-
 
 Monsieur Grei'in 
 
 Photogravure From an Original Drawing
 
 Illustrated Sterling edition 
 
 The Member for Arcis 
 
 The Seamy Side of History 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 BY 
 HONORE de BALZAC 
 
 With Introductions by 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 BOSTON 
 DANA KSTKS \ COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 COPYRIGHTED 1901 
 BY 
 
 JOHN D. AVIL 
 
 A II Rights Reserved
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS: 
 
 (Le Diputt d' Arch ; Translator, CLARA BELL) 
 
 PART I- THE ELECTION - I 
 
 " II. EDIFYING LETTERS - - 114 
 
 " III. THE COMTE DE SALLENAVAUVE - - 275 
 
 PART II 
 
 INTRODUCTION - - ir 
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOR Y : 
 
 (L 'Envers de I ' Histoire Conteinporine) 
 
 FIRST EPISODE : MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE - I 
 
 SECOND EPISODE: INITIATED - - 114 
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA ... - 213 
 
 (Un Prince de la Bokeme) 
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS - - 251 
 
 (Un Homme d'affaires) 
 VOL. 16 1 
 
 ../. i
 
 IV CONTENTS 
 
 GAUD1SSART II - . 273 
 
 (Gaudissari II) 
 
 SARRASINE - . - 285 
 
 (Sarrasine) 
 
 FACING CANE - 325 
 
 {Facing Cane) 
 
 Z. MARC AS - - - 341 
 
 (Z. Marcas) 
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR . 369 
 
 (U Episode sous la Terreur) 
 
 INDEX . - 391 
 
 (Translated by CLARA BBLL and othrs)
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Le Depute d'Arcis, like the still less generally known Les 
 Petits Bourgeois, stands on a rather different footing from 
 the rest of Balzac's work. Both were posthumous, and both, 
 having been left unfinished, were completed by the author's 
 friend, Charles Rabou. Eabou is not much known nowadays 
 as a man of letters ; he must not be confused with the writer 
 Hippolyte Babou, the friend of Baudelaire, the reputed in- 
 ventor of the title Fleurs du Mai, and the author of some 
 very acute articles in the great collection of Crepet's Poetes 
 Frangais. But he figures pretty frequently in association of 
 one kind or another with Balzac, and would appear to have 
 been thoroughly imbued with the scheme and spirit of the 
 Comedie. At the same time, it does not appear that even the 
 indefatigable and most competent M. de Lovenjoul is per- 
 fectly certain where Balzac's labors end and those of Eabou 
 begin. 
 
 It would seem, however (and certainly internal evidence 
 has nothing to say on the other side), that the severance, or 
 rather the junction, must have taken place somewhere about 
 the point where, after the introduction of Maxime de Trailles, 
 the interest suddenly shifts altogether from the folk of Arcis 
 and the conduct of their election to the hitherto unknown 
 Comte de Sallenauve. It would, no doubt, be possible, and 
 even easy, to discover in Balzac's undoubted work for in- 
 stance, in Le Cure de Village and Illusions Perdues in- 
 stances of shiftings of interest nearly as abrupt and of 
 
 (ix)
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 changes in the main centre of the story nearly as decided. 
 Nor is it possible, considering the weakness of constructive 
 finish which always marked Balzac, to rule out offhand the 
 substitution, after an unusually lively and business-like be- 
 ginning, of the nearly always frigid scheme of letters, topped 
 up with a conclusion in which, with very doubtful art, as 
 many personages of the Comedie, and even direct references 
 to as many of its books as possible, are dragged in. But it is 
 nearly as possible certain that he would never have left things 
 in such a condition, and I do not even think that he would 
 ever have arranged them in quite the same state, even as an 
 experiment. 
 
 The book belongs to the Champenois or Arcis-sur-Aube 
 series, which is so brilliantly opened by Une Tenebreuse 
 Affaire. It is curious and worth notice, as showing the con- 
 scientious fashion in which Balzac always set about his mature 
 work, that though his provincial stories are taken from parts 
 of France widely distant from one another, the selection is 
 by no means haphazard, and arranges itself with ease into 
 groups corresponding to certain haunts or sojourns of the 
 author. There is the Loire group, furnished by his youthful 
 remembrances of Tours and Saumur, and by later ones down 
 to the Breton coast. There is the group of which Alengon 
 and the Breton-Norman frontiers are the field, and the 
 scenery of which was furnished by early visits of which we 
 know little, but the fact of the existence of which is of the 
 first importance, as having given birth to the Chouans, and so 
 to the whole Comedie in a way. There is the Angoumois- 
 Limousin group, for which he informed himself during his 
 frequent visits to the Carraud family. And lastly, there is 
 one of rather wider extent, and not connected with so definite
 
 INTRODUCTION Xl 
 
 a centre, but including the Morvan, Upper Burgundy, and 
 part of Champagne, which seems to have been commended 
 to him by his stay at Sache and other places. This was his 
 latest set of studies, and to this Le Depute d'Arcis of course 
 belongs. To round off the subject, it is noteworthy that no 
 part of the coast except a little in the north, with the re- 
 markable exceptions of the scenes of La Recherche de I'Absolu 
 and one or two others; nothing in the greater part of Brit- 
 tany and Normandy; nothing in Guienne, Gascony, Langue- 
 doc, Provence, or Dauphine, seems to have attracted him. 
 Yet some of these scenes and with some of them he had 
 meddled in the Days of Ignorance are the most tempting 
 of any in France to the romancer, and his abstention from 
 them is one of the clearest proofs of his resolve to speak only 
 of that he did know. 
 
 The certainly genuine part of the present book is, as cer- 
 tainly, not below anything save his very best work. It be- 
 longs, indeed, to the most minute and "meticulous" part of 
 that work, not to the bolder and more ambitious side. There 
 is no Goriot, no Eugenie Grandet, not even any Corentin or 
 Vautrin, hardly so much as a Eastignac about it. But the 
 good little people of Arcis-sur-Aube are represented "in their 
 natural," as Balzac's great compatriot would have said, with 
 extraordinary felicity and force. The electoral meeting in 
 Madame Marion's house is certainly one of the best things in 
 the whole Comedie for completeness within its own limits, 
 and none of the personages, official or other, can be said to 
 suffer from that touch of exaggeration which, to some tastes, 
 interferes with the more celebrated and perhaps more gen- 
 erally attractive delineations of Parisian journalism in Illu- 
 sions Perdues and similar books. In fact, in what he wrote
 
 xli INTRODUCTION 
 
 of Le Depute d'Arcis, Balzac seems to have had personal 
 knowledge to go upon, without any personal grievances to re- 
 venge or any personal crazes to enforce. The latter, it is true, 
 often prompted his sublimest work ; hut the former frequently 
 helped to produce his least successful. In Le Depute d'Arcis 
 he is at the happy mean. It is not necessary to give an elab- 
 orate bibliography of it, for, as has been said, only the "Elec- 
 tion" part is certainly Balzac's. This appeared in a news- 
 paper, L'Union Monarchique, for April and May 1847. 
 
 G. S.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 PART 1. 
 
 THE ELECTION 
 
 BEFORE entering on a study of a country election, I need 
 hardly say that the town of Arcis-sur-Aube was not the scene 
 of the events to be related. The district of Arcis votes at 
 Bar-sur-Aube, which is fifteen leagues away from Arcis; 
 so there is no member for Arcis in the Chamber of Deputies. 
 The amenities demanded by the history of contemporary man- 
 ners require this precaution. It is perhaps an ingenious 
 notion to describe one town as the setting for a drama played 
 out in another; indeed, the plan has been already adopted 
 in the course of this Human Comedy, in spite of the draw- 
 back that it often makes the frame as elaborate as the picture. 
 
 Towards the end of April 1839, at about ten in the morn- 
 ing, a strange appearance was presented by Madame Marion's 
 drawing-room the lady was the widow of a revenue collector 
 in the department of the Aube. Nothing remained in it of 
 all the furniture but the window curtains, the chimney hang- 
 ings and ornaments, the chandelier, and the tea-table. The 
 Aubusson carpet, taken up a fortnight sooner than was 
 necessary, encumbered the balcony steps, and the parquet had 
 been energetically rubbed without looking any the brighter. 
 
 This was a sort of domestic forecast of the coming elec- 
 tions, for which preparations were being made over the 
 whole face of the country. Things are sometimes as humor- 
 ous as men. This is an argument in favor of the occult 
 sciences. 
 
 (1)
 
 8 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 An old man-servant, attached to Colonel Giguet, Madame 
 Marion's brother, had just finished sweeping away the dust 
 that had lodged between the boards in the course of the 
 winter. The housemaid and cook, with a nimble zeal that 
 showed as much enthusiasm as devotion, were bringing down 
 all the chairs in the house and piling them in the garden. It 
 must be explained that the trees already displayed large leaves, 
 between which the sky smiled cloudless. Spring breezes and 
 May sunshine allowed of the glass doors and windows being 
 thrown open from the drawing-room, a room longer than it 
 was wide. 
 
 The old lady, giving her orders to the two women, desired 
 them to place the chairs in four rows with a space of about 
 three feet between. In a few minutes there were ten chairs 
 across the rows, a medley of various patterns ; a line of chairs 
 was placed along the wall in front of the windows. At the 
 end of the room opposite the forty chairs Madame Marion 
 placed three armchairs behind the .tea-table, which she cov- 
 ered with a green cloth, and on it placed a bell. 
 
 Old Colonel Giguet appeared on the scene of the fray 
 just as it had occurred to his sister that she might fill up the 
 recess on each side of the chimney-place by bringing in two 
 benches from the ante-room, in spite of the baldness of the 
 velvet, which had seen four-and-twenty years' service. 
 
 "We can seat seventy persons," said she, with exulta- 
 tion. 
 
 "God send us seventy friends !" replied the Colonel. 
 
 "If, after receiving all the society of Arcis-sur-Aube every 
 evening for twenty-four years, even one of our usual visitors 
 should fail us well!" said the old lady in a threatening 
 tone. 
 
 "Come," said the Colonel with a shrug, as he interrupted 
 his sister, "I can name ten who cannot who ought not to 
 come. To begin with," said he, counting on his fingers: 
 "Antonin Goulard, the sous-prefet, for one; the public pros- 
 ecutor, Frederic Marest, for another ; Monsieur Olivier Vinet,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 3 
 
 his deputy, three; Monsieur Martener, the examining judge, 
 four ; the justice of the peace " 
 
 "But I am not so silly," the old lady interrupted in her 
 turn, "as to expect that men who hold appointments should 
 attend a meeting of which the purpose is to return one more 
 deputy to the Opposition. At the same time, Antonin Gou- 
 lard, Simon's playfellow and school-mate, would be very glad 
 to see him in the Chamber, for " 
 
 "Now, my good sister, leave us men to manage our own 
 business. Where is Simon?" 
 
 "He is dressing.' He was very wise not to come to break- 
 fast for he is very nervous; and though our young lawyer is 
 in the habit of speaking in Court, he dreads this meeting as 
 much as if he had to face his enemies." 
 
 "My word! Yes. I have often stood the fire of a 
 battery and my soul never quaked my body I say nothing 
 about; but if I had to stand up here," said the old soldier, 
 placing himself behind the table, "opposite the forty good 
 people who will sit there, open-mouthed, their eyes fixed on 
 mine, and expecting a set speech in sounding periods my 
 shirt would be soaking before I could find a word." 
 
 "And yet, my dear father, you must make that effort on 
 my behalf," said Simon Giguet, coming in from the little 
 drawing-room; "for if there is a man in the department 
 whose word is powerful, it is certainly you. In 1815 " 
 
 "In 1815," said the particularly well-preserved little man, 
 "I had not to speak; I merely drew up a little proclamation 
 which raised two thousand men in twenty-four hours. And 
 there is a great difference between putting one's name at the 
 bottom of a broadsheet and addressing a meeting. Napoleon 
 himself would have lost at that game. On the 18th Brumaire 
 he talked sheer nonsense to the Five Hundred." 
 
 "But, my dear father, my whole life is at stake, my pros- 
 pects, my happiness Just look at one person only, and 
 
 fancy you are speaking to him alone you will get through it 
 all right." 
 
 "Mercy on us! I am only an old woman," said Madame
 
 4 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Marion; "but in such a case, and if I knew what it was all 
 about why, I could be eloquent!" 
 
 "Too eloquent, perhaps," said the Colonel. "And to shoot 
 beyond the mark is not to hit it. But what is in the wind ?" 
 he added, addressing his son. "For the last two days you 
 
 have connected this nomination with some notion If 
 
 my son is not elected, so much the worse for Arcis, that's 
 all." 
 
 These words, worthy of a father, were quite in harmony 
 with the whole life of the speaker. 
 
 Colonel Giguet, one of the most respected officers in the 
 GRANDE ARMEE, was one of those admirable characters which 
 to a foundation of perfect rectitude add great delicacy of 
 feeling. He never thrust himself forward; honors came to 
 seek him out; hence for eleven years he had remained a 
 captain in the artillery of the guards, rising to command a 
 battalion in 1813, and promoted Major in 1814. His almost 
 fanatical attachment to Napoleon prohibited his serving the 
 Bourbons after the Emperor's first abdication. And in 1815 
 his devotion was so conspicuous that he would have been 
 banished but for the Comte de Gondreville, who had his name 
 erased from the list, and succeeded in getting him a retiring 
 pension and the rank of Colonel. 
 
 Madame Marion, nee Giguet, had had another brother who 
 was Colonel of the Gendarmerie at Troyes, and with whom 
 she had formerly lived. There she had married Monsieur 
 Marion, receiver-general of the revenues of the department. 
 
 A brother of the late lamented Marion was presiding judge 
 of one of the Imperial Courts. While still a pleader at 
 Arcis this lawyer had, during the "Terror," lent his name 
 to the famous Malin (deputy for the Aube), a representative 
 of the people, to enable him to purchase the estate of Gondre- 
 ville. Consequently, when Malin had become a senator and 
 a count, his influence was entirely at the service of the 
 Marions. The lawyer's brother thus got his appointment 
 as receiver-general at a time when the Government, far from 
 having to choose from among thirty applicants, was only too 
 glad to find men to sit in such slippery seats.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 5 
 
 Marion, the receiver-general, had inherited the property 
 of his brother the judge; Madame Marion came in for that 
 of her brother Colonel Giguet of the Gendarmerie. In 1814 
 Monsieur Marion suffered some reverses ; he died at about the 
 same time as the Empire, and his widow was able to make up 
 fifteen thousand francs a year from the wreck of these fag- 
 ends of fortune. Giguet of the Gendarmerie had left all his 
 little wealth to his sister on hearing of his brother's marriage 
 in 1806 to one of the daughters of a rich Hamburg banker. 
 The admiration of all Europe for Napoleon's magnificent 
 troopers is well known. 
 
 In 1814 Madame Marion in very narrow circumstances 
 came to live at Arcis, her native town, where she bought a 
 house in the Grande Place, one of the handsomest residences 
 in the town, on a site suggesting that it had formerly been 
 dependent on the chateau. Being used to entertain a great 
 deal at Troyes, where the revenue-collector was a person of 
 importance, her drawing-room was open to the prominent 
 members of the Liberal circle at Arcis. A woman who is 
 used to the position of queen of a country salon does not 
 readily forego it. Of all habits, those of vanity are the most 
 enduring. 
 
 Colonel Giguet, a Liberal, after being a Bonapartist for 
 by a singular metamorphosis, Napoleon's soldiers almost all 
 fell in love with the constitutional system naturally became, 
 under the Eestoration, the President of the Town Council 
 of Arcis, which included Grevin, the notary, and Beauvisage, 
 his son-in-law ; Varlet fils, the leading physician in the town 
 and Grevin's brother-in-law, with sundry other Liberals of 
 importance. 
 
 "If our dear boy is not elected," said Madame Marion, after 
 looking into the ante-room and the garden to make sure that 
 nobody was listening; "he will not win Mademoiselle Beau- 
 visage; for what he looks for in the event of his success is 
 marrying Cecile." 
 
 "Cecile ?" said the old man, opening his eyes wide to gaze 
 at his sister in amazement*
 
 6 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 
 
 "No one but you in all the department, brother, is likely 
 to forget the fortune and the expectations of Mademoiselle 
 Beauvisage." 
 
 "She is the wealthiest heiress in the department of the 
 Aube," said Simon Giguet. 
 
 "But it seems to me that my son is not to be sneezed at !" 
 said the old Colonel. "He is your heir; he has his mother's 
 money; and I hope to leave him something better than my 
 bare name." 
 
 "All that put together will not give him more than thirty 
 thousand francs a year, and men have already come forward 
 with as much as that to say nothing of position " 
 
 "And? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 "And have been refused." 
 
 "What on earth do the Beauvisages want, then?" said 
 Giguet, looking from his sister to his son. 
 
 It may seem strange that Colonel Giguet, Madame Marion's 
 brother in whose house the society of Arcis had been meeting 
 every evening for the last f our-and-twenty years, whose salon 
 rang with the echo of every rumor, every slander, every piece of 
 gossip of the countryside where perhaps they were even manu- 
 factured should be ignorant of such facts and events. But his 
 ignorance is accounted for when it is pointed out that this 
 noble survivor of the Imperial phalanx went to bed and rose 
 with the fowls, as old men do who want to live all the days 
 of their life. Hence he was never present at confidential 
 "talks." . 
 
 There are, in provincial life, two kinds of confidential 
 talk: that held in public when everybody is assembled to 
 play cards and gossip, and that which simmers like a care- 
 fully watched pot when only two or three trustworthy friends 
 remain, who will certainly not repeat anything that is said, 
 excepting in their own drawing-room to two or three other 
 friends equally to be relied on. 
 
 For the past nine years, since his political party had come 
 to the top, the Colonel lived almost out of the world. He 
 always rose with the sun, and devoted himself to horticulture :
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 1 
 
 he was devoted to flowers ; but of all flowers, he only cherished 
 his roses. He had the stained hands of a true gardener. He 
 himself tended his beds his squares he called them. His 
 squares ! The word reminded him of the gaudy array of men 
 drawn up on the field of battle. He was always holding 
 council with his man, and, especially for the last two years, 
 seldom mingled with the company, rarely seeing any visitors. 
 He took one meal only with the family his dinner; for he 
 was up too early to breakfast with his sister and his son. 
 It is to the Colonel's skill that the world owes the Giguet 
 rose, famous among amateurs. 
 
 This old man, a sort of domestic fetich, was brought out, 
 of course, on great occasions; some families have a demi- 
 god of this kind, and make a display of him as they would 
 of a title. 
 
 "I have a suspicion that since the Revolution of July Ma- 
 dame Beauvisage has a hankering after living in Paris," 
 said Madame Marion. "Being compelled to remain here till 
 her father dies, she has transferred her ambition and placed 
 her hopes in her future son-in-law; the fair matron dreams 
 of the splendors of a political position." 
 
 "And could you love Cecile?" asked the Colonel of his 
 son. 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 "Does she take to you?" 
 
 "I think so. But the important point is that her mother 
 and her grandfather should fancy me. Although old Grevin 
 is pleased to oppose my election, success would bring Ma- 
 dame Beauvisage to accept me, for she will hope to govern 
 me to her mind, and be minister under my name." 
 
 "A good joke !" cried Madame Marion. "And what does 
 she take us for?" 
 
 "Whom has she refused then?" asked the Colonel of his 
 sister. 
 
 "Well, within the last three months they say that Antonin 
 Goulard and Monsieur Froderic Marest, the public pros- 
 ecutor, got very equivocal replies, meaning anything except- 
 ing Yes."
 
 8 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Good Heavens!" exclaimed the old man, throwing up 
 his arms, "what times we live in ! Why, Cecile is a hosier's 
 daughter, a farmer's grandchild. Does Madame Beauvisage 
 look for a Comte de Cinq-Cygne for a son-in-law?" 
 
 "Nay, brother, do not make fun of the Beauvisages. Cecile 
 is rich enough to choose a husband wherever she pleases 
 even of the rank of the Cygnes. But I hear the bell an- 
 nouncing the arrival of some elector; I must go, and am 
 sorry that I cannot listen to what is said." 
 
 Though, politically speaking, 1839 is far enough from 
 1847, we can still remember the elections which produced 
 the Coalition, a brief attempt made by the Chamber of 
 Deputies to carry into effect the threatened parliamentary 
 government ; a Cromwellian threat which, for lack of a Crom- 
 well, and under a King averse to fraud, could only result 
 in the system we now live under, of a Ministry and Chamber 
 for all the world like the puppets that are worked by the 
 owner of a show, to the great delight of the always gaping 
 passer-by. 
 
 The district of Arcis-sur-Aube was at that time in a strange 
 position, believing itself free to elect a deputy. From 1816 
 till 1836 it had always returned one of the most ponderous 
 orators of the Left, one of those seventeen whom the Liberal 
 party loved to designate as great citizens no less a man, in 
 short, than Frangois Keller, of the firm of Keller Brothers, 
 son-in-law to the Comte de Gondreville. 
 
 Gondreville, one. of the finest estates in France, is not 
 more than a quarter of a league from Arcis. The banker, 
 lately created count and peer of France, proposed, no doubt, 
 to hand on to his son, now thirty years of age, his posi- 
 tion as deputy, so as to fit him in due time to sit among 
 the peers. 
 
 Charles Keller, already a major holding a staff appoint- 
 ment, and now a viscount, as one of the Prince Eoyal's 
 favorites, was attached to the party of the Citizen King. A 
 splendid future seemed to lie before a young man of immense 
 wealth, high courage, and noteworthy devotion to the new
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 9 
 
 dynasty grandson to the Comte de Gondreville, and nephew 
 of the Marechale de Carigliano. But this election, indis- 
 pensable to his future plans, presented very great difficulties. 
 
 Ever since the advancement to power of the citizen class, 
 Arcis had felt a vague yearning for independence. The last 
 few elections, at which Frangois Keller had been returned, 
 had been disturbed by certain Kepublicans whose red caps 
 and wagging beards had not proved alarming to the good 
 folk of Arcis. By working up the feeling of the country, 
 the radical candidate had secured thirty or forty votes. Some 
 of the residents, humiliated by seeing their town a rotten 
 borough of the Opposition, then joined these democrats, but 
 not to support democracy. In France, when the votes are 
 polled, strange politico-chemical products are evolved in which 
 the laws of affinity are quite upset. Now to nominate young 
 Major Keller, in 1839, after returning his father for twenty 
 years, would be positively slavish, a servitude against which 
 the pride of many rich townsmen rose in arms men who 
 thought themselves quite the equals of Monsieur Malin Comte 
 de Gondreville or of Keller Brothers, bankers, or the Cinq- 
 Cygnes or the King .himself, if it came to that ! Hence the 
 numerous partisans of old Gondreville, the king of the de- 
 partment, hoped for some fresh stroke of the astuteness he 
 had so often shown. To keep up the influence of his family 
 in the district of Arcis, the old statesman would, no doubt, 
 put forward some man of straw belonging to the place, who 
 would then accept public office and make way for Charles 
 Keller, a state of things which requires the elect of the peo- 
 ple to stand another election. 
 
 When Simon Giguet sounded Grevin the notary, the Count's 
 faithful ally, on the subject of the candidature, the old man 
 replied that, without knowing anything of the Comte de 
 Gondreville's intentions, Charles Keller was the man for 
 him, and that he should do his utmost to secure his return. 
 
 As soon as Grevin' s announcement was made known in 
 Arcis there was a strong feeling against him. Although this 
 Aristides of Champagne had, during thirty years of practice,
 
 10 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 commanded the fullest confidence of the citizens; although 
 he had been mayor of the town from 1804 till 1814, and again 
 during the Hundred Days; although the Opposition had 
 recognized him as their leader till the days of triumph in 
 1830, when he had refused the honor of the mayoralty in 
 consideration of his advanced age; finally, although the 
 town, in proof of its attachment, had then elected his son- 
 in-law, Monsieur Beauvisage, they now all turned against 
 him, and some of the younger spirits accused him of being 
 in his dotage. Simon Giguet's supporters attached themselves 
 to Phileas Beauvisage the mayor, who was all the more ready 
 to side with them because, without being on bad terms with 
 his father-in-law, he affected an independence which resulted 
 in a coolness, but which the cunning old father-in-law over- 
 looked, finding in it a convenient lever for acting on the 
 townspeople of Arcis. 
 
 Monsieur le Maire, questioned only the day before on the 
 market-place, had declared that he would sooner vote for 
 the first name on the list of eligible citizens of Arcis than 
 for Charles Keller, for whom he had, however, the highest 
 esteem. 
 
 "Arcis shall no longer be a rotten borough !" cried he. "Or 
 I go to live in Paris." 
 
 Flatter the passions of the day, and you become a hero at 
 once, even at Arcis-sur-Aube. 
 
 "Monsieur le Maire has given crowning proof of his firm- 
 ness of temper," they said. 
 
 Nothing gathers faster than a legalized rebellion. In the 
 course of the evening Madame Marion and her friends had 
 organized for the morrow a meeting of "Independent Elec- 
 tors" in favor of Simon Giguet, the Colonel's son. And now 
 that morrow was to-day, and she had turned the whole house 
 topsy-turvy for the reception of the friends on whose in- 
 dependence they relied. 
 
 Simon Giguet, the home-made candidate of a little town 
 that was jealously eager to return one of its sons, had, as 
 has been seen, at once taken advantage of this little stir to
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 11 
 
 make himself the representative of the wants and interests 
 of Southwestern Champagne. At the same time, the posi- 
 tion and fortune of the Giguet family were wholly due to 
 the Comte de Gondreville. But when an election is in the 
 case, can feelings be considered ? 
 
 This drama is written for the enlightenment of lands so 
 unhappy as to be ignorant of the benefits of national repre- 
 sentation, and unaware, therefore, of the intestinal struggles 
 and the Brutus-like sacrifices a little town has to suffer in 
 giving birth to a deputy a natural and majestic spectacle 
 which can only be compared to child-birth there are the 
 same efforts, the same defilement, the same travail, the same 
 triumph. 
 
 It may be wondered how an only son with a very sufficient 
 fortune happened to be, like Simon Giguet, an unpretending 
 advocate in the little town of Arcis, where advocates have 
 hardly any employment. So a few words are here necessary 
 describing the candidate. 
 
 During his wife's lifetime, from 1806 to 1813, the Colonel 
 had had three children, of whom Simon, the eldest, survived 
 the other two. The mother died in 1814, one of the children 
 in 1818, the other in 1825. Until he remained the sole sur- 
 vivor, Simon had, of course, been brought up with a view 
 to making his own living by some lucrative profession. Then, 
 when he was an only son, Simon's prospects underwent a 
 reverse. Madame Marion's hopes for her nephew had been 
 largely founded on his inheriting considerable wealth from 
 his grandfather, the Hamburg banker ; but the German, dying 
 in 1826, left his grandson Giguet no more than two thousand 
 francs a year. The financier, endowed with great powers of 
 procreation, had counteracted the monotony of commercial 
 life by indulging in the joys of fatherhood ; hence he favored 
 the families of the eleven other children who clung to him, 
 ;is it were, and made him believe what, indeed, seemed not 
 unlikely that Simon would be a rich man. 
 
 The Colonel was bent on putting his son into an inde- 
 pendent profession; and this was why: the Giguets could
 
 12 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 not hope for any favor from Government under the Restora- 
 tion. Even if Simon had not had an ardent Bonapartist for 
 his father, he belonged to a family all of whom had justly 
 incurred the disapprobation of the Cinq-Cygne family, in 
 consequence of the part taken by Giguet, the Colonel of Gen- 
 darmes, and all the Marions Madame Marion included 
 as witnesses for the prosecution in the famous trial of the 
 Simeuses. These brothers were unjustly sentenced, in 1805, 
 as guilty of carrying off and detaining the Comte de Gondre- 
 ville (at that time a senator, after having been the people's 
 representative), who had despoiled their family of its for- 
 tune. 
 
 Grevin had been not only one of the most important 
 witnesses, but also an ardent promoter of the proceedings. 
 At this time this trial still divided the district of Arcis into 
 two factions one believing in the innocence of the condemned 
 parties and upholding the family of Cinq-Cygne, the other 
 supporting the Comte de Gondreville and his adherents. 
 Though, after the Restoration, the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne 
 made use of the influence she acquired by the return of the 
 Bourbons to settle everything to her mind in the department, 
 the Comte de Gondreville found means to counterbalance 
 the supremacy of the Cinq-Cygnes by the secret authority 
 he held over the Liberals by means of Grevin and Colonel 
 Giguet. He also had the support of his son-in-law Keller, 
 who was unfailingly elected deputy in spite of the Cinq- 
 Cygnes, and considerable influence in the State Council so 
 long as Louis XVIII. lived. 
 
 It was not till after the death of that king that the 
 Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne was successful in getting Michu ap- 
 pointed presiding judge of the Lower Court at Arcis. She 
 was bent on getting this place for the grandson of the land 
 steward who had perished on the scaffold at Troyes, the victim 
 of his attachment to the Simeuses, and whose full-length 
 portrait was to be seen in her drawing-room both in Paris 
 and at Cinq-Cygne. Until 1823 the Comte constantly hin- 
 dered the appointment of Michu.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 13 
 
 It was by the Comte de Gondreville's advice that Colonel 
 Giguet had made a lawyer of his son. Simon had all the 
 better chance of shining in the Areis district, because he was 
 the only pleader there; as a rule, in these small towns, the 
 attorneys plead in their own cases. Simon had had some 
 little success at the assizes of the department ; but he was not 
 the less the butt of many pleasantries from Frederic Marest, 
 the public prosecutor ; Olivier Yinet, his deputy ; and Michu, 
 the presiding judge the three wits of the court. Simon 
 Giguet, it must be owned, like all men who are laughed at, 
 laid himself open to the cruel power of ridicule. He listened 
 to his own voice, he was ready to talk on any pretence, he 
 spun out endless reels of cut-and-dried phrases, which were 
 accepted as eloquence among the superior citizens of Arcis. 
 The poor fellow was one of the class of bores who have an ex- 
 planation for everything, even for the simplest matters. He 
 would explain the rain ; the causes of the Eevolution of July ; 
 he would also explain things that were inexplicable he 
 would explain Louis- Philippe, Monsieur Odilon Barrot, Mon- 
 sieur Thiers ; he explained the Eastern Question ; the state of 
 the province of Champagne; he explained 1789, the custom- 
 house tariff, the views of humanitarians, magnetism, and the 
 distribution of the civil list. 
 
 This young man, who was lean and bilious-looking, and 
 tall enough to account for his sonorous emptiness for a 
 tall man is rarely remarkable for distinguished gifts 
 caricatured the puritanism of the Extreme Left, whose mem- 
 bers are all so precise, after the fashion of a prude who has 
 some intrigue to conceal. Always dressed in black, he wore 
 a white tie that hung loose round his neck, while his face 
 seemed to be set in stiff white paper, for he still affected the 
 upright starched collars which fashion has happily discarded. 
 His coat and trousers were always too big for him. He had 
 what, in the country, is termed dignity, that is to say, he 
 stood stiffly upright while he was boring you Antonin Gou- 
 lard, his friend, accusing him of aping Monsieur Dupin. 
 And, in fact, he was rather too much given to low shoes, and 
 coarse black spun-Bilk stockings.
 
 14 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Under the protection of the respect constantly shown to 
 his old father, and the influence exerted by his aunt in a small 
 town whose principal inhabitants had haunted her receptions 
 for four-and-twenty years, Simon Giguet, already possessed 
 of about ten thousand francs a year, irrespective of the fees 
 he earned, and his aunt's fortune, which would some day 
 certainly be his, never doubted of his election. At the same 
 time, the first sound of the door-bell, announcing the advent 
 of the more important electors, made the ambitious youth's 
 heart beat with vague alarms. Simon did not deceive him- 
 self as to the cleverness or the vast resources at the command 
 of old Grevin, nor as to the effect of the heroic measures that 
 would be taken by the Ministry to support the interests of the 
 brave young officer at that time in Africa on the staff of the 
 Prince who was the son of one of the great citizen-lords of 
 France, and the nephew of a Marechale. 
 
 "I really think I have the colic," said he to his father. "I 
 have a sickly burning just over the pit of my stomach, which 
 I do not at all like " 
 
 "The oldest soldiers," replied the Colonel, "felt just 
 the same when the guns opened fire at the beginning of a 
 battle." 
 
 "What will it be, then, in the Chamber!" exclaimed the 
 lawyer. 
 
 "The Comte de Gondreville has told us," the old soldier 
 went on, "that more than one speaker is liable to the little 
 discomforts which we old leather-breeches were used to feel 
 at the beginning of a fight. And all for a few empty words ! 
 But, dear me, you want to be a deputy," added the old 
 man, with a shrug. "Be a deputy !" 
 
 "The triumph, father, will be Cecile ! Cecile is enormously 
 rich, and in these days money is power." 
 
 "Well, well, times have changed ! In the Emperor's time 
 it was bravery that was needed." 
 
 "Every age may be summed up in a word !" said Simon, 
 repeating a remark of the old Comte de Gondreville's, which 
 was thoroughly characteristic of the man. "Under the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 15 
 
 Empire to ruin a man you said, 'He is a coward !' Nowadays 
 we say, 'He is a swindler.' '' 
 
 "Unhappy France, what have you come to!" cried the 
 Colonel. "I will go back to my roses." 
 
 "No, no, stay here, father. You are the keystone of the 
 arch !" 
 
 The first to appear was the Mayor, Monsieur Phileas Beau- 
 visage, and with him came his father-in-law's successor, the 
 busiest notary in the town, Achille Pigoult, the grandson of 
 an old man who had been justice of the peace at Arcis all 
 through the ^Revolution, the Empire, and the early days of 
 the Eestoration. Achille Pigoult, a man of about two-and- 
 thirty, had been old Grevin's clerk for eighteen years, with- 
 out a hope of getting an office as notary. His father, the old 
 justice's son, had failed badly in business, and died of an 
 apoplexy so called. Then the Comte de Gondreville, on whom 
 old Pigoult had some claims outstanding from 1793, had lent 
 the necessary security, and so enabled the grandson to pur- 
 chase Grevin's office ; the old justice of the peace had, in fact, 
 conducted the preliminary inquiry in the Simeuse case. So 
 Achille had established himself in a house in the Church 
 Square belonging to the Count, and let at so low a rent that 
 it was easy to perceive how anxious the wily politician was to 
 keep a hold over the chief notary of the town. 
 
 This young Pigoult, a lean little man, with eyes that 
 seemed to pierce the green spectacles which did not mitigate 
 their cunning expression, and fully informed of everybody's 
 concerns in the district, had acquired a certain readiness of 
 speech from the habit of talking on business, and was sup- 
 posed to be a great wag, simply because he spoke out with 
 rather more wit than the natives had at their command. He 
 was still a bachelor, looking forward to making some good 
 match by the intervention of his two patrons Grevin and 
 the Comte de Gondreville. And lawyer Giguet could not 
 repress a start of surprise when he saw Achille as a satellite 
 to Monsieur Phil ('as Beau visage. 
 
 The little notary, his face so seamed with the small-pox that
 
 16 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 
 
 it looked as if it were covered with a white honeycomb, was 
 a perfect contrast to the burly mayor, whose face was like a 
 full moon, and a florid moon too. This pink-and-white com- 
 plexion was set off by a beaming smile, the result less of a 
 happy frame of mind than of the shape of his mouth; but 
 Phileas Beauvisage was blessed with such perfect self-satis- 
 faction, that he smiled incessantly on everybody and under 
 all circumstances. Those doll-like lips would have grinned 
 at a funeral. The bright sparkle in his round blue eyes did 
 not belie that insufferable and perpetual smile. 
 
 The man's entire self-satisfaction passed, however, for 
 benevolence and friendliness, all the more readily because he 
 had a style of speech of his own, marked by the most ex- 
 travagant use of polite phraseology. He always "had the 
 honor" to inquire after the health of a friend, he invariably 
 added the adjectives dear, good, excellent; and he was prodigal 
 of complimentary phrases on every occasion of the minor 
 grievances or pleasures of life. Thus, under a deluge of 
 commonplace, he concealed his utter incapacity, his lack of 
 education, and a vacillating nature which can only find 
 adequate description in the old-fashioned word weathercock. 
 But then this weathercock had for its pinion handsome Ma- 
 dame Beauvisage, Severine Grevin, the notable lady of the 
 district. 
 
 When Severine had heard of what she was pleased to call 
 her husband's freak a propos to the election, she had said 
 to him that very morning: 
 
 "You did not do badly by asserting your independence; 
 but you must not go to the meeting at the Giguets' without 
 taking Achille Pigoult; I have sent to tell him to call for 
 you." 
 
 Now sending Achille Pigoult to keep an eye on Beauvisage 
 was tantamount to sending a spy from the Gondreville fac- 
 tion to attend the Giguets' meeting. So it is easy to imagine 
 what a grimace twisted Simon's puritanical features when 
 he found himself extending a civil welcome to a regular 
 visitor in his aunt's drawing-room, and an influential elector, 
 in whom he scented an enemy.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 17 
 
 "Ah !" thought he to himself, "I was a fool when I refused 
 the security money he asked me to lend him! Old Gondre- 
 ville was sharper than I. Good-day, Achille," he said 
 aloud, with an air of ease. "You will give me a tough job 
 or two." 
 
 "Your meeting is not a conspiracy against the independence 
 of our votes, I suppose," replied the notary with a smile. 
 "We are playing above board ?" 
 
 "Above board !" repeated Beauvisage. 
 
 And the Mayor laughed that meaningless laugh with which 
 some men end every sentence, and which might be called 
 the burden of their song. Then Monsieur le Maire assumed 
 what we may call his third position, full-face, and very up- 
 right, with his hands behind his back. He was in a whole 
 suit of black, with a highly decorative white waistcoat, open so as 
 to show a glimpse of two diamond studs worth several thou- 
 sand francs. 
 
 "We will fight it out, and be none the worse friends," 
 Phileas went on. "That is the essential feature of con- 
 stitutional institutions. Hah, ha, ha ! That is my notion 
 of the alliance between monarchy and liberty. He, he, he !" 
 
 Thereupon the Mayor took Simon by the hand, saying: 
 
 "And how are you, my dear friend? Your dear aunt and 
 the worthy Colonel are, no doubt, as well to-day as they were 
 yesterday at least we may presume that they are. Heh, 
 heh ! A little put out, perhaps, by the ceremony we are pre- 
 paring for, perhaps. So, so ! Young man" (yong maan, he 
 said), "we are starting in our political career? Ah, ha, ha! 
 This is our first step ! We must never draw back it is a 
 strong measure ! Ay, and I would rather you than I should 
 rush into the tempests of the Chamber. He, he ! pleasing 
 as it may be to find the sovereign power of France embodied 
 in one's own person he, he ! one four-hundred-and-fifty- 
 third part of it he, he !" 
 
 There was a pleasant fulness in Phileas Beauvisage's voice 
 that corresponded admirably with tjie gourd-like rotundity 
 of his face and its hue as of a pale buff pumpkin, his round
 
 18 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 
 
 back, and broad protuberant person. His voice, as deep 
 and mellow as a bass, had the velvety quality of a baritone, 
 and the laugh with which he ended every sentence had a 
 silvery ring. If God, in stocking the earthly paradise, had 
 wanted to complete the set of species by adding a country 
 citizen, He could not have moulded a more magnificent and 
 developed specimen than Phileas Beauvisage. 
 
 "I admire the devotion of men who can throw themselves 
 into the storms of political life," he went on. "He, he, he ! 
 You need a nerve that I cannot boast of. Who would have 
 said in 1812 in 1813 even that this was what we were 
 coming to? For my part, I am prepared for anything, now 
 that asphalt and india-rubber, railways and steam, are 
 metamorphosing the ground under our feet, our greatcoats, 
 and the length of distances. Ha, ha !" 
 
 This speech was freely seasoned with the eternal laugh 
 by which Phileas pointed the commonplace facetiousness that 
 passes muster with his class, and he emphasized it by a ges- 
 ture he had made his own: he clenched his right fist and 
 rubbed it into the hollow palm of the left hand with a 
 peculiarly jovial air. This action was an accompaniment to 
 his giggle on the many occasions when he flattered himself 
 that he had been witty. 
 
 It is, no doubt, superfluous to add that Phileas was re- 
 garded at Arcis as an agreeable and charming man. 
 
 "I will endeavor," said Simon Giguet, "to be a worthy 
 representative 
 
 "Of the sheep of Champagne," said Achille Pigoult quickly, 
 interrupting his friend. 
 
 The aspirant took the irony without replying, for he had 
 to go forward and receive two more electors. One was the 
 owner of the Mulet, the best inn of the town, situated in the 
 market square, at the corner of the Eue de Brienne. This 
 worthy innkeeper, whose name was Poupart, had married the 
 sister of a man in the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne's service, the 
 notorious Gothard, who. had figured at the great trial. Go- 
 thard had been acquitted. Poupart, though he was of all
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 19 
 
 the townsfolk one of the most devoted to the Cinq-Cygnes, 
 had, two days since, been so diligently and so cleverly 
 wheedled by Colonel Giguet's servant, that he fancied he 
 would be doing their enemy an ill turn by bringing all his 
 influence to bear on the election of Simon Giguet ; and he had 
 just been talking to this effect to a chemist named Fromaget, 
 who, as he was not employed by the Gondreville family, was 
 very ready to plot against the Kellers. These two men, im- 
 portant among the lower middle class, could control a certain 
 number of doubtful votes, for they were the advisers of several 
 electors to whom the political opinions of the candidates were 
 a matter of indifference. 
 
 Simon, therefore, took Poupart in hand, leaving Fromaget 
 to his father, who had just come in, and was greeting those 
 who had arrived. 
 
 The deputy inspector of public works of the district, the 
 secretary to the Mairie, four bailiffs, three attorneys, the 
 clerk of assize, and the justice's clerk, the revenue collector, 
 and the registrar, two doctors old Varlet's rivals, Grevin's 
 brother-in-law a miller named Laurent Coussard, leader of 
 the Republican party at Arcis the mayor's two deputies, the 
 bookseller and printer of the place, and a dozen or so of towns- 
 folk came in by degrees, and then walked about the garden 
 in groups while waiting till the company should be numerous 
 enough to hold a meeting. 
 
 Finally, by twelve o'clock, about fifty men in their Sunday 
 attire, most of them having come out of curiosity to see the 
 fine rooms of which so much had been said in the district, 
 were seated in the chairs arranged for them by Madame 
 Marion. The windows were left open, and the silence was 
 presently so complete that the rustle of a silk dress could be 
 heard; for Madame Marion could not resist the temptation 
 to go out into the garden and sit where she could hear what 
 was going on. The cook, the housemaid, and the man-servant 
 remained in the dining-room, fully sharing their master's 
 feelings. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Simon Giguet, "some of you wish to
 
 20 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 do my father the honor of placing him in the chair as 
 dent of this meeting, but Colonel Giguet desires me to express 
 his acknowledgments and decline it, while deeply grateful to 
 you for the proposal, which he takes as a recompense for his 
 services to his country. We are under my father's roof, and 
 he feels that he must beg to be excused; he proposes a 
 merchant of the highest respectability a gentleman on whom 
 your suffrages conferred the mayoralty of this town Mon- 
 sieur Phileas Beauvisage." 
 
 "Hear, hear!" 
 
 "We are, I believe, agreed that in this meeting purely 
 friendly, and perfectly free, without prejudice in any way 
 to the great preliminary meeting, when it will be your busi- 
 ness to question your candidates and weigh their merits we 
 are agreed, I say, to follow the forms the constitutional 
 forms of the elective Chamber?" 
 
 "Yes, yes!" unanimously. 
 
 "Therefore," said Simon, "I have the honor, speaking in 
 the name of all present, to request Monsieur the Mayor to 
 take the president's chair." 
 
 Phileas rose and crossed the room, feeling himself turn 
 as red as a cherry. When he found himself behind the tea- 
 table, he saw not a hundred eyes, but a hundred thousand 
 lights. The sunshine seemed to put the room in a blaze, and, 
 to use his own words, his throat was full of salt. 
 
 "Keturn thanks !" murmured Simon in his ear. 
 
 "Gentlemen " 
 
 The silence was so alarming that Phileas felt his heart in 
 his mouth. 
 
 "What am I to say, Simon ?" he whispered. 
 
 "Well?" said Achille Pigoult. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Simon, prompted by the little notary's 
 spiteful interjection, "the honor you have done the mayor 
 may have startled without surprising him." 
 
 "It is so," said Beauvisage. "I am too much overpowered 
 by this compliment from my fellow-citizens not to be ex- 
 cessively flattered."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 21 
 
 "Hear, hear !" cried the notary only. 
 
 "The devil may take me," said Beauvisage to himself, "if 
 I am ever caught again to make speeches!" 
 
 "Will Monsieur Fromaget and Monsieur Marcelin accept 
 the functions of tellers?" asked Simon. 
 
 "It would be more in order," said Achille Pigoult, rising, 
 "if the meeting were to elect the two members who support 
 the chair in imitation of the Chamber." 
 
 "It would be far better," observed Monsieur Mollot, an 
 enormous man, clerk of the assizes, "otherwise the whole 
 business will be a farce, and we shall not be really free. 
 There would be no just cause why the whole of the proceed- 
 ings should not be regulated as Monsieur Simon might dic- 
 tate." 
 
 Simon muttered a few words to Beauvisage, who rose, and 
 was presently delivered of the word, "Gentlemen!" which 
 might be described as of thrilling interest. 
 
 "Allow me, Mr. President," said Achille Pigoult; "it is 
 your part to preside, not to discuss." 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Beauvisage again, prompted by Simon, 
 "if we are to to conform to to parliamentary usage I 
 would beg the Honorable Monsieur Pigoult to to come and 
 speak from the table this table." 
 
 Pigoult started forward and stood by the tea-table, his 
 fingers lightly resting on the edge, and showed his courage 
 by speaking fluently almost like the great Monsieur Thiers. 
 
 "Gentlemen, it was not I who proposed that we should 
 imitate the Chamber; till now it has always appeared to me 
 that the Chambers are truly inimitable. At the same time, 
 it was self-evident that a meeting of sixty-odd notables of 
 Champagne must select a president, for no sheep can move 
 without a shepherd. If we had voted by ballot, I am quite 
 sure our esteemed mayor would have been unanimously 
 elected. His antagonism to the candidate put forward by his 
 relations shows that he possesses civic courage in no ordinary 
 degree, since he can shake oft* the strongest ties those of 
 family connection.
 
 22 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "To set public interest above family feeling is so great an 
 effort, that, to achieve it, we are always obliged to remind 
 ourselves that Brutus, from his tribune, has looked down on 
 us for two thousand five hundred odd years. It seemed quite 
 natural to Maitre Giguet who was so clever as to divine our 
 wishes with regard to the choice of a chairman to guide us 
 in our selection of the tellers ; but, in response to my remark, 
 you thought that once was enough, and you were right. Our 
 common friend, Simon Giguet, who is, in fact, to appear as 
 a candidate, would appear too much as the master of the situ- 
 ation, and would then lose that high place in our opinion 
 which his venerable father has secured by his diffidence. 
 
 "Now, what is our worthy chairman doing by accepting 
 the presidency on the lines suggested to him by the candidate ? 
 Why, he is robbing us of our liberty. And, I ask you, is it 
 seemly that the chairman of our choice should call upon us 
 to vote, by rising and sitting, for the two tellers? Gentle- 
 men, that would be a choice already made. Should we be 
 free to choose ? Can a man sit still when his neighbor stands ? 
 If I were proposed, every one would rise, I believe, out of 
 politeness; and so, as all would rise for each one in turn, 
 there would be simply no choice when every one had voted for 
 every one else." 
 
 "Very true!" said the sixty listeners. 
 
 "Well, then, let each of us write two names on a voting- 
 paper, and then those who take their seats on each side of 
 the chairman may regard themselves as ornaments to the 
 meeting. They will be qualified, conjointly with the chair- 
 man, to decide on the majority when we vote by rising and 
 sitting on any resolution to be passed. 
 
 "We have met, I believe, to promise the candidate such 
 support as we can command at the preliminary meeting, at 
 which every elector in the district will be present. This I 
 pronounce to be a solemn occasion. Are we not voting for the 
 four-hundredth part of the governing power, as Monsieur 
 le Maire told us just now with the appropriate and charac- 
 teristic wit that we so highly appreciate?"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 23 
 
 During this address Colonel Giguet had been cutting a 
 sheet of paper into strips, and Simon sent for an inkstand 
 and pens. There was a pause. 
 
 This introductory discussion had greatly disturbed Simon 
 and aroused the attention of the sixty worthies in convocation. 
 In a few minutes they were all busy writing the names, and 
 the cunning Pigoult gave it out that the votes were in favor 
 of Monsieur Mollot, clerk of assize, and Monsieur Godivet, 
 the registrar. These two nominations naturally displeased 
 Fromaget the druggist and Marcelin the attorney. 
 
 "You have been of service," said Achille Pigoult, "by 
 enabling us to assert our independence ; you may be prouder 
 of being rejected than you could have been of being chosen." 
 
 Everybody laughed. Simon Giguet restored silence by 
 asking leave of the chairman to speak. Beauvisage was 
 already damp with perspiration, but he summoned all his 
 courage to say : 
 
 "Monsieur Simon Giguet will address the meeting." 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the candidate, "allow me first to thank 
 Monsieur Achille Pigoult, who, although our meeting is a 
 strictly friendly one " 
 
 "Is preparatory to the great preliminary meeting," Marce- 
 lin put in. 
 
 "I was about to say so," Simon went on. "In the first 
 place, I beg to thank Monsieur Achille Pigoult for having 
 proceeded on strictly parliamentary lines. To-day, for the 
 first time, the district of Arcis will make free use " 
 
 "Free use !" said Pigoult, interrupting the orator. 
 
 "Free use !" cried the assembly. 
 
 "Free use," repeated Simon, "of the right of voting in the 
 great contest of the general election of a member to be re- 
 turned to Parliament ; and as, in a few days, we shall have a 
 meeting, to which every elector is invited, to form an opinion 
 of the candidates, we may think ourselves fortunate to ac- 
 quire here, on a small scale, some practice in the customs 
 of such meetings. We shall be all the forwarder as to a deci- 
 sion on the political prospects of the town of Arcis ; for what
 
 24 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 we have to do to-day is to consider the town instead of a 
 family, the country instead of a man." 
 
 He went on to sketch the history of the elections for the 
 past twenty years. While approving of the repeated election 
 of Frangois Keller, he said that now the time had come for 
 shaking off the yoke of the Goridrevilles. Arcis could not be 
 a fief of the Liberals any more than it could be a fief of the 
 Cinq-Cygnes. Advanced opinions were making their way in 
 France, and Charles Keller did not represent them. Charles 
 Keller, now a viscount, was a courtier; he could never be 
 truly independent, since, in proposing him as a candidate 
 for election, it was done more with a view to fitting him to 
 succeed his father as a peer than as a deputy to the Lower 
 Chamber and so forth, and so forth. Finally, Simon begged 
 to offer himself as a candidate for their suffrages, pledging 
 himself to sit under the wing of the illustrious Odilon Barrot, 
 and never to desert the glorious standard of Progress. Prog- 
 ress ! a word behind which, at that time, more insincere 
 ambitions took shelter than definite ideas; for, after 1830, it 
 could only stand for the pretensions of certain hungry demo- 
 crats. 
 
 Still, the word had much effect in Arcis, and lent impor- 
 tance to any man who wrote it on his flag. A man who an- 
 nounced himself as a partisan of Progress was a philosopher 
 in all questions, and politically a Puritan. He was in favor 
 of railways, mackintoshes, penitentiaries, negro emancipation, 
 savings-banks, seamless shoes, gas-lighting, asphalt pave- 
 ments, universal suffrage, and the reduction of the civil list. 
 It was also a pronouncement of opposition to the treaties of 
 1815, to the Elder Branch (the Bourbons), to the Giant of 
 the North, "perfidious Albion," and to every undertaking, 
 good or bad, inaugurated by the Government. As may be 
 seen, the word Progress can stand equally well for black or 
 white. It was a furbishing up of the word Liberalism, a new 
 rallying cry for new ambitions. 
 
 "If I rightly understand what we are here for," said Jean 
 Violette, a stocking-weaver, who had, two years since, bought
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 25 
 
 the Beauvisage business, "we are to bind ourselves to secure, 
 by every means in our power, the return of Monsieur Simon 
 Giguet at the election as member for Arcis in the place of the 
 Count Frangois Keller. And if we are all agreed to combine 
 to that end, we have only to say Yes or No to that question." 
 
 "That is going much too fast. Political matters are not 
 managed in that way, or they would cease to be politics!" 
 cried Pigoult, as his grandfather, a man of eighty-six, came 
 into the room. "The last speaker pronounces a decision on 
 what is, in my humble opinion, the very subject under dis- 
 cussion. I beg to speak." 
 
 "Monsieur Achille Pigoult will address the meeting," said 
 Beauvisage, who could now get through this sentence with 
 due municipal and constitutional dignity. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the little notary, "if there be in all 
 Arcis a house where no opposition ought to be made to the 
 influence of the Comte de Gondreville and the Keller family, 
 is it not this? The worthy Colonel Colonel Giguet is the 
 only member of this household who has not experienced the 
 benefits of senatorial influence, since he never asked anything 
 of the Comte de Gondreville, who, however, had his name 
 erased from the list of exiles in 1815, and secured him the 
 pension he enjoys, without any steps on the part of the 
 Colonel, who is the pride of our town " 
 
 A murmur, flattering to the old man, ran through the 
 crowd. 
 
 "But," the orator went on, "the Marion family are loaded 
 with the Count's favors. But for his patronage the late 
 Colonel Giguet never would have had the command of the 
 Gendarmerie of this department. The late Monsieur Marion 
 would not have been presiding judge of the Imperial Court 
 he-re but for the Count to whom I, for my part, am eternally 
 indebted. You will therefore understand how natural it is 
 that I should take his part in this room. And, in fact, there 
 are few persons in this district who have not received some 
 kindness from that family." 
 
 There was a stir among the audience.
 
 26 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "A candidate comes forward," Achille went on with some 
 vehemence, "and I have a right to inquire into his past before 
 I intrust him with power to act for me. Now I will not 
 accept ingratitude in my delegate, for ingratitude is like mis- 
 fortune it leads from bad to worse. We have been a step- 
 ping-stone for the Kellers, you will say; well, what I have 
 just listened to makes me fear that we may become -a stepping- 
 stone for the Giguets. We live in an age of facts, do we not ? 
 Well, then, let us inquire what will be the results for the 
 electors of Arcis if we return Simon Giguet? 
 
 "Independence is your cry? Well, Simon, whom I am 
 scouting as a candidate, is my friend as he is the friend of 
 all who hear me and personally I should be delighted to 
 see him as an orator of the Left, between Gamier-Pages and 
 Laffitte; but what will be the result for the district repre- 
 sented? It will have lost the countenance of the Comte de 
 Gondreville and the Kellers, and in the course of five years 
 we shall all feel the want of one or the other. If we want to 
 get leave for a poor fellow who is drawn for the conscription, 
 we apply to the Marechale de Carigliano. We rely on the 
 Kellers' interest in many matters of business which their good 
 word settles at once. We have always found the old Comte 
 de Gondreville kind and helpful ; if you belong to Arcis, you 
 are shown in without being kept waiting. Those three fam- 
 ilies know every family in the place. But where is the 
 Maison Giguet's bank, and what influence has it on the Min- 
 istry? What credit does it command in the Paris markets? 
 If we want to have a good stone bridge in the place of our 
 wretched timber one, will the Giguets extract the necessary 
 funds from the Department and the State ? 
 
 "If we return Charles Keller, we shall perpetuate a bond 
 of alliance and friendship which till now has been entirely 
 to our advantage. By electing my good, my excellent friend 
 and schoolfellow Simon Giguet, we shall be constantly the 
 worse till he is in office ! And I know his modesty too well 
 to think that he will contradict me when I express a doubt 
 as to his rapid advancement to the Ministry! (Laughter.)
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 27 
 
 "I came to this meeting to oppose a resolution which, I 
 think, would be fatal to our district. 'Charles Keller is a 
 courtier/ I am told. So much the better. We shall not have 
 to pay for his political apprenticeship; he knows all the 
 business of the place, and the requirements of parliamentary 
 etiquette; he is more nearly a statesman than my friend 
 Simon, who does not pretend that he has trained himself to 
 be a Pitt or a Talleyrand in our little town of Arcis " 
 
 "Danton was a native of Arcis !" cried Colonel Giguet, 
 furious at this harangue, which was only too truthful. 
 
 "Hear, hear!" The word was shouted, and sixty listeners 
 clapped the speaker. 
 
 "My father is very ready," said Simon in an undertone to 
 Beauvisage. 
 
 "I cannot understand why, in discussing an election mat- 
 ter, there should be so much exaggeration of any ties be- 
 tween us and the Comte' de Gondreville," the old Colonel 
 went on, starting to his feet, while the blood mounted to his 
 face. "My son inherits his fortune from his mother ; he never 
 asked the Comtc de Gondreville for anything. If the Count 
 had never existed, my son would have been just what he is 
 the son of an artillery Colonel who owes his promotion to his 
 services a lawyer who has always held the same opinions. 
 I would say to the Comte de Gondreville himself, 'We have 
 elected your son-in-law for twenty years. Now we wish to 
 prove that when we did so it was of our own free-will, and we 
 are returning an Arcis man to show that the old spirit of 
 1793 to which you owed your fortune still lives on the 
 
 native soil of Danton, Malin, Grevin, Pigoult, Marion ' 
 
 And so " 
 
 The old man sat down. 
 
 There was a great commotion. Achille opened his mouth 
 to speak. Beauvisage, who would not have felt himself pre- 
 siding if he had not rung his bell, added to the racket by 
 ringing for silence. It was by this time two o'clock. 
 
 "I must be permitted to point out to the honored -Colonel, 
 whose feelings we can all understand, that he spoke without
 
 28 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 authority from the chair, which is contrary to parliamentary 
 usage/' said Achille Pigoult. 
 
 "I see no necessity for calling the Colonel to order/' said 
 Beauvisage. "As a father " 
 
 Silence was restored. 
 
 "We did not come here," said Fromaget, "to say Amen to 
 everything put forward by the Giguets father and son " 
 
 "No, no!" cried the audience. 
 
 "This looks badly !" said Madame Marion to the cook. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Achille, "I will confine myself to asking 
 my friend Simon Giguet to set forth categorically what he 
 proposes to do to further our interests." 
 
 "Yes, yes !" 
 
 "And when, may I ask," said Simon Giguet, "did good 
 citizens like the men of Arcis first begin to make the sacred 
 mission of a deputy a matter of bargaining and business ?" 
 
 It is impossible to overestimate the effect of fine sentiment 
 on a crowd. Noble maxims are always applauded, and the 
 humiliation of the country voted for all the same; just as 
 a jail-bird who yearns for the punishment of Robert Macaire 
 when he sees the play, will nevertheless murder the first Mon- 
 sieur Germeuil who comes in his way. 
 
 "Hear, hear!" cried some thorough-going partisans. 
 
 "If you send me to the Chamber, it will be to represent 
 your principles the principles of 1789 to be a cipher, if 
 you will, of the Opposition ; but to vote with it, to enlighten 
 the Government, to make war against abuses, and insist on 
 progress in all particulars " 
 
 "But what do you call progress? Our notion of progress 
 would be to bring all this part of the country under cultiva- 
 tion," said Fromaget. 
 
 "Progress? I will explain to you what I mean by pro- 
 gress," cried Giguet, provoked by the interruption. 
 
 "It is the Rhine-frontier for France," said Colonel Giguet, 
 "and the treaties of 1815 torn across." 
 
 "It is- keeping up the price of wheat and keeping down 
 the price of bread !" said Pigoult mockingly, and uttering
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 29 
 
 in jest one of the nonsensical cries which France believes in. 
 
 "It is the happiness of the multitude achieved by the 
 triumph of humanitarian doctrines." 
 
 "What did I tell you?" the wily notary muttered to his 
 neighbors. 
 
 "Hush, silence we want to hear !" said some. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Mollot, with a fat smile, "the debate 
 is noisy; give your attention to the speaker; allow him to 
 explain " 
 
 "Ba-a-a, ba-a-aa," bleated a friend of Achille's, who was 
 gifted with a power of ventriloquism that was invaluable at 
 elections. 
 
 A roar of laughter burst from the audience, who were es- 
 sentially men of their province. Simon Giguet folded his 
 arms and waited till the storm of merriment should be over. 
 
 "If that was intended as a reproof," he said, "a hint that I 
 was marching with the flock of those noble defenders of the 
 rights of man, who cry out, who write book after book of 
 the immortal priest who pleads for murdered Poland of 
 the bold pamphleteers of those who keep an eye on the civil 
 list of the philosophers who cry out for honesty in the action 
 of our institutions if so, I thank my unknown friend. To 
 me progress means the realization of all that was promised 
 us at the Eevolution of July; electoral reform and " 
 
 "Then you are a democrat," interrupted Achille Pigoult. 
 
 "No," replied the candidate. "Am I a democrat because 
 I aim at a regular and legal development of our institutions ? 
 To me progress is fraternity among all the members of the 
 great French family, and we cannot deny that much suffer- 
 ing " 
 
 At three o'clock Simon Giguet was still explaining the 
 meaning of progress, and some of the audience were emitting 
 steady snores expressive of deep slumbers. 
 
 Achille Pigoult had artfully persuaded them to listen in 
 religious silence to the speaker, who was sinking, drowning, 
 in his endless phrases and parentheses.
 
 30 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 At that hour several groups of citizens., electors, and non- 
 electors were standing about in front of the Chateau d'Arcis. 
 The gate opens on to the Place at a right angle to that of 
 Madame Marion's house. Several streets turn out of this 
 square, and in the middle of it stands a covered market. 
 Opposite the chateau, on the further side of the square, which 
 is neither paved nor macadamized, so that the rain runs off in 
 little gullies, there is a fine avenue known as the Avenue des 
 Soupirs (of Sighs). Is this to the honor or the discredit 
 of the women of the town? The ambiguity is, no doubt, a 
 local witticism. Two broad walks, shaded by handsome old 
 lime-trees, lead from the market-square to a boulevard form- 
 ing another promenade, deserted, as such walks always are 
 in a country town, and where stagnant filth takes the place 
 of the bustling crowd of the capital. 
 
 While the discussion was at its height, to which Achille 
 Pigoult had given a dramatic turn, with a coolness and 
 dexterity worthy of a member of the real Parliament, four 
 men were pacing one of the lime-walks of the Avenue des 
 Soupirs. When they came to the square they stopped with 
 one accord to watch the townsfolk, who were buzzing round 
 the chateau like bees going into a hive at dusk. These four 
 were the whole Ministerial party of Arcis : the sous-pref et, the 
 public prosecutor, his deputy, and Monsieur Martener, the 
 examining judge. The presiding judge was, as has already 
 been explained, a partisan of the Elder Branch, and devoted 
 to the family of Cinq-Cygne. 
 
 "Well, I cannot understand what the Government is about," 
 the sous-prefet declared, pointing to the growing crowd. 
 "The position is serious, and I am left without any instruc- 
 tions." 
 
 "In that you are like many other people," said Olivier. 
 Vinet, smiling. 
 
 "What complaint have you against the Government ?" asked 
 the public prosecutor. 
 
 "The Ministry is in a difficulty," said young Martener. 
 "It is well known that thie borough belongs, so to speak, to
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 31 
 
 the Kellers, and it has no wish to annoy them. Some con- 
 sideration must be shown to the only man who can at all 
 compare with Monsieur de Talleyrand. It is to the Comte de 
 Gondreville that the police should go for instructions, not 
 to the prefet." 
 
 "And meanwhile," said Frederic Marest, "the Opposition 
 is making a stir, and you see that Colonel Giguet's influence 
 is strong. The mayor, Monsieur Beauvisage, is in the chair 
 at this preliminary meeting." 
 
 "After all," said Olivier Vinet slily to the sous-prefet, 
 "Simon Giguet is- a friend of yours, a school-fellow. Even if 
 he were a supporter of Monsieur Thiers, you would lose 
 nothing by his being elected." 
 
 "The present Ministry might turn me out before its fall. 
 We may know when we are likely to be kicked out, but we 
 can never tell when we may get in again," said Antonin 
 Goulard. 
 
 "There goes Collinet the grocer. He is the sixty-seventh 
 qualified elector who has gone into Colonel Giguet's house/' 
 said Monsieur Martener, fulfilling his functions as examin- 
 ing judge by counting the electors. 
 
 "If Charles Keller is the Ministerial candidate, I ought 
 to have been informed," said Goulard. "Time ought not to 
 have been given for Simon Giguet to get hold of the voters." 
 
 The four gentlemen walked on slowly to where the avenues 
 end at the market-place. 
 
 "There comes Monsieur Groslier !" said the judge, seeing a 
 man on horseback. 
 
 The horseman was the superintendent of the police. He 
 saw the governing body of Arcis assembled on the highway, 
 and rode up to the four functionaries. 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Groslier?" questioned the sous-prefet, 
 meeting him at a few paces from the other three. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the police-officer in a low voice, "Mon- 
 sieur le Prefet sent me to tell you some very sad news the 
 Vicomte Charles Keller is dead. The news reached Paris by 
 telegraph the day before yesterday ; and the two Messieurs
 
 32 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Keller, the Comte de Gondreville, the Marechale de Carigliano, 
 in fact, all the family, came yesterday to Gondreville. Abd- 
 el-Kader has reopened the fighting in Africa, and there has 
 been some very hot work. The poor young man was one of 
 the first victims to the war. You will receive confidential in- 
 structions, I was told to say, with regard to the election." 
 
 "Through whom?" asked Goulard. 
 
 "If I knew, it would cease to be confidential," replied the 
 other. "Monsieur le Prefet himself did not know. 'It would 
 be/ he said, 'a. private communication to you from the Min- 
 ister.' ' ; 
 
 And he went on his way, while the proud and happy official 
 laid a finger to his lips to impress on him to be secret. 
 
 "What news from the prefecture ?" asked the public prose- 
 cutor when Goulard returned to join the other three func- 
 tionaries. 
 
 "Nothing more satisfactory," replied Antonin, hurrying 
 on as if to be rid of his companions. 
 
 As they made their way towards the middle of the square, 
 saying little, for the three officials were somewhat nettled 
 by the hasty pace assumed by the sous-prefet, Monsieur 
 Martener saw old Madame Beauvisage, Phileas' mother, sur- 
 rounded by almost all the people who had gathered there, 
 and apparently telling them some long story. An attorney 
 named Sinot, whose clients were the royalists of the town and 
 district, and who had not gone to the Giguet meeting, stepped 
 out of the crowd, and hurrying up to Madame Marion's house, 
 rang the bell violently. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Frederic Marest, dropping 
 his eyeglass, and informing the other two of this proceeding. 
 
 "The matter, gentlemen," replied Antonin Goulard, seeing 
 no occasion for keeping a secret which would at once be told 
 by others, "is that Charles Keller has been killed in Africa, 
 an event which gives Simon Giguet every chance ! You know 
 Arcis; there could be no ministerial candidate other than 
 Charles Keller. Parochial patriotism would rise in arms 
 against any other "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 33 
 
 "And will such a simpleton be elected?*' asked Olivier 
 Vinet, laughing. 
 
 The judge's deputy, a young fellow of three-and-twenty, 
 the eldest son of a very famous public prosecutor, whose 
 promotion dated from the Revolution of July, had, of course, 
 been helped by his father's interest to get into the upper ranks 
 of his profession. That father, still a public prosecutor, and 
 returned as deputy by the town of Provins, is one of the 
 buttresses of the Centre. Thus the son, whose mother had 
 been a Mademoiselle Chargebceuf, had an assurance, alike in 
 his official work and his demeanor, which proclaimed his 
 father's influence. He expressed his opinions unhesitatingly 
 on men and things, for he counted on not remaining long at 
 Arcis, but on getting a place as public prosecutor at Ver- 
 sailles, the infallible stepping-stone to an appointment in 
 Paris. 
 
 The free-and-easy air, and the sort of judicial conceit as- 
 sumed by this personage on the strength of his certainty of 
 "getting on," annoyed Frederic Marest, and all the more 
 because a very biting wit effectually supported his young sub- 
 altern's undisciplined freedom. The public prosecutor him- 
 self, a man of forty, who had waited six years under the Res- 
 toration to rise to the post of first deputy judge, and whom the 
 Revolution of July had left stranded at Arcis, though he 
 had eighteen thousand francs a year of his own, was always 
 torn between his anxiety to win the good graces of the elder 
 Vinet, who had every chance of becoming Keeper of the Seals 
 an office commonly conferred on a lawyer who sits in Par- 
 liament and the necessity for preserving his own dignity. 
 Olivier Vinet, a thin stripling, with fair hair and a colorless 
 face, accentuated by a pair of mischievous greenish eyes, was 
 one of those mocking spirits, fond of pleasure, who can at 
 any moment assume the precise, pedantic, and rather abrupt 
 manner which a magistrate puts on when in Court. 
 
 The burly public prosecutor, very stout and solemn, 
 had, for a short time past, adopted a method by which, as he
 
 34 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 hoped, to get the upper hand of this distracting youth: he 
 treated him as a father treats a spoilt child. 
 
 "Olivier," said he to his deputy, patting him on the 
 shoulder, "a man as clear-sighted as you are must see that 
 Maitre Giguet is likely enough to be elected. You might have 
 blurted out that speech before the townsfolk instead of among 
 friends." 
 
 "But there is one thing against Giguet," remarked Mon- 
 sieur Martener. 
 
 This worthy young fellow, dull, but with very capable 
 brains, the son of a doctor at Provins, owed his position to 
 Vinet's father, who during the long years when he had been a 
 pleader at Provins, had patronized the townsfolk there as the 
 Comte de Gondreville did those of Arcis. 
 
 "What?" asked Antonin. 
 
 "Parochial feeling is tremendously strong against a man 
 who is forced on the electors," replied the judge ; "but when, 
 in a place like Arcis, the alternative is the elevation of one 
 of their equals, jealousy and envy get the upper hand even of 
 local feeling." 
 
 "That seems simple enough," said the public prosecutor, 
 "but it is perfectly true. If you could secure only fifty Min- 
 isterial votes, you would not unlikely find the first favorite 
 here," and he glanced at Antonin Goulard. 
 
 "It will be enough to set up a candidate of the same calibre 
 to oppose Simon Giguet," said Olivier Vinet. 
 
 The sous-prefet's face betrayed such satisfaction as could 
 not escape the eye of either of his companions, with whom, 
 indeed, he was on excellent terms. Bachelors all, and all well 
 to do, they had without premeditation formed a defensive 
 alliance to defy the dulness of a country town. The other 
 three were already aware of Goulard's jealousy of Giguet, 
 which a few words here will suffice to account for. 
 
 Antonin Goulard, whose father had been a huntsman in 
 the service of the Simeuse family, enriched by investments 
 in nationalized land, was, like Simon Giguet, a native of 
 Arcis. Old Goulard left the Abbey of Valpreux a oorrup-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 35 
 
 tion of Val-des-Preux to live in the town after his wife's 
 death, and sent his son Antonin to school at the Lycee Im- 
 perial, where Colonel Giguet had placed his boy. The two lads, 
 after being school-fellows, went together to Paris to study law, 
 and, their friendship persisting, they took their amusements 
 together. They promised to help each other in life, since they 
 adopted different branches of their profession; but fate de- 
 cided that they were to become rivals. 
 
 In spite of his sufficiently evident personal advantages, 
 and the cross of the Legion of Honor, which the Count had 
 obtained for Goulard to compensate him for lack of promo- 
 tion, and which he displayed at his button-hole, the offer of 
 his heart and prospects had been civilly declined when, six 
 months before the day when this narrative opens', Antonin 
 had secretly called on Madame Beauvisage as her daughter's 
 suitor. But no step of this kind is a secret in the country. 
 Frederic Marest, whose fortune, whose order, and whose posi- 
 tion were the same three years before, had then been also dis- 
 missed on the score of disparity of years. Hence both 
 Goulard and the public prosecutor were never more than 
 strictly polite to the Beauvisages, and made fun of them 
 between themselves. 
 
 As they walked just now, they both had guessed, and had 
 told each other, the secret of Simon Giguet's candidature, for 
 they had got wind, the night before, of Madame Marion's 
 ambitions. Animated alike by the spirit of the dog in the 
 manger, they were tacitly but heartily agreed in a determina- 
 tion to hinder the young lawyer from winning the wealthy 
 heiress who had been refused to them. 
 
 "Heaven grant that I may be able to control the election !" 
 said the sous-prefet, "and the Comte de Gondreville may 
 get me appointed prefet, for I have no more wish to remain 
 here than you have, though I am a native born." 
 
 "You have a very good opportunity of being elected dep- 
 uty, sir," said Olivier Vinet to Marest. "Come and see my 
 father, who will, no doubt, arrive at Provins within a few 
 hours, and we will get him to have you nominated as the 
 Ministerial candidate."
 
 36 THE MEMBER FOR AKCIS 
 
 "Stay where you are/' said Goulard. "The Ministry has 
 ideas of its own as to its candidate " 
 
 "Pooh! Why, there are two Ministries one that hopes 
 to control the election, and one that means to profit by it," 
 said Vinet. 
 
 "Do not complicate Antonin's difficulties," replied Fre- 
 deric Marest, with a knowing wink to his deputy. 
 
 The four officials, now far away from the Avenue des Sou- 
 pirs, crossed the market-place to the Mulet inn on seeing 
 Poupart come out of Madame Marion's house. At that mo- 
 ment, in fact, the sixty-seven conspirators were pouring 
 out of the carriage gate. 
 
 "And you have been into that house?" asked Antonin 
 Goulard, 'pointing to the wall of the Marion's garden, back- 
 ing on the Brienne road opposite the stables of the Mulet. 
 
 "And I go there no more, Monsieur le Sous-prefet," re- 
 turned the innkeeper. "Monsieur Keller's son is dead; I 
 have nothing more to do with it. God has made it his bus- 
 iness to clear the way " 
 
 "Well, Pigoult?" said Olivier Vinet, seeing the whole 
 of the Opposition coming out from the meeting. 
 
 "Well," echoed the notary, on whose brow the moisture 
 still testified to the energy of his efforts, "Sinot has just 
 brought us news which resulted in unanimity. With the 
 exception of five dissidents Poupart, my grandfather, Mol- 
 lot, Sinot and myself they have all sworn, as at a game 
 of tennis, to use every means in their power to secure the 
 return of Simon Giguet of whom I have made a mortal 
 enemy. We all got very heated ! At any rate, I got the 
 Giguets to fulminate against the Gondrevilles, so the old 
 Count will side with me. Not later than to-morrow he 
 shall know what the self-styled patriots of Arcis said about 
 him, and his corruption, and his infamous conduct, so as 
 to shake off his protection, or, as they say, his yoke." 
 
 "And they are unanimous?" said Vinet, with a smile. 
 
 "To-day," replied Monsieur Martener. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Pigoult, "the general feeling is in favor of
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 37 
 
 electing a man of the 'place. Whom can you find to set up 
 in opposition to Simon Giguet, who has spent two mortal 
 hours in preaching on the word Progress !" 
 
 "We can find old Grevin !" cried the sous-prefet. 
 
 "He has no ambition," said Pigoult. "But first and fore- 
 most we must consult the Count. Just look," he went on, 
 "how attentively Simon is taking care of that old noodle 
 Beauvisage !" 
 
 And he pointed to the lawyer, who had the mayor by the 
 arm, and was talking in his ear. 
 
 Beauvisage bowed right and left to all the inhabitants, who 
 gazed at him with the deference of country townspeople 
 for the richest man in the place. 
 
 "He treats him as a father and mother !" remarked Vinet. 
 
 "Oh ! he will do no good by buttering him up," replied 
 Pigoult, who caught the hint conveyed in Vinet's retort. 
 "Cecile's fate does not rest with either father or mother." 
 
 "With whom, then ?" 
 
 "My old master. If Simon were the member for Arcis, 
 he would be no forwarder in that matter." 
 
 Though the sous-prefet and Marest pressed Pigoult hard, 
 they could get no explanation of this remark, which, as 
 they shrewdly surmised, was big with meaning, and re- 
 vealed some acquaintance with the intentions of -the Beau- 
 visage family. 
 
 All Arcis was in a pother, not only in consequence of the 
 distressing news that had stricken the Gondrevilles, but also 
 because of the great resolution voted at the Giguets' where, 
 at this moment, Madame Marion and the servants were hard 
 at work restoring order, that everything might be in readi- 
 ness for the company who would undoubtedly drop in as usual 
 in the evening in full force, attracted by curiosity. 
 
 Champagne looks, and is, but a poor country. Its aspect 
 is for the most part dreary, a dull plain. As you pass 
 through the villages, or even the towns, you see none but 
 shabby buildings of timber or concrete; the handsomest are 
 of brick. Stone is scarcely used even for public build-
 
 38 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 ings. At Arcis the chateau, the Palais de Justice, and the 
 church are the only edifices constructed of stone. Never- 
 theless, the province or, at any rate, the departments of the 
 Aube, the Marne, and the Haute-Marne, rich in the vine- 
 yards which are famous throughout the world also support 
 many flourishing industries. To say nothing of the manu- 
 facturing centre at Reims, almost all the hosiery of every kind 
 produced in France, a very considerable trade, is woven in and 
 near Troyes. For ten leagues round, the country is inhabited 
 by stocking-weavers, whose frames may be seen through the 
 open doors as you pass through the hamlets. These workers 
 deal through factors with the master speculator, who calls 
 himself a manufacturer. The manufacturer sells to Paris 
 houses, or more often, to retail hosiers, who stick up a sign 
 proclaiming themselves manufacturing hosiers. 
 
 None of these middlemen ever made a stocking, or a night- 
 cap, or a sock. A large proportion of such gear comes from 
 Champagne not all, for there are weavers in Paris who com- 
 pete with the country workers. 
 
 These middlemen, coming between the producer and the 
 consumer, are a curse not peculiar to this trade. It exists in 
 most branches of commerce, and adds to the price of the 
 goods all the profit taken by the intermediary. To do away 
 with these, expensive go-betweens, who hinder the direct sale 
 of manufactured goods, would be a benevolent achievement, 
 and the magnitude of the results would raise it to the level 
 of a great political reform. Industry at large would be 
 benefited, for it would bring about such a reduction of prices 
 to the home-consumer as is needed to maintain the struggle 
 against foreign competition, a battle as murderous as that 
 of hostile armies. 
 
 But the overthrow of such an abuse as this would not 
 secure to our modern philanthropists such glory or such 
 profit as are to be obtained by fighting for the Dead Sea 
 apples of negro emancipation, or the penitentiary system; 
 hence this illicit commerce of the middleman, the producer's 
 banker, will weigh for a long time yet on the workers and
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 39 
 
 consumers alike. In France so clever as a nation it is 
 always supposed that simplification means destruction. We 
 are etill frightened by the Revolution of 1789. 
 
 The industrial energy that always thrives in a land where 
 Nature is a grudging step-dame, sufficiently shows what 
 progress agriculture would make there if only wealth would 
 join its partnership with the land, which is not more barren 
 in Champagne than in Scotland, where the outlay of capital 
 has worked miracles. And when agriculture shall have con- 
 quered the unfertile tracts of that province, when industry 
 shall have scattered a little capital on the chalk fields of 
 Champagne, prosperity will multiply threefold. The land is, 
 in fact, devoid of luxury, and the dwelling-houses are bare; 
 but English comfort will find its way thither, money will 
 acquire that rapid circulation which is half of what makes 
 wealth, and which is now beginning in many of the torpid 
 districts of France. 
 
 Writers, officials, the Church from its pulpits, the Press 
 in its columns all to whom chance has given any kind of 
 influence over the masses ought to proclaim it again and 
 again: "Hoarding is a social crime." The miserliness of 
 the provinces stagnates the vitality of the industrial mass, 
 and impairs the health of the nation. The little town of 
 Arcis, for instance, on the way to nowhere, and apparently 
 sunk in complete quiescence, is comparatively rich in the 
 possession of capital slowly amassed in the hosiery trade. 
 
 Monsieur Phileas Beauvisage was the Alexander or, if 
 you will, the Attila of his native town. This is how that 
 respectable and hardworking man had conquered the dominion 
 of cotton. He was the only surviving child of the Beau- 
 visages, long settled on the fine farm of Bellache, part of the 
 Gondreville estate; and in 1811 his parents made a con- 
 siderable sacrifice to save him from the conscription by pur- 
 chasing a substitute. Then his mother, as a widow, had 
 again, in 1813, rescued her only son from being enlisted 
 in the Guards by the good offices of the Comte de Gondre- 
 ville.
 
 40 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 In 1813 Phileas, then twenty-one, had for three years past 
 been engaged in the pacific busiaess of a hosier. The lease 
 of the farm of Bellache having run out, the farmer's widow 
 decided that she would not renew it. In fact, she foresaw 
 ample occupation for her old age in watching the investment 
 of her money. 
 
 That her later days might not be disturbed by anxiety, she 
 had a complete valuation made by Monsieur Grevin, the 
 notary, of all her husband's estate, though her son had made 
 no claims on her ; and his share was found to amount to about 
 a hundred and fifty thousand francs. The good woman had 
 not to sell her land, most of it purchased from Michu, the 
 luckless steward of the Simeuse family. She paid her son in 
 cash, advising him to buy up his master's business. This old 
 Monsieur Pigoult was the son of the old justice of the peace, 
 and his affairs were already in such disorder that his death, 
 as has been hinted, was supposed to have been due to his own 
 act. 
 
 Phileas Beauvisage, a prudent youth, with a proper respect 
 for his mother, had soon concluded the bargain; and as he 
 inherited from his parents the bump of acquisitiveness, as 
 phrenologists term it, his youthful zeal was thrown into the 
 business, which seemed to him immense, and which he pro- 
 posed to extend by speculation. 
 
 The Christian name Phileas, which may, perhaps, seem 
 extraordinary, was one of the many whimsical results of the 
 Eevolution. The Beauvisages, as connected with the Simeuses, 
 and consequently good Catholics, had their infant baptized. 
 The cure of Cinq-Cygne, the Abbe Goujet, being consulted 
 by the farmers, advised them to take Phileas as his patron 
 saint, his Greek name being likely to find favor in the eyes of 
 the municipality, for the boy was born at a time when chil- 
 dren were registered by the strange names in the Eepublican 
 calendar. 
 
 In 1814, hosiery as a rule, a fairly regular trade was 
 liable to all the ups and downs of the cotton market. The 
 price of cotton depended on the Emperor's successes or de-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 41 
 
 feats; his adversaries, the English generals in Spain, would 
 say, "The town is ours ; send up the bales." Pigoult, Phileas' 
 retiring master, supplied his weavers in the country with 
 yarns. At the time when he sold his business to young Beau- 
 visage, he had in stock a large supply of cotton yarns, pur- 
 chased when they were at the dearest, while cotton was now 
 being brought in through Lisbon in vast quantities at six 
 sous the kilogramme, in virtue of the Emperor's famous 
 decree. The reaction in France, caused by the importation 
 of this cheap cotton, brought about Pigoult's death, and laid 
 the foundation of Beauvisage's fortune; for he, instead of 
 losing his head like his old master, bought up twice as much 
 cotton as his predecessor had in stock, and so struck a medium 
 average price. This simple transaction enabled Phileas to 
 triple his output of manufactured goods, while apparently a 
 benefactor to the workers; and he could sell his produce in 
 Paris and the provinces at a profit when others were merely 
 recovering the cost price. By the beginning of 1814 his 
 manufactured stock was exhausted. 
 
 The prospect of war on French soil, which would be 
 especially disastrous to Champagne, made him cautious. He 
 manufactured no more goods, and by realizing his capital in 
 solid gold, stood prepared for the event. At that time the 
 custom-houses were a dead letter. Napoleon had been obliged 
 to enlist his thirty thousand customs officials to defend the 
 country. Cotton, smuggled in through a thousand gaps in 
 the hedge, was flung into every market. It is impossible 
 to give an idea of the liveliness and cunning of cotton at that 
 date, or of the avidity with which the English clutched at a 
 country where cotton stockings were worth six francs a pair, 
 and cambric shirts were an article of luxury. 
 
 Manufacturers on a smaller scale and the master work- 
 men, counting on Napoleon's genius and luck, had invested 
 in cotton coming through Spain. This they were working 
 up, in the hope of presently dictating terms to the Paris retail 
 shops. All this Phileas noted. Then, when the province 
 was devastated by war, he stood between the army and Paris.
 
 42 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 As each battle was lost he went to the weavers who had hidden 
 their goods in casks silos of hosiery and, cash in hand, 
 this Cossack of the trade, going from village to village, 
 bought up, below cost price, these barrels of stockings, 
 which might fall any day into the hands of foes whose feet 
 wanted covering as badly as their throats wanted liquor. 
 
 At this period of disaster, Phileas displayed a degree of 
 energy that was almost a match for the Emperor's. This 
 captain of the hosiery trade fought the commercial campaign 
 of 1814 with a courage that remains unrecognized. One 
 league behind, wherever the General was one league in ad- 
 vance, he bought up cotton nightcaps and stockings as his 
 trophies, while the Emperor in his reverses plucked immortal 
 palms. The genius was equal in both, though exercised in 
 widely different spheres, since one was eager to cover as many 
 heads as the other hoped to fell. Compelled to create means 
 of transport to save his casks full of stockings, which he stored 
 iq a Paris suburb, Phileas often requisitioned horses and 
 wagons, as though the safety of the Empire depended on 
 him. And was not the majesty of Trade as good as that of 
 Napoleon? Had not the English merchants, after subsidiz- 
 ing Europe, got the upper hand of the giant who threatened 
 their ships? 
 
 While the Emperor was abdicating at Fontainebleau, 
 Phileas was the triumphant master of the "article." As a 
 result of his clever manreuvres, the price of cotton was kept 
 down, and he had doubled his fortune when many manufac- 
 turers thought themselves lucky to get rid of their goods at 
 a loss of fifty per cent. He returned to Arcis with three 
 hundred thousand francs, half of which, invested in the 
 Funds, brought him fifteen thousand francs a year. One 
 hundred thousand he used to double the capital needed for 
 his business; and he spent the remainder in building, decorat- 
 ing, and furnishing a fine house in the Place du Pont, at 
 Arcis. 
 
 On his return in triumph, the hosier naturally confided 
 hie story to Monsieur Grevin. The notary had a daughter
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 43 
 
 to marry, just twenty years of age. Grevin's father-in-law, 
 who for forty years had practised as a doctor at Arcis, was 
 at that time still alive. Grevin was a widower; he knew 
 that old Madame Beauvisage was rich; he believed in the 
 energy and capacity of a young man who had thus boldly 
 utilized the campaign of 1814. Severine Grevin's fortune 
 from her mother was sixty thousand francs. What was 
 old Dr. Varlet to leave her ? As much again, at most ! 
 Grevin was already fifty ; he was very much afraid of dying ; 
 he saw no chance, after the ^Restoration, of marry- 
 ing his daughter as he would wish for her he was am- 
 bitious. 
 
 Under these circumstances, he contrived to have it suggested 
 to Phileas that he should propose for Severine. Made- 
 moiselle Grevin, well brought up and handsome, was regarded 
 as one of the good matches of the town. Also, the connection 
 with the most intimate friend of the Comte de Gondreville, 
 who retained his dignity as a peer of France, was, of course, 
 an honor for the son of one of the Gondreville farmers. The 
 widow would, indeed, have made a sacrifice to achieve it. But 
 when she heard that her son's suit was successful, she held 
 her hand, and gave him nothing, an act of prudence in which 
 the notary followed suit. And thus the marriage was brought 
 about between the son of the farmer who had been so faithful 
 to the Simeuses, and the daughter of one of their most de- 
 termined enemies. This, perhaps, was the only instance in 
 which Louis XVIII. 's motto found application "Union et 
 oubli" (union and oblivion). 
 
 When the Bourbons returned for the second time, old Dr. 
 Varlet died, at the age of seventy-six, leaving in. his cellar 
 two hundred thousand francs in gold, besides other property 
 valued at an equal sum. Thus, in 1816, Phileas and his 
 wife found themselves possessed of thirty thousand franca a 
 year, apart from the profits of the business ; for Grevin wished 
 to invest his daughter's money in land, and Beauvisage made 
 no objection. The interest on Severine Grevin's share of 
 her grandfather's money amounted to scarcely fifteen thou-
 
 44 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 sand francs a year, in spite of the good opportunities for in- 
 vestment which Grevin kept a lookout for. 
 
 The first two years of married life were enough to show 
 Grevin and his .daughter how incapable Phileas really was. 
 The hawk's eye of commercial greed had seemed to be the 
 effect of superior capacity, and the old notary had mistaken 
 youthfulness for power, and luck for a talent for business. 
 But though Phileas could read and write, and do sums to 
 admiration, he had never read a book. Miserably ignorant, 
 conversation with him was out of the question ; he could re- 
 spond by a deluge of commonplace, expressed pleasantly 
 enough. But, as the son of a farmer, he was not wanting in 
 commercial acumen. 
 
 Other men must be plain with him, clear and explicit; 
 but he never was the same to his adversary. 
 
 Tender and kind-hearted, Phileas wept at the least touch 
 of pathos. This made him reverent to his wife, whose 
 superiority filled him with unbounded admiration. Severine, 
 a woman of brains, knew everything according to Phileas. 
 And she was all the more accurate in her judgments because 
 she consulted her father on every point. Also, she had a 
 very firm temper, and this made her absolute mistress in her 
 own house. As soon as this point was gained, the old notary 
 felt less regret at seeing his daughter happy through a mastery 
 which is always gratifying to a wife of determined character. 
 Still, there was the woman ! 
 
 This, it was said, was what befell the woman. 
 
 At the time of the reaction of 1815, a certain Vicomte 
 de Chargebo3uf, of the poorer branch, was appointed sous- 
 prefet at.Arcis by the influence of the Marquise de Cinq- 
 Cygne, to whom he was related. This young gentleman re- 
 mained there as sous-prefet for five years. Handsome Ma- 
 dame Beauvisage, it was said, had something to do with the 
 long stay much too long for his advantage made by the 
 Vicomte in this small post. At the same time, it must at once 
 be said that these hints were never justified by the scandals 
 which betray such love-affairs, so difficult to conceal from the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 45 
 
 Argus eyes of a small country town. "If Severine loved 
 the Vicomte de Chargebceuf, if he loved her, it was a blame- 
 less and honorable attachment/' said all the friends of- the 
 Grevins and the Marions. And these two sets imposed their 
 opinion on the immediate neighborhood. But the Grevins 
 and the Marions had no influence over the Royalists, and the 
 Eoyalists declared that the sous-prefet was a happy man. 
 
 As soon as the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne heard what was 
 rumored as to her young relation, she sent for him to Cinq- 
 Cygne; and so great was her horror of all who were ever 
 so remotely connected with the actors in the judicial tragedy 
 that had been so fatal to her family, that she desired the Vis- 
 count to live elsewhere. She got him appointed to Sancerre 
 as sous-prefet, promising to secure his promotion. Some 
 acute observers asserted that the Viscount had pretended 
 to be in love, so as to be made prefet, knowing how deeply 
 the Marquise hated the name of Grevin. Others, on the other 
 hand, remarked 011 the coincidence of the Vicomte de Charge- 
 boeuf's visits to Paris with those made by Madame Beauvisage 
 under the most trivial pretexts. An impartial historian 
 would find it very difficult to form an opinion as to facts 
 thus enwrapped in the mystery of private life. 
 
 A single circumstance seemed to turn the scale in favor 
 of scandal. Cecile Renee Beauvisage was born in 1820, 
 when Monsieur de Chargeboeuf was leaving Arcis, and one of 
 the sous-prefet's names was Rene. The name was given 
 her by the Comte de Gondreville, her godfather. If the 
 mother had raised any objection to her child's having that 
 name, she might possibly have confirmed these suspicions; 
 and as the world must always be in the right, this was sup- 
 posed to be a little bit of mischief on the part of the old 
 peer. Madame Keller, the Count's daughter, was the god- 
 mother, and her name was Cecile. 
 
 As to Cecile Renee Beauvisage's face, the likeness is strik- 
 ing ! not to her father or her mother ; as time goes on, she 
 has become the living image of the Viscount, even to his 
 aristocratic manner. This likeness, moral and physical, has
 
 46 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 however escaped the ken of the good folks of Arcis, for the 
 Vicomte never returned there. 
 
 At any rate, Severine made Phileas happy in his own way. 
 He was fond of good living and the comforts of life; she 
 gave him the choicest wines, a table fit for a bishop, catered 
 for by the best cook in the department; but she made no 
 display of luxury, keeping house in the style required by 
 the plain citizens of Arcis. It was a saying at Arcis that 
 you should dine with Madame Beauvisage, and spend the 
 evening with Madame Marion. 
 
 The importance to which the House of Cinq-Cygne was at 
 once raised by the Eestoration had naturally tightened the 
 bonds that held together all the families in the district who 
 had been in any way concerned in the trial as to the temporary 
 disappearance of Gondreville. The Marions, the Grevins, 
 and the Giguets held together all the more closely because, 
 to secure the triumph of their so-called constitutional party 
 at the coming elections, harmonious co-operation would be 
 necessary. 
 
 Severine, of aforethought, kept Beauvisage busy with his 
 hosiery trade, from which any other man might have retired, 
 sending him to Paris or about the country on business. In- 
 deed, till 1830, Phileas, who thus found work for his bump 
 of acquisitiveness, earned every year as much as he spent, be- 
 sides the interest on his capital, while taking things easy 
 and doing his work in slippers, as they say. Hence, the in- 
 terest and fortune of Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage, in- 
 vested for fifteen years past by the constant care of old 
 Grevin, would amount, in 1830, to five hundred thousand 
 francs. This, in fact, was at that time Cecile's marriage- 
 portion ; and the old notary invested it in three and a half per 
 cents bought at fifty, and so yielding thirty thousand francs 
 a year. So no one was mistaken when estimating the fortune 
 of the Beauvisages at a guess at eighty thousand francs a 
 year. 
 
 In 1830 they sold the business to Jean Violette, one of 
 their agents, the grandson of one of the most important
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 47 
 
 witnesses for the prosecution in the Simeuse trial, and had 
 invested the purchase-money, estimated at three hundred 
 thousand francs. And Monsieur and Madame Beauvisage 
 had still in prospect the money that would come to them from 
 old Grevin and from the old farmer's widow, each supposed 
 to be worth fifteen to twenty thousand francs a year. 
 
 These great provincial fortunes are the product of time 
 multiplied by economy. Thirty years of old age are in 
 themselves a capital. Even if they gave Cecile a portion of 
 fifty thousand francs a year, Monsieur and Madame Beau- 
 visage would still inherit two fortunes, besides keeping thirty 
 thousand francs a year and their house at Arcis. 
 
 As soon as the old Marquise de Cinq-Cygne should die, 
 Cecile would be an acceptable match for the young Marquis ; 
 but that lady's health strong, and almost handsome still 
 at the age of sixty negatived any such hope, if, indeed, it 
 had ever entered into the mind of Grevin and his daughter, 
 as some persons asserted who were surprised at the rejection 
 of suitors so eligible as the sous-prefet and the public pros- 
 ecutor. 
 
 The house built by Beauvisage, one of the handsomest in 
 Arcis, stands in the Place du Pont, in a line, with the Hue 
 Vide-Bourse, and at the corner of the Rue du Pont, which 
 slopes up to the Church Square. Though, like many 
 provincial town-houses, it has neither forecourt nor garden, 
 it has a rather good effect in spite of some bad taste in the 
 decorations. The house door a double door opens from 
 the street. The windows on the ground floor overlook the 
 Paste inn, on the street side, and on the side towards the 
 Square have a view of the picturesque reaches of the Aube, 
 which is navigable below this bridge. On the other side 
 of the bridge is a corresponding place or square. Here 
 stood Monsieur Grevin's house, and here begins the road to 
 Sezanne. 
 
 The Maison Beauvisage, carefully painted white, might 
 pass for being built of stone. Tho height of the windows, 
 and the enriched outside mouldings, contribute to give the
 
 48 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 building a certain style, enhanced, no doubt, by the poverty- 
 stricken appearance of most of the houses in the town, con- 
 structed as they are of timber, and coated with stucco made 
 to imitate stone. Still, even these dwellings have a stamp 
 of originality, since each architect, or each owner, has exerted 
 his ingenuity to solve the problems of this mode of con- 
 struction. 
 
 On each of the open spaces at either end of the bridge, 
 an example may be seen of this peculiar architecture. In 
 the middle of the row of houses in the square, to the left 
 of the Maison Beauvisage, may be seen the frail shop the 
 walls painted plum-color, and the woodwork green occupied 
 by Jean Violette, grandson of the famous farmer of Grouage, 
 one of the chief witnesses in the case of the senator's dis- 
 appearance; to him, in 1830, Beauvisage had made over his 
 connection and his stock-in-trade, and, it was said, had lent 
 him capital. 
 
 The bridge of Arcis is of timber. At about a hundred 
 yards above this bridge the current is checked by another 
 bridge supporting the tall wooden buildings of a mill with 
 several wheels. The space between the road bridge and this 
 private dam forms a pool, on each side of which stand some 
 good houses. Through a gap, and over the roofs, the hill 
 is seen where stands the Chateau d' Arcis, with its gardens, 
 its paddock, its surrounding walls and trees, commanding 
 the upper river of the Aube and the poor meadows of the left 
 bank. 
 
 The noise of the water tumbling over the dam behind the 
 foot-bridge to the mills, and the hum of the wheels as they 
 thrash the water ere it falls into the pool in cascades, make 
 the street above the bridge quite lively, in contrast with the 
 silence of the stream where it flows below between Monsieur 
 Grevin's garden, his house being next to the bridge on the 
 left bank, and the quay on the right bank, where boats unload, 
 in front of a row of poor but picturesque houses. The Aube 
 meanders in the distance between trees, singly or in groups, 
 tall or stumpy, and of various kinds, according to the caprice 
 pf the residents.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 4& 
 
 The character of the buildings is so various that the tourist 
 might find a specimen representative of every country. On 
 the north side of the pool, where ducks sport and gobble in 
 the water, there is, for instance, an almost southern-looking 
 house with an incurved roof covered with pan-tiles, such as 
 are used in Italy ; on one side of it is a small garden plot on 
 the quay in which vines grow over a trellis, and two or three 
 trees. It recalls some corner of Eome, where, on the banks 
 of the Tiber, houses of this type may be seen. Opposite, on 
 the other shore, is a large dwelling with a pent-house roof 
 and balconies like those of a Swiss chalet; to complete the 
 illusion, between it and the weir lies a wide meadow, planted 
 with poplars on each side of a narrow graveled path. And, 
 crowning the town, the buildings of the chateau, looking all 
 the more imposing as it stands up amid such frail structures, 
 seem to represent the grandeur of the old French aristocracy. 
 
 Though the two squares at the ends of the bridge are in- 
 tersected by the Sezanne road, an abominable road too, and 
 very ill kept, and though they are the liveliest spots in the 
 town for the offices of the Justice of the Peace and of the 
 Mayor of Arcis are both in the Rue Vide-Bourse a Parisian 
 would think the place strangely rustic and deserted. The 
 landscape is altogether artless ; standing on the square by the 
 bridge, opposite the Paste inn, a farmyard pump is to be 
 seen; to be sure, for nearly half a century a similar one 
 commanded our admiration in the grand courtyard of the 
 Louvre. 
 
 Nothing can more aptly illustrate provincial life than the 
 utter silence that reigns in this little town, even in its busiest 
 quarter. It may easily be supposed how agitating is the 
 presence of a stranger, even if he stays but half a day, and 
 what eager faces lean from every window to watch him ; and, 
 then, picture the chronic espionage exercised by the residents 
 over each other. Life becomes so nearly monastic that ex- 
 cepting on Sundays and fete-days, a visitor will not 
 meet a creature on the Boulevards or in the Avenue des 
 Soupirs nowhere, in short, not even in the streets.
 
 50 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 It will now be obvious why the front of Monsieur Beau- 
 visage's house was in a line with the street and the square: 
 the square served as a forecourt. As he sat at the window, 
 the retired hosier could get a raking view of the Church 
 Square, of those at the two ends of the bridge, and of the 
 Sezanne road. He could see the coaches and travelers arrive 
 at the Hotel de la Poste. And on days when the Court was 
 sitting, he could see the stir in front of the Justice-house 
 and the Mairie. And, indeed, Beauvisage would, not have 
 exchanged his house for the chateau in spite of its lordly 
 appearance, its stone masonry, and its commanding posi- 
 tion. 
 
 On entering the house, you found yourself in a hall, and 
 facing a staircase beyond. On the right was a large draw- 
 ing-room, with two windows to the square, on the left a 
 handsome dining-room looking on to the street. The bed- 
 rooms were on the first floor. 
 
 In spite of their wealth, the Beauvisage household con- 
 sisted of the cook and a housemaid, a peasant woman who 
 washed, ironed, and cleaned, not often being required to wait 
 on madame and mademoiselle, who waited on each other to 
 fill up their time. Since the hosiery business had been sold, 
 the horse and trap, formerly used by Phileas, and kept at 
 the inn, had also been disposed of. 
 
 Just as Phileas went in, his wife, who had been informed 
 of the resolution passed at the meeting, had put on her boots 
 and her shawl to call on her father; for she rightly guessed 
 that in the course of the evening Madame Marion would 
 throw out some hints preliminary to proposing Simon for 
 Cecile. 
 
 After telling her about Charles Keller's death, Phileas 
 asked her opinion with a simplicity that proved a habit of 
 respecting Severine's views on all subjects. 
 
 "What do you say to that, wife?" said he, and then sat 
 down to await her reply. 
 
 In 1839 Madame Beauvisage, though forty-four years of
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 51 
 
 age, still looked so young, that she might have been the 
 "double" of Mademoiselle Mars. If the reader can remember 
 the most charming Celimene ever seen on the stage of the 
 Frangais, he may form an exact idea of Severine Beauvisage. 
 There were in both the same roundness of form, the same 
 beautiful features, the same finished outline ; but the hosier's 
 wife was too short, and thus missed the dignified grace, the 
 coquettish air a la Sevigne, which dwell in the memory of 
 those who have lived through the Empire and the Kestora- 
 tion. And then provincial habits, and the careless way of 
 dressing which Severine had allowed herself to drift into for 
 ten years past, gave a common look to that handsome profile 
 and fine features, and she had grown stout, which disfigured 
 what for the first twelve years of her married life had been 
 really a magnificent person. Severine's imperfections were 
 redeemed by a queenly glance, full of pride and command, 
 and by a turn of the head that asserted her dignity. Her 
 hair, still black, long, and thick, crowning her head with a 
 broad plait, gave her a youthful look. Her shoulders and 
 bosom were as white as snow, but all too full and puffy, spoil- 
 ing the lines of the throat, and making it too short. Her 
 arms, too stout and dimpled, ended in hands which, though 
 pretty and small, were too plump. She was so overfull of 
 life and health, that the flesh, in spite of all her care, made 
 a little roll above her shoe. A pair of earrings without 
 pendants, each worth a thousand crowns, adorned her ears. 
 
 She had on a lace cap with pink ribbons, a morning gown 
 of mousseline de laine, striped in pink and gray, and trimmed 
 with green, opening over a petticoat with a narrow frill of 
 Valenciennes edging, and a green Indian shawl, of which the 
 point hung to the ground. Her feet did not seem comfortable 
 in their bronze kid boots. 
 
 "You cannot be so hungry," said she, looking at her hus- 
 band, "but that you can wait half an hour. My father will 
 have finished dinner, but I cannot eat mine in comfort till 
 I know what he thinks, and whether we ought to go out to 
 Gondreville "
 
 52 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Yes, yes, go, my dear ; I can wait," said the hosier. 
 
 "Bless me ! shall I never cure you of addressing me as tu f* 
 she exclaimed, with a meaning shrug. 
 
 "I have never done so in company by any chance since 
 1817," replied Phileas. 
 
 "But you constantly do so before your daughter and the 
 servants " 
 
 "As you please, Severine," said Beauvisage dejectedly. 
 
 "Above all things, do not say a word to Cecile about the 
 resolution of the electors," added Madame Beauvisage, who 
 was looking at herself in the glass while arranging her 
 shawl. 
 
 "Shall I go with you to see your father?" asked Phileas. 
 
 "No; stay with Cecile. Besides, Jean Violette is to call 
 to-day to pay the rest of the money he owes you. He 
 will bring you his twenty thousand francs. This is 
 the third time he has asked for three months' grace; grant 
 him no more time, and if he cannot pay up, take his note of 
 hand to Courtet the bailiff; we must do things regularly, 
 and apply to the Court. Achille Pigoult will tell you how to 
 get the money. That Violette is the worthy descendant of 
 his grandfather ! I believe him quite capable of making 
 money out of a bankruptcy. He has no sense of honor or 
 justice." 
 
 "He is a very clever fellow," said Beauvisage. 
 
 "You handed over to him a connection and stock-in-trade 
 that were well worth fifty thousand francs for thirty thou- 
 sand, and in eight years he has only paid you ten thou- 
 sand " 
 
 "I never had the law of any man," replied Beauvisage, 
 "and would rather lose my money than torment the poor 
 fellow " 
 
 "A poor fellow who is making a fool of you." 
 
 Beauvisage was silent. Finding nothing to say in reply 
 to this brutal remark, he stared at the drawing-room floor. 
 
 * Tu (them) instead of vous (you) is used in domestic and familiar intercourse. 
 Translator.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 53 
 
 The gradual extinction of Beauvisage's intellect was per- 
 haps due to too much sleep. He was in bed every night by 
 eight o'clock, and remained there till eight next morning, 
 and for twenty years had slept for twelve hours on end with- 
 out ever waking ; or, if such a serious event should supervene, 
 it was to him the most extraordinary fact he would talk 
 about it all day. He then spent about an hour dressing, for 
 his wife had drilled him into never appearing in her presence 
 at breakfast till he was shaved, washed, and properly dressed. 
 
 When he was in business he went off after breakfast to 
 attend to it, and did not come in till dinner-time. Since 
 1832 he would call on his father-in-law instead, and take a 
 walk, or pay visits in the town. He always was seen in boots, 
 blue cloth trousers, a white waistcoat, and a blue coat, the 
 dress insisted on by his wife. His linen was exquisitely fine 
 and white, Severine requiring him to have a clean shirt, every 
 day. This care of his person, so unusual in the country, con- 
 tributed to the respect in which he was held, as in Paris we 
 remark a man of fashion. 
 
 Thus the outer man of this worthy and solemn night-cap 
 seller denoted a person of worship; and his wife was too 
 shrewd ever to have said a word that could let the public of 
 Arcis into the secret of her disappointment and of her hus- 
 band's ineptitude; while he, by dint of smiles, obsequious 
 speeches, and airs of wealth, passed muster as a man of great 
 importance. It was reported that Severine was so jealous 
 that she would not allow him to go out in the evening, while 
 Phileas was expressing roses and lilies for his complexion 
 under the weight of blissful slumbers. 
 
 Beauvisage, whose life was quite to his mind, cared for 
 by his wife, well served by the two maids, and petted by his 
 daughter, declared himself and was the happiest man in 
 Arcis. Severine's feeling for her commonplace husband was 
 not without the hue of protective pity that a mother feels 
 for her children. She disguised the stern remarks she felt 
 called upon to make to him under a jesting tone. There was 
 not a more peaceful household; and Phileas' dislike to com-
 
 54 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 paiiy, which sent him to sleep, as he could not play any 
 games of cards, had left Severine free to dispose of her even- 
 ings. 
 
 Cecile's entrance put an end to her father's embarrass- 
 ment. He looked up. 
 
 "How fine you are !" he exclaimed. 
 
 Madame Beauvisage turned round sharply with a piercing 
 look at her daughter, who blushed under it. 
 
 "Why, Cecile ! who told you to dress up in that style ?" 
 asked the mother. 
 
 "Are we not going to Madame Marion's this evening? I 
 dressed to see how my gown fits." 
 
 "Cecile, Cecile !" said Severine, "why try to deceive your 
 mother ? It is not right ; I am not pleased with you. You 
 are trying to hide something " 
 
 "Why, what has she done?" asked Beauvisage, enchanted 
 to see his daughter so fresh and smart. 
 
 "What has she done? I will tell her," said the mother, 
 threatening her only child with an ominous finger. 
 
 Cecile threw her arms round her mother's neck, hugged 
 and petted her, which, in an only child, is a sure way of 
 winning the day. 
 
 Cecile Beauvisage, a young lady of nineteen, had dressed 
 herself in a pale gray silk frock, trimmed with brandenburgs 
 of a darker shade to look in front like a coat. The body, 
 with its buttons and jockey tails, formed a point in front, and 
 laced up the back, like stays. This sort of corset fitted ex- 
 actly to the line of the back, hips and bust. The skirt, with 
 three rows of narrow fringe, hung in pretty folds, and the 
 cut and style proclaimed the hand of a Paris dressmaker. A 
 light handkerchief trimmed with lace was worn over the body. 
 The heiress had knotted a pink kerchief round her throat, 
 and wore a straw hat with a moss rose in it. She had fine 
 black netted mittens and bronze kid boots ; in short, but for 
 a certain "Sunday-best" effect, this turnout, as of a figure 
 in a fashion-plate, could not fail to charm her father and 
 mother. And Cecile was a pretty girl, of medium height,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 55 
 
 and well proportioned. Her chestnut hair was dressed in 
 the fashion of the day, in two thick plaits, forming loops on 
 each side of her face, and fastened up at the back of her 
 head. Her face, bright with health, had the aristocratic 
 stamp which she had not inherited from her father or her 
 mother. Thus her clear brown eyes had not a trace of the soft, 
 calm, almost melancholy look so common in young girls. 
 Sprightly, quick, and healthy, Cecile destroyed the romantic 
 cast of her features by a sort of practical homeliness and the 
 freedom of manner often seen in spoilt children. At the 
 same time, a husband who should be capable of recommenc- 
 ing her education and effacing the traces of a provincial life, 
 might extract a charming woman from this rough-hewn 
 marble. 
 
 In point of fact, Severine's pride of her daughter had 
 counteracted the effects of her love for her. Madame Beau- 
 visage had had firmness enough to bring her daughter up 
 well ; she had assumed a certain severity which exacted obedi- 
 ence and eradicated the little evil that was indigenous in the 
 child's soul. The mother and daughter had never been sepa- 
 rated ; and Cecile was blessed with what is rarer among girls 
 than is commonly supposed perfect and unblemished purity 
 of mind, innocence of heart, and genuine guilelessness. 
 
 "Your dress is highly suggestive," said Madame Beau- 
 visage. "Did Simon Giguet say anything to you yesterday 
 which you did not confide to me ?" 
 
 "Well, well !" said Phileas, "a man who is to be the repre- 
 sentative to his fellow-citizens " 
 
 "My dear mamma," said Cecile in her mother's ear, "he 
 bores me to death but there is not another man in Arcis !" 
 
 "Your opinion of him is quite correct. But wait till we 
 know what your grandfather thinks," said Madame Beau- 
 visage, embracing her daughter, whose reply betrayed great 
 good sense, though it showed that her innocence had been 
 tarnished by a thought of marriage. 
 
 Monsieur Grevin's house, situated on the opposite bank 
 of the river, ai. the corner of the little Place beyond the
 
 56 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 bridge, was one of the oldest in the town. It was built of 
 wood, the interstices between the timbers being filled up with 
 pebbles, and it was covered with a smooth coating of cement 
 painted stone-color. In spite of this coquettish artifice, it 
 looked, all the same, like a house built of cards. 
 
 The garden, lying along the river bank, had a terrace wall 
 with vases for flower-pots. 
 
 This modest dwelling, with its stout wooden shutters 
 painted stone-color like the walls, was furnished with a 
 simplicity to correspond with the exterior. On entering you 
 found yourself in a small pebbled courtyard, divided from the 
 garden by a green trellis. On the ground floor the old 
 notary's office had been turned into a drawing-room, with 
 windows looking out on the river and the square, furnished 
 with very old and very faded green Utrecht velvet. The law- 
 yer's study was now his dining-room. Everything bore the 
 stamp of the owner, the philosophical old man who led one 
 of those lives that flow like the waters of a country stream, 
 the envy of political harlequins when at last their eyes are 
 opened to the vanity of social distinctions, and when they 
 are tired of a mad struggle with the tide of human affairs. 
 
 While Severine is making her way across the bridge to 
 see if her father has finished his dinner, it may be well to 
 give a few minutes' study to the person, the life, and the 
 opinions of the old man whose friendship with the Comte 
 Malin de Gondreville secured him the respect of the whole 
 neighborhood. This is the plain unvarnished tale of the 
 notary who for a long time had been, to all intents and pur- 
 poses, the only notary in Arcis. 
 
 In 1787 two youths set out from Arcis with letters of 
 recommendation to a member of the Council named Dan- 
 ton. This famous revolutionary was a native of Arcis. His 
 house is still shown, and his family still lives there. This 
 may perhaps account for the influence of the Eevolution be- 
 ing so strongly felt in that part of the province. 
 
 Danton articled his young fellow-countrymen to a lawyer 
 of the Chatelet, who became famous for an action against
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 57 
 
 the Comte Morton de Chabrillant concerning his box at the 
 theatre on the occasion of the first performance of the 
 Mariage de Figaro, when the Parlement took the lawyer's 
 side as considering itself insulted in the person of its legal 
 representative. 
 
 One of the young men was named Malin, and the other 
 Grevin; each was an only son. Malin's father was at that 
 time the owner of the house in which Grevin was now living. 
 They were mutually and faithfully attached. Malin, a 
 shrewd fellow, with good brains and high ajnbitions, had the 
 gift of eloquence. Grevin, honest and hardworking, made it 
 his business to admire Malin. 
 
 They returned to the country when the Revolution began; 
 Malin as a pleader at Troyes, Grevin to be a notary at Arcis. 
 Grevin, always Malin's humble servant, got him returned as 
 deputy to the Convention ; Malin had Grevin appointed pros- 
 ecuting magistrate at Arcis. Until the 9th Thermidor, Malin 
 remained unknown ; he always voted with the strong to crush 
 the weak; but Tallien showed him the necessity for crushing 
 Robespierre. Then in that terrific parliamentary battle, 
 Malin distinguished himself; he showed courage at the right 
 moment. 
 
 From that day he began to play a part as a politician ; he 
 was one of the heroes of the rank and file ; he deserted from 
 the party of the "Thermidoriens" to join that of the "Cli- 
 chyens," and was one of the Council of Elders. After ally- 
 ing himself with Talleyrand and Fouehe to conspire against 
 Bonaparte, he with them became one of Bonaparte's most 
 ardent partisans after the victory of Marengo. Appointed 
 tribune, he was one of the first to be elected to the Council 
 of State, worked at the revision of the Code, and was soon 
 promoted to senatorial dignity with the title of Comte de 
 Gondreville. 
 
 This was the political side of their career. Now for the 
 financial side. 
 
 Grevin was the most active and most crafty instrument 
 of the Comte de Gondreville's fortune in the district of
 
 58 THE MEMBER FOE ARCIS 
 
 Arcis. The estate of Gondreville had belonged to the 
 Simeuse family, a good old house of provincial nobility, 
 decimated by the guillotine, of which the two surviving heirs, 
 both young soldiers, were serving in Conde's army. The 
 estate, sold as nationalized land, was purchased by Grevin for 
 Malin, under Marion's name. Grevin, in fact, acquired for 
 his friend the larger part of the Church lands sold by the 
 Eepublic in the department of the Aube. Malin sent the 
 sums necessary for these purchases, not forgetting a bonus to 
 the agent. When, presently, the Directory was supreme 
 by which time Malin was a power in the Republic the sales 
 were taken up in his name. 
 
 Then Grevin was a notary, and Malin in the Council of 
 State; Grevin became Mayor of Arcis, Malin was Senator 
 and Comte de Gondreville. Malin married the daughter of 
 a millionaire army-contractor; Grevin married the only 
 daughter of Monsieur Varlet, the leading doctor in Arcis. 
 The Comte de Gondreville had three hundred thousand francs 
 a year, a fine house in Paris, and the splendid chateau of 
 Gondreville. One of his daughters married a Paris banker, 
 one of the Kellers ; the other became the wife of Marshal the 
 Due de Carigliano. 
 
 Grevin, a rich man too, with fifteen thousand francs a 
 year, owned the house where he was now peacefully ending 
 his days in strict economy, having managed his friend's busi- 
 ness for him, and bought this house from him for six thou- 
 sand francs. The Comte de Gondreville was eighty years of 
 age, and Grevin seventy-six. The peer, taking his walk in 
 his park, the old notary in what had been that peer's father's 
 garden, each in his warm morning wrapper, hoarded crown 
 upon crown. Not a cloud had chequered this friendship of 
 sixty years. The notary had always been subservient to the 
 Member of the Convention, the Councillor of State, the Sena- 
 tor, the Peer of France. 
 
 After the Eevolution of July, Malin, being in Arcis, had 
 said to Grevin: 
 
 "Would you care to have the Cross?" (of the Legion of 
 Honor).
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 59 
 
 "And what would I do with it ?" replied Grevin. 
 
 Neither had ever failed the other. They had always ad- 
 vised and informed each other without envy on one side or 
 arrogance or offensive airs on the other. Malin had always 
 been obliged to do his best for Grevin, for all Grevin's pride 
 was in the Comte de Gondreville. Grevin was as much the 
 Comte de Gondreville as Malin himself. At the same time, 
 since the Revolution of July, when Grevin, already an old 
 man, had given up the management of the Count's affairs, 
 and when the Count, failing from age and from the part he 
 had played in so many political storms, was settling down to 
 a quiet life, the old men sure of each other's regard, but no 
 longer needing each other's help had met but rarely. On 
 his way to his country place or on his return journey to 
 Paris, the Count would call on Grevin, who paid the Count a 
 visit or two while he was at Gondreville. 
 
 Their children were scarcely acquainted. Neither Ma- 
 dame Keller, nor the Duchesse de Carigliano, had ever formed 
 any intimacy with Mademoiselle Grevin either before or since 
 her marriage to Beauvisage the hosier. This scorn, whether 
 apparent or real, greatly puzzled Severine. Grevin, as Mayor 
 of Arcis under the Empire, a man kind and helpful to all, 
 had, in the exercise of his power, conciliated and overcome 
 many difficulties. His good humor, bluntness, and honesty 
 had won the regard and affection of his district ; and besides, 
 everybody respected him as a man who could command the 
 favor, the power, and the influence of the Comte de Gondre- 
 ville. 
 
 By this time, however, when the notary's active participa- 
 tion in public business was a thing of the past, when for eight 
 years he had been almost forgotten in the town of Arcis. and 
 his death might be expected any day, Grevin, like his old 
 friend Malin, vegetated rather than lived. He never went 
 beyond his garden ; he grew his flowers, pruned his trees, in- 
 spected his vegetables and his grafts like all old men, he 
 seemed to practise being a corpse. His life was as regular 
 as clockwork. Like his friend Colonel Giguet, he was up
 
 60 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 with the Bun and in bed before nine; he was as frugal as a 
 miser, and drank very little wine but it was the best. He 
 allowed himself coffee, but never touched liqueurs, and took 
 no exercise but that involved in gardening. 
 
 In all weathers he wore the same clothes: heavy shoes, 
 oiled to keep out the wet, loose worsted stockings, thick gray 
 flannel trousers strapped round the waist, without braces; a 
 wide waistcoat of thin sky-blue cloth with horn buttons, and 
 a coat of gray flannel to match the trousers. On his head 
 he wore a little round beaver-skin cap, which he never took 
 off in the house. In the summer a black velvet cap took the 
 place of the fur cap, and he wore an iron-gray cloth coat in- 
 stead of the thick flannel one. 
 
 He was of medium height, and stout, as a healthy old man 
 should be, which made him move a little heavily; his pace 
 was slow, as is natural to men of sedentary habits. Up by 
 daybreak, he made the most careful and elaborate toilet; he 
 shaved himself, he walked round his garden, he looked at the 
 weather and consulted the barometer, opening the drawing- 
 room shutters himself. He hoed, he raked, he hunted out the 
 caterpillars he would always find occupation till breakfast 
 time. After breakfast he devoted two hours to digestion, 
 thinking of heaven knows what. Almost every day, between 
 two and five, his granddaughter came to see him, sometimes 
 brought by the maid, and sometimes by her mother. 
 
 There were days when this mechanical routine was upset. 
 He had to receive the farmers' rents, and payments in kind, 
 to be at once resold; but this little business was but once a 
 month on a market-day. What became of the money? No 
 one knew, not even Severine or Cecile; on that point Grevin 
 was as mute as the confessional. Still, all the old man's feel- 
 ings had in the end centered in his daughter and his grand- 
 child; he really loved them more than his money. 
 
 This septuagenarian, so neat in his person, with his round 
 face, his bald forehead, his blue eyes and thin white hair, 
 had a tinge of despotism in his temper, as men have when 
 they have met with no resistance from men and things. His
 
 61 
 
 only great fault, and that deeply hidden, for nothing had 
 ever called it into play, was a persistent and terrible vindic- 
 tiveness, a rancor which Malin had never roused. Grevin 
 had always been at Malin's service, but he had always found 
 him grateful; the Count had never humiliated or offended 
 his friend, whose nature he knew thoroughly. The two men 
 still called each other iu, as in their boyhood, and still affec- 
 tionately shook hands. The Senator had never allowed Grevin 
 to feel the difference in their positions ; he always anticipated 
 the wishes of his old comrade, and offered him all, knowing 
 that he would be content with little. Grevin, who was de- 
 voted to classical literature, a purist in taste, and a good law- 
 yer, was deeply and widely learned in legal studies; he had 
 done work for Malin which won the editor of the Code much 
 honor in the Council of State. 
 
 Severine was affectionately attached to her father ; she and 
 her daughter never left the making of his linen to any one 
 else. They knitted his winter stockings, and watched his 
 health with minute care. And Grevin knew that no thought 
 of self-interest mingled with their love for him; a possible 
 inheritance of a million francs would not dry their tears, and 
 old men are keenly alive to disinterested affection. Before 
 leaving the good man's house, every day Severine or Cecile in- 
 quired as to what his dinner was to be next day, and sent him 
 early vegetables from market. 
 
 Madame Beauvisage had always wished that her father 
 should introduce her at the Chateau de Gondreville to make 
 acquaintance with the Count's daughters; but the prudent 
 old man had frequently explained to her how difficult it would 
 be to keep up any connection with the Duchesse de Carigliano, 
 who lived in Paris, and seldom came to Gondreville, or with 
 a woman of fashion, like Madame Keller, when she herself 
 had a hosier's shop at Arcis. 
 
 "Your life is settled," said Grevin to his daughter. "Place 
 all your hopes of enjoyment in Cecile, who, when you give 
 up business, will certainly be rich enough to give you the free 
 and handsome style of living that you deserve Choose a
 
 82 THE MEMBER FOE ARCI8 
 
 son-in-law who has ambitions and brains, and then you can 
 some day go to Paris and leave that simpleton Beauvisage 
 here. If I should live long enough to have a grandson-in- 
 law, I will steer you over the sea of politics as I steered Malin, 
 and you shall rise as high as the Kellers." 
 
 These words, spoken before the Eevolution of 1830, and 
 one year after the old notary had established himself in his 
 little house, account for his calm existence. Grevin wished 
 to live; he wished to start his daughter, his granddaughter, 
 and his great-grandchildren on the highroad to greatness. 
 Grevin was ambitious for the third generation. 
 
 When he made that speech the old man was thinking of 
 seeing Cecile married to Charles Keller, and at this moment 
 he was mourning over his disappointed hopes: he did not 
 know what determination to come to. 
 
 He had no connections in Paris society ; and seeing nobody 
 else whom Cecile could advantageously marry but the young 
 Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, he was wondering whether by sheer 
 force of gold he might not smooth away the difficulties raised 
 by the Eevolution of July between the Royalists who were 
 faithful to their principles and their conquerors. In fact, it 
 seemed to him that there would be so little chance of happi- 
 ness for Cecile if she fell into the hands of the Marquise de 
 Cinq-Cynge, that he made up his mind to leave it to time to 
 settle matters that trusted friend of the aged. He hoped 
 that his arch-enemy the Marquise might die, and then he 
 thought he could capture the son through the grandfather, old 
 Hauteserre, who was living with them at Cinq-Cygne, and 
 whom he knew to be open to the bribery of his avarice. If 
 this scheme should fail, when Cecile Beauvisage should be 
 two-and-twenty with no hope of success, Grevin would consult 
 his friend Gondreville, and leave him to find her a husband 
 in Paris, in accordance with her taste or ambition, among the 
 dukes of the Empire. 
 
 Severine found her father sitting on a wooden bench at 
 the end of his terrace, under the blossoming lilacs, and tak- 
 ing his coffee, for it was half-past five. She saw at once by
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 63 
 
 the sorrowful gravity of her father's expression that he had 
 heard the news. In fact, the old Count had sent a man- 
 servant to beg his friend to go to him. Hitherto, Grevin 
 had been unwilling to encourage his daughter's hopes; but 
 now, in the conflict of mingled considerations that struggled 
 in his sorrowful mind, his secret slipped out. 
 
 "My dear child," said he, "I had dreamed of such splendid 
 and noble prospects for your future life, and death has upset 
 them all. Cecile might have been the Vicomtesse Keller; 
 for Charles, by my management, would have been elected 
 member for Arcis, and he would certainly some day have suc- 
 ceeded his father as peer. Neither Gondreville nor Madame 
 Keller, his daughter, would have sneezed at Cecile's sixty 
 thousand francs a year, especially with the added prospect of a 
 hundred thousand more which will come to you some day. 
 You could have lived in Paris with your daughter, and have 
 played your part as mother-in-law in the higher spheres of 
 power." 
 
 Madame Beauvisage nodded approval. 
 
 "But we are struck down by the blow that has killed this 
 charming young man, who had already made a friend of 
 the Prince. And this Simon Giguet, who is pushing forward 
 on the political stage, is a fool, a fool of the worst kind, for 
 he believes himself an eagle. You are too intimate with the 
 Giguets and the Marion family to refuse the alliance without 
 a great show of reason, but you must refuse " 
 
 "We are, as usual, quite agreed, my dear father." 
 
 "All this necessitates my going to see my old friend Malin; 
 in the first place, to comfort him ; and in the second place, 
 to consult him. You and Cecile would be miserable with an 
 old family of the Faubourg Saint-Germain ; they would make 
 you feel your humble birth in a thousand little way?. What 
 we must look out for is one of Napoleon's dukes who is in 
 want of money ; then we can get a fine title for Cecile, and we 
 will tie up her fortune. 
 
 "You can say thnt T have arranged for the disposal of 
 Cecile's hand, and that will put an end to all such impertinent
 
 04 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 proposals as Antonin Goulard's. Little Vinet is sure to come 
 forward; and of all the suitors who will nibble at her for- 
 tune, he is the preferable. He is clever, pushing, and con- 
 nected through his mother with the Chargeboeufs. But he is 
 too determined not to be master, and he is young enough to 
 make her love him; between the two you would be done for. 
 I know what you are, my child !" 
 
 "I shall feel very much embarrassed this evening at the 
 Marions," said Severine. 
 
 "Well, my dear, send Madame Marion to me. I will talk 
 to her!" 
 
 "I knew that you were planning for our future, dear father, 
 but I had no idea that it would be anything so brilliant," 
 said Madame Beauvisage, taking her father's hands and kiss- 
 ing them. 
 
 "I have planned so deeply," replied Grevin, "that in 1831 I 
 bought a house you know very well the Hotel Beau- 
 seant " 
 
 Madame Beauvisage started with surprise at hearing this 
 well-kept secret, but she did not interrupt her father. 
 
 "It will be my wedding gift," he added. "I let it in 1832 
 to some English, for seven years, at twenty-four thousand 
 francs a year a good stroke of business, for it only cost 
 me three hundred and twenty-five thousand, and I have got 
 back nearly two hundred thousand. The lease is out on the 
 15th of July next." 
 
 Severine kissed her father on the forehead and on both 
 cheeks. This last discovery promised such splendor in the 
 future that she was dazzled. 
 
 "If my father takes my advice," said she to herself, as she 
 recrossed the bridge, "he will leave the property only in re- 
 version to his grandchildren, and I shall have the life-in- 
 terest; I do not wish that my daughter and her husband 
 should turn me out of their house; they shall live in mine." 
 
 At dessert, when the maids were dining in the kitchen, 
 and Madame Beauvisage was sure of not being overheard, 
 she thought it well to give Cecile a little lecture.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 65 
 
 "My dear child," said she, "behave this evening as a well- 
 brought-up girl should; and henceforth try to have a quiet 
 reserved manner; do not chatter too freely, nor walk about 
 alone with Monsieur Giguet, or Monsieur Olivier Vinet, or 
 the Sous-prefet, or Monsieur Martener or anybody, 
 in short, not even Achille Pigoult. You will never marry 
 any young man of Arcis or of the department. Your fate 
 will be to shine in Paris. You shall have some pretty dresses 
 for every-day wear, to accustom you to being elegant ; and I 
 will try to bribe some waiting-woman of the Duchesse de 
 Maufrigneuse's to find out where the Princesse de Cadignan 
 and the Marquise de Cinq-Cygne buy their things. Oh, we 
 will not look in the least provincial ! You must practise the 
 piano three hours a da} r , and I will have Moi'se over from 
 Troyes every day till I can find out about a master who will 
 come from Paris. You must cultivate all your talents, 
 for you have not more than a year before you at most be- 
 fore getting married. So, now, I have warned you, and I 
 shall see how you conduct yourself this evening. You must 
 keep Simon at arm's length without making him ridiculous." 
 
 "Be quite easy, ma'am, I will begin at once to adore the 
 Unknown." 
 
 This speech, which made Madame Beauvisage smile, needs 
 a word of explanation. 
 
 "Ah, I have not seen him yet," said Phileas, "but every- 
 body is talking of him. When I want to know who he is, 
 I will send the sergeant or Monsieur Groslier to inspect his 
 passport." 
 
 There is not a country town in France where sooner or 
 later the Comedy of the Stranger is not played. The Stranger 
 is not unfrequently an adventurer who takes the natives in, 
 and goes off, carrying with him a woman's reputation or a 
 family cash-box. More often he is really a stranger, whose 
 life is a mystery for long enough to set the town talking 
 of his acts and deeds. 
 
 Now, the possible accession of Simon Giguet to representa- 
 tive power was not the only great event of the day. The at-
 
 66 THE MEMBER FOR ARC1S 
 
 tention of the citizens of Arcis had been much engaged by the 
 proceedings of an. individual who had arrived three days 
 previously, and who was, as it happened, the first Stranger to 
 the rising generation. Hence, the Unknown was the chief 
 subject of conversation in every family circle. He was the 
 log that had dropped from the clouds into a community of 
 frogs. 
 
 The position of Arcis-sur-Aube sufficiently accounts for 
 the effect that the advent of a visitor was likely to produce. 
 Within six leagues from Troyes, by a farm called La Belle- 
 fitoile, on the highway from Paris, a country road turns off, 
 leading to the town of Arcis, across the wide flats where the 
 Seine traces a narrow green valley, shaded with poplars, in 
 sharp contrast to the white chalky marl of the soil. The road 
 from Arcis to Troyes is also about six leagues long, and forms 
 the chord of an arc with Arcis and Troyes at either end, so 
 that the shortest way from Paris is by the cross-road turning 
 off by La Belle-fitoile. The river Aube, as has been said, 
 is not navigable above Arcis ; and so this town, at six leagues 
 from the main road, divided from Troyes by a monotonous 
 level, lies lost in a desert, as it were, with no traffic or trade 
 by land or water. Sezanne, at some leagues from Arcis 
 on the other side of the river, stands on a highroad which 
 shortens, by eight stages, the old post road to Germany, via 
 Troyes. Thus, Arcis is isolated; no mails pass through the 
 town ; there is only a service of coaches to La Belle-fitoile on 
 one hand, and to Troyes on the other. 
 
 All the residents know each other, and they know every 
 commercial traveler who comes on business from the Paris 
 houses; thus, as in every small town in a similar position, 
 the arrival of a stranger in Arcis sets every tongue wagging, 
 and excites every imagination, if lie should stay more than two 
 days without announcing his name and his business. 
 
 Now, while Arcis was still stagnantly peaceful, three days 
 before that on which by the fiat of the creator of so many 
 fictions this story begins, everybody had witnessed the ar- 
 rival, by the road from La Belle-fitoile, of a Stranger, in
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 67 
 
 a neat tilbury, driving a well-bred horse, and followed by a 
 tiger no bigger than your thumb, mounted on a saddle-horse. 
 The coach in connection with the mails for Troyes had 
 brought from La Belle-fitoile three trunks from Paris, with 
 no name on them, but belonging to the newcomer, who took 
 rooms at the Mulet. Everybody in Arcis that evening sup- 
 posed that this individual wanted to purchase land at Arcis, 
 and he was spoken of in many family councils as the future 
 owner of the chateau. 
 
 The tilbury, the traveler, the tiger, and the steeds all 
 seemed to have dropped from some very superior social sphere. 
 The stranger, who was tired no doubt, remained invisible; 
 perhaps he spent part of his time in settling in the rooms 
 he selected, announcing his intention of remaining some little 
 time. He insisted on seeing where his horses were housed 
 in the stable, and was exceedingly particular; they were to 
 be kept apart from those belonging to the inn, and from any 
 that might arrive. So much eccentric care led the host of 
 the Mulet to the conclusion that the visitor must be an Eng- 
 lishman. 
 
 On the very first evening some attempts were made on the 
 Mulet by curious inquirers ; but no information was to be got 
 out of the little groom, who refused to give any account of 
 his master, not by misleading answers or silence, but by such 
 banter as seemed to indicate deep depravity far beyond his 
 years. 
 
 After a careful toilet, the visitor ate his dinner at about 
 six o'clock, and then rode out, his groom in attendance, on 
 the Brienne road, and returned very late. The innkeeper, 
 his wife, and the chambermaids vainly examined the 
 stranger's luggage and possessions; they discovered nothing 
 that could throw any light on the mysterious visitor's rank, 
 name, profession, or purpose. 
 
 The effect was incalculable: endless surmises were put for- 
 ward, such as might have justified the intervention of the 
 public prosecutor. 
 
 When he returned, the stranger admitted the mistress of
 
 the house, who laid before him the volume in which, by the 
 regulations of the police, he was required to write his name 
 and dignity, the object of his visit, and the place whence he 
 came. 
 
 "I shall write nothing whatever, madame," said he to the 
 innkeeper's wife. "If anybody troubles you on the subject, 
 you can say that I refused, and send the Sous-prefet to me 
 if you like, for I have no passport. People will ask you a 
 great many questions about me, madame," he added. "And 
 you can answer what you please; I do not intend that you 
 should know anything about me, even if you should obtain 
 information in spite of me. If you annoy, me, I shall go the 
 Hotel de la Paste, on the square by the bridge ; and, observe, 
 that I propose to remain a fortnight at least. I should be 
 very sorry to go^ for I know you to be a sister of Gothard, 
 one of the heroes of the Simeuse case." 
 
 "Certainly, sir!" replied the sister of Gothard the Cinq- 
 Cygnes' steward. 
 
 After this, the stranger had no difficulty in detaining the 
 good woman for nearly two hours, and extracting from her 
 all she could tell him concerning Arcis everybody's fortune, 
 everybody's business, and who all the officials were. 
 
 Next morning he again rode out attended by the tiger, 
 and did not come in till midnight. 
 
 The reader can now understand Cecile's little jest, which 
 Madame Beauvisage thought had nothing in it. 
 
 Beauvisage and Cecile, equally surprised by the order of 
 the day set forth by Severine, were no less delighted. While 
 his wife was changing her dress to go to Madame Marion's, 
 the father listened to the girl's hypotheses guesses such as 
 a young lady naturally indulges in under such circumstances. 
 Then, tired by the day's work, as soon as his wife and daughter 
 were gone, he went to bed. 
 
 As all may suppose who know France, or the province of 
 Champagne which is not quite the same thing or yet more, 
 the ways of country towns, there was a perfect mob in Ma- 
 dame Marion's rooms that evening. Simon Giguefs success
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 69 
 
 was regarded as a victory over the Comte de Gondreville, and 
 the independence of Arcis in electioneering matters as es- 
 tablished for ever. The news of poor Charles Keller's death 
 was felt to be a special dispensation from Heaven, and silenced 
 rivalry. 
 
 Antonin Goulard, Frederic Marest, Olivier Vinet, Mon- 
 sieur Martener, in short, all the authorities who had ever 
 frequented the house, whose opinions could hardly be adverse 
 to the Government as established by popular suffrage in July 
 1830, were there as usual, but all brought thither by curiosity 
 as to the attitude assumed by the Beauvisages, mother and 
 daughter. 
 
 The drawing-room, restored to order, bore no traces of 
 the meeting which had presumably decided Maitre Simon'a 
 fate. 
 
 By eight o'clock, four card-players, at each of the four 
 tables, were busily occupied. The small drawing-room and 
 the dining-room were full of company. Never, excepting 
 on great occasions when there was dancing, or on some public 
 holiday, had Madame Marion seen people crowded at the door 
 of her room, and streaming in like the tail of a comet. 
 
 "It is the dawn of advancement," said Olivier, remarking 
 to her on a sight so delightful to a woman who is fond of 
 entertaining. 
 
 "It is impossible to foresee what Simon may rise to," re- 
 plied Madame Marion. "We live in an age when a man who 
 has perseverance and the art of getting on may aspire to the 
 best." 
 
 This speech was made less to Vinet than for the benefit 
 of Madame Beauvisage, who had just come in with her 
 daughter and congratulated her friend. 
 
 To avoid any direct questioning, and to forefend any mis- 
 interpretation of chance remarks, Cecile's mother took a 
 seat at a whist-table, and threw all her concentrated energies 
 into the task of winning a hundred points. A hundred points 
 means fifty sous! If a player loses so large a sum, it is a 
 two days' wonder at Arcis.
 
 70 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Cecile went to gossip with Mademoiselle Mollot, one of 
 her- bosom friends, and seemed more affectionate to her than 
 ever. Mademoiselle Mollot was the beauty of Arcis, as Cecile 
 was the heiress. M. Mollot, clerk of assize at Arcis, lived in 
 the Grande Place, in a house situated very much as that of 
 the Beauvisages' was at the bridge end. Madame Mollot, who 
 never sat anywhere but at the drawing-room window on the 
 ground floor, suffered in consequence from acute and chronic 
 curiosity, a permanent and inveterate malady. Madame 
 Mollot devoted herself to watching her neighbors, as a nervous 
 woman talks of her ailments, with airs, and graces, and 
 thorough enjoyment. If a countryman came on the Square 
 from the road to Brienne, she watched and wondered what 
 his business could be at Arcis, and her mind knew no rest 
 till she could account for that peasant's proceedings. She 
 spent her whole life in criticising events, men and things, 
 and the household affairs of Arcis. 
 
 She was a tall, meagre woman, the daughter of a judge at 
 Troyes, and she had brought Monsieur Mollot, formerly 
 Grevin's managing clerk, fortune enough to enable him to pay 
 for his place as clerk of assize. The clerk of assize ranks with a 
 judge, just as in the Supreme Court the chief clerk ranks 
 with a councillor. Monsieur Mollot owed his nomination to 
 the Comte de Gondreville, who had settled the matter by a 
 word in season at the Chancellor's office in favor of Grevin's 
 clerk. The whole ambition of these three persons Mollot, 
 his wife, and his daughter was to see Ernestine Mollot, who 
 was an only child, married to Antonin Goulard. Thus the 
 rejection by the Beauvisages of every advance on the part 
 of the Sous-prefet had tightened the bonds of friendship 
 between the two families. 
 
 "There is a much-provoked man !" said Ernestine to Cecile, 
 pointing to Simon Giguet. "He is pining to come and talk 
 to us ; but everybody who comes in feels bound to congratulate 
 and detain him. Fifty times at least I have heard him say 
 'The goodwill of my fellow-citizens is towards my father, 
 I believe, rather than myself ; be that as it may, rely upon it,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 71 
 
 I shall devote myself not merely to our common interests, 
 but more especially to yours' I can hear the words from the 
 movement of his lips, and every time he looks round at you 
 with the eyes of a martyr." 
 
 "Ernestine," said Cecile, "stay by me all the evening, for 
 I do not want to hear his hints hidden under speeches full of 
 Alas! and punctuated with sighs." 
 
 "Then you do not want to be the wife of a Keeper of the 
 Seals!" 
 
 "Have they got no higher than that?" said Cecile, laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 "I assure you," said Ernestine, "that just now, before you 
 came in, Monsieur Godivet the registrar declared in his en- 
 thusiasm that Simon would be Keeper of the Seals before 
 three years were out." 
 
 "And do they rely on the patronage of the Comte de Gon- 
 dreville?" asked Goulard, seating himself by the two girls, 
 with a shrewd suspicion that they were laughing at his friend 
 Giguet. 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur Antonin," said pretty Ernestine, "you 
 promised my mother to find out who the handsome stranger 
 is ! What is your latest information ?" 
 
 "The events of to-day, mademoiselle, have been of far 
 greater importance," said Antonin, seating himself by Cecile 
 like a diplomate enchanted to escape from general observa- 
 tion by taking refuge with a party of girls. "My whole 
 career as Sous-prefet or full Prefet hangs in the balance." 
 
 "Why ! Will you not allow your friend Simon to be re- 
 turned as unanimously elected?" 
 
 "Simon is my friend, but the Government is my master, 
 and I mean to do all I can to hinder Simon's return. And 
 Madame Mollot ought to lend me her assistance as the wife 
 of a man whose duties attach him to the Government." 
 
 "We are quite prepared to side with you," said Madame 
 Mollot. "My husband told me," she went on in an undertone, 
 "of all the proceedings here this morning. It was lament- 
 able,' Onbr one man showed any talent Achille Pigoult.
 
 72 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Every one agrees in saying that he is an orator, and would 
 shine in Parliament. And though he has nothing, and my 
 daughter is an only child with a marriage portion of sixty 
 thousand francs to say nothing of what we may leave her 
 and money from her father's uncle the miller, and from my 
 aunt Lambert at Troyes well, I declare to you that if Mon- 
 sieur Achille Pigoult should do us the honor of proposing 
 for her, for my part, I would say yes that is, if my daughter 
 liked him well enough. But the little simpleton will not 
 marry any one she does not fancy. It is Mademoiselle Beau- 
 visage who has put that into her head." 
 
 The Sous-prefet took this broadside as a man who knows 
 that he has thirty thousand francs a year of his own, and 
 expects to be made Prefet. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Beauvisage is in the right," said he, looking 
 at Cecile ; "she is rich enough to marry for love." 
 
 "We will not discuss marriage," said Ernestine. "It only 
 distresses my poor little Cecile, who was confessing to me just 
 now that if she could only be married for love, and not for her 
 money, she would like to be courted by some stranger who. 
 knew nothing of Arcis or the fortunes which are to make her 
 a female Crcesus; and she only wishes she could go through 
 some romantic adventure that would end in her being loved 
 and married for her own sake " 
 
 "That is a very pretty idea. I always knew that made- 
 moiselle had as much wit as money!" exclaimed Olivier 
 Vinet, joining the group, in detestation of the flatterers 
 surrounding Simon Giguet, the idol of the day. 
 
 "And that was how, from one thing to another, we were 
 led to talk of the Unknown " 
 
 "And then," added Ernestine, "she thought of him as the 
 possible hero of the romance I have sketched " 
 
 "Oh !" cried Madame Mollot, "a man of fifty ! Never !" 
 
 "How do you know that he is a man of fifty ?" asked Vinet, 
 with a smile. 
 
 "To tell the truth," said Madame Mollot, "I was so mysti- 
 fied, that this morning I took my opera-glass "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 73 
 
 "Well done!" exclaimed the inspector of works, who was 
 courting the mother to win the daughter. 
 
 "And so," Madame Mollot went on, "I could see the 
 stranger shaving himself with such elegant razors! Gold 
 handles or silver-gilt." 
 
 "Gold ! gold !" cried Vinet. "When there is any doubt, 
 let everything be of the best! And I, who have never seen 
 the gentleman, feel quite sure that he is at least a Count." 
 This, which was thought very funny, made everybody laugh.* 
 
 The little group who could be so merry excited the envy 
 of the dowagers and attracted the attention of the black- 
 coated men who stood round Simon Giguet. As to Giguet 
 himself, he was in despair at not being able forthwith to lay 
 his fortune and his prospects at the heiress' feet. 
 
 "Oh, my dear father," thought the deputy clerk, finding 
 himself complimented for the involuntary witticism, "what a 
 place you have sent me to as a beginning of my experience ! 
 A count Comte with an m, ladies," he explained. "A man 
 as illustrious by birth as he is distinguished in manners ; note- 
 worthy for his fortune and his carriages a dandy, a man of 
 fashion a lemon-kid glove man " 
 
 "He has the smartest tilbury you ever saw, Monsieur 
 Olivier," said Ernestine. 
 
 "And you never told me of his tilbury, Antonin, this morn- 
 ing when we were discussing this dark conspirator; the til- 
 bury is really an attenuating circumstance. A man with a 
 tilbury cannot be a Eepublican." 
 
 "Young ladies," said Antonin Goulard, "there is nothing 
 I would not do to promote your pleasure. We will know, 
 and that soon, if he is a Comte, with an m, so that you may be 
 able to construct your conte with an n" 
 
 "And it may then become history," said the engineer. 
 
 "As written for the edification of Sous-prefets," said 
 Olivier Vinet. 
 
 "And how will you set about it ?" asked Madame Mollot. 
 
 * There is a pun in the French on the words Comix, a Couut, and Conte, a romance, 
 anb.
 
 74 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Ah !" replied the Sous-pref et. "If you were to ask Made- 
 moiselle Beauvisage whom she would marry, if she were con- 
 demned to choose from the men who are here now, she would 
 not tell you ! You must grant some reticence to power. Be 
 quite easy, young ladies, in ten minutes you shall know 
 whether the stranger is a count or a bagman." 
 
 Antonin left the little coterie of girls for there were be- 
 sides Cecile and Ernestine, Mademoiselle Berton, the daugh- 
 ter of the collector of revenue, an insignificant damsel who 
 was a sort of satellite to the heiress and the beauty, and Made- 
 moiselle Herbelot, sister of the second notary of Arcis, an old 
 maid of thirty, sour, pinched, and dressed after the manner 
 of old maids she wore a green tabinet gown, and a kerchief 
 with embroidered corners, crossed and knotted in front after 
 the manner in fashion during the Eeign of Terror. 
 
 "Julien," said the Sous-prefet to his servant in the vesti- 
 bule, "you were in service for six months with the Gondre- 
 villes ; do you know a count's coronet when you see it ?" 
 
 "It has nine points, sir, with balls." 
 
 "Very good. Then go over to the Mulet and try to get a 
 look at the tilbury belonging to the strange gentleman who is 
 staying there ; and come back and tell me what is painted on 
 it. Do the job cleverly, pick up anything you can hear. If 
 you see the little groom, ask him at what hour to-morrow his 
 master can receive the Sous-prefet say Monsieur le Comte, 
 if by chance you see such a coronet. Don't drink, say noth- 
 ing, come back quickly, and when you return let me know by 
 just showing yourself at the drawing-room door." 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur le Sous-prefet." 
 
 The Mulet inn, as has been said, stands on the Place at the 
 opposite corner to the garden wall of Madame Marion's 
 house on the other side of the Brienne road. So the problem 
 would be quickly solved. 
 
 Antonin Goulard returned to his seat by Mademoiselle 
 Beauvisage. 
 
 "We talked of him so much here last evening," Madame 
 Mollot was saying, "that I dreamed of him all night "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 75 
 
 "Dear, dear !" said Vinet ; "do you still dream of the Un- 
 known, fair lady ?" 
 
 "You are very impertinent. I could make you dream of me 
 if I chose !" she retorted. "So this morning when I got 
 up " 
 
 It may here be noted that Madame Mollet was regarded at 
 Arcis as having a smart wit that is to say, she talked 
 fluently, and took an unfair advantage of the gift. A Pa- 
 risian wandering in those parts, like the Stranger in question, 
 would have probably thought her an intolerable chatterbox. 
 
 "And was dressing, in the natural course of things, as I 
 looked straight before me " 
 
 "Out of window?" said Goulard. 
 
 "Certainly. My dressing-room looks out on the market- 
 place. You must know that Poupart has given the Stranger 
 one of the rooms that face mine " 
 
 "One room, mamma !" exclaimed Ernestine. "The Count 
 has three rooms ! The groom, who is all in black, is in the 
 first room ; the second has been turned into a sort of drawing- 
 room; and the gentleman sleeps in the third." 
 
 "Then he has half the inn," remarked Mademoiselle 
 Herbelot. 
 
 "Well, what has that to do with the man himself?" said 
 Madame Mollot, vexed at being interrupted by girls; "I am 
 speaking of his person." 
 
 "Do not interrupt the orator," said Olivier Vinet. 
 
 "As I was stooping " 
 
 "Sitting," said Antonin Goulard. 
 
 "Madame was as she ought to be dressing, and looking 
 at the Mulct," said Vinet. 
 
 These pleasantries are highly esteemed in the country; for 
 everybody has said everything there for too long not to be 
 content with the same nonsense as amused our fathers before 
 the importation of English prudery, one of the forms of 
 merchandise which custom-houses cannot prohibit. 
 
 "Do not interrupt the orator," said Mademoiselle Beau- 
 visage to Vinet, with a responsive smile.
 
 76 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "My eyes involuntarily fell on the window of the room in 
 which last night the Stranger had gone to bed at what hour 
 I cannot imagine, for I lay awake till after midnight ! It is 
 my misfortune to have a husband who snores till the walls 
 and ceiling tremble. If I get to sleep first, I sleep so heavily 
 that I hear nothing; but if Mollot gets the start, my night's 
 rest is done for." 
 
 "There is a third alternative you might go off together," 
 said Achille Pigoult, coming to join this cheerful party. "It 
 is your slumbers that are in question, I perceive " 
 
 "Hold your tongue, and get along with you," said Madame 
 Mollot, very graciously. 
 
 "You see what that means?" said Cecile in Ernestine's 
 ear. 
 
 "Well, he had not come in by one o'clock," Madame Mollot 
 went on. 
 
 "He is a fraud ! Sneaking in when you could not see him," 
 said Achille Pigoult. "Oh, he is a knowing one, you may 
 depend! He will get us all into a bag and sell us on the 
 market-place !" 
 
 "To whom?" asked Vinet. 
 
 "To a business, to an idea, to a system !" replied the 
 notary, and the other lawyer answered with a cunning smile. 
 
 "Imagine my surprise," Madame Mollot returned, "when 
 I caught sight of a piece of stuff, so magnificent, so elegant, 
 so gaudy ! Said I to myself, 'He must have a dressing-gown 
 of that stuff woven with spun glass which we saw at the 
 Industrial Exhibition.' And I went for my opera-glass and 
 looked, But, good Heavens! what did I see? Above the 
 dressing-gown, where his head should have been, I saw a huge 
 mass, like a big knee. No, I cannot tell you how curious I 
 was !" 
 
 "I can quite imagine it," said Antonin. 
 
 "No, you cannot imagine it," said Madame Mollot, "for 
 that knee " 
 
 "Oh, I see it all," said Olivier Vinet, shouting with
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 77 
 
 laughter. "The Stranger was dressing too, and you saw his 
 two knees " 
 
 "Not at all," said Madame Mollot ; "you are putting things 
 into my mouth. The Stranger was standing up; he held a 
 sponge over a huge basin, and your rude joke be on your own 
 head, Monsieur Olivier. I should have known if I had seen 
 what you suppose " 
 
 "Oh ! have known Madame, you are committing your- 
 self I" said Antonin Goulard. 
 
 "Do let me speak!" said Madame Mollot. "It was his 
 head ! He was washing his head ! he has not a hair." 
 
 "Rash man!" said Antonin Goulard. "He certainly can- 
 not have come to look for a wife. To get married here a man 
 must have some hair. Hair is in great request." 
 
 "So I have my reasons for saying that he must be fifty. 
 A man does not take to a wig before that age. For, in fact, 
 the Unknown, when he had finished his toilet, opened his 
 window, and I beheld him from afar, the owner of a splendid 
 head of black hair. He stuck up his eyeglass when I went 
 to the balcony. : So, my dear Cecile, that gentleman will 
 hardly be the hero of your romance." 
 
 "Why not ? Men of fifty are not to be disdained when they 
 are Counts," said Ernestine. 
 
 "Perhaps he had fair hair after all," said Olivier Vinet 
 mischievously, "and then he would be very eligible. The real 
 question is whether it was his bald head that Madame Mol- 
 lot saw, or " 
 
 "Be quiet !" said Madame Mollot. 
 
 Antonin Goulard went out to send Madame Marion's ser- 
 vant across to the Mulet with instructions for Julien. 
 
 "Bless me, what does a husband's age matter ?" said Made- 
 moiselle Herbelot. 
 
 "So long as you get one," Vinet put in. He was much 
 feared for his cold and malignant sarcasm. 
 
 "Yes," replied the old maid, piqued by the remark, "I 
 would rather have a husband of fifty, kind and indulgent to 
 hi& wife, than a young man of between twenty and thirty who
 
 78 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 had no heart, and whose wit stung everybody even his wife." 
 
 "That," said Olivier Vinet, "is mere talk, since to prefer a 
 man of fifty to a young man one must have the choice !" 
 
 "Oh !" said Madame Mollot, to stop this squabble between 
 Mademoiselle Herbelot and young Vinet, who always went 
 too far, "when a woman has seen something of life, she 
 knows that whether a husband is fifty or five-and-twenty, it 
 comes to exactly the same thing if he is merely esteemed. 
 The really important thing in marriage is the suitability of 
 circumstances to be considered. If Mademoiselle Beauvisage 
 wishes to live in Paris and that would be my notion in her 
 place I would certainly not marry anybody in Arcis. If I 
 had had such a fortune as she will have, I might very well 
 have given my hand to a Count, a man who could have placed 
 me in a good social position, and I should not have asked to 
 see his pedigree." 
 
 "It would have been enough for you to have seen him at 
 his toilet," said Vinet in a murmur to Madame Mollot. 
 
 "But the King can make a Count, madame," observed 
 Madame Marion, who had been standing for a minute or two 
 looking at the circle of young people. 
 
 "But some young ladies like their Counts ready-made," 
 said Vinet. 
 
 "Now, Monsieur Antonin," said Cecile, laughing at 
 Olivier Vinet's speech, "the ten minutes are over, and we do 
 not yet know whether the Stranger is a Count." 
 
 "The Government must prove itself infallible," said Vinet, 
 turning to Antonin. 
 
 "I will keep my word," replied the Sous-prefet, seeing his 
 servant's face in the doorway. And he again left his seat. 
 
 "You are talking of the Stranger !" said Madame Marion. 
 "Does any one know anything about him?" 
 
 "No, madame," said Achille Pigoult. "But he, without 
 knowing it, is like an athlete in a circus the object of in- 
 terest to two thousand pairs of eyes. I do know something," 
 added the little notary. 
 
 "Oh, tell us, Monsieur Achille!" Ernestine eagerly ex- 
 claimed.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 7ft 
 
 "His servant's name is Paradis." 
 
 "Paradis !" echoed everybody. 
 
 "Can any one be called Paradis ?" asked Madame Herbelot, 
 taking a seat by her sister-in-law. 
 
 "It goes far to prove that his master is an angel," the notary 
 went on, "for when his servant follows him you see " 
 
 " 'C'est le chemin du Paradis/ That is really very neat," 
 said Madame Marion, who was anxious to secure Achille 
 Pigoult in her nephew's interest. 
 
 "Monsieur," Julien was saying to his master in the dining- 
 room, "there is a coat-of-arms on the tilbury." 
 
 "A coat-of-arms?" 
 
 "And very queer they are. There is a coronet over them 
 nine points with balls " 
 
 "Then he is a Count " 
 
 "And a winged monster running like mad, just like a 
 postilion that has lost something. And this is what is 
 written on the ribbon," said he, taking a scrap of paper out 
 of his waistcoat pocket. "Mademoiselle Anicette, the Prin- 
 cesse de Cadignan's maid who had just come in a carriage, 
 of course to bring a letter to the gentleman (and the car- 
 riage from Cinq-Cygne is waiting at the door) copied the 
 words down for me." 
 
 "Give it me." 
 
 The Sous-prefet read: 
 
 "Quo me trahit fortuna." 
 
 Though he was not a sufficiently accomplished herald to 
 know what family bore this motto, Antonin supposed that 
 the Cinq-Cygnes would hardly lend their chaise for the 
 Princesse de Cadignan to send an express messenger to any 
 one not of the highest nobility. 
 
 "Oho ! so you know the Princess' maid ? You are a lucky 
 beggar," said Antonin to the man. 
 
 Julien, a native of the place, after being in service at Gon- 
 dreville for six months, had been engaged by Monsieur le 
 Sous-prefet, who wished to have a stylish servant. 
 
 "Well, monsieur, Anicette was my father's god-daughter.
 
 80 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 And father, who felt kindly to the poor child, as her father 
 was dead, sent her to Paris to learn dressmaking ; my mother 
 could not bear the sight of her." 
 
 "Is she pretty?" 
 
 "Not amiss, Monsieur le Sous-prefet. More by token she 
 had her little troubles in Paris. However, as she is clever, 
 and can make dresses and understands hairdressing, the 
 Princess took her on the recommendation of Monsieur Marin, 
 head-valet to Monsieur le Due de Maufrigneuse." 
 
 "And what did she say about Cinq-Cygne ? Is there a great 
 deal of company?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, a great deal. The Princess is there, and Mon- 
 sieur d'Arthez, the Due de Maufrigneuse and the Duchess, 
 ant? the young Marquis. In short, the house is full. Mon- 
 seigneur the Bishop of Troyes is expected this evening." 
 
 "Monseigneur Troubert. Oh, I should like to know 
 whether he makes any stay there." 
 
 "Anicette thought he would. She fancies he has come on 
 account of the gentleman who is lodging at the Mulet. And 
 more people are expected. The coachman said there was a 
 great talk about the elections. Monsieur le President Michu 
 is to spend a few days there." 
 
 "Just try to get that maid into the town on some pretext. 
 Have you any fancy for her ?" 
 
 "If she had anything of her own, there is no knowing. 
 She is a smart girl." 
 
 "Well, tell her to come to see you at the Sous-prefecture." 
 
 "Very well, sir ; I will go at once." 
 
 "But do not mention me, or she will not come. Tell her 
 you have heard of a good place " 
 
 "Oh, sir ! I was in service at Gondreville " 
 
 "And you do not know the history of that message sent 
 from Cinq-Cygne at such an hour. For it is half-past nine." 
 
 "It was something pressing, it would seem; for the Count, 
 who had just come in from Gondreville " 
 
 "The Stranger had been to Gondreville !" 
 
 "He dined there, Monsieur le Sous-prefet. And, you shall
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 81 
 
 see, it is the greatest joke. The little groom is as drunk as an 
 owl, saving your presence. They gave him so much cham- 
 pagne wine in the servants' hall that he cannot keep on his 
 legs. They did it for a joke, no doubt." 
 
 "Well but the Count ?" 
 
 "The Count had gone to bed, but as soon as he read the 
 note he got up. He is now dressing. They were putting the 
 horse in, and he is going out in the tilbury to spend the rest 
 of the evening at Cinq-Cygne." 
 
 "Then he is a person of importance ?" 
 
 "Oh yes, sir, no doubt ; for Gothard, the steward at Cinq- 
 Cygne, came this morning to see Poupart, who is his brother- 
 in-law, and told him to be sure to hold his tongue about the 
 gentleman and his doings, and to serve him as if he were the 
 King." 
 
 "Then can Vinet be right?" thought Goulard to himself. 
 "Is there some plot brewing?" 
 
 "It was the Due Georges de Maufrigneuse who sent Mon- 
 sieur Gothard to the Mulet; and when Poupart came here to 
 the meeting this morning, it was because this Count made 
 him come. If he were to tell Monsieur Poupart to set out 
 for Paris to-night, he would go. Gothard told his brother-in- 
 law to throw everything over for the gentleman and hood- 
 wink all inquirers." 
 
 "If you can get hold of Anicette, be sure to let me know," 
 said Antonin. 
 
 "Well, I could go to see her at Cinq-Cygne, sir, if you were 
 to send me out to your house at le Val-Preux." 
 
 "That is a good idea. You might get a lift on the chaise. 
 But what about the little groom?" 
 
 "He is a smart little chap, Monsieur 'le Sous-prefet! Just 
 fancy, sir, screwed as he is, he has just ridden off on his mas- 
 ter's fine English horse, a thoroughbred that can cover seven 
 leagues an hour, to carry a letter to Troyes, that it may reach 
 Paris to-morrow ! And the brat is no more than nine and a 
 half years old ! What will he be by the time he is twenty ?" 
 
 The Sous-prefet listened mechanically to this last piece of
 
 82 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 domestic gossip. Julien chattered on for a few minutes, and 
 Goulard heard him vaguely, thinking all the time of the 
 great Unknown. 
 
 "Wait a little," he said to the servant. 
 
 "What a puzzle !" thought he, as he slowly returned to the 
 drawing-room. "A man who dines with the Comte de Gon- 
 dreville, and who spends the night at Cinq-Cygne ! Mysteries 
 with a vengeance!" 
 
 "Well !" cried Mademoiselle Beauvisage's little circle as he 
 joined them. 
 
 "Well, he is a count, and of the right sort, I will answer 
 for itr 
 
 "Oh, how I should like to see him !" exclaimed Cecile. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Antonin, with a mischievous smile at 
 Madame Mollot, "he is tall and well made, and does not 
 wear a wig ! His little tiger was as tipsy as a lord ; they had 
 filled him up with wine in the servants' hall at Gondreville; 
 and the child, who is but nine, replied to Julien with all the 
 dignity of an old valet when my man said something about 
 his master's wig. *A wig ! My master ! I would not stay 
 with him. He dyes his hair, and that is bad enough.' " 
 
 "Your opera-glasses magnify a good deal," said Achille 
 Pigoult to Madame Mollot, who laughed. 
 
 "Well, and this boy of our handsome Count's, tipsy as he 
 is, has flown off to Troyes to carry a letter, and will be there 
 in an hour and a quarter, in spite of the darkness." 
 
 "I should like to see the tiger !" said Vinet. 
 
 "If he dined at Gondreville, we shall soon know all about 
 this Count," said Cecile, "for grandpapa is going there to-mor- 
 row morning." 
 
 "What will seem even more strange," said Antonin Goulard, 
 "is that a special messenger, in the person of Mademoiselle 
 Anicette, the Princesse de Cadignan's maid, has come from 
 Cinq-Cygne to the stranger, and he is going to spend the 
 night there." 
 
 "Bless me !" said Olivier Vinet ; "but he is not a man he 
 is a demon, a phoenix ! He is the friend of both parties ! He 
 can ingurgitate "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 88 
 
 "For shame, monsieur !" said Madame Mollot, "you use 
 W0 rds " 
 
 "Ingurgitate is good Latin, madame," replied Vinet very 
 gravely. "He ingurgitates, I say, with King Louis-Philippe 
 in the morning, and banquets at Holyrood in "the evening 
 with Charles X. There is but one reason that can allow a 
 respectable Christian to frequent both camps and go alike to 
 the Capulets' and the Montagues'. Ah ! I know what the man 
 is ! He is the manager of the railway line between Paris and 
 Lyons, or Paris and Dijon, or Montereau and Troyes " 
 
 "Of course !" cried Antonin. "You have hit it. Only 
 finance, interest, or speculation are equally welcome wherever 
 they go." 
 
 "Yes, and just now the greatest names, the greatest fam- 
 ilies, the old and the new nobility are rushing full tilt into 
 joint-stock concerns," said Achille Pigoult. 
 
 "Francs to the Frank !" said Olivier, without a smile. 
 
 "You can hardly be said to be the olive branch of peace,'* 
 said Madame Mollot. 
 
 "But is it not disgusting to see such names as Verneuil, 
 Maufrigneuse, and d'Herouville cheek by jowl with Tillet 
 and Nucingen in the quotations on 'Change?" 
 
 "Our stranger is, you may depend, an infant railway line," 
 said Vinet. 
 
 "Well, all Arcis will be topsy-turvy by to-morrow," said 
 Achille Pigoult. "I will call on the gentleman to get the 
 notary's work in the concern. There will be two thousand 
 deeds to draw up !" 
 
 "And so our romance is a locomotive !" said Ernestine sadly 
 to Cecile. 
 
 "Nay, a count and a railway company in one is doubly 
 conjugal," said Achille. "But is he a bachelor?" 
 
 "I will find out to-morrow from grandpapa !" cried Cecile 
 with affected enthusiasm. 
 
 "A pretty joke !" exclaimed Madame Marion with a forced 
 laugh. "Why, Cecile, child, is your brain running on the 
 Unknown ?"
 
 84 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "A husband is always the Unknown," remarked Olivier 
 Vinet hastily, with a glance at Mademoiselle Beauvisage, 
 which she perfectly understood. 
 
 "And why not?" said she. "There is nothing compromis- 
 ing in that. Besides, if these gentlemen are right, he is either 
 a great lord or a great speculator. My word ! I can do with 
 either. I like Paris ! I want a carriage, and a fine house, and 
 a box at the Opera, et cetera." 
 
 "To be sure," said Vinet. "Why refuse yourself anything 
 in a day-dream ? Now, if I had the honor to be your brother, 
 you should marry the young Marquis de Cinq-Cygne, who is, 
 it strikes me, the young fellow to make the money fly, and to 
 laugh at his mother's objections to the actors in the judicial 
 drama in which our presiding judge's father came to such 
 a sad end." 
 
 "You would find it easier to become Prime Minister !" said 
 Madame Marion. "There can never be an alliance between 
 Grevin's granddaughter and the Cinq-Cygnes." 
 
 "Borneo was within an ace of marrying Juliet," said Achille 
 Pigoult ; "and Mademoiselle Cecile is handsomer " 
 
 "Oh, if you quote opera !" said Herbelot feebly, as he rose 
 from the whist-table. 
 
 "My colleague," said Achille Pigoult, "is evidently not 
 strong in mediaeval history." 
 
 "Come along, Malvina," said the sturdy notary, without 
 answering his young brother of the law. 
 
 "Tell me, Monsieur Antonin," said Cecile, "you spoke of 
 Anicette, the Princesse de Cadignan's maid do you know 
 her?" 
 
 "No; but Julien does. She is his father's godchild, and 
 they are old friends." 
 
 "Oh, do try, through Julien, to get her for us; mamma 
 will give any wages " 
 
 "Mademoiselle, to hear is to obey, as they say to the despots 
 in Asia," replied the Sous-prefet. "To serve you, see how 
 prompt I will be." 
 
 He went off to desire Julien to get a lift in the chaise
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 85 
 
 returning to Cinq-Cygne, and to win over Anicette at any 
 cost. , 
 
 At this moment Simon Giguet, who had been put through 
 his paces by all the influential men of Arcis, and who be- 
 lieved himself secure of his election, joined the circle round 
 Cecile and Mademoiselle Mollot. 
 
 It was getting late ; ten had struck. 
 
 Having consumed an enormous quantity of cakes, of orgeat, 
 punch, lemonade, and various fruit syrups, all who had come 
 that evening to Madame Marion's on purely political grounds, 
 and who were unaccustomed to tread these boards to them 
 quite aristocratic disappeared promptly, all the more so 
 because they never sat up so late. The party would now be 
 more intimate in its tone ; Simon Giguet hoped to be able to 
 exchange a few words with Cecile, and looked at her with a 
 conquering air. This greatly offended Cecile. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Antonin to Simon, as he saw the 
 aureole of triumph on his friend's brow, "you have joined us 
 at a moment when all the men of Arcis are in the wrong 
 box " 
 
 "Quite wrong," said Ernestine, nudged by Cecile. "We 
 are quite crazy about the Unknown. Cecile and I are quar- 
 reling for him." 
 
 "To begin with, he is no longer unknown," said Cecile. 
 "He is a Count." 
 
 "Some adventurer !" said Simon Giguet scornfully. 
 
 "Would you say that to his face," retorted Cecile, much 
 nettled. "A man who has just had a message by one of the 
 Princesse de Cadignan's servants, who dined to-day at Gon- 
 dreville, and is gone to spend this very evening with the Mar- 
 quise de Cinq-Cygne?" 
 
 She spoke so eagerly and sharply that Simon was put out of 
 countenance. 
 
 "Indeed, mademoiselle," said Olivier Vinet, "if we all said 
 to people's faces what we say behind each other's backs, 
 society would be impossible. The pleasure of society, espe- 
 cially in the country, consists in speaking ill of others."
 
 80 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Monsieur Simon is jealous of your enthusiasm about the 
 strange Count," remarked Ernestine. 
 
 "It seems to me/' said Cecile, "that Monsieur Simon has 
 no right to be jealous of any fancy of mine !" 
 
 And saying this in a tone to annihilate Simon, Cecile rose. 
 Everybody made way for her, and she joined her mother, 
 who was settling her gambling account. 
 
 "My dear girl," said Madame Marion, close at her heels, 
 "it seems to me that you are very hard on my poor Simon." 
 
 "Why, what has the dear little puss been doing ?" asked her 
 mother. 
 
 "Mamma, Monsieur Simon gave my Unknown a slap in the 
 face by calling him an adventurer." 
 
 Simon had followed his aunt, and was now on the battle- 
 field by the whist-table. Thus the four persons, whose inter- 
 ests were so serious, were collected in the middle of the room ; 
 Cecile and her mother on one side of the table, Madame 
 Marion and her nephew on the other. 
 
 "Eeally, madame," said Simon Giguet, "you must confess 
 that a young lady must be very anxious to find me in the 
 wrong, to be vexed by my saying that a man of whom all 
 Arcis is talking, and who is living at the Mulet 
 
 "Do you suppose he is competing with you ?" said Madame 
 Beauvisage jestingly. 
 
 "I should certainly feel it a deep grievance if he should 
 be the cause of any misunderstanding between Mademoiselle 
 Cecile and me/' said the candidate, with a beseeching look at 
 the girl. 
 
 "But you pronounced sentence, monsieur, in a cutting tone, 
 which proved you to be despotic and you are right; if you 
 hope ever to be Minister, you must cut a good deal !" 
 
 Madame Beauvisage took Madame Marion by the arm and 
 led her to a sofa. Cecile, left alone, went to join the circle, 
 that she might not hear any reply that Simon might make; 
 and he remained by the table, looking foolish enough, mechan- 
 ically playing tricks with the bone fish. 
 
 "There are as good fish in the sea!" said Olivier Vinet,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 87 
 
 who had observed the little scene ; and Cecile, overhearing the 
 remark, though it was spoken in a low tone, could not help 
 laughing. 
 
 "My dear friend," said Madame Marion to Madame Beau- 
 visage, "nothing now, you see, can hinder my nephew's elec- 
 tion." 
 
 "I congratulate you and the Chamber," said Severine. 
 
 "And my nephew will make his mark, my dear. I will tell 
 you why : his own fortune, and what his father will leave him 
 with mine, will bring him in about thirty thousand francs a 
 year. When a man is a member of parliament and has such 
 a fortune, there is nothing he may not aspire to." 
 
 "Madame, he will command our admiration, and our best 
 wishes will be with him throughout his political career, 
 but 
 
 "I ask for no reply," exclaimed Madame Marion, eagerly 
 interrupting her friend "I only ask you to think it over. 
 Do our young people like each other? Can we arrange the 
 match? We shall live in Paris whenever the Chambers are 
 sitting, and who knows but the Member for Arcis may be 
 settled there by getting some good place in office? See how 
 Monsieur Vinet of Provins has got on ! Mademoiselle de 
 Chargebceuf was thought very foolish to marry him; and be- 
 fore long she will be the wife of the Keeper of the Seals, and 
 Monsieur Vinet may have a peerage if he likes." 
 
 "Madame, it does not rest with me to settle my daughter's 
 marriage. In the first place, her father and I leave her abso- 
 lutely free to choose for herself. If she wanted to marry the 
 Unknown; if he were a suitable match, we should give our 
 consent. Then Cecile depends entirely on her grandfather, 
 who, as a wedding gift, will settle on her a house in Paris, 
 the Hotel Beauseant, which he bought for us ten years ago, 
 and which at the present day is worth eight hundred thousand 
 francs. It is one of the finest mansions in the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain. He has also a sum of two hundred thousand 
 francs put by for furnishing it. Now a grandfather who be- 
 haves in that way, and who will persuade my mother-in-law
 
 88 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 on her part to do something for her grandchild, has some 
 right to an opinion on the question of a suitable match 
 
 "Certainly !" said Madame Marion, amazed at this revela- 
 tion, which would add to the difficulties of her nephew's 
 marriage with Cecile. 
 
 "And even if Cecile had no expectations from her grand- 
 father," Madame Beauvisage went on, "she would not marry 
 without consulting him. The young man my father had 
 chosen is just dead; I do not know what his present inten- 
 tions may be. If you have any proposals to make, go and see 
 my father." 
 
 "Very well, I will," said Madame Marion. 
 
 Madame Beauvisage signaled to Cecile, and they left. 
 
 On the following afternoon Antonin and Frederic Marest 
 were walking, as was their after-dinner custom, with Mon- 
 sieur Martener and Olivier under the limes of the Avenue 
 des Soupirs, smoking their cigars. These walks are one of 
 the little pleasures of provincial bigwigs, when they live on 
 good terms with each other. 
 
 They had taken but a few turns when they were joined by 
 Simon Giguet, who said to the Sous-prefet with an air of 
 mystery : 
 
 "You will surely stick by an old comrade, who will make 
 it his business to get you the Legion of Honor and a prefec- 
 ture I" 
 
 "Are you beginning your political career already?" said 
 Antonin, laughing. "So you are trying to bribe me you who 
 are such a puritan?" 
 
 "Will you support me?" 
 
 "My dear fellow, you know that Bar-sur-Aube registers its 
 votes here. Who can guarantee a majority under such cir- 
 cumstances? My colleague at Bar-sur-Aube would show me 
 up if I did not do as much as he to support the Government ; 
 and your promises are conditional, while my overthrow would 
 be a certainty." 
 
 "But I have no opponent."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 89 
 
 "So you think," said Antonin. "But one will turn up, 
 there is no doubt of that." 
 
 "And my aunt, who knows that I am on tenter-hooks, has 
 not come back !" cried Giguet. "These three hours may count 
 for three years !" 
 
 And the great secret came out. He confided to his friend 
 that Madame Marion was gone to propose on his behalf to old 
 Grevin for Cecile. 
 
 The friends had walked on as far as the Brienne road, just 
 opposite the Mulct. While Simon stared down the hill, up 
 which his aunt would return from the bridge, the Sous-prefet 
 was studying the runlets worn in the ground by the rain. 
 Arcis is not paved with either flagstones or cobbles, for the 
 plains of Champagne afford no building materials, much less 
 any pebbles large enough to make a road. There are paved 
 side-paths in one or two streets, but the rest are badly ma- 
 cadamized, and that is enough to explain the state they are in 
 when it rains. The Sous-prefet kept himself in countenance 
 by seeming to meditate on this important matter, but he did 
 not lose one of the secret pangs that found expression in his 
 companion's anxious face. 
 
 At this particular moment the Stranger was returning 
 from the chateau of Cinq-Cygne, where he had evidently 
 spent the night. Goulard was determined to clear up for him- 
 self the mystery in which the Stranger chose to wrap himself 
 being also wrapped, so far as his outer man was con- 
 cerned, in a light overcoat or paletot of coarse frieze, such as 
 was then the fashion. A cloak thrown over him hid his 
 figure from view, and an enormous comforter of red cash- 
 mere covered his face up to the eyes. His hat, knowingly set 
 on one side, was, nevertheless, not extravagant. Never was 
 a mystery so mysteriously smothered and concealed. 
 
 "Clear the way!" cried the tiger, riding in front of the 
 tilbury. "Open the gate, Daddy Poupart !" he piped in his 
 shrill little voice. 
 
 The three stablemen ran out, and the tilbury went in with- 
 out any one having seen the driver's face.
 
 90 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 The Sous-prefet followed it, however, to the door of the 
 inn. 
 
 "Madame Poupart," said Antonin, "will you tell Monsieur 
 Monsieur ?" 
 
 "I do not know his name," said Gothard's sister. 
 
 "Then you are to blame. The police regulations are defi- 
 nite, and Monsieur Groslier does not see a joke like all police 
 authorities when they have nothing to do." 
 
 "Innkeepers are never in the wrong at election time," said 
 the tiger, getting off his horse. 
 
 "I will tell that to Vinet," thought the official. "Go and 
 ask your master to see me, the Sous-prefet of Arcis." 
 
 Antonin went back to his three friends, who had stopped 
 outside on seeing the Sous-prefet in conversation with the 
 tiger, already famous in Arcis for his name and his ready wit. 
 
 "Monsieur begs that Monsieur le Sous-prefet will walk up. 
 He will be delighted to see him," Paradis came out in a few 
 minutes to say to Antonin. 
 
 "I say, little man," said Olivier, "how much a year does 
 your master give a youth of your spirit and inches ?" 
 
 "Give, monsieur ? What do you take me for ? Monsieur le 
 Comte allows himself to be done and I am satisfied." 
 
 "That boy is at a good school," said Frederic Marest. 
 
 "The High School, Monsieur le Procureur du Eoi," replied 
 Paradis, and the five men stared at his cool impudence. 
 
 "What a Figaro !" exclaimed Vinet. 
 
 "It does not do to sing small," said the boy. "My 
 master calls me a little Eobert Macaire. Since we have 
 found out how to invest in the funds, we are Figaro 
 with the savings bank into the bargain." 
 
 "Why, what do you earn?" 
 
 "There are times when I make a thousand crowns on a 
 race and without selling my master, monsieur." 
 
 "Sublime infant! He knows the turf " 
 
 "And all the gentleman riders!" said the boy, putting 
 out his tongue at Vinet. 
 
 "Paradise road goes a long way !" said Frederic Marest.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 91 
 
 Antonin Goulard, meanwhile, shown up by the innkeeper, 
 found the Unknown in the room he used for a drawing- 
 room, and himself under inspection through a most imper- 
 tinent eyeglass. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Antonin Goulard in a rather lofty tone, 
 "I have just heard from the innkeeper's wife that you re- 
 fuse to conform to the police regulations; and as I have no 
 doubt that you are a man of some consequence, I have come 
 myself " 
 
 'Tour name is Goulard?" said the Stranger in a head- 
 voice. 
 
 "I am Sous-prefet, monsieur," said Antonin Goulard. 
 
 "Your father, I think, was attached to the Simeuses?" 
 
 "And I am attached to the Government. Times have 
 changed." 
 
 "You have a servant named Julien who wants to bribe 
 away the Princesse de Cadignan's waiting-maid?" 
 
 "Monsieur, I allow no one to speak to me in such a way; 
 you misunderstand my character " 
 
 "But you wish to understand mine," interrupted the 
 other. "You may write it in the inn-register: 'An imper- 
 tinent person, from Paris, age doubtful, traveling for his 
 pleasure.' It would be an innovation highly appreciated 
 in France to imitate the English method of allowing people 
 to come and go as they please without annoying them and 
 asking them for their papers at every turn. I have no 
 passport : what will you do to me ?" 
 
 "The public prosecutor is out there under the limes " 
 
 said the Sous-prefet. 
 
 "Monsieur Marest? Wish him from me a very good 
 morning." 
 
 "But who are you?" 
 
 "Whatever you wish me to be, my dear Monsieur Gou- 
 lard," said the Stranger, "since it is you who must decide 
 how I should appear before the good folks of this district. 
 Give me some advice as to my demeanor. Here read this.' ;
 
 92 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 And the visitor held out a note as follows : 
 
 
 (Private.} PREFECTURE OF THE AUBE. 
 
 "MONSIEUR LE SOUS-PRE"FET, Be good enough to take 
 steps with the bearer as to the election in Arcis, and con- 
 form to his requirements in every particular. I request 
 you to be absolutely secret, and to treat him with the respect 
 due to his rank." 
 
 The note was written and signed by the Prefet of the de- 
 partment. 
 
 "You have been talking prose without knowing it," said the 
 Stranger, as he took the letter back. 
 
 Antonin Goulard, already impressed by the man's gentle- 
 manly appearance and manner, spoke respectfully. 
 
 "How is that, monsieur?" said he. 
 
 "By trying to bribe Anicette. She came to tell me of 
 Julien's offers you may call him Julien the Apostate, for 
 little Paradis, my tiger, routed him completely, and he ended 
 by confessing that you were anxious to place Anicette in the 
 service of the richest family in Arcis. Now, as the richest 
 family in Arcis are the Beauvisages, I presume that it is 
 Mademoiselle Ceeile who is anxious to secure such a 
 treasure." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Very well, Anicette can go to the Beauvisages at once." 
 
 He whistled. Paradis appeared so promptly that his master 
 said: 
 
 "You were listening." 
 
 "I cannot help myself, Monsieur le Comte, the walls are 
 made of paper. If you like, Monsieur le Comte, I can go to 
 an upstairs room." 
 
 "No, you may listen ; it is your privilege. It is my business 
 to speak low when I do not want you to hear. Now, go back 
 to Cinq-Cygne, and give this twenty-franc piece to Anicette 
 from me. Julien will be supposed to have bribed her on
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 93 
 
 your account/' he added, turning to Goulard. "This gold 
 piece means that she is to do as Julien tells her. Anicette 
 may possibly be of use to our candidate." 
 
 "Anicette !" 
 
 "You see, Monsieur le Sous-prefet, I have made use of wait- 
 ing-maids for two-and-thirty years. I had my first adventure 
 at the age of thirteen, exactly like the Regent, the present 
 King's great-great-grandfather. Now, do you know the 
 amount of this demoiselle Beauvisage's fortune?" 
 
 "No one can help knowing it, monsieur; for last evening 
 at Madame Marion's, Madame Severine said that Monsieur 
 Grevin, Cecile's grandfather, would give her the Hotel Beau- 
 seant and two hundred thousand francs on her wedding 
 day." 
 
 The Stranger's eyes betrayed no surprise; he seemed to 
 think it a very moderate fortune. 
 
 "Do you know Arcis well?" he asked Goulard. 
 
 "I am Sous-prefet of the town, and I was born here." 
 
 "Well, then; how can I balk curiosity?" 
 
 "By satisfying it, Monsieur le Comte. Use your Christian 
 name ; enter that and your title on the register." 
 
 "Very good : Comte Maxime." 
 
 "And if you would call yourself the manager of a railway 
 company, Arcis would be content ; you could keep it quiet for 
 a fortnight by flying that flag." 
 
 "No, I prefer water- works ; it is less common. I have come 
 to improve the waste-lands of the province. That, my dear 
 Monsieur Goulard, will be an excuse for inviting myself to 
 dine at your house to meet the Beauvisages to-morrow. I 
 particularly wish to see them and study them." 
 
 "I shall be only too happy," said the official. "But I 
 must ask your indulgence for the poverty of my establish- 
 ment " 
 
 "If I succeed in directing the election at Arcis in accord- 
 ance with the wishes of those who have sent me here, you, 
 
 my good friend, will be made a Prefet. Read these " 
 
 and he held out two other letters.
 
 94 THE MEMBER FOR ARCI8 
 
 "Very good, Monsieur le Comte," said Goulard, as he re- 
 turned them. 
 
 "Make out a list of all the votes at the disposal of the 
 Government. Above all, we must not appear to have any 
 mutual understanding. I am merely a speculator, and do 
 not care a fig about the election." 
 
 "I will send the police superintendent to compel you to 
 write your name on Poupart's register." 
 
 "Yes, that is very good. Good-morning, monsieur. What 
 a land we live in!" he went on in a loud tone. "It is im- 
 possible to stir a step without having the whole posse at your 
 heels even the Sous-pref et !" 
 
 "You will have to settle that with the head of the police," 
 replied Antonin emphatically. 
 
 And twenty minutes later there was a great talk at Ma- 
 dame Mollot's of high words between the Sous-prefet and 
 the Stranger. 
 
 "Well, and what wood is the log made of that has dropped 
 into our pool?" asked Olivier Vinet of Goulard, as he came 
 away from the inn. 
 
 "A certain Comte Maxime, come to study fche geology of 
 the district in the hope of finding mineral sources," said 
 Goulard indifferently. 
 
 ".Ke-sources you should say," replied Olivier. 
 
 "Does he fancy he can raise any capital in these parts?" 
 asked Monsieur Martener. 
 
 "I doubt our royalist people seeing anything in that form 
 of mining," said Vinet, smiling. 
 
 "What do you expect, judging from Madame Marion's 
 looks and movements?" said Antonin, changing the con- 
 versation by pointing out Simon and his aunt in eager con- 
 ference. 
 
 Simon had gone forward to meet Madame Marion, and 
 stood talking in the square. 
 
 "Well, if he were accepted, a word would be enough to 
 tell him so, I should think," observed Vinet. 
 
 "Well?" asked the two men at once as Simon came up 
 the lime walk.
 
 95 
 
 "My aunt has hopes. Madame Beauvisage and old Grevin, 
 who was starting for Gondreville, were not surprised at our 
 proposal; our respective fortunes were discussed. Cecile is 
 absolutely free to make her own choice. Finally, Madame 
 Beauvisage said that for her part she saw no objection to 
 a connection which did her honor, though, at the same time, 
 she must make her consent depend on my election, and 
 possibly on my appearing in the Chamber; and old Grevin 
 said he must consult the Comte de Gondreville, as he never 
 came to any important decision without taking his advice." 
 
 "So you will not marry Cecile, old boy," said Goulard 
 bluntly. 
 
 "And why not?" said Giguet ironically. 
 
 "My dear fellow, Madame Beauvisage and her daughter 
 spend four evenings a week in your aunt's drawing-room; 
 Madame Marion is the most thoroughly fine lady in Arcis. 
 Though she is twenty years the elder, she is the object of 
 Madame Beauvisage' s envy; and do you suppose they could 
 refuse you point-blank without some little civility?" 
 
 "Neither Yes nor No is ' No," Vinet went on, "in view 
 of the extreme intimacy of your two families. If Madame 
 Beauvisage is the woman of fortune, Madame Marion is the 
 most looked up to; for, with the exception of the presiding 
 judge's wife who sees no one she is the only woman who 
 can entertain at all; she is the queen of Arcis. Madame 
 Beauvisage wishes to refuse politely that is all." 
 
 "It seems to me that old Grevin was making a fool of 
 your aunt, my dear boy," said Frederic Marest. "Yesterday 
 you attacked the Comte de Gondreville; you, hurt him, you 
 offended him deeply for Achille Pigoult defended him 
 bravely and now he is to be consulted as to your marrying 
 Cecile !" 
 
 "No one can be craftier than old Grevin," said Vinet. 
 
 "Madame Beauvisage is ambitious," Goulard went on, 
 "and knows that her daughter will have two millions of francs. 
 She means to be the ..mother-in-law of a minister or of an 
 ambassador, so as to lord it in Paris."
 
 96 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Well, and why not that ?" said Simon Giguet. 
 
 "I wish you may get it !" replied Goulard, looking at Vinet, 
 and they laughed as they went on their way. "He will not 
 even be elected !" he went on to Olivier. "The Government 
 has schemes of its own. You will find a letter at home from 
 your father, desiring you to secure every one in your con- 
 nection who ought to vote for their masters. Your promotion 
 depends upon it, and you are to keep your own counsel." 
 
 "And who is the man for whom they are to vote ushers, 
 attorneys, justice of the peace, and notaries?" asked Vinet. 
 
 "The man I will tell you to vote for." 
 
 "But how do you know that my father has written to me, 
 and what he has written?" 
 
 "From the Unknown." 
 
 "The man of mines?" 
 
 "My dear Vinet, we are not to know him; we must treat 
 him as a stranger. He saw your father as he came through 
 Provins. Just now this individual showed me a letter from 
 the Prefet instructing me to act in the matter of the elections 
 as I shall be directed by this Com te Maxime. I should not 
 get off without having to fight a battle, that I knew ! Let 
 us dine together and plan our batteries: You want to be 
 Public Prosecutor at Mantes, and I to be Prefet, and we 
 must not appear to meddle in the elections, for we are between 
 the hammer and anvil. Simon is the candidate put forward 
 by the party who want to upset the present Ministry, and 
 who may succeed. But for clear-sighted men like us there is 
 but one thing to do." 
 
 "And that is?" 
 
 "To obey those who make and unmake ministries. The 
 letter that was shown to me was from a man in the secrets of 
 the immutable idea." 
 
 Before going any further, it will be necessary to explain 
 who this "miner" was, and what he hoped to extract out of 
 the province of Champagne. 
 
 About two months before Simon Giguet's day of triumph
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 97 
 
 as a candidate, at eleven o'clock one evening, just as tea 
 was being served in the Marquise d'Espard's drawing-room 
 in the Eue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, the Chevalier 
 d ; Espard, her brother-in-law, as he set his cup down on 
 the chimney-shelf and looked at the circle round the fire, ob- 
 served : 
 
 "Maxime was very much out of spirits this evening did 
 not you think so?" 
 
 "Well," replied Rastignac, "his depression is very natural. 
 He is eight-and-forty ; at that age a man does not make 
 friends; and when we buried de Marsay, Maxime lost the 
 only one who could thoroughly understand him, who could 
 be of use to him, or make use of him." 
 
 "And he probably has some pressing debts. Could not 
 you put him in the way of paying them off?" said the 
 Marquise to Rastignac. 
 
 Rastignac at this juncture was in office for the second 
 time ; he had just been created Count, almost in spite of him- 
 self; his father-in-law, the Baron de Nucingen, had been 
 made a peer of France ; his brother was a bishop ; the Comte 
 de la Roche-Hugon, his brother-in-law, was ambassador ; and 
 he was supposed to be an indispensable element in the com- 
 position of any future ministry. 
 
 "You always forget, my dear Marquise," replied Rastignac, 
 "that our Government changes its silver for nothing but gold ; 
 it takes no account of men." 
 
 "Is Maxime a man to blow his brains out ?" asked du Tillet 
 the banker. 
 
 "You only wish he were ! Then we should be quits," re- 
 plied Maxime de Trailles, who was supposed by all to have 
 left the house. 
 
 And the Count rose like an apparition from the depths 
 of a low chair behind that of the Chevalier d'Espard. 
 
 Everybody laughed. 
 
 "Will you have a cup of tea?" asked young Madame de 
 Rastignac, whom the Marquise had begged to do the honors 
 of the tea-table.
 
 98 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "With pleasure," said the Count, coming to stand in front 
 of the fire. 
 
 This man, the prince of the rakes of Paris, had, till now, 
 maintained the position of superiority assumed by dandies 
 in those days known in Paris as gants jaunes (lemon-kids), 
 and since then as lions. It is needless to tell the story of 
 his youth, full of disreputable adventures and terrible dramas, 
 in which he had always managed to observe the proprieties. 
 To this man women were but means to an end; he had no 
 belief in their sufferings or their enjoyment ; like the deceased 
 de Marsay, he regarded them as naughty children. 
 
 After running through his own fortune, he had devoured 
 that of a famous courtesan known as La belle Hollandaise, 
 the mother of the no less famous Esther Gobseck. Then he 
 brought trouble on Madame de Restaud, Madame Delphine 
 de Nucingen's sister; the young Comtesse de Rastignac was 
 Madame de Nucingen's daughter. 
 
 Paris society is full of inconceivable anomalies. The 
 Baronne de Nucingen was at this moment in Madame 
 d'Espard's drawing-room, face to face with the author of all 
 her sister's misery an assassin who had only murdered 
 a woman's happiness. That, no doubt, was why he was 
 there. 
 
 Madame de Nucingen had dined with the Marquise, and 
 her daughter with her. Augusta de ISTucingen had been 
 married for about a year to the Comte de Rastignac, who had 
 started on his political career by holding the post of Under- 
 secretary of State in the Ministry formed by the famous de 
 Marsay, the only great statesman brought to the front by the 
 Revolution of July. Count Maxime de Trailles alone knew 
 how much disaster he had occasioned; but he had always 
 sheltered himself from blame by obeying the code of manly 
 honor. Though he had squandered more money in his life 
 than the felons in the four penal establishments of France had 
 stolen in the same time, justice treated him with respect. He 
 had never failed in any question of technical honor; he paid 
 his gambling debts with scrupulous punctuality. He was a
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 99 
 
 capital player, and the partner of the greatest personages 
 and ambassadors. He dined with all the members of the 
 Corps diplomatique. He would fight ; he had killed two or 
 three men in his time nay, he had murdered them, for his 
 skill and coolness were matchless. 
 
 There was not a young man in Paris to compare with him 
 in dress, in grace of manner, in pleasant wit, in ease and 
 readiness, in what used to be called the grand air. As page 
 to the Emperor, trained from the age of twelve in horse 
 exercise of every kind, he was a noted rider. He had always 
 five horses in his stables, he kept racers, he set the fashion. 
 Finally, no man was more successful than he in giving a 
 supper to younger men; he would drink with the stoutest, 
 and come out fresh and cool, ready to begin again, as if orgies 
 were his element. 
 
 Maxime, one of the men whom everybody despises, but 
 who control that contempt by the insolence of audacity and 
 the fear they inspire, never deceived himself as to his position. 
 This was where his strength lay. Strong men can always 
 criticise themselves. 
 
 At the time of the Restoration he had turned his em- 
 ployment as page to the Emperor to good account. He at- 
 tributed his supposed Bonapartist proclivities to the repulses 
 he had met with from a succession of ministers when he had 
 wanted to serve under the Bourbons; for, in fact, notwith- 
 standing his connections, his good birth, and his dangerous 
 cleverness, he had never succeeded in getting an appointment. 
 Then he had joined the underground conspiracy, which ended 
 in the fall of the elder branch of the Bourbons. When the 
 younger branch, at the heels of the Paris populace, had 
 trampled down the senior branch, and established itself on the 
 throne, Maxime made the most of his attachment to Napoleon, 
 for whom he cared no more than for the object of his first 
 flirtation. He then did good service, for which it was difficult 
 to make a return, as he wanted to be repaid too often by 
 people who knew how to keep accounts. At the first refusal 
 Maxime assumed a hostile attitude, threatening to rereal
 
 100 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 certain not very creditable details; for a dynasty first set up 
 has, like infants, dirty linen to hide. 
 
 De Marsay, in the course of his career, made up for the 
 blunders of those who had undervalued the usefulness of this 
 person; he employed him on such secret errands as need a 
 conscience hardened by the hammer of necessity, an address 
 which is equal to any mode of action, impudence, and, above 
 all, the coolness, presence of mind, and swift apprehension 
 of affairs, which are combined to make a bravo of scheming 
 and superior policy. Such an instrument is at once rare and 
 indispensable. De Marsay intentionally secured to Maxime 
 de Trailles a firm footing in the highest social circles; he 
 represented him as being a man matured by passion, taught 
 by experience, knowing men and things, to whom traveling 
 and a faculty of observation had given great knowledge of 
 European interests, of foreign Cabinets, and of the connec- 
 tions of all the great continental families. De Marsay im- 
 pressed on Maxime the necessity for doing himself credit; 
 he explained to him that discretion was not so much a virtue 
 as a good speculation; he proved to him that power never 
 evades the touch of a strong and trustworthy tool, at the same 
 time elegant and polished. 
 
 "In political life you can only squeeze a man once," said 
 he, blaming him for having uttered a threat. 
 
 And Maxime was the man to understand all the signifi- 
 cance of the axiom. 
 
 At de Marsay's death, Comte Maxime de Trailles fell back 
 into his old life. He went every year to gamble at water- 
 ing-places, and returned to spend the winter in Paris; but, 
 although he received from time to time some considerable 
 sums dug out of the depths of very tight-locked chests, this 
 sort of half-pay due to a man of spirit, who might at any 
 moment be made use of, and who was in the confidence of 
 many mysteries of antagonistic diplomates, was insufficient 
 for the extravagant splendor of a life like that of this king 
 of the dandies, the tyrant of four or five Paris clubs. Hence 
 the Count had many hours of uneasiness over the financial 
 question.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 101 
 
 Haying no estates or investments, he had never been able 
 to strengthen his position by being elected depute; and hav- 
 ing no ostensible duties, it was out of his power to hold the 
 knife to a great man's throat, and get himself made a peer 
 of France. And time was gaining on him ; dissipation of all 
 kinds had damaged his health and person. In spite of a 
 handsome appearance, he knew it ; he did not deceive himself. 
 He determined to settle, to marry. He was too clever a man 
 to overestimate the true value of his position ; it was, he knew, 
 an illusion. So he could not find a wife in the highest Paris 
 society, nor in the middle class. He required a vast amount 
 of spite, with apparent sincerity and real service done, to 
 make himself acceptable; for every one hoped for his fall, 
 and a vein of ill-luck might be his ruin. 
 
 If once he should find himself in prison, at Clichy or 
 abroad, as a result of some bill of exchange that he failed to 
 negotiate, he would drop into the gulf where so many political 
 dead men are to be seen who do not comfort each other. At 
 this very hour he was dreading the falling stones from some 
 portions of the awful vault which* debts build up over many 
 a Parisian head. He had allowed his anxiety to be seen in 
 his face ; he had refused to play here at Madame d'Espard's ; 
 he had been absent-minded while talking to ladies; and 
 he had ended by sitting mute and absorbed in the armchair 
 from which he now rose like Banquo's ghost. 
 
 Comte Maxime de Trailles, standing in the middle of the 
 fire-front, under the cross-lights of two large candelabra, 
 found himself the centre of direct or indirect observation. 
 The few words that had been said required him to assume 
 an attitude of defiance; and he stood there like a man of 
 spirit, but without arrogance, determined to show himself 
 superior to suspicion. A painter could not have had a 
 more favorable moment for sketching this really remarkable 
 man. 
 
 For must not a man have extraordinary gifts to play such 
 a part as his, to have fascinated women for thirty years, to 
 have commanded himself to use his talents only in a secret
 
 102 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 sphere exciting a people to rebel, discovering the mysteries 
 of the astutest politicians, and triumphing only in ladies' 
 boudoirs or men's private rooms? Is there not something 
 grand in being able to rise to the highest schemes of political 
 life, and then calmly drop back into the insignificance of a 
 frivolous existence? A man must be of iron who can live 
 through the alternations of the gaming table and the sudden 
 journeys of a political agent, who can keep up the war footing 
 of elegance and fashion and the expenses of necessary civilities 
 to the fair sex, whose memory is a perfect library of craft 
 and falsehood, who can hide so many and such different ideas, 
 and so many tricks of craft, under such impenetrable suavity 
 of manner. If the breeze of favor had blown steadily on 
 those ever-spread sails, if the course of events had served 
 Maxime better, he might have been a Mazarin, a Marechal de 
 Kichelieu, a Potemkin or perhaps, more exactly, a Lauzun, 
 minus Pignerol. 
 
 The Count, a fairly tall man, and not inclining to be fat, 
 had a certain amount of stomach; but he suppressed it 
 majestically to use Britlat-Savarin's words. His clothes, 
 too, were so well made that his figure preserved a youthful 
 aspect, and there was something light and easy in his move- 
 ments, which was due, no doubt, to constant exercise, to the 
 habit of fencing, riding, and shooting. Maxime had, in 
 fact, all the physical grace and distinction of an aristocrat, 
 enhanced by his admirable "get-up." His face was long, of 
 the Bourbon type> framed in whiskers and a beard under his 
 chin, carefully cut and curled, and as black as jet. This hue, 
 matching that of his thick hair, was preserved by the use of 
 an Indian cosmetic, very expensive, and known only in Persia, 
 of which Maxime kept the secret. He thus cheated the keen- 
 est eye as to the white hairs which had long since streaked the 
 natural black. The peculiarity of this dye, used by the 
 Persians for thin beards, is that it does not make the features 
 look hard ; it can be softened by an admixture of indigo, and 
 harmonizes with the color of the skin. This, no doubt, was 
 the operation seen by Madame Mollot ; but it remains to this
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 103 
 
 day a standing joke at Arcis to wonder now and again, at 
 the evening meetings, "what Madame Mollot did see." 
 
 Maxime had a fine forehead, blue eyes, a Grecian nose, 
 a pleasant mouth, and well-shaped chin; but all round his 
 eyes were a myriad wrinkles, as fine as if they had been 
 marked with a razor invisible, in fact, at a little distance. 
 There were similar lines on his temples, and all his face was 
 a good deal wrinkled. His eyes, like those of gamblers who 
 have sat up night after night, were covered with a sort of glaze ; 
 but their look, if dimmed, was only the more terrible nay, 
 terrifying. It so evidently covered a brooding fire, the lavas 
 of half -extinguished passions. The mouth too, once fresh and 
 scarlet, had a cold shade, and it was not quite straight; the 
 right-hand corner drooped a little. This sinuous line seemed 
 to hint at falsehood. Vice had disfigured the smile, but his 
 teeth were still sound and white. 
 
 These blemishes, too, were overlooked in the general effect 
 of his face and figure. His grace was still so attractive that 
 no younger man could compare with Maxime on horseback 
 in the Bois de Boulogne, where he appeared more youthful 
 and graceful than the youngest and most graceful of them 
 all. This privilege of eternal youth has been seen in some 
 men of our day. 
 
 De Trailles was all the more dangerous because he seemed 
 yielding and indolent, and never betrayed his obstinate fore- 
 gone conclusions on every subject. This charming indiffer- 
 ence, which enabled him to back up a seditious mob with as 
 much skill as he could have brought to bear orl a Court 
 intrigue to strengthen the position of a King, had a certain 
 charm. No one, especially in France, ever distrusts what 
 seems calm and homogeneous; we are accustomed to so much 
 stir about trifles. 
 
 The Count, dressed in the fashion of 1839, had on a black 
 coat, a dark blue cashmere waistcoat embroidered with light 
 blue sprigs, black trousers, gray silk socks, and patent leather 
 shoes. His watch, in his waistcoat pocket, was secured 
 through" a button-hole by a neat gold chain.
 
 104 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Rastignac," said he, as he accepted the cup of tea held 
 out to him by the pretty Countess, "will you come with me 
 to the Austrian embassy?" 
 
 "My dear fellow, I am too recently married not to go home 
 with my wife." 
 
 "Which means that by and by ?" said the young Count- 
 ess, looking round at her husband. 
 
 "By and by is the end of the world," replied Maxime. 
 "But if you make madame the judge, that will win the case 
 for me, I think?" 
 
 Count Maxime, with a graceful gesture, drew the pretty 
 Countess to his side ; she listened to a few words he said, and 
 then remarked, "If you like to go to the embassy with Mon- 
 sieur de Trailles, my mother will take me home." 
 
 A few minutes later the Baronne de Nucingen and the 
 Comtesse de Eastignac went away together. Maxime and 
 Rastignac soon followed ; and when they were sitting together 
 in the carriage: 
 
 "What do you want of me, Maxime?" asked the husband. 
 "What is the hurry, that you take me by the throat? And 
 Avhat did you say to my wife ?" 
 
 "That I wanted to speak to you," replied Monsieur de 
 Trailles. "You are a lucky dog, you are ! You have ended 
 by marrying the sole heiress of the Nucingen millions 
 but you have worked for it. Twenty years of penal servi- 
 tude " 
 
 "Maxime !" 
 
 "While I find myself looked at askance by everybody," he 
 went on, without heeding the interruption. "A wretched 
 creature a du Tillet asks if I have courage enough to kill 
 myself ! It is time to see where we stand. Do they want 
 me out of the way, or do they not? You can find out you 
 must find out," said Maxime, silencing Rastignac by a gesture. 
 "This is my plan ; listen to it. You ought to do me a service 
 I have served you, and can serve you again. The life I am 
 leading bores me, and I want a pension. Help me to con- 
 clude a marriage which will secure me half a million; once
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 105 
 
 married, get me sent as Minister to some wretched American 
 republic. I will stay there long enough to justify my ap- 
 pointment to a similar post in Germany. If I am good for 
 anything, I shall be promoted; if I am good for nothing, I 
 shall be cashiered. I may have a son; I will bring him up 
 strictly; his mother will be rich; I will train him to 
 diplomacy ; he may become an ambassador !" 
 
 "And this is my answer," said Kastignac. "There is a 
 harder struggle to be fought out than the outside world 
 imagines between a power in swaddling clothes and a child 
 in power. The power in swaddling clothes is the Chamber 
 of Deputies, which, not being restrained by a hereditary 
 Chamber " 
 
 "Aha !" said Maxime, "you are a peer of France !" 
 
 "And shall I not remain so under any government?" said 
 the newly-made peer. "But do not interrupt, you are in- 
 terested in all this muddle. The Chamber of Deputies will 
 inevitably be the whole of the Government, as Marsay used 
 to tell us the only man who might have rescued France; 
 for a nation does not die ; it is slave or free, that is all. The 
 child in power is the dynasty crowned in the month of August 
 1830. 
 
 "The present Ministry is beaten; it has dissolved the 
 Chamber, and will call a general election to prevent the next 
 Ministry from having the chance; but it has no hope of a 
 victory. If it should be victorious in the elections, the 
 dynasty would be in danger ; whereas, if the Ministry is turned 
 out, the dynastic party may struggle on and hold its own for 
 some time yet. The blunders of the Chamber will turn to the 
 advantage of a Will, which, unfortunately, is the mainspring 
 of politics. When one man is all in all, as Napoleon was, 
 the moment comes when he must have representatives; and 
 as superior men are rejected, the great Head is not repre- 
 sented. The representative is called the Cabinet, and. in 
 France there is no Cabinet only a Will for life. In France 
 only those who govern can blunder, the Opposition can never 
 blunder; it may lose every battle and be none the worse; it
 
 106 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 is enough if, like the Allies in 1814, it wins but one victory. 
 With 'three glorious days' is could destroy everything. Hence 
 not to govern, but to sit and wait, is to be the next heir to 
 power. Now, my personal feelings are on the side of the aris- 
 tocracy, my public opinions on that of the dynasty of July. 
 The House of Orleans has helped me to reinstate the fortunes 
 of my family, and I am attached to it for ever." 
 
 "The for ever of Monsieur do Talleyrand, of course," de 
 Trailles put in. 
 
 "So at the present moment I can do nothing for you," Kas- 
 tignac went on. "We shall not be in power these six months. 
 Yes, for those six months we shall be dying by inches ; I have 
 always known it. We knew our fate from the first ; we were 
 but a stop-gap ministry. But if you distinguish yourself 
 in the thick of the electoral fray that is beginning, if you 
 become a vote a member faithful to the reigning dynasty, 
 your wishes shall be attended to. I can say a great deal 
 about your zeal, I can poke my nose into every secret docu- 
 ment, every private and confidential letter, and find you some 
 tough place to work up. If you succeed, I can urge your 
 claims your skill and devotion and demand the reward. 
 
 "As to your marriage, my dear fellow, that can only be 
 arranged in the country with some family of ambitious manu- 
 facturers. In Paris you are too well known. The thing to 
 find is a millionaire, a parvenu, with a daughter, and pos- 
 sessed with the ambition to swagger at the Tuileries." 
 
 "Well; but get your father-in-law to lend me twenty-five 
 thousand francs to carry me over meanwhile ; then he will be 
 interested in my not being dismissed with empty promises, 
 and will promote my marriage." 
 
 "You are wide-awake, Maxime, and you do not trust me. 
 but I like a clever fellow; I will arrange that little business 
 for you." 
 
 The carriage stopped. 
 
 The Comte de Rastignac saw the Minister of the Interior 
 in the Embassy drawing-room, and drew him into a corner. 
 The Comte de Trailles was apparently devoting himself to the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 107 
 
 old Comtesse de Listomere, but in reality he was watching 
 the two men; he marked their gestures, interpreted their 
 glances, and at last caught a friendly look towards himself 
 from the Minister's eye. 
 
 Maxime and Eastignac went away together at one in tlie 
 morning, and before they each got into his own carriage, Ras- 
 tignac said on the stairs: 
 
 "Come to see me when the elections are coming on. Be- 
 tween this and then I shall find out where the Opposition is 
 likely to be strongest, and what remedy may be devised 
 by two such minds as ours." 
 
 "I am in a hurry for those twenty-five thousand francs !" 
 replied de Trailles. 
 
 "Well, keep out of sight." 
 
 About seven weeks later, one morning before it was light, 
 the Comte de Trailles drove mysteriously in a hackney cab 
 to the Rue de Varenne. He dismissed the cab on arriving at 
 the door of the Minister of Public Works, looked to see that 
 he was not watched, and then waited in a small room on the 
 first floor till Eastignac should be up. In a few minutes the 
 man-servant, who had carried in Maxime's card, showed him 
 into his master's room, where the great man was finishing his 
 toilet. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said the Minister, "I can tell you a secret 
 which will be published in the newspapers within two days, 
 and which you can turn to good account. That poor Charles 
 Keller, who danced the mazurka so well, has been killed in 
 Africa, and he was our candidate for the borough and district 
 of Arcis. His death leaves a gap. Here are copies of the 
 two reports one from the Sous-prefet, the other from the 
 Police Commissioner informing the Ministry that there were 
 difficulties in the way of our poor friend's election. In the 
 Police Commissioner's letter you will find some information 
 as to the state of the town which will be sufficient to guide a 
 man of your ability, for the ambition of poor Charles Keller's 
 opponent is founded on his wish to marry an heiress. To a 
 man like you this is hint enough. The Cinq-Cygnes, the
 
 108 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Princesse de Cadignan, and Georges de Maufrigneuse are 
 within a stone's throw of Arcis; you could at need secure the 
 legitimist votes. So " 
 
 "Do not wear your tongue out," said Maxime. "Is the 
 Police Commissioner still at Arcis?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Give me a line to him." 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Eastignac, giving Maxime a packet 
 of papers, "you will find there two letters written to Gondre- 
 ville to introduce you. You have been a page, he was a sena- 
 tor you will understand each other. Madame Frangois 
 Keller is addicted to piety; here is a letter to her from the 
 Marechale de Carigliano. The Marechale is now Orleanist ; she 
 recommends you warmly, and will, in fact, be going to Arcis. 
 I have only one word to add: Be on your guard against the 
 Sous-prefet : I believe him to be very capable of taking up this 
 Simon Giguet as an advocate with the ex-President of the 
 Council. If you need more letters, powers, introductions 
 write to me." 
 
 "And the twenty-five thousand francs?" asked Maxime. 
 
 "Sign this bill on du Tillet ; here is the money." 
 
 "I shall succeed," said the Count, "and you can promise 
 the authorities that the Member for Arcis will be theirs, body 
 and soul. If I fail, pitch me overboard !" 
 
 And within an hour Maxime de Trailles, driving his tilbury, 
 was on the road to Arcis. 
 
 As soon as he was furnished with the information supplied 
 by the landlady of the Mulct and Antonin Goulard, Mon- 
 sieur de Trailles lost no time in arranging the plan of his 
 electoral campaign a plan so obvious that the reader will 
 have divined it at once. This shrewd agent for his own 
 private politics at once set up Phileas as the candidate in op- 
 position to Simon Giguet; and, notwithstanding that the 
 man was an unlikely cipher, the idea, it must be admitted, 
 had strong chances in its favor. Beauvisage, as wearing the 
 halo of municipal authority, had, with the great mass of in- 
 different voters, the advantage of being known by reputation.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 109 
 
 Logic rules the development of affairs here below more than 
 might be supposed it is like a wife to whom, after every 
 infidelity, a man is sure to return. 
 
 Plain sense demands that the electors called upon to choose 
 a representative of their common interests should always be 
 'amply informed as to his fitness, his honesty, and his char- 
 acter. In practice, no doubt, this theory is often considerably 
 strained; but whenever the electoral flock is left to follow its 
 instincts, and can believe that it is voting in obedience to its 
 own lights and intelligence, it may be trusted to throw zeal 
 and conscious pride into its decisions; hence, while knowing 
 their man is half the battle in the electoral sense, to know his 
 name is, at any rate, a good beginning. 
 
 Among lukewarm voters, beginning with the most fervent, 
 Phileas was certain, in the first instance, to secure the Gondre- 
 ville party. Any candidate would be certain of the support 
 of the Viceroy of Arcis, if it were only to punish the audacity 
 of Simon Giguet. The election of an upstart, in the very act 
 of flagrant ingratitude and hostility, would cast a slur on the 
 Comte de GondreviMe's provincial supremacy, and must be 
 averted at any cost. Still, Beauvisage must expect, at the 
 first announcement of his parliamentary ambition, a far from 
 flattering or encouraging expression of surprise on the part 
 of his father-in-law Grevin. The old man had, once for all, 
 taken his son-in-law's measure ; and to a mind as well balanced 
 and clear as his, the notion of Phileas as a statesman would 
 have the same unpleasant effect as a startling discord has on 
 the ear. Also, if it is true that no man is a prophet in his 
 own country, he is still less so in his own family, where any 
 recognition of even the most indisputable success is grudged 
 or questioned long after it has ceased to be doubted by the 
 outer world. But, the first shock over, Grevin would proba- 
 bly become accustomed to an alternative, which, after all, 
 was not antagonistic to his own notions for the future exist- 
 ence of Severine. And then what sacrifice would he not be 
 ready to make to save the high influence of the Gondrevilles, 
 so evidently endangered?
 
 110 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 To the legitimist and republican parties, neither of which 
 could have any weight in the elections excepting to turn the 
 scale, Monsieur de Trailles' nominee had one strange recom- 
 mendation namely, his acknowledged ineptitude. These 
 two fractional elements of the anti-dynastic opposition knew 
 that neither was strong enough to return a member; hence 
 they would probably be eager to embrace an opportunity of 
 playing a trick on what they disdainfully called the estab- 
 lished order of things; and it might confidently be expected 
 that, in cheerful desperation, they would heartily contribute 
 to the success of a candidate so grossly ridiculous as to reflect 
 a broad beam of ridicule on the Government that could sup- 
 port his election. Finally, in the suffrages of the Left 
 Centre, which had provisionally accepted Simon Giguet as its 
 candidate, Beauvisage would give rise to a strong secession, 
 since he too gave himself out as opposed to the reigning 
 dynasty; and Monsieur de Trailles, pending further orders, 
 while assuring the Mayor of the support of the Ministry, 
 meant to encourage that political bias, which was undoubt- 
 edly the most popular on the scene of operations. 
 
 Whatever budget of convictions the incorruptible repre- 
 sentative might carry with him to Paris, his horoscope was 
 drawn; it was quite certain that on his very first appearance 
 at the Tuileries, august fascination would win him over to 
 fanaticism, if the mere snares of ministerial enticement were 
 not enough to produce that result. 
 
 Public interest being so satisfactorily arranged for, the 
 electoral agent had now to consider the personal question: 
 Whether, while manufacturing a deputy, he could find the 
 stuff that would also make a father-in-law. The first point 
 the fortune, and the second point the young lady, met his 
 views; the first without dazzling him, the second without 
 his being blind to the defects of a provincial education which 
 must be corrected from the beginning, but which would proba- 
 bly not offer any serious resistance to his skilful marital 
 guidance. Madame Beauvisage carried her husband away by 
 storm; she was an ambitious woman, who, in spite of her
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 111 
 
 four-and-forty years, still seemed conscious of a heart. Con- 
 sequently, the best game to play would perhaps be a feint at- 
 tack on her, to be subsequently turned on the daughter. 
 
 How far must the advanced works be carried ? A question 
 to be answered as circumstances might direct. In any case, 
 so far as the two women were concerned, Maxime felt that 
 he had the strong recommendation of his title, his reputation 
 as a man of fashion, and his peculiar fitness to initiate them 
 into the elegant and difficult arcana of Paris life ; and, finally, 
 as the founder of Beauvisage's political fortunes, which 
 promised such a happy revolution in the life of these two 
 exiled ladies, might not Monsieur de Trailles expect to find 
 them enthusiastically grateful? 
 
 At the same time, there remained one serious difficulty in 
 the way of a successful matrimonial campaign. He must 
 obtain the consent of old Grevin, who was not the man to 
 allow Cecile's marriage without making the strictest inquiries 
 into the past career of her suitor. Now, in the event of such 
 an inquiry, was there not some fear that a punctilious old 
 man might fail to find a record of such complete security and 
 conventional virtues as his prudence might insist on? 
 
 The semi-governmental mission which had brought Mon- 
 sieur de Trailles to Arcis would indeed give a semblance of 
 such importance and amendment as might be calculated to 
 neutralize the effect of certain items of information. And if, 
 before this mission were made public, it were confided as a 
 great secret to Grevin by Gondreville, the old man's vanity 
 would be flattered, and that would score in Maxime's favor. 
 
 He then resolved, in this difficult predicament, to adopt 
 the very old trick attributed to Gribouille, consisting in 
 throwing himself into the water to avoid getting wet. He 
 would anticipate the old notary's suspicions ; he himself would 
 seem to doubt his own prudence ; and, by way of a precaution 
 against the temptations that had so long beset him, he de- 
 termined to make it a preliminary condition that Chile's 
 fortune should be expressly settled on herself. By this
 
 112 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 means they would feel safe against any relapse on his part 
 into habits of extravagance. 
 
 It would be his business to acquire such influence over his 
 young wife as would enable him, by acting on her feelings, 
 to recover the conjugal authority of which such a marriage- 
 contract would deprive him. 
 
 At first nothing occurred to make him doubt the wisdom 
 and perspicacity of all these projects. As soon as it was 
 mooted, the nomination of Beauvisage caught fire like a 
 train of gunpowder; and Monsieur de Trailles thought the 
 success of 'all his schemes so probable, that he felt justified in 
 writing to Eastignac, pledging himself to carry out his 
 mission with the happiest and completest results. 
 
 But, suddenly, in opposition to Beauvisage the triumphant, 
 another candidate appeared on the scene; and, it may be 
 incidentally noted, that, for the good fortune of this piece of 
 history, the competitor presented himself under conditions so 
 exceptional and so unforeseen that, instead of a picture of 
 petty conflicts attending a country election, it may very proba- 
 bly afford the interest of a far more exciting drama. 
 
 The man who intervenes in this narrative to fill so high 
 a calling will be called upon to play so important a part that 
 it is necessary to introduce him by a somewhat lengthy 
 retrospective explanation. But at the stage we have reached, 
 to interrupt the story by a sort of argument in the middle 
 would be a breach of all the laws of art, and expose me to 
 the wrath of the Critic, that sanctimonious guardian of 
 literary orthodoxy. 
 
 In the presence of such a dilemma, the author would find 
 himself in serious difficulties, but that his lucky star threw 
 in his way a correspondence in which he found every detail 
 he could wish to place before the reader set forth in order, 
 with a brilliancy and vividness he could not have hoped to 
 achieve. 
 
 These letters are worthy of being read with attention. 
 While they bring on to the scene many actors in the Human 
 Comedy who have appeared before, they explain a number
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 113 
 
 of facts indispensable to the understanding and progress of 
 this particular drama. When they have been presented, and 
 the narrative thus brought up to the point where it now 
 apparently breaks off, it will resume its course without any 
 hiatus; and the author flatters himself that the introduction 
 for a time of the epistolary form, instead of destroying its 
 urr'ty, may, in fact, enhance it.
 
 PART II. 
 
 EDIFYING LETTERS 
 
 The Comte de VEstorade to Marie-Gaston.* 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, In obedience to your request, I have seen 
 [M. the Prefet of Police, to ascertain whether the pious pur- 
 pose of which you speak in your letter dated from Carrara 
 will meet with any opposition on the part of the authorities. 
 He informs me that the Imperial decree of the 23rd Prairial 
 of the year XII., which is still paramount on all points con- 
 nected with interments, establishes beyond a doubt the right 
 of every landowner to be buried in his own ground. You 
 have only to apply for permission from the Prefet of the De- 
 partment rSeine-et-Oise and without any further formality, 
 you can transfer the mortal remains of Madame Marie- 
 Gaston to the monument you propose to erect to her in your 
 P*TK at Ville-d'Avray. 
 
 But I may now be so bold as to suggest to you some ob- 
 jections. Are you quite sure that difficulties may not be 
 raised by the Chaulieu family, with whom you are not on the 
 best terms ? In fact, might they not, up to a certain point, be 
 justified in complaining that, by removing a tomb dear to 
 them as well as to you from a public cemetery to private and 
 enclosed ground, you are regulating the visits they may wish 
 to pay to that grave by your own arbitrary will and pleasure ? 
 Since, evidently, it will be in your power to prohibit their 
 coming on to your property. 
 
 I am well aware that, strictly speaking, a wife, living or 
 dead, belongs to her husband, to the exclusion of all other 
 relationship however near. But if, under the promptings of 
 
 * See Mfmoires de deuxjeunes Marie'es. 
 (114)
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 115 
 
 the ill-feeling they have already manifested towards you on 
 more than one occasion, Madame Marie-Gaston's parents 
 should choose to dispute your decision by an action at law, 
 what a painful business it must be ! You would gain the day, 
 I make no doubt, the Due de Chaulieu's influence being no 
 longer what it was at the time of the Bestoration; but have 
 you considered what venom an advocate's tongue can infuse 
 into such a question, especially when arguing a very natural 
 claim: that of a father, mother, and two brothers, pleading 
 to be left in possession of the melancholy gratification of 
 praying over a grave? 
 
 And if I must indeed tell you my whole mind, it is with 
 deep regret that I find you inventing new forms of cherish- 
 ing your grief, too long inconsolable. We had hoped that, 
 after spending two years in Italy, you would return more 
 resigned, and would make up your mind to seek some diversion 
 from your sorrow in active life. But this sort of temple to 
 ardent memories which you are proposing to erect in a place 
 where they already crush you too closely, can only prolong 
 their bitterness, and I cannot approve the perennial renewal 
 you will thus confer on them. 
 
 However, as we are bound to serve our friends in their 
 own way, I have conveyed your message to Monsieur 
 Dorlange; still, I cannot but tell you that he was far from 
 eager to enter into your views. His first words, when I an- 
 nounced myself as representing you, were that he had not 
 the honor of knowing you; and, strange as the reply may 
 seem to you, it was spoken with such perfect simplicity, that 
 at first I imagined I had made some mistake, some confusion 
 of names. However, as your oblivious friend presently ad- 
 mitted that he had been at school at the college of Tours, 
 and also that he was the same M. Dorlange who, in 1831, had 
 taken the first prize for sculpture under quite exceptional 
 circumstances, I could entertain no doubt as to his identity. 
 I then accounted to myself for his defective memory by the 
 long break in your intercourse, of which you wrote. That 
 neglect must have wounded him more than you imagined;
 
 116 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 and when he affected not even to recollect your name, it was 
 a revenge he was not sorry to take. 
 
 This, however, is not the real obstacle. 
 
 Eemembering on what brotherly terms you had formerly 
 been, I could not believe that M. Dorlange's wrath would be 
 inexorable. And so, after explaining to him the work he 
 was invited to undertake, I was about to enter on some ex- 
 planations as to his grievance against you, when I was met by 
 the most unlooked-for obstacle. 
 
 "Indeed," said he, "the importance of the commission you 
 are good enough to propose to me, the assurance that no out- 
 lay will be thought too great for the dignity and perfection 
 of the work, the invitation to set out myself for Carrara to 
 superintend the choice and extraction of the marbles, the 
 whole thing is a piece of such great good fortune for an 
 artist, that at any other time I should have accepted it 
 eagerly. But at this moment, when you honor me with a 
 call, though I have no fixed intention of abandoning my 
 career as an artist, I am possibly about to be launched in 
 political life. My friends are urging me to come forward 
 as a candidate at the coming elections; and, as you will un- 
 derstand, monsieur, if I should be returned, the complication 
 of parliamentary duties, and my initiation into a new ex- 
 perience, would, for some time at any rate, stand in the way of 
 undertaking such a work as you propose, with the necessary 
 leisure and thought. Also," added M. Dorlange, "I should 
 be working in the service of a great sorrow anxious to find 
 consolation at any cost in the projected monument. That 
 sorrow would naturally be impatient ; I should inevitably be 
 slow, disturbed, hindered ; it will be better, therefore, to apply 
 to some one else which does not make me less grateful for 
 the honor and confidence you have shown me." 
 
 After listening to this little speech, very neatly turned, as 
 you perceive, it struck me that your friend was anticipating 
 parliamentary triumphs, perhaps a little too confidently, 
 and, for a moment, I thought of hinting at the possibility 
 of his failing at the election, and asking whether, in that
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 117 
 
 case, I might call on him again. But it is never polite to 
 cast doubts on popular success; and as I was talking to a 
 man already much offended, I would not throw oil on the fire 
 by a question that might have been taken amiss. I merely 
 expressed my regrets, and said I would let you now the result 
 of my visit. 
 
 I need hardly say that within a few days I shall have found 
 out what are the prospects of this parliamentary ambition 
 which has arisen so inopportunely in our way. For my part, 
 there seem to me to be a thousand reasons for expecting it 
 to miss fire. Assuming this, you would perhaps do well to 
 write to M. Dorlange ; for his manner, though perfectly polite 
 and correct, appeared to confess a still lively memory of some 
 wrong for which you will have to obtain forgiveness. I know 
 that it must be painful to you to explain the very singular 
 circumstances of your marriage, for it will compel you to 
 retrace the days of your happiness, now so cruel a memory. 
 But, judging from what I saw of your old friend, if you are 
 really bent on his giving you the benefit of his talents, if you 
 do not apply to him yourself, but continue to employ a go- 
 between, you will be persisting in a course which he finds 
 disobliging, and expose yourself to a final refusal. 
 
 At the same time, if the step I urge on you is really too 
 much for you, there is perhaps another alternative. Madame 
 de 1'Estorade has always seemed to me a very tactful 
 negotiator in any business she undertakes, and in this partic- 
 ular instance I should feel entire confidence in her skill. 
 She endured, from Madame Marie-Gaston's gusts of selfish 
 passion, treatment much like that of which Monsieur Dor- 
 lange complains. She, better than anybody, will be in a 
 position to explain to him the absorbing cares of married life 
 which you shut in its own narrow folds; and it seems to me 
 that the example of long-suffering and patience which she al- 
 ways showed to her whom she would call her "dear crazy 
 thing," cannot fail to infect your friend. 
 
 You have ample time to think over the use you may wish 
 to make of the opening that thus offers. Madame de
 
 118 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 1'Estorade is just now suffering from a nervous shock, the 
 result of a terrible fright. A week ago our dear little Nais 
 was within an ace of being crushed before her eyes; and but 
 for the courage of a stranger who rushed at the horses' heads 
 and brought them up short, God knows what dreadful mis- 
 fortune would have befallen us. This fearful moment pro- 
 duced in Madame de 1'Estorade an attack of nervous excite- 
 ment which made us for a time excessively anxious. Though 
 she is much better to-day, it will be some days yet before she 
 can see Monsieur Dorlange, supposing you should think her 
 feminine intervention desirable and useful. 
 
 Still, once again, my dear sir, would it not be wiser to 
 give up your idea ? All I can foresee as the outcome for you 
 is enormous expense, unpleasant squabbles with the Chaulieus, 
 and a renewal of your sorrows. Notwithstanding, I am none 
 the less at your service in and for anything, as I cannot fail 
 to be, from every sentiment of esteem and friendship. 
 
 The Comtesse de 1'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PARIS, February 1839. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, Of all the expressions of sympathy that 
 have reached me since the dreadful accident to my poor child, 
 none has touched me more deeply than your kind letter. To 
 answer your affectionate inquiry, I must say that in that ter- 
 rible moment Nais was marvelously composed and calm. It 
 would be impossible, I think, to see death more imminent, but 
 neither at the time nor afterwards did the brave child flinch ; 
 everything shows her to have a firm nature, and her health, 
 thank God, has not suffered in the faintest degree. 
 
 I, for my part, as a consequence of my intense fright, 
 have had an attack of spasmodic convulsions, and for some 
 days, it would seem, alarmed my doctor, who feared I might 
 go out of my mind. Thanks, however, to a strong constitu- 
 tion, I am now almost myself again, and no traces would re- 
 main of that painful shock if it had not, by a singular 
 fatality, been connected with another unpleasant circum-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 119 
 
 stance which had for some time thought fit to fill a place in 
 my life. 
 
 Even before this latest kind assurance of your good- 
 will towards me, I had thought of turning to the help of 
 your friendship and advice; and now, when you are so good 
 as to write that you would be happy and proud if in any 
 degree you might take the place of poor Louise de Chaulieu, 
 the dear, incomparable friend snatched from me by death, 
 how can I hesitate? I take you at your word, my dear ma- 
 dame, and boldly request you to exert in my favor the delicate 
 skill which enabled you to defy impertinent comment when 
 the impossibility of announcing your marriage to Monsieur de 
 Camps exposed you to insolent and perfidious curiosity the 
 peculiar tact by which you extricated yourself from a position 
 of difficulty and danger in short, the wonderful art 
 which allowed you at once to keep your secret and maintain 
 your dignity. I need their help in the disagreeable matter 
 to which I have alluded. Unfortunately, to benefit by the 
 doctor's advice, the patient must explain the case; and here 
 M. de Camps, with his genius for business, seems to me an 
 atrocious person. Owing to those odious forges he has 
 chosen to buy, you are as good as dead to Paris and the 
 world. Of old, when you were at hand, in a quarter of an 
 hour's chat I could have told the whole story without hesitancy 
 or preparation; as it is, I have to think it all out and go 
 through the solemn formality of a confession in black and 
 white. 
 
 After all, effrontery will perhaps best serve my turn; and 
 since, in spite of circumlocutions and preambles, I must at 
 last come to the point, why not confess at once that at the 
 kernel of the matter is that very stranger who rescued my 
 poor little girl. A stranger be it clearly understood to 
 M. de 1'Estorade, and to all who may have reported the ac- 
 cident ; a stranger to the whole world, if you please but not 
 to your humble servant, whom this man has for three months 
 past condescended to honor with the most persistent atten- 
 tion. If cannot seem any less preposterous to you than it
 
 120 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 does to me, my dear friend, that I, at two-and-thirty, with 
 three children, one a tall son of fifteen, should have become 
 the object of unremitting devotion, and } r et that is the 
 absurd misfortune against which I have to protect myself. 
 
 And when I say that I know the unknown, this is but 
 partly true: I know neither his name nor his place of resi- 
 dence, nor anything about him; I never met him in society; 
 and I may add that though he has the ribbon of the Legion 
 of Honor, nothing in his appearance, which has no trace of 
 elegance, leads me to suppose that I ever shall meet him in 
 society. 
 
 It was at the Church of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, where, as 
 you know, I was in the daily habit of attending Mass, that 
 this annoying "shadowing" first began. I also took the 
 children out walking in the Tuileries almost every day, M. 
 de 1'Estorade having taken a house without a garden. This 
 custom was soon noted by my persecutor, and gave him bold- 
 ness; for wherever I was to be found out of doors I had to 
 put up with his presence. But this singular adorer was as 
 prudent as he was daring; he always avoided following me 
 to my door ; and he steered his way at such a distance and so 
 undemonstratively, that I had at any rate the comforting 
 certainty that his foolish assiduity could not attract the 
 notice of anybody who was with me. And yet, Heaven alone 
 knows to what inconveniences and privations I have sub- 
 mitted to put him off my track. I never entered the church 
 but on Sunday ; and to the risk of the dear children's health 
 I have often kept them at home, or invented excuses for not 
 going out with them, leaving them to the servants against 
 all my principles of education and prudence. 
 
 Visits, shopping I can do nothing but in a carriage; and 
 all this could not hinder that, just when I fancied I had 
 routed this tiresome person and exhausted his patience, he 
 was on the spot to play so brave and providential a part in 
 that dreadful accident to ISTai's. But it is this very obligation 
 which I now owe him that introduces a vexations complica- 
 tion into a position already so awkward. If I had at last
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 121 
 
 been too much annoyed by his persistency I might by some 
 means, even by some decisive action, have put an end to his 
 persecution ; but now, if he comes across my path, what can 
 I do? How am I to proceed? Merely to thank him would 
 be to encourage him; and even if he should not try to take 
 advantage of my civilities to alter our relative position, I 
 should have him at my heels closer than ever. Am I then 
 not to notice him, to affect not to recognize him? But, my 
 dear madame, think ! A mother who owes her child's life 
 to his efforts and pretends not to perceive it who has not 
 a word of gratitude ! 
 
 This, then, is the intolerable dilemma in which I find my- 
 self, and you can see how sorely I need your advice and judg- 
 ment. What can I do to break the odious habit this gentle- 
 man has formed of following me like my shadow ? How am 
 I to thank him without exciting his imagination, or to avoid 
 thanking him without suffering the reproaches of my con- 
 science ? This is the problem I submit to your wisdom. 
 
 If you will do me the service of solving it and I know 
 no one else so capable I shall add my gratitude to the 
 affection which, as you know, dear madame, I already feel 
 for you. 
 
 The Comte de I'Estorade to Marie-Gaston. 
 
 PARIS, February 1839. 
 
 The public prints, my dear sir, may have been beforehand 
 in giving you an account of a meeting between your friend 
 M. Dorlange and the Due de Rhetore, But the newspapers, 
 by announcing the bare facts since custom and propriety 
 do not allow them to expatiate on the motives of the quarrel 
 will only have excited your curiosity without satisfying it. 
 I happen to know on good authority all the details of the 
 affair, and I hasten to communicate them to you, as they 
 must to you be of the greatest interest. 
 
 Three days ago, that is to say, on the evening of the day 
 when I had called on M. Dorlange, the Due de Rhetore was 
 in a stall at the opera. M. de Ronquerolles, who has lately
 
 122 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 returned from a diplomatic mission that had detained him far 
 from Paris for some years, presently took the seat next to 
 him. Between the acts these gentlemen did not leave their 
 place to walk in the gallery; but, as is commonly done in 
 the theatre, they stood up with their back to the stage, con- 
 sequently facing M. Dorlange, who sat behind them and 
 seemed absorbed in the evening's news. There had been a 
 very uproarious scene in the Chamber what is termed a 
 very interesting debate. The conversation turned very 
 naturally on the events in Paris society during M. de 
 Ronquerolles' absence, and he happened to make this remark, 
 which, of course, attracted M. Dorlange's attention: 
 
 "And that poor Madame de Macumer what a sad end, 
 and what a strange marriage !" 
 
 "Oh, you know," said M. de Bhetore in the high-pitched 
 tone he affects, "my sister had too much imagination not to 
 be a little chimerical and romantic. She was passionately in 
 love with M. de Macumer, her first husband; still, one may 
 tire of all things, even of widowhood. This M. Marie-Gaston 
 came in her way. He is attractive in person; my sister was 
 rich, he very much in debt; he was proportionately amiable 
 and attentive; and, on my honor, the rogue managed so 
 cleverly, that, after stepping into M. de Macumer's shoes, 
 and making his wife die of jealousy, he got out of her every- 
 thing that the law allowed the poor silly woman to dispose 
 of. Louise left a fortune of at least twelve hundred thou- 
 sand francs, to say nothing of magnificent furniture and a 
 delightful villa she had built at Yille-d'Avray. Half of this 
 came to our gentleman, the other half to my father and 
 mother, the Due and Duchesse de Chaulieu, who, as parents, 
 had a right to that share. As to my brother Lenoncourt and 
 me we were simply disinherited for our portion." 
 
 As soon as your name was pronounced, my dear sir, M. 
 Dorlange laid down his paper ; then, as M. de Rhetore ceased 
 speaking, he rose. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, M. le Due, for taking the liberty of 
 correcting your statements; but, as a matter of conscience,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 123 
 
 I must assure you that you are to the last degree misin- 
 formed." 
 
 "You say? " replied the Duke, half closing his eyes, 
 
 and in a tone of contempt which you can easily imagine. 
 
 "I say, Monsieur le Due, that Marie-Gaston has been 
 my friend from childhood, and that he has never been called 
 a rogue. On the contrary, he is a man of honor and talent ; 
 and far from making his wife die of jealousy, he made her 
 perfectly happy during three years of married life. As to her 
 fortune " 
 
 "You have considered the consequences of this step?" said 
 the Duke, interrupting him. 
 
 "Certainly, monsieur. And I repeat that, with regard 
 to the fortune left to Marie-Gaston by a special provision in 
 his wife's will, he coveted it so little that, to my knowledge, 
 he is about to devote a sum of two or three hundred thou- 
 sand francs to the erection of a monument to the wife he has 
 never ceased to mourn." 
 
 "And, after all, monsieur, who are you?" the Due de 
 Ehetore broke in again, with growing irritation. 
 
 "In a moment I shall have the honor to inform you," 
 replied M. Dorlange. "But, first, you will allow me to add 
 that Madame Marie-Gaston could have no pangs of conscience 
 in disposing as she did of the fortune of which you have been 
 deprived. All her wealth, as a matter of fact, came to her 
 from M. le Baron de Macumer, her first husband, and she 
 had previously renounced her patrimony to secure, an adequate 
 position to your brother, M. le Due de Lenoncourt-Giyry, 
 who, as a younger son, had not, like yourself, M. le Due, the 
 benefit of the entail." 
 
 M. Dorlange felt in his pocket for his card-case, but it 
 was not there. 
 
 "I have no cards about me," he said; "but my name is 
 Dorlange a sort of stage-name, and easy to remember 42 
 Rue de 1'Ouest." 
 
 "Not a very central position," M. de Rhetore remarked 
 ironically.
 
 124 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 At the same time he turned to M. de Ronquerolles, and 
 taking him as a witness and as his second : 
 
 "I must apologize to you, my dear fellow/' said he, "for 
 sending you on a voyage of discovery to-morrow morning." 
 Then he added, "Come to the smoking-room; we can talk 
 there in peace, and at any rate in security." 
 
 By the emphasis he laid on the last word, it was im- 
 possible to misunderstand the innuendo it was meant to 
 convey. The two gentlemen went out, without the scene hav- 
 ing given rise to any commotion or fuss, since the stalls all 
 round them were empty, and M. Dorlange then caught sight 
 of M. Stidmann, the famous sculptor, at the other end of the 
 stalls. He went up to him. 
 
 "Do you happen to have," said he, "such a thing as a 
 memorandum or sketch book in your pocket?" 
 
 "Yes always." 
 
 "Then would you lend it me and allow me to tear a leaf 
 out? I have just had an idea that I do not want to lose. 
 If I should not see you as you go out, to return the book, you 
 shall have it without fail to-morrow morning." 
 
 On returning to his seat, M. Dorlange made a hasty pencil 
 sketch; and when the curtain rose, and MM. de Rhetore and 
 de Ronquerolles came back to their places, he lightly touched 
 the Duke on the shoulder, and handing him the drawing, he 
 said, "My card, which I have the honor of giving to your 
 grace." 
 
 The card was a pretty sketch of sculpturesque architecture 
 set. in a landscape. Underneath it was written: "Sketch for 
 a monument to be erected to the memory of Madame Marie- 
 Gaston, nee Chaulieu, by her husband, from the designs of 
 Charles Dorlange, sculptor, Rue de 1'Ouest, 42." 
 
 He could have found no more ingenious way of intimating 
 to M. de Rhetore that he had no mean adversary; and you 
 may observe, my dear sir, that M. Doriange thus gave weight 
 to his denial by giving substance, so to speak, to his statement 
 as to your disinterestedness and conjugal devotion and grief.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 125 
 
 The performance ended without any further incident. M. 
 de Rhetore parted from M. de Ronquerolles. 
 
 M. de Ronquerolles then addressed M. Dorlange, very 
 courteously endeavoring to effect a reconciliation, observing 
 that though he might be in the right, his conduct was un- 
 conventional and offensive, that M. de Rhetore had behaved 
 with great moderation, and would certainly accept the very 
 slightest expression of regret in fact, said everything that 
 could be said on such an occasion. M. Dorlange would not 
 hear of anything approaching an apology, and on the follow- 
 ing day he received a visit from M. de Ronquerolles and 
 General de Montriveau as representing M. de Rhetore. Again 
 they were urgent that M. Dorlange should consent to express 
 himself in different language. But your friend would not be 
 moved from this ultimatum. 
 
 "Will M. de Rhetore withdraw the expressions I felt myself 
 bound to take exception to ? If so, I will retract mine." 
 
 "That is impossible," said they. "The offence was personal 
 to M. de Rhetore, to you it was not. Rightly or wrongly, he 
 firmly believes that M. Marie-Gaston did him an injury. 
 Allowance must always be made for damaged interests; per- 
 fect justice is never to be got from them." 
 
 "So that M. le Due may continue to slander my friend 
 at his pleasure !" said M. Dorlange, "since, in the first place, 
 my friend is in Italy; and in the second, he would always, 
 if possible, avoid coming to extreme measures with his wife's 
 brother. And," he added, "it is precisely this impossibility 
 of his defending himself which gives me a right nay more, 
 makes it my duty to intervene. It was by a special grace of 
 Providence that I was enabled to catch some of the malignant 
 reports that are flying about on the wing; and since M. le 
 Due de Rhetore sees no reason to mitigate his language, we 
 will, if you please, carry the affair through to the end." 
 
 The dispute being reduced to these terms, the duel was 
 inevitable, and in the course of the day the seconds on both 
 sides arranged the conditions. The meeting was fixed for the 
 next morning; the weapons, pistols. On the ground, M.
 
 126 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Dorlange was perfectly cool. After exchanging shots without 
 effect, as the seconds seemed anxious to stop the proceed- 
 ings 
 
 "Come," said he cheerfully, "one shot more !" as if he were 
 firing at a dummy in a shooting gallery. 
 
 This time he was wounded in the fleshy part of the thigh, 
 not a dangerous wound, but one which bled very freely. While 
 he was being carried to the carriage in which he had come, 
 M. de Ehetore was anxiously giving every assistance, and 
 when he was close to him "All the same," said Dorlange, 
 
 "Marie-Gaston is an honest gentleman, a heart of gold " 
 
 and he fainted away almost as he spoke. 
 
 This duel, as you may suppose, my dear sir, has been the 
 talk of the town; I have only had to keep my ears open to 
 collect any amount of information concerning M. Dorlange, 
 for he is'the lion of the day, and all yesterday it was impos- 
 sible to go into a house where he was not the subject of con- 
 versation. My harvest was chiefly gathered at Mme. de 
 Montcornet's. She, as you know, has a large acquaintance 
 among artists and men of letters; and to give you a notion 
 of the position your friend holds in their regard, I need only 
 report a conversation in which I took part last evening in the 
 Countess' drawing-room. The speakers were M. Emile Blon- 
 det, of the Debats; M. Bixiou the caricaturist, one of the best 
 informed eavesdroppers in Paris I believe you know them 
 both, but at any rate I am sure that you are intimate with 
 Joseph Bridau, our great painter, who was the third speaker, 
 for I remember that he and Daniel d'Arthez signed for you 
 when you were married. 
 
 Bridau was speaking when I joined them. 
 
 "Dorlange began splendidly," said he. "There was the 
 touch of a great master even in the work he sent in for com- 
 petition, to which, under the pressure of opinion, the Acad- 
 emy awarded the prize, though he had laughed very au- 
 daciously at their programme." 
 
 "Quite true," said M. Bixiou. "And the Pandora he exhib- 
 ited in 1837, on his return from Home, was also a very strik-
 
 
 This time he was wounded
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 127 
 
 ing work. But as it won him, out of hand, the Legion of 
 Honor and commissions from the Government and the Mu- 
 nicipality, with at least thirty flaming notices in the papers, 
 I doubt if he can ever recover from that success." 
 
 "That is a verdict a la Bixiou," said fimile Blondet. 
 
 "So it is, and with good reason. Did you ever see the 
 man?" 
 
 "No, he is seen nowhere." 
 
 "True, that is his favorite haunt. He is a bear, but a bear 
 intentionally ; out of affectation and deliberate purpose." 
 
 "I really cannot see," said Joseph Bridau, "that such a dis- 
 like to society is a bad frame of mind for an artist. What can 
 a sculptor, especially, gain by frequenting drawing-rooms 
 where men and women have got into the habit of wearing 
 clothes?" 
 
 "Well, even a sculptor may get some amusement which 
 saves him from monomania or brooding. And then he can 
 see how the world wags that 1839 is neither the fifteenth 
 nor the sixteenth century." 
 
 "What !" said Blondet, "do you mean the poor fellow suffers 
 from that delusion?" 
 
 "He ! he talks quite glibly of living the life of the artists 
 of mediaeval times, with all their universal studies and learn- 
 ing, and the terrific labors which he can conceive of in a society 
 that was still semi-barbarous, but that has no place in ours. 
 He is a guileless dreamer, and never perceives that civiliza- 
 tion, by strangely complicating our social intercourse, devotes 
 to business, interest, and pleasure thrice as much time as a 
 less advanced social organization would spend on those ob- 
 jects. Look at the savage in his den ! He has nothing to do ; 
 but we, with the Bourse, the opera, the newspapers, parlia- 
 mentary debates, drawing-room meetings, elections, railways, 
 the Cafe de Paris, and the National Guard when, I ask you, 
 are we to find time for work ?" 
 
 "A splendid theory for idlers," said fimile Blondet, laugh- 
 ing. 
 
 "Not at all, my dear boy ; it is perfectly true. The curfew
 
 128 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 no longer rings at nine o'clock, I suppose ! Well, and only 
 last evening, if my door-porter Ravenouillet didn't give a 
 party! Perhaps I committed a serious blunder by declining 
 the indirect invitation he sent me." 
 
 "Still," said Joseph Bridau, "it is evident that a man who is 
 not mixed up with the business interests or pleasures of his 
 age may, out of his savings, accumulate a very pretty capital of 
 time. Dorlange, I fancy, has a comfortable income irre- 
 spective of commissions : there is nothing to hinder him from 
 living as he has a mind to live." 
 
 "And, as you see, he goes to the opera, since it was there 
 he picked up his duel. And, indeed, you have hardly hit 
 the nail on the head by representing him as cut off from all 
 contemporary interests, when I happen to know that he is on 
 the point of taking them up on the most stirring and absorb- 
 ing side of the social machine namely, politics !" 
 
 "What ! he thinks he can be a politician ?" asked- fimile 
 Blondet scornfully. 
 
 "It is part, no doubt, of his famous scheme of universal 
 efficiency, and you should see how logically and perseveringly 
 he is carrying out the idea. Last year two hundred and fifty 
 thousand francs fell on him from the sky, and my man pur- 
 chased a house in the Eue Saint-Martin as a qualification; 
 and then, as another little speculation, with the rest of the 
 money he bought shares in the National newspaper, and I 
 find him in the office whenever I am in the mood to have a 
 laugh at the Republican Utopia. There he has his flatterers ; 
 they have persuaded him that he is a born orator and will 
 make a sensation in the Chamber. There is, in fact, a talk 
 of working up a constituency to nominate him, and on days 
 when they are very enthusiastic they discover that he is like 
 Danton." 
 
 "Oh, this is the climax of burlesque !" said Emile Blondet 
 
 I do not know, my dear sir, whether you have ever observed 
 that men of superior talent are always extremely indulgent. 
 This was now proved in the person of Joseph Bridau. 
 
 "I agree with you," said he, "that if Dorlange starts on that
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 129 
 
 track he is almost certainly lost to art. But, after all, why 
 should he not be a success in the Chamber? He speaks with 
 great fluency, and seems to be full of ideas. Look at Canalis ; 
 when he won his election : 'Faugh ! a poet !' said one and an- 
 other, which has not prevented his making himself famous as 
 an orator and being made Minister." 
 
 "Well, the first point is to get elected," said fimile Blondet. 
 "What place does Dorlange think of standing for?" 
 
 "For one of the rotten boroughs of the National, of course," 
 remarked Bixiou. "However, I do not know that the place is 
 yet decided on." 
 
 "As a general rule," said the man of the Debats, "to be re- 
 turned as a member, even with the hottest support of your 
 party, requires a somewhat extensive political notoriety, or 
 else, at least, some good provincial status of family or of 
 fortune. Does any one know whether Dorlange can command 
 these elements of success ?" 
 
 "As to family status, that would be a particular difficulty 
 with him ; his family is non-existent to a desperate extent." 
 
 "Indeed," said Blondet. "Then he is a natural son?" 
 
 "As natural as may be father and mother alike unknown. 
 But I can quite imagine his being elected ; it is the rank and 
 file of his political notions that will be so truly funny." 
 
 "He must be a Eepublican if he is a friend of the gentlemen 
 on the National, and has a likeness to Danton." 
 
 "Evidently. But he holds his fellow-believers in utter con- 
 tempt, and says that they are good for nothing but fighting, 
 rough play and big talk. So provisionally he will put up with 
 a monarchy bolstered up by republican institutions though 
 he asserts that this citizen-kingship must infallibly be under- 
 mined by the abuse of private interest which he calls corrup- 
 tion. This would tempt him to join the little Church of the 
 Left Centre; but there again there is always a but he can 
 discern nothing but a coalition of ambitious and emasculated 
 men, unconsciously smoothing the way to a revolution which 
 he sees already on the horizon ; to his great regret, because in 
 his opinion the masses are neither sufficiently prepared nor
 
 130 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 sufficiently intelligent to keep it from slipping through their 
 fingers. 
 
 "As to Legitimism, he laughs at it; he will not accept it 
 as a principle under any aspect. He regards it simply as a 
 more definite and time-honored form of hereditary monarchy, 
 allows it no other superiority than that of old wine over new. 
 And while he is neither Legitimist, nor Conservative, nor Left 
 Centre, but a republican who deprecates a republic, he stoutly 
 sets up for being a Catholic and rides the hobby of that party 
 freedom in teaching ; and yet this man, who wants freedom 
 in teaching, is, on the other hand, afraid of the Jesuits, and 
 still talks, as if we were in 1829, of the encroachments of the 
 priestly party and the Congregation. 
 
 "And can you imagine, finally, the great party he proposes 
 to form in the Chamber himself, of course, its leader? 
 That of justice, impartiality, and honesty : as if anything of 
 the kind were to be found in the parliamentary pottage or as 
 if every shade of opinion had not from time immemorial flour- 
 ished that flag to conceal its ugly emptiness?" 
 
 "So that he gives up sculpture once and for all?" said 
 Joseph Bridau. 
 
 "Not immediately. He is just finishing a statue of some 
 female Saint, but he will not let anybody see it, and does not 
 mean to exhibit it this year. He has notions of his own about 
 that too." 
 
 "Which are ?" asked Emile Blondet. 
 
 "That religious works ought not to be displayed to the 
 judgment of criticism and the gaze of a public cankered by 
 scepticism; that, without confronting the turmoil of the 
 world, they ought modestly and piously to take the place for 
 which they were intended." 
 
 "Bless me !" exclaimed Blondet. "And such a fervent 
 Catholic could fight a duel?" 
 
 "Oh, there is a better joke than that. Catholic as he is, 
 he lives with a woman he brought over from Italy, a sort of 
 goddess of Liberty, who is at the same time his model and his 
 housekeeper."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 131 
 
 "What a gossip what a regular inquiry office that Bixiou 
 is !" they said, as they divided. 
 
 They had just been asked by Madame de Montcornet to 
 accept a cup of tea from her fair hands. 
 
 As you see, my dear sir, M. Dorlange's political aspirations 
 are not regarded very seriously, most people thinking of them 
 very much as I do myself. I cannot doubt that you will 
 write to him at once to thank him for his zealous intervention 
 to defend you against calumny. His brave devotion has, in 
 fact, filled me with sympathy for him, and I should be really 
 glad to see you making use of your old friendship for him to 
 hinder him from embarking on the thankless track he is so 
 eager to tread. I am not guided by the thought of the draw- 
 backs attributed to him by M. Bixiou, who has a sharp and 
 too ready tongue; like Joseph Bridau, I think little of them; 
 but a mistake that every one must regret, in my opinion, 
 would be to abandon a career in which he has already won a 
 high position, to rush into the political fray. Sermonize him 
 to this effect, and as much as you can, to induce him to stick 
 to Art. Indeed, you yourself are interested in his doing so if 
 you are still bent on his undertaking the work he has so far 
 refused to accept. 
 
 In the matter of the personal explanation I advised you to 
 have with him, I may tell you that your task is greatly facili- 
 tated. You are not called upon to enter into any of the 
 details that might perhaps be too painful. Mme. de 1'Es- 
 torade, to whom I have spoken of the mediator's part I pro- 
 posed that she should play, accepts it with pleasure, and un- 
 dertakes in half an hour's conversation to dissipate the clouds 
 that may still hang between you and your friend. 
 
 While writing you this long letter, I sent to inquire for 
 him : the report is as good as possible, and the surgeons are 
 not in the least uneasy about him, unless some extraordinary 
 and quite unforeseen complications should supervene. He is, 
 it would seem, an object of general interest; for, according 
 to my servant, people are standing in rows waiting to put 
 their names down.
 
 132 
 
 There is this also to be said M. de Khetore is not liked. 
 He is haughty, starch, and not clever. How different from 
 her who dwells in our dearest memory ! She was simple and 
 kind, without ever losing her dignity, and nothing could com- 
 pare with the amiability of her temper, unless it were the 
 brightness of her wit. 
 
 The Comtesse de I'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PARIS, February 1839. 
 
 Nothing could be better than all you have written, dear 
 madame: it was, in fact, highly probable that this annoying 
 person would not think twice about speaking to me the next 
 time we should meet. His heroism gave him a right to do so, 
 and the most ordinary politeness made it incumbent on him. 
 Unless he were content to pass for the clumsiest of admirers, 
 he could not help asking me how Na'is and I had recovered 
 from the effects of the accident he had been able to forefend. 
 But if, contrary to all expectations, he should persist in not 
 stepping out of his cloud, I was fully determined to act on 
 your wise advice. If the mountain did not come to me, I 
 would go to the mountain. Like Hippolyte in Theramene's 
 tale, I would "thrust myself on the monster" and fire my grati- 
 tude in his teeth. Like you, my dear friend, I quite under- 
 stood that the real danger of this persecution lay in its con- 
 tinuance, and the inevitable explosion that threatened me 
 sooner or later; the fact that the servants, or the children, 
 might at any moment detect the secret; that I should be ex- 
 posed to the most odious inferences if it were suspected by 
 others ; and, above all, the idea that if this ridiculous mystery 
 should be discovered by M. de I'Estorade and drive him to 
 such lengths as his southern nature and past experience in 
 the army made me imagine only too easily, all this had 
 spurred me to a point I cannot describe, and I might have 
 gone further even than you advised. I had not only recog- 
 nized the necessity for being the first to speak ; but under the 
 pretext that my husband would call to thank him under his
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 133 
 
 own roof, I meant to compel him to give me his name and ad- 
 dress, and, supposing he \vere at all a possible acquaintance, to 
 invite him forthwith to dinner, and thus entice the wolf into 
 the sheepfold. 
 
 For, after all, what danger could there be ? If he had but a 
 shade of common-sense when he saw the terms I live on with 
 M. de 1'Estorade, and my maniacal passion for my children, 
 as you call it, in short, the calm regularity of my home-life, 
 would he not understand how vain was his pursuit? At any 
 rate, whether he should persist or no, his vehemence would 
 have lost its perilous out-of-door character. If I was to be 
 persecuted, it would, at any rate, be under my own roof, and 
 I should only have to deal with one of those common adven- 
 tures to which every woman is more or less liable. And we 
 can always get over such slippery places with perfect credit, 
 so long as we have a real sense of duty and some little presence 
 of mind. 
 
 Not, I must tell you, that I have come to this conclusion 
 without a painful effort. When the critical moment should 
 come, I was not at all sure that I should be cool enough to 
 confront the situation with such a high hand as was indis- 
 pensable. However, I had fully made up my mind; and 
 you know me what I have determined on I do. 
 
 Well, my dear madame, all this fine scheme, all my elabo- 
 rate courage, and your not less elaborate foresight, are en- 
 tirely wasted. Since your last letter the doctor has let me out 
 of his hands. I have been out several times, always majestic- 
 ally surrounded by my children, that their presence, in case 
 I should be obliged to take the initiative, might screen the 
 crudity of such a proceeding. But in vain have I scanned the 
 horizon on all sides out of the corner of my eye, nothing, ab- 
 solutely nothing, has been visible that bore the least resem- 
 blance to a deliverer or a lover. What, now, do you say to 
 this new state of affairs? A minute since I spoke of thrusting 
 myself on the monster. Was this gentleman bent on giving 
 himself the airs of a monster, and of the most dangerous 
 species ? How was I to interpret this absence ? Had he, with 

 
 184 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 admirable perspicacity, scented the snare in which we meant 
 to trap him, and was he prudently keeping out of the way? 
 Or was there some deeper motive still? Did this man, in 
 whom I had failed to discern the smallest sign of elegance, 
 carry refinement and delicacy so far as to sacrifice his fancy 
 to his fear of marring a generous action? 
 
 But if this were so, he would be really a man to think seri- 
 ously about ; my dear M. de FEstorade, you must take care 
 of yourself ! For, do you know, the attentions of a man of 
 such noble sentiments might prove to be more dangerous than 
 was apparent at a first glance? 
 
 You see, my dear friend, I am trying to take the matter 
 lightly, but in my heart of hearts I believe that I sing to 
 keep my courage up. This skilful and unexpected strategy 
 leaves me wondering; and my wonderment brings me back 
 to some other ideas which at first I dismissed from my mind ; 
 now, however, I must trouble you with them, as the end of this 
 little annoyance is beyond my ken. 
 
 As to my feeling for the man, you will not misunderstand 
 that. He saved my little girl, it is true, but merely to lay me 
 under an obligation. Meanwhile he has upset my pleasantest 
 habits: I am obliged to send the poor children out without 
 me; I cannot go to church as often as I please, since even 
 before the altar he dares to come between me and God; in 
 fact, he has upset that perfect equanimity of thought and feel- 
 ing which till now has been the joy and the pride of my life. 
 But though this persecution is odious and intolerable, the 
 man has a sort of magnetic power over me that distresses me 
 greatly. I can feel him near me before I see him. His gaze 
 oppresses me without my meeting his eye. He is ugly; but 
 there is something vigorous and strongly marked about him 
 which leaves an impression on the mind ; one fancies that he 
 must have some powerful and dominating characteristics. 
 So, do what I will, I cannot hinder his occupying my mind. 
 Now, I feel as if I had got rid of him altogether. Well, may 
 I say it? I am conscious of a void. I miss him as the ear
 
 THE .MEMBER FOR ARCIS 135 
 
 misses a sharp and piercing sound that has annoyed it for 
 a long time. 
 
 What I am going to add will strike you as very childish, 
 fcut can we control the mirage of our fancy? I have often 
 told you of my discussions with Louise de Chaulieu as to the 
 way in which women should deal with life.. For my part, 
 I always told her that the frenzy with which she never ceased 
 to seek the Infinite was quite ill regulated, and fatal to happi- 
 ness. And she would answer: "You, my dearest, have never 
 loved. Love implies a phenomenon so rare, that we may live 
 all our life without meeting the being on whom nature has 
 bestowed the faculty of giving us happiness. If on some 
 glorious day that being appears to wake your heart from its 
 slumbers, you will take quite another tone." 
 
 The words of those doomed to die are so often prophetic ! 
 Supposing this man should be the serpent, though late, that 
 Louise seemed to threaten me with ; good Heavens ! That he 
 should ever represent a real danger, that he should ever be 
 able to tempt me from my duty, there is certainly no fear. 
 I am confidently strong as to any such extreme of ill. But I 
 did not like you, my dear friend marry a man who was the 
 choice of my heart. It was only by dint of patience, deter- 
 mination, and sense that I built up the austere but solid at- 
 tachment that binds me to M. de 1'Estorade. Hence I cannot 
 but be terrified at the mere idea of anything that might un- 
 dermine that feeling ; and the constant occupation of my mind 
 by another man, even in the form of detestation, must be a real 
 misery to me. 
 
 I say to you, as MONSIEUR, Louis XIV.'s brother, said to 
 his wife when he brought her papers he had just written, for 
 her to decipher them : "See clearly for me, dear madame, 
 read my heart and brain ; disperse the mists, allay the antago- 
 nistic impulses, the ebb and flow of will which these events 
 have given rise to in my mind." Was not my dear Louise 
 mistaken? Am I not one of those women on whom love, in 
 her sense, has no hold? The "Being who on some glorious 
 day awoke my heart from its slumbers" was my Armand my
 
 136 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Rene my Nais, three angels for whom and in whom I have 
 hitherto lived; and for me, I feel, there can never be any 
 other passion. 
 
 The Comtesse de I'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PARIS, March 1839. 
 
 In about the year 1820, two new boys, to use my son Ar- 
 mand's technical slang, joined the school at Tours in the same 
 week. One had a charming face ; the other might have been 
 called ugly, but that health, honesty, and intelligence beamed 
 in his features and made up for their homeliness and irregu- 
 larity. And here you will stop me, dear madame, asking me 
 whether I have quite got over my absorbing idea, that I am 
 in the mood to write you a chapter of a novel ? Not at all, 
 and this strange beginning, little as it may seem so, is only the 
 continuation and sequel of my adventure. So I beg you to 
 listen to my tale and not to interrupt. To proceed. Almost 
 from the first, the two boys formed a close friendship; there 
 was more than one reason for their intimacy. One of them 
 the handsome lad was dreamy, thoughtful, even a little sen- 
 timental; the other eager, impetuous, always burning for 
 action. Thus their two characters supplemented each other 
 the best possible combination for an} 7 union that is to prove 
 lasting. Both, too, had the same stain on their birth. The 
 dreamy boy was the son of the notorious Lady Brandon, born 
 in adultery; he was known as Marie-Gaston, which can hardly 
 be called a name. The other, whose father and mother were 
 both unknown, was called Dorlange which is not a name at 
 all. Dorlange, Valmon, Yolmar, Derfeuil, Melcourt, these 
 are all names adopted for the stage, and that only in the old- 
 fashioned plays, where they dwell now in company with 
 Arnolphe, Alceste, Clitandre, Damis, firaste, Philinte, and 
 Arsinoe. So another reason why these unhappy no-man's- 
 sons should cling together for warmth was the cruel desertion 
 they both suffered from. During the seven mortal years of 
 their life at school, not once for a single day, even in holiday
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 137 
 
 time, did the prison doors open to let them out. At long 
 intervals Marie-Gaston had a visitor in the person of an old 
 nurse who had served his mother. Through this woman's 
 hands came the quarterly payment for his schooling. 
 
 The money paid for Dorlange came with perfect regularity 
 from some unknown source through a banker at Tours. One 
 thing was observed that this youth's weekly allowance was 
 fixed at the highest sum permitted by the college rules, whence 
 it was concluded that his anonymous parents were rich. Owing 
 to this, but yet more to the generous use he made of his money, 
 Dorlange enjoyed a certain degree of consideration among 
 his companions, though he could in any case have commanded 
 it by the prowess of his fist. At the same time, it was re- 
 marked, but not loud enough for him to hear, that no one 
 had ever asked to see him in the parlor, nor had anybody 
 outside the house ever taken the smallest interest in him. 
 
 These two boys, both destined to fame, were far from brill- 
 iant scholars. Though they were neither refractory nor idle, 
 since they did not know any mother to be happy in their 
 success, what could they care for rewards at the end of the 
 year? 
 
 And they worked, each after his own fashion. At the age of 
 fifteen, Marie-Gaston had produced a volume of verse : satires, 
 elegies, meditations, to say nothing of two tragedies. As for 
 Dorlange, his studies led him to steal firelogs; out of these, 
 with his knife, he carved virgins, grotesques, schoolmasters 
 and saints, grenadiers, and in secret figures of Napoleon. 
 
 In 1827 their school days ended; the friends left the Col- 
 lege de Tours together, and both were sent to Paris. A place 
 had already been secured for Dorlange in Bosio's studio, and 
 thenceforward a certain amount of caprice was discernible in 
 the occult Providence that watched over him. On arriving at 
 the house to which the master of the college had directed him 
 on leaving, he found pleasant rooms prettily furnished for 
 him. Under the glass shade over the clock a large letter, ad- 
 dressed to him, had been so placed as to strike his eye at once. 
 Within the envelope he found a note in these words :
 
 138 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "The day after your arrival in Paris, go, at eight in the 
 morning precisely, to the Garden of the Luxembourg, Allee 
 de FObservatoire, the fourth bench on the right-hand side 
 from the gate. This is imperative. Do not on any account 
 fail." 
 
 Dorlange was punctual, as may be supposed, and had not 
 waited long when he was joined by a little man, two feet high, 
 who, with his enormous head and thick mop of hair, 
 his hooked nose and chin and crooked legs, might have stepped 
 out of one of Hoffmann's fairy tales. Without a word for 
 to his personal advantages, this messenger added that of being 
 deaf and dumb he placed in the youth's hands a letter and a 
 purse. The letter said that Dorlange's family were much 
 pleased to find that he had a disposition for the fine arts. 
 He was urged to work hard and profit by the teaching of the 
 great master under whose tuition he was placed. He would, 
 it was hoped, be steady, and an eye would be kept on his be- 
 havior. On the other hand, he was not to forego the rational 
 amusements suited to his age. For his needs and his pleasures 
 he might count on a sum of twenty-five louis, which would be 
 paid to him every three months at this same place, by the same 
 messenger. With regard to this emissary, Dorlange was ex- 
 pressly forbidden to follow him when he departed after ful- 
 filling his errand. In case of disobedience, either direct or 
 indirect, the penalty was serious no less, in fact, than the 
 withdrawal of all assistance, and complete desertion. 
 
 Now, my dear friend, do you remember that in 1831 I car- 
 ried you off to the ficole des Beaux- Arts, where, at that time, 
 the exhibition used to be held of works competing for the first 
 prize in sculpture? The subject set for the competition had 
 appealed to my heart Niobe weeping over her children. And 
 do you remember my fury at the work sent in by one of the 
 competitors, round which there was a crowd so dense that 
 we could scarcely get near it ? The insolent wretch had made 
 game of the subject. His Niobe, indeed, as I could not but 
 agree with you and the public, was most touching in her 
 beauty and grief; but to have represented her children as so
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 139 
 
 many monkeys, lying on the ground in the most various and 
 grotesque attitudes what a deplorable waste of talent ! It 
 was in vain that you insisted in pointing out how charming 
 the monkeys were graceful, witty and that it was impos- 
 sible to laugh more ingeniously at the blindness and idolatry 
 of mothers who regard some hideous brat as a masterpiece 
 of Nature's handiwork. I considered the thing a monstrosity ; 
 and the indignation of the older academicians, who demanded 
 the solemn erasure of this impertinent work from the list of 
 competing sculpture, was, in my opinion, wholly justified. 
 Yielding, however, to public opinion and to the papers, which 
 spoke of -raising a subscription to send the sculptor to Home 
 if the Grand Prix were given to anybody else, the Academy 
 did not agree with me and with its elders. The remarkable 
 beauty of the Niobe outweighed all else, and this slanderer 
 of mothers found his work crowned, though he had to take 
 a pretty severe lecture which the secretary was desired to 
 give him on the occasion. Unhappy youth ! I can pity him 
 now, for he never had known a mother. He was Dorlange, 
 the youth abandoned at the school at Tours, and Marie- 
 Gaston's friend. 
 
 For four years, from 1827 till 1831, when Dorlange was 
 sent to Eome, the two young men had never parted. Dor- 
 lange, with his allowance of two thousand four hundred 
 francs, always punctually paid by the hand of the mysterious 
 dwarf, was a sort of Marquis d'Aligre. Marie-Gaston, on the 
 contrary, if left to his own resources, would have lived in 
 great penury; but between persons who truly care for each 
 other, a rarer case than is commonly supposed, on one side 
 plenty, and on the other nothing, is a determining cause of 
 their alliance. Without keeping any score, our two pigeons 
 had everything in common home, money, troubles, pleasures, 
 and hopes; the two lived but one life. Unfortunately for 
 Marie-Gaston, his efforts were not, like his friend's, crowned 
 with success. His volume of verse, carefully recast and re- 
 vised, with other poems from his pen and two or three dramas, 
 all, for lack of goodwill on the part of stage-managers and
 
 140 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 publishers, remained in obscurity. At last the firm of two, 
 by Dorlange's insistency, took strong measures: by dint of 
 strict economy, the needful sum was saved to print and bring 
 out a volume. The title Snowdrops was attractive; the 
 binding was pearl-gray, the margins broad, and there was a 
 pretty title-page designed by Dorlange. But the public was 
 as indifferent as the publishers and managers it would 
 neither buy nor read ; so much so, that one day when the rent 
 was due, Marie-Gaston, in a fit of despair, sent for the old- 
 book buyer, and sold him the whole edition for three sous a 
 volume, whence a perfect crop of Snowdrops was ere long to be 
 seen on every stall along the quays from the Pont Koyal to the 
 Pont Marie. 
 
 This wound was still bleeding in the poet's soul when it be- 
 came necessary for Dorlange to set out for Rome. Life in 
 common was no longer possible. Being informed by the 
 mysterious dwarf that his allowance would be paid to him as 
 usual in Rome, through Torlonia's bank, it occurred to Dor- 
 lange to offer Marie-Gaston the fifteen hundred francs a year 
 granted him on the Royal scholarship for the five years while 
 he should remain in Rome. But a heart noble enough to re- 
 ceive a favor is rarer even than that which can bestow one. 
 Marie-Gaston, embittered by constant reverses, had not the 
 necessary courage to meet this sacrifice half-way. The disso- 
 lution of partnership too plainly exposed the position of a 
 dependent which he had hitherto accepted. Some trifling 
 work placed in his hands by the great writer Daniel d'Arthez 
 added to his little income would, he said, be enough to live 
 on, and he peremptorily refused what his pride stigmatized 
 as charity. 
 
 This misplaced pride led to a coolness between the friends. 
 Their intimacy was kept alive till 1833 by a fairly brisk cor- 
 respondence, but on Marie-Gaston's part there was a diminu- 
 tion of confidence and freedom. He was evidently hiding 
 something. His haughty determination to be self-sufficing 
 had led to bitter disappointment. His poverty increased day 
 by day ; and, prompted by inexorable necessity, he had drifted
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 141 
 
 into a most painful position. He had tried to release himself 
 from the constant pinch of want, which paralyzed his flight, 
 by staking everything for all or nothing. He imprudently 
 mixed himself up in the concerns of a newspaper, and then, 
 to obtain a ruling voice, took upon himself almost all the 
 expenses of the undertaking. Thus led into debt for a sum 
 of not less than thirty thousand francs, he saw nothing before 
 him but a debtor's prison opening its broad jaws to devour 
 him. 
 
 At this juncture he met Louise de Chaulieu. For nine 
 months, the blossoming time of their marriage, Marie-Gas- 
 ton's letters were few and far between, and those he wrote 
 were high treason to friendship. Dorlange ought to have 
 been the first person told, and he was told nothing. That most 
 high and mighty dame, Louise de Chaulieu, Baronne de 
 Macumer, would have it so. When the day of the marriage 
 arrived, her passion for secrecy had reached a pitch bordering 
 on mania. I, her closest friend, was scarcely allowed to know 
 it, and no one was admitted to the ceremony. To comply 
 with the requirements of the law, witnesses were indispen- 
 sable ; but at the time when Marie-Gaston invited two friends 
 to do him this service, he announced that their relations must 
 be finally but amiably put an end to. His feelings towards 
 everybody but his wife, whom he exalted to a pure abstraction, 
 "would be," he wrote to Daniel d'Arthez, "friendship inde- 
 pendent of the friend." 
 
 As for Louise, she, I believe, for greater security, would 
 have had the witnesses murdered on leaving the Mairie, but 
 for a wholesome fear of the public prosecutor ! 
 
 Dorlange was still away, a happy excuse for telling him 
 nothing. Buried in a Trappist monastery, Marie-Gaston 
 could not have been more lost to him. By dint of writing to 
 other friends and asking for information, Dorlange at last 
 found out that Marie-Gaston no longer trod this lower earth ; 
 that, like Tithonus, he had been translated by a jealous 
 divinity to a rural Olympus, which she had constructed on 
 purpose in the heart of the woods of Ville-d'Avray.
 
 142 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 In 1836, when the sculptor came back from Kome, the 
 sequestration of Marie-Gaston was closer and more unrelaxing 
 than ever. Dorlange had too much spirit to steal or force his 
 way into the sanctuary where Louise had sheltered her crazy 
 passion, and Marie-Gaston was too desperately in love to 
 break the spell and escape from Armida's garden. The 
 friends, incredible as it must seem, never met, nor even ex- 
 changed notes. Still, on hearing of Madame Marie-Gaston's 
 death, Dorlange forgot every slight and rushed off to Ville- 
 d'Avray to offer what consolation he might. Vain devotion. 
 Within two hours of the melancholy ceremony, Marie-Gaston 
 was in a post-chaise flying south to Italy, with no thought 
 for his friend, or a sister-in-law and two nephews, who were 
 dependent on him. Dorlange thought this selfishness of grief 
 rather too much to be borne ; and he eradicated from his heart, 
 as he believed, the last remembrance of a friendship which 
 even the breath of sorrow had not revived. 
 
 My husband and I had loved Louise de Chaulieu too sin- 
 cerely not to retain some feeling of affection for the man who, 
 for three years, had been all in all to her. When leaving, 
 Marie-Gaston had requested M. de 1'Estorade to take entire 
 charge of all his business matters, and he sent him a power of 
 attorney to act for him in all particulars. 
 
 A few weeks since, his sorrow, still living and acute, sug- 
 gested an idea to his mind. In the middle of the park at 
 Ville-d'Avray there is a small lake, and in the middle of the 
 lake an island which Louise was very fond of. To this island, 
 a calm and shady retreat, Marie-Gaston wished to transfer his 
 wife's remains, and he wrote us from Carrara to this effect. 
 And then, remembering Dorlange, he begged my husband to 
 call on him and inquire whether he would undertake to execute 
 a monument. Dorlange at first affected not even to remember 
 Marie-Gaston's name, and under a civil pretext refused the 
 commission. 
 
 But here comes a startling instance of the strength of old 
 association in an affectionate nature. On the evening of the 
 day when he had shown out M. de 1'Estorade, being at the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 143 
 
 opera, he overheard the Due de Bhetore speak slightingly of 
 his old friend, and took the matter up with eager indignation. 
 Hence a duel, in which he was wounded and of which the 
 news must certainly have reached you ; so here is a man risking 
 his life for an absentee whom he had strenuously denied in the 
 morning. 
 
 How all this long story is directly connected with my own 
 absurd adventure is what I would proceed to tell you if my 
 letter were not already interminable. And, indeed, as I have 
 called it the chapter of a novel, this, it will no doubt seem to 
 you, is a favorable place for a break. I have, I flatter myself, 
 excited your interest to such a pitch of curiosity as to have a 
 right to refuse to satisfy it. To be continued, therefore, by 
 the next post. 
 
 The Comtesse de I'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PARIS, March 1839. 
 
 I derived the main facts of the long biographical notice 
 I sent you, *my dear friend, from a recent letter written by 
 M, Marie-Gaston. On hearing of the heroic devotion of which 
 he- had been the object, his first impulse was to hasten to Paris 
 and see the friend who had made such a noble return for his 
 faithlessness. Unluckily, the day before he should have 
 started, a painful hindrance interfered. By a singular coinci- 
 dence, while M. Dorlange was wounded in his behalf in Paris, 
 he himself, visiting Savarezza one of the finest marble quar- 
 ries that are worked at Carrara had a bad fall and sprained 
 his leg. Being obliged to put off his journey, he wrote to M. 
 Dorlange from his bed of suffering to express his gratitude. 
 
 By the same mail I also received a voluminous letter: M. 
 Marie-Gaston, after telling me all the past history of their 
 friendship, begged me to call on his old school-fellow and ad- 
 vocate his cause. In point of fact, he could not be satisfied 
 with this convincing proof of the place he still held in M. 
 Dorlange's affections. What he desires is to prove that, in 
 spite of evidence to the contrary, he has never ceased to de- 

 
 144 
 
 serve it. This is a matter of some little difficulty, because he 
 would not on any account consent to attribute the blame to 
 the real author of the mischief. This, however, is the whole 
 secret of his conduct to M. Dorlange. His wife was bent on 
 having him entirely to herself, and insisted, with extraordi- 
 nary perversity, on uprooting every other feeling. But noth- 
 ing would persuade him to admit this, or the sort of moral 
 mediocrity which such ill-regulated and frenzied jealousy de- 
 notes. To him Louise de Chaulieu is absolute perfection ; 
 even the most extravagant freaks of her imagination and 
 temper were in his eyes adorable. The utmost he might con- 
 cede would be that the character and the conduct of his be- 
 loved despot must not be weighed in the same scales as those 
 of other women. He regards Louise as a glorious exception to 
 her sex in general, and would allow that on those grounds 
 indeed she may need explaining. 
 
 Who then better than I, from whom she had no secrets, 
 could undertake this task ? So I was requested to proceed to 
 throw so much light as that on the matter for M. Dorlange's 
 benefit; since if Madame Marie-Gaston's influence was justi- 
 fied and understood, her husband's conduct must be forgiven. 
 
 My first idea, to this end, was to write a note to his friend 
 the sculptor and beg him to call on me. ' But, on second 
 thoughts, he has hardly yet got over his wound, and besides, 
 this kind of convocation with a definite object in view would 
 give an absurd solemnity to my part as go-between. I thought 
 of another plan. Anybody may visit an artist's studio : with- 
 out any preliminary announcement I could call on M. Dor- 
 lange with my husband and Nai's, under pretence of reiterat- 
 ing the request already put to him to give us the benefit of his 
 assistance. And by seeming to bring my feminine influence 
 to bear on this matter, I had a bridge ready made to lead me 
 to the true point of my visit. Do you not approve? and 
 doesn't it seem to you that in this way everything was well 
 prepared ? 
 
 So, on the day after I had come to this happy conclusion, I 
 and my escort, as proposed, found our way to a pleasant little
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 146 
 
 house in the liue de FOuest, hehiiid the gardens of the Lux- 
 embourg, one of the quietest parts of Paris. In the vestibule 
 and passages, fragments of sculpture, bas-reliefs, and inscrip- 
 tions, nicely arranged against the walls, showed the owner's 
 good taste and betrayed his habitual interests. 
 
 We were met on the steps by a woman to whom M. de 1'Es- 
 torade had already alluded. The Student from Eome, it 
 would seem, could not come away from Italy without bringing 
 some souvenir. This beautiful Italian, a sort of middle-class 
 Galatea, sometimes housekeeper and sometimes a model, rep- 
 resenting at once the Home and Art, fulfils in M. Dorlange's 
 household if scandal is to be trusted the most perfect ideal 
 of the "woman-of -all-work" so constantly advertised in news- 
 papers. 
 
 At the same time, I must at once say plainly that there was 
 absolutely nothing whatever in her appearance to lead me 
 to imagine such a strange plurality of offices. She was gravely 
 and rather coldly polite. Her large, velvety black eyes, some- 
 what tawny complexion, hair done in bands, and arranged in 
 such broad, thick plaits as to show that it must be magnifi- 
 cently luxuriant, her rather large hands, well shaped and of 
 an amber whiteness, that was conspicuous against her black 
 dress ; a very simple dress, but fitting so as to do justice to her 
 splendid figure; and then an air of almost untamed pride 
 pervading her whole person the demeanor by which, as I 
 have heard, you may always know a Koman Trasteverina : 
 there you have the portrait of our guide who led us into a 
 gallery crowded with works of art and opening into the studio. 
 
 While this handsome housekeeper announced M. le Comte 
 and Mine, la Corntesse de 1'Estorade, M. Dorlange, in a pict- 
 uresque studio jacket, having his back to us, hastily drew a 
 green baize curtain in front of the statue he was working on. 
 
 The instant he turned round, before I had had time to be- 
 lieve my eyes, imagine my astonishment at seeing Xai's rush 
 up to him and almost into his arms, exclaiming with childish 
 glee: 
 
 "Oh ! you are the gentleman who saved me 1" 

 
 146 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 What the gentleman who had saved her? Why, then M. 
 Dorlange must be that much-talked-of Unknown. 
 
 Yes, madame, and I at once saw, as Na'is did, that it was 
 certainly he. 
 
 "Well, but if he is the Unknown, he is also the persecutor ?" 
 
 Yes, madame; chance, often the most ingenious of ro- 
 mancers, willed that M. Dorlange should be all this; and my 
 last letter, I fancy, must have suggested this to you, if only 
 by the prolixity with which I enlarged on his previous his- 
 tory. 
 
 "And you, my dear Countess, rushing thus into his 
 studio ?" 
 
 My dear madame, don't speak of it ! Startled, trembling, 
 red and white by turns, I must for a moment have looked an 
 image of awkward confusion. 
 
 Happily, my husband launched at once into elaborate com- 
 pliments as a happy and grateful father. I, meanwhile, had 
 time to recover myself ; and when it came to my turn to speak, 
 I had composed my features to one of my finest expressions 
 a I'Estorade, as you choose to call them; I then, as you 
 know, register twenty-five degrees below zero, and should 
 freeze the words on the lips of the most ardent adorer. I thus 
 hoped to keep my artist friend at a distance, and hinder him 
 if he should hope to make capital out of my stupid visit to his 
 house. M. Dorlange himself seemed surprised rather than 
 disconcerted by the meeting ; and then, as if we were insisting 
 on our gratitude too strongly for his modesty, to cut it short 
 and suddenty change the subject, he began: 
 
 "Madame," said he, "since we are better acquainted than 
 we had any reason to suppose, may I be permitted to indulge 
 my curiosity ?" 
 
 I fancied I felt the cat's claw extended to play with the 
 mouse, so I replied : 
 
 "Artists, if I am not mistaken, are sometimes very indis- 
 creetly curious " 
 
 And I emphasized my meaning with a marked severity
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 147 
 
 which T hoped would give it point. But my man was not 
 abashed. 
 
 "I hope that will not prove to he the case with my inquiry/' 
 eaid he. "I only wanted to know if you have a sister?" 
 
 "Well done/' thought I. "A way out of the difficulty! 
 The game he means to play is to ascribe his persistent perse- 
 cution to some fancied resemblance." 
 
 But though I should very willingly have given him that 
 loophole in M. de 1'Estorade's presence, I was not free to tell 
 him a lie. 
 
 "No, monsieur/' replied I, "I have no sister at any rate, 
 not to my knowledge." 
 
 And I said it with an air of superior cunning so as to make 
 sure of not being taken for a dupe. 
 
 "At any rate," said M. Dorlange, "it was not impossible 
 that my idea was a true one. The family, among whom I 
 once met a lady strikingly like you, is involved in an atmos- 
 phere of mystery which allows every possible hypothesis." 
 
 "And am I indiscreet in asking their name ?" 
 
 "Not in the least. They are people you may perhaps have 
 known in Paris in 1829-30. They kept house in great style, 
 and entertained magnificently. I met them in Italy." 
 
 "But their name?" said I, with a determination that was 
 not prompted, I own, by any charitable motive. 
 
 "Lanty," said M. Dorlange, without any hesitation or em- 
 barrassment. 
 
 There was, in fact, a family of that name in Paris before 
 I came to live here, and you, like me, may remember hearing 
 some strange tales about them. 
 
 As he answered the question, the sculptor went up to the 
 veiled statue. 
 
 "I have taken the liberty, madame, of giving you the sister 
 you never had," he said, rather abruptly, "and I make so bold 
 as to ask you if you do not yourself dfscern a family likeness ?" 
 
 At the same time he pulled away the baize which hid the 
 work, and then, my dear madame, I beheld myself, in the 
 guise of a saint, crowned with glory. How, I ask you, could
 
 148 THE MEMBER FOR AEGIS 
 
 I be angry? On seeing the startling likeness that really 
 stared them in the face, my husband and Na'is exclaimed 
 with admiration. 
 
 As for M. Dorlange, he proceeded without delay to explain 
 this rather dramatic surprise. 
 
 "This statue," said he, "is a Saint Ursula, a commission 
 from a convent in the country. In consequence of circum- 
 stances too long to relate, the features of the young lady I 
 mentioned just now remained deeply stamped on my memory. 
 I should have striven vainly to create, by the help of my im- 
 agination, any head that would more perfectly have repre- 
 sented my idea. I began, therefore, to model it from memory ; 
 but one day, madame, in the Church of St. Thomas d'Aquin, 
 I saw you, and I was so superstitious as to believe that Provi- 
 dence had sent you to me as a duplicate for my benefit. From 
 that time you were the model from which I worked ; and as I 
 could not think of asking you to come and sit to me in my 
 studio, I availed myself, as far as possible, of every chance of 
 meeting you. I also took particular care not to know your 
 name or your social position: that would have been to vul- 
 garize you, to bring you down from the ideal. If by any 
 mischance you had happened to notice my persistency in 
 crossing your path, you would have taken me for one of 
 those idlers who hang about in hope of an adventure, and I 
 was nothing worse than a conscientious artist, prenant son 
 lien oil il le trouve, like Moliere, making the most of my 
 chances, and trying to find inspiration in Nature alone, which 
 always gives the best results." 
 
 "Oh, I had noticed you following us," said Nai's, with an 
 all-knowing air. 
 
 Children ! my dear madame does any one understand 
 them? Nai's had seen all; at the time of her accident it 
 would have been natural that she should say something to her 
 father or to me about this gentleman, whose constant presence 
 had not escaped her notice and yet, not a word. Brought up 
 as she has been by me with such constant care, and hardly 
 ever out of my sight, I am absolutely certain of her perfect
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 149 
 
 innocence. Then it must be supposed that Nature alone can 
 give a little girl of thirteen an instinctive knowledge of certain 
 secrets. Is it not terrible to think of? 
 
 But husbands ! my dear madame, husbands are what are 
 so truly appalling when, at unexpected moments, we find them 
 abandoned to a sort of blind predestination. Mine, for 
 instance, as it seems to me, ought to have pricked up his ears 
 as he heard this gentleman describe how he had dared to take 
 me for his model. M. de 1'Estorade is not considered a fool ; 
 on all occasions he has a strong sense of the proprieties ; and 
 if ever I should give the least cause, I believe him capable of 
 being ridiculously jealous. And yet, seeing his belle Renee, 
 as he calls me, embodied in white marble as a saint, threw 
 him, as it seems, into such a state of admiration as altered 
 him out of all knowledge ! 
 
 He and Nai's were wholly absorbed in verifying the fidelity 
 of the copy ; that was quite my attitude, quite my eyes, my 
 mouth, the dimples in my cheeks. In short, I found that I 
 must take upon myself the part which M. de 1'Estorade had 
 quite forgotten, so I said very gravely to this audacious 
 artist : 
 
 "Does it not occur to you, monsieur, that thus to appropriate 
 without leave in short, to put it plainly, thus to steal a 
 stranger's features might strike her, or him, as a rather 
 strange proceeding?" 
 
 "Indeed, madame," replied he, very respectfully, "my 
 fraudulent conduct would never have gone beyond the point 
 you yourself might have sanctioned. Though my statue is 
 doomed to be buried in a chapel for nuns, I should not have 
 despatched it without obtaining your permission to leave it as 
 it was. I could, when necessary, have ascertained your ad- 
 dress; and while confessing the fascination to which I had 
 succumbed, I should have requested you to come to see the 
 work. Then, when you saw it, if a too exact likeness should 
 have offended you, I would have said what I now say : with a 
 few strokes of the chisel I will undertake to mislead the most 
 practised eye."
 
 150 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Diminish the resemblance ! That was no part of the pro- 
 gramme! My husband, apparently, did not think it close 
 enough, for at this moment he turned to M. Dorlange to say, 
 with beatific blandness : 
 
 "Do not you think, monsieur, that Madame de 1'Estorade's 
 nose is just a little thinner ?" 
 
 Thoroughly upset as I was by these unforeseen incidents, 
 I should, I fear, have pleaded badly for M. Marie-Gaston ; 
 however, at my very first allusion to the subject : 
 
 "I know," said M. Dorlange, "all you could say in defence 
 of the 'faithless one.' I do not forgive, but I will forget. 
 As things have turned out, I was within an ace of being 
 killed for his sake, and it would be really too illogical to owe 
 him now a grudge on old scores. Still, as regards the monu- 
 ment at Ville-d'Avray, nothing will induce me to undertake 
 it. As I have already explained to M. de 1'Estorade, there 
 is an obstacle in the way which grows more definite every day ; 
 I also consider it contemptible in Marie-Gaston that he should 
 persist in chewing the cud of his grief, and I have written to 
 him to that effect. He must show himself a man, and seek 
 such consolation as may always be found in study and work." 
 
 The object of my visit was at an end, and for the moment 
 I had no hope of penetrating the dark places, on which, how- 
 ever, I must throw some light. As I rose to leave, M. Dor- 
 lange said: 
 
 "May I hope, then, that you will not insist on any too 
 serious disfigurement of my statue ?" 
 
 "It is my husband rather than I who must answer that 
 question. We can re-open it on another occasion, for M. 
 de 1'Estorade hopes you will do us the honor to return this 
 call." 
 
 M. Dorlange bowed respectful acquiescence, and we came 
 away. As he saw us to the carriage, not venturing to offer 
 me his arm, I happened to turn round to call Na'is, who was 
 rashly going up to a Pyrenean dog that lay in the forecourt. 
 I then perceived the handsome housekeeper behind a window- 
 curtain eagerly watching me. Finding herself caught in the 
 act, she dropped the curtain with evident annoyance.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 151 
 
 "Well," thought I, "now this woman is jealous of me! 
 Is she afraid, I wonder, that T may become her rival, at least 
 as a model?" 
 
 In fact, I came away in a perfectly vile temper. I was 
 furious with Nais and with my husband. I could have given 
 him the benefit of a scene of which he certainly could have 
 made neither head nor tail. 
 
 Now, what do you think of it all ? Is this man one of the 
 cleverest rogues alive, who all in a moment, to get himself 
 out of a scrape, could invent the most plausible fiction? Or 
 is he, indeed, an artist and nothing but an artist, who artlessly 
 regarded me as the living embodiment of his ideal? This 
 is what I mean to find out within the next few days; for, 
 more than ever now, I shall carry out my programme, and not 
 later than to-morrow M. le Comte and Mme. la Comtesse de 
 1'Estorade will have the honor of inviting M. Dorlange to 
 dinner. 
 
 The Comtesse de 1'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PARIS, March 1839. 
 
 DEAR MADAME, M. Dorlange dined with us yesterday. 
 My own notion had been to receive him en famille, so as to 
 have him under my eye and catechise him at my ease. But M. 
 de 1'Estorade, to whom I did not communicate my disinter- 
 ested purpose, pointed out that such an invitation, to meet 
 nobody, might be taken amiss: M. le Comte de 1'Estorade, 
 Peer of France, might appear to regard the sculptor Dorlange 
 as having no pretensions to mix with his society. 
 
 "We cannot treat him," my husband smilingly added, "as 
 if he were one of our farmers' sons who came to display his 
 sub-lieutenant's epaulette, and whom we should invite quite 
 by himself because we could not send him to the kitchen." 
 
 So to meet our principal guest, we asked M. Joseph Bridau 
 the painter; the Chevalier d'Espard, M. and Mme. de la 
 Bastie, and M. de Ronquerolles. When inviting this last gen-
 
 152 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 tleman, my husband took care to ask him whether he would 
 object to meeting M. de Khetore's adversary for you know, 
 no doubt, that the Duke chose for his seconds in the duel 
 General de Montriveau and M. de Ronquerolles. 
 
 "Far from objecting," he replied, "I am delighted to seize 
 an opportunity of improving my acquaintance with a clever 
 man, whose conduct in the affair in which we were concerned 
 was in all respects admirable." 
 
 And when my husband told him of the obligation we owe 
 to M. Dorlange: 
 
 "Why, the artist is a hero !" he exclaimed. "If he goes 
 on as he has begun, we shall not be able to reach to his 
 knees." 
 
 In his studio, with his throat bare so as to give freedom 
 to his head, which is a little large for his body, and dressed 
 in a most becoming loose Oriental sort of garment, M. 
 Dorlange was certainly better looking than in ordinary even- 
 ing dress. At the same time, when he is talking with anima- 
 tion, his face lights up, and then his eyes seem to pour out a 
 tide of that magnetic fluid of which I had been conscious at 
 our previous meetings. Mme. de la Bastie was no less struck 
 by it. 
 
 I forgot whether I told you of the object of M. Dorlange's 
 ambition : he proposes to come forward as a candidate on the 
 occasion of the next elections. This was his reason for de- 
 clining the commission offered him by my husband as repre- 
 senting M. Marie-Gaston. This, which M. de 1'Estorade and 
 I had supposed to be a mere subterfuge or an empty dream, 
 is, it would seem, a serious scheme. At dinner, being 
 challenged by M. Joseph Bridau as to the reality of his parlia- 
 mentary pretensions, M. Dorlange asserted and maintained 
 them. As a result, almost all through the dinner, the con- 
 versation took an exclusively political turn. I expected to 
 find our artist, if not an absolute novice, at least very moder- 
 ately conversant with such matters, which hitherto must have 
 lain quite outside his range. JSTot at all ; on men and things, 
 on the past and future history of party strife, he had really
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 153 
 
 fresh views, evidently not borrowed from the daily cant of 
 newspapers; and he spoke with lucidity, ease, and elegance 
 so much so, that, when he had left, M. de Ronquerolles and 
 M. de FEstorade expressed their amazement at the clear and 
 powerful political intelligence that he had revealed to them. 
 The admission is all the more striking because these two gen- 
 tlemen, both by instinct and position, are staunch Conserva- 
 tives, while M. Dorlange's proclivities tend very evidently to 
 democratic ideas. 
 
 This quite unexpected intellectual superiority in my 
 problematical admirer reassured me considerably. Politics, 
 in fact, are an absorbing and dominating passion which can 
 scarcely allow a second to flourish by its side. Xevertheless, 
 I was bent on studying the situation to the bottom, and after 
 dinner I insidiously drew my gentleman into one of those 
 tete-a-tete chats which the mistress of a house can generally 
 arrange. After speaking of M. Marie-Gaston, our friend in 
 common, of my dear Louise's crazy flights, and my own con- 
 stant but useless attempts to moderate them, after giving him 
 every opportunity and facility for opening the battle, I 
 asked him whether his Saint Ursula was to be sent off 
 soon. 
 
 "It is quite ready to start, madame/' said he. "But I wait 
 for your permission, your exeat; for you to tell me, in short, 
 whether or no I am to alter anything in the face." 
 
 "First tell me this," replied I. "Supposing I were to wish 
 for any alteration, would such a change greatly injure the 
 statue ?" 
 
 "It probably would. However little you clip a bird's 
 wings, it is always checked in its flight." 
 
 "One more question. Is your statue most like me or the 
 other woman?" 
 
 "You, madame, I need hardly say. You are the present; 
 she is the past." 
 
 "But to throw over the past in favor of the present is 
 called, as you doubtless are aware, monsieur, by an ugly
 
 154 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 name. And you confess to this evil tendency with a frank 
 readiness that is really quite startling." 
 
 "It is true that art can be brutal," said M. Dorlange, laugh- 
 ing. "Wherever it may find the raw material of a creation, 
 it rushes on it with frenzy." 
 
 "Art," said I, "is a big word, under which a world of 
 things find refuge ! The other day you told me that cir- 
 cumstances, too long to be related, had contributed to stamp 
 on your mind, as a constant presence, the features of which 
 mine are a reflection, and which have left such an impression 
 on your memory. Was not this saying pretty plainly that it 
 was not the sculptor alone -who remembered them ?" 
 
 "Indeed, madame, I had not time to explain myself more 
 fully. And in any case, on seeing you for the first time, 
 would you not have thought it extraordinary if I had assumed 
 a confidential tone? " 
 
 "But now?" said I audaciously. 
 
 "Even now, unless under very express encouragement, I 
 should find it hard to persuade myself that anything in my 
 past life could have a special interest for you." 
 
 "But why so? Some acquaintances ripen quickly. Your 
 devotion to my ISTais is a long step forward in ours. Be- 
 sides," I added with affected giddiness, "I love a story be- 
 yond all things." 
 
 "Besides the fact that mine has no end, it has, even to 
 me, remained a mystery." 
 
 "All the more reason Between us, perhaps, we may 
 
 be able to solve it." 
 
 M. Dorlange seemed to consider the matter; then, after 
 a short silence, he said: 
 
 "It is very true; women are clever in discerning faint 
 traces in facts or feelings where we men can detect none. 
 But this revelation does not involve myself alone, and I must 
 be allowed to beg that it remains absolutely between ourselves. 
 I do not except even M. de FEstorade; a secret ceases to 
 exist when once it goes beyond the speaker and the recipient." 
 
 I really was desperately puzzled as to what was coming.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 155 
 
 This last clause suggested the cautious preliminaries of a man 
 about to trespass on another's property. However, I pursued 
 my policy of impudence and encouragement. 
 
 "M. de 1'Estorade," said I, "is so little accustomed to hear 
 everything from me, that he never saw a single line of my 
 correspondence with Madame Marie-Gaston." 
 
 At the same time I made a mental reservation with refer- 
 ence to you, my dear friend ; for are you not the keeper of 
 my conscience? And to a confessor one must confess all, if 
 one is to be judiciously advised. 
 
 Till now M. Dorlange had been standing in front of the 
 fireplace, while I sat at the corner. He now took a chair 
 close to me, and by way of preamble he said : 
 
 "I spoke to you, madame, of the Lanty family " 
 
 At this instant Mme. de la Bastie, as provoking as a shower 
 at a picnic, came up to ask me whether I had seen Nathan's 
 new play? Much I cared for anybody else's comedy when 
 absorbed in this drama, in which it would seem I had played 
 a pretty lively part ! However, M. Dorlange was obliged 
 to give up his seat by me, and it was impossible to have him 
 to myself any more that evening. 
 
 As you see, nothing has come of all my forwardness and 
 wiliness; no light has dawned on the matter; but in the 
 absence of any advances from M. Dorlange, as I remember 
 his manner, which I carefully studied, I am more and more 
 inclined to believe in his perfect innocence. 
 
 Nor, in fact, is there anything in this interrupted tale 
 to suggest that love played the part I had insinuated. There 
 are plenty more ways of stamping a personality on one's 
 memory; and if M. Dorlange did not love the woman of 
 whom I reminded him, what grudge can he have against me 
 who am but a sort of second edition? Nor must we over- 
 look that very handsome housekeeper; for, granting that she 
 is but a habit, adopted for reasons of common sense rather 
 than a passion, the woman must still be, at any rate in some 
 degree, a fence against me. Consequently, dear madame, all 
 the alarms I have dinned into your ears would be ridiculous
 
 156 
 
 indeed; I should somewhat resemble Belise in Les Femmes 
 Savantes, who is haunted by the idea that every one who 
 sees her must fall in love with her. 
 
 But I should be only too glad to come to this dull con- 
 clusion. 
 
 Lover or no, M. Dorlange is a man of high spirit and 
 remarkable powers of mind; if he does not put himself out 
 of court by any foolish aspirations, it will be an honor and 
 a pleasure to place him on our list of friends. The service 
 he did us predestines him to this, and I should really be sorry 
 to seem hard on him. In that case, indeed, Nais would 
 quarrel with me, for she very naturally thinks everything 
 of her rescuer. 
 
 In the evening, when he left : 
 
 "Mamma, how well M. Dorlange talks !" said she, with a 
 most amusing air of approval. 
 
 Speaking of Nai's, this is the explanation she gives of the 
 reserve that disturbed me so much. 
 
 "Well, mamma," said she, "I supposed that you would have 
 seen him too. But after he stopped the horses, as you did 
 not seem to know him, and as he is rather common-looking, 
 I fancied he was a man " 
 
 "A man what do you mean?" 
 
 "Why, yes; the sort of man one takes no notice of. But 
 how glad I was when I found that he was a gentleman ! You 
 heard me exclaim, 'Wliy, you are the gentleman who saved 
 me/ " 
 
 Though her innocence is perfect, there is in this explana- 
 tion an ugly streak of pride, on which, you may be sure, I 
 delivered a fine lecture. This distinction between the man 
 and the gentleman is atrocious ; but, on the whole, was not the 
 child in the right ? She only said with guileless crudity what 
 even our democratic notions still allow us to carry out in 
 practice, though they do not allow us to profess it. The 
 famous Eevolution of '89, at any rate, went so far as to 
 establish this virtuous hypocrisy on a social footing. But 
 here am I too drifting into politics ; and if I carry my criticism
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 157 
 
 any further, you will be telling me to beware, for that I am 
 already catching it from M. Dorlange. 
 
 The Comtesse de I'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PAKIS, April 1839. 
 
 For nearly a fortnight, my dear madame, we heard no more 
 of M. Dorlange. Not only did he not think proper to come 
 and re-open the confidences so provokingly interrupted by 
 Madame de la Bastie, but he did not seem aware that after 
 dining with anybody, a card, at least, is due within a week. 
 
 Yesterday morning we were at breakfast, and I had just 
 made a remark to this effect, without bitterness, and merely 
 by way of conversation, when Lucas, who, as an old servant, 
 is somewhat overbold and familiar, made some one throw 
 open the door of the dining-room as if in triumph; and 
 handing a note first to M. de I'Estorade, he set down in the 
 middle of the table a mysterious object wrapped in tissue 
 paper, which at first suggested a decorative dish of some 
 kind. 
 
 "What in the world is that?" I asked Lucas, seeing in 
 his face the announcement of a surprise. And I put out my 
 hand to tear away the paper. 
 
 "Oh, madame, be careful !" cried he. "It is breakable." 
 
 My husband meanwhile had read the note, which he handed 
 to me, saying, "M. Dorlange's apology/' 
 
 This is what the artist wrote : 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, I fancied I could discern that Ma- 
 dame de I'Estorade gave me permission very reluctantly to 
 take advantage of the audacious use I had made of my 
 petty larceny. I have therefore bravely determined to alter 
 my work and at the present moment hardly a likeness is dis- 
 cernible between 'the two sisters.' Still, I could not bear 
 that all I had done should be lost to the world, so I had 
 a cast taken of Saint Ursula's head before altering it, and 
 made a reduced copy, placing it on the shoulders of a charm- 
 ing Countess, who is not yet canonized, thank Heaven !
 
 158 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "The mould was broken after the first copy was taken, 
 and that only copy I have the honor to beg you to accept. 
 This fact, which was only proper, gives the statuette rather 
 more value. Believe me, etc." 
 
 While I was reading, my husband, Lucas, Nais, and Eene 
 had been very busy extracting me from my wrappings; and 
 behold, from a saint I had been converted into a lady of 
 fashion, in the shape of a lovely statuette elegantly dressed. 
 I thought that M. de 1'Estorade and the two children would 
 go crazy with admiration. The news of this wonder having 
 spread through the house, all the servants whom we certainly 
 spoil came in one after another, as. if they had been invited, 
 and each in turn exclaimed "How like madame !" I quote 
 only the leading theme, and do not remember every stupid 
 variation. 
 
 I alone remained unaffected by the general enthusiasm. 
 It seemed to me that to be the eternal subject of M. Dorlange's 
 plastic efforts was not an enviably happy lot; and, for the 
 reasons you know, I should have liked far better to be less 
 frequently in his thoughts and under his chisel. As to M. 
 de 1'Estorade, after spending an hour in deciding on the place 
 in his study where the great work would look best, he came to 
 say: 
 
 "On my way to the Exchequer office I will look in on 
 M. Dorlange. If he is disengaged this evening, I will ask 
 him to dine here. Armand, whom he has not yet seen, will 
 be at home; thus he will see all the family together, and you 
 can express your thanks." 
 
 I did not approve of this family dinner; it seemed to me 
 to place M. Dorlange on a footing of intimacy which this 
 fresh civility again warned me might be dangerous. When 1 
 raised some little difficulty, M. de 1'Estorade remarked: 
 
 "'Why, my dear, the first time we invited him, you wanted 
 to ask him only, which would have been extremely awkward, 
 and now that it is perfectly suitable, you are making objec- 
 tions !" 
 
 To this argument, which placed me entirely in the wrong,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 159 
 
 I could make no reply, excepting saying to myself that hus- 
 bands are sometimes very clumsy. 
 
 M. Dorlange consented to join us. He may have found 
 me a little cold in my expressions of gratitude. I even went 
 so far as to say that I should not have asked him to alter the 
 statue, which no doubt made him sorry he had done so, and 
 implied that I did not particularly approve of the present he 
 had sent us. 
 
 He also contrived to vex me on another point, on which, 
 as you know, I am never amenable. At dinner, M. de 
 1'Estorade reverted to the subject of the elections, disapprov- 
 ing more than ever of M. Dorlange as a candidate, though 
 no longer thinking it ridiculous; this led to a political dis- 
 cussion. Armand, who is a very serious person, and reads 
 the newspapers, joined in the conversation. Unlike most lads 
 of the present day, he shares his father's opinions, that is to 
 say, he is strongly Conservative indeed, rather in excess 
 of that wise moderation which is very rare, no doubt, at six- 
 teen. He was thus tempted to contradict M. Dorlange, who, 
 as I have told you, is a bit of a Jacobin. And really it did 
 not appear to me that my little man's arguments were un- 
 sound or too virulently expressed. 
 
 Without being rude, M. Dorlange seemed to scorn the idea 
 of discussing the matter with the poor boy, and he rather 
 sharply reminded him of his school uniform; so much so, 
 that I saw Armand ready to lose his temper and answer 
 viciously. As he is quite well bred, I had only to give him 
 a look, and he controlled himself ; but seeing him turn crim- 
 son and shut himself up in total silence, I felt that his pride 
 had been deeply wounded, and thought it ungenerous of M. 
 Dorlange to have crushed him by his superiority. I know 
 that in these days all children want to be of importance too 
 soon, and that it does them no harm to interfere now and 
 then and hinder them from being men of forty. But Armand 
 really has powers of mind and reason beyond his age. 
 
 Do you want proof? 
 
 Until last year I would never part from him; he went
 
 160 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 to the College Henri IV. as a day scholar. Well, it was he 
 who, for the benefit of his studies, begged to be placed there 
 as a boarder, since the constant to and fro inevitably inter- 
 fered with his work; and to be allowed, as a favor, to shut 
 himself up under the ferule of an usher, he exhausted more 
 arguments, and wheedled me with more coaxing, than most 
 boys would have used to obtain the opposite result. Thus 
 the grown-up manner, which in many school-boys is intoler- 
 ably absurd, in him is the evident result of natural precocity, 
 and this precocity ought to be forgiven him, since it is the gift 
 of God. M. Dorlange, owing to the misfortune of his birth, 
 is less able than most men to enter into the feelings of boys, 
 so, of course, he is deficient in indulgence. But he had better 
 be careful ! This is a bad way of paying his court to me, 
 even on the most ordinary footing of friendship. 
 
 Being so small a party, I could not, of course, revert to 
 the history he had to tell me ; but I did not think that he was 
 particularly anxious to recur to the subject. In fact, he was 
 less attentive to me than to Na'is, for whom he cut out black 
 paper figures during an hour or more. It must also be said 
 that Madame de Eastignac came in the way, and that I had 
 to give myself up to her visit. While I was talking to her 
 by the fire, M. Dorlange, at the other end of the room, was 
 making NVis and Rene stand for their portraits, and they 
 presently came exultant to show me their profiles, wonderfully 
 like, snipped out with the scissors. 
 
 "Do you know," said Na'is in a whisper, "M. Dorlange says 
 he will make a bust of me in marble ?" 
 
 All this struck me as in rather bad taste. I do not like 
 to see artists who, when admitted to a drawing-room, still 
 carry on the business, as it were. They thus justify the 
 aristocratic arrogance which sometimes refuses to think them 
 worthy to be received for their own sake. 
 
 M. Dorlange went away early ; and M. de 1'Estorade got on 
 my nerves, as he has done so many times in his life, when 
 he insisted on showing out his guest, who had tried to steal 
 away unperceived, and I heard him desire him to repeat his 
 visits less rarely, that I was always at home in the evening.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 161 
 
 The result of this family dinner has been civil war among 
 the children. Nai's lauding her dear deliverer to the skies, in 
 which she is supported by Kene, who is completely won over 
 by a splendid lancer on horseback, cut out for him by M. 
 Dorlange. Armand, on the contrary, says he is ugly, which is 
 indisputable ; he declares he is just like the portraits of Danton 
 in the illustrated history of the Eevolution, and there is 
 pome truth in it. He also says that in the statuette he has 
 made me look like a milliner's apprentice, which is not true 
 at all. Hence endless squabbles among the dear creatures. 
 Only just now I was obliged to interfere and tell them that 
 I was tired of hearing of their M. Dorlange. 
 
 Will you not say the same of me, dear madame, when I 
 have written so much about him and told you nothing definite 
 after all ? 
 
 Dorlange to Marie-Oaston. 
 
 PARIS, April 1839. 
 
 Why do I give up my art, and what do I expect to find 
 in that "galley" called politics?. 
 
 That is what comes, my dear fond lover, of shutting your- 
 self up for years in conventual matrimony. The world, mean- 
 while, has gone on. Life has brought fresh combinations to 
 those whom you shut out, and the less you know of them, the 
 readier you are to blame those you have forgotten. Every 
 one is clever at patching other folks' affairs. 
 
 You must know then, my inquisitive friend, that it was 
 not of my own accord that I took the step for which you 
 would call me to account. My unforeseen appearance in the 
 electoral breach was in obedience to the desire of a very high 
 personage. A father has at last allowed a gleam of light to 
 shine in the eternal darkness; he has three parts revealed 
 himself; and, if I may trust appearances, he fills a place in 
 society that might satisfy the most exacting conceit. And, 
 to be in keeping with the usual current of my life, this revela- 
 tion was involved in circumstances singular and romantic 
 enough to deserve telling in some detail.
 
 162 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Since for two years past you have been living in Italy 
 and visiting the most interesting cities, I believe I need hardly 
 tell you that the Cafe Greco is the general haunt of the art 
 pupils from the Paris schools, and the artists of every nation- 
 ality who are staying in Home. 
 
 In Paris, Rue du Coq-Saint-Honore, there is remote 
 equivalent for this institution in a cafe that has long been 
 known as the Cafe des Arts. I spend the evening there two 
 or three times a week, and meet there several Roman students, 
 my contemporaries. They have made me acquainted with 
 some journalists and men of letters, agreeable and superior 
 men, with whom it is both pleasant and profitable to exchange 
 ideas. There is a particular corner where we congregate, 
 and where every question of a serious character is discussed 
 and thrashed out; but, as having the most living interests, 
 politics especially give rise to the most impassioned argu- 
 ments. In our little club democratic views predominate ; they 
 are represented in the most diverse shades, including the 
 Utopia or phalanstery of workers. This will show you that 
 the proceedings of the Government are often severely handled, 
 and that unlimited freedom of language characterizes our 
 verdicts. 
 
 Rather more than a year ago the waiter the only waiter 
 who is allowed the honor of supplying our wants took me 
 aside one day, having, as he declared, a communication of 
 importance to make. 
 
 "You are watched by the police, sir,'' said he, "and you 
 will be wise not to talk always open-mouthed like St. Paul." 
 
 "By the police, my good fellow ! Why, what on earth can 
 it find to watch? All I can say, and a great deal more, is 
 printed every morning in the newspapers." 
 
 "That has nothing to do with it. They have an eye on 
 you. I have seen it. There is a little old man who takes a 
 great deal of snuff, and who always sits where he can hear 
 you. When you are speaking he listens much more attentively 
 than to any of the others, and I even caught him once writing 
 something in his pocket-book in signs that were not the 
 alphabet."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 163 
 
 "Very good ; the next time he comes, show him to me." 
 
 The next time was no further off than the morrow. 
 
 The man pointed out was small and gray-haired, untidy in 
 his appearaance, and his face, deeply marked by the small-pox, 
 was, I thought, that of a man of fifty. And he certainly 
 very often took a pinch out of a large snuff-box, and seemed 
 to honor my remarks with a degree of attention which I could, 
 as I chose, regard as highly complimentary or extremely im- 
 pertinent. But of the two alternatives I was inclined to the 
 more charitable by the air of honesty and mildness that per- 
 vaded this supposed emissary of the police. When I re- 
 marked on this reassuring aspect to the waiter, who flattered 
 himself that he had scented out a secret agent: 
 
 "Oh yes, indeed !" said he. "Those are the sweet manners 
 they always put on to hide their game." 
 
 Two days after, one Sunday, at the hour of vespers, in the 
 course of one of those long walks all across Paris, which you 
 know I always loved, mere chance led me into the Church of 
 Saint-Louis en File, the parish church of that God-forsaken 
 quarter. The building is not particularly interesting, in spite 
 of what some historians have said, and, following them, every 
 Stranger's Guide to Paris. I should only have walked 
 through it, but that the wonderful talent of the organist who 
 was playing the service irresistibly held me. When I tell 
 you that the performer came up to my ideal, you will know 
 that is high praise; for you will, I daresay, remember that 
 I draw a distinction between organ players and organists a 
 rank of the superior nobility to whom I grant the title only 
 on the highest grounds. 
 
 When the service was over, I was curious to see the face 
 of so remarkable an artist buried in such a corner. I took 
 my stand at the door from the organ loft to be close to the 
 player as he came out. I could have done no more for a 
 crowned head! But are not great artists, after all, the real 
 kings by divine right? Imagine my amazement when, aftei 
 waiting a few minutes, instead of a perfectly strange face, 1 
 saw a man whom I at once vaguely recognized, and knew at
 
 164 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 a second glance for my watchful listener of the Cafe des Arts. 
 NOT was this all: at his heels came a sort of spoilt attempt 
 at humanity; and in this misshapen failure, with crooked 
 legs and a thicket of unkempt hair, I discerned our old 
 quarterly providence, my banker, my money-carrier in short, 
 our respected friend the mysterious dwarf. 
 
 I, you may be sure, did not escape his sharp eye, and I 
 saw him eagerly pointing me out to the organist. He in- 
 stinctively, and not probably calculating all that would come 
 of it, turned quickly to look at me, and then, taking.no further 
 notice of me, went on his way. The dwarf, meanwhile whom 
 I might recognize as his master's servant by this single detail 
 went familiarly up to the man who distributed holy water 
 and offered him a pinch of snuff; then he hobbled away, 
 never looking at me again, and vanished through a door in a 
 corner under one of the side aisles. 
 
 The care this man had taken to point me out to the organ- 
 ist was a revelation. The Maestro was evidently fully in- 
 formed as to the strange means by which my allowance used 
 to reach me, and it had been regularly handed over to me 
 after my return from Eome, till I was placed above want by 
 receiving some commissions. It was not less probable that 
 the man who knew about this financial mystery was the de- 
 positary of other secrets; and I was all the more eager to 
 extract from him some explanation because, as I am now living 
 on the fruit of my own exertions, I had no fear of finding 
 my curiosity punished by the stoppage of supplies that had 
 formerly been threatened. 
 
 I acted on the spur of the moment and rushed after the 
 organist. By the time I had got out of the church door, he 
 was out of sight, but chance favored me and led me in the 
 direction he had taken ; as I came out on the Quai de Bethune, 
 I saw him in the distance knocking at a door. 
 
 I boldly followed and paid to the gate porter: 
 
 "Is the organist of Saint-Louis en File within ?" 
 
 "M. Jacques Bricheteau?" 
 
 "Yes, M. Jacques Bricheteau; he lives here, I think?"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 165 
 
 "On the fourth floor above the entresol, the door on the 
 left. He has just come in; you may catch him up on the 
 stairs." 
 
 Run as fast as I could, by the time I reached my man 
 his key was in the lock. 
 
 "M. Jacques Bricheteau?" I hastily exclaimed. "I have 
 the honor, I think ?" 
 
 "I know no such person," said he coolly, as he turned 
 the key. 
 
 "I may be mistaken in the name; but M. the organist of 
 Saint-Louis en File?" 
 
 "I never heard of any organist living in this house." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, monsieur: there certainly is, for the 
 concierge has just told me so. Besides, you are undoubtedly 
 the gentleman I saw coming out of the organ loft, accom- 
 panied by a man I may say " 
 
 But before I had finished speaking, this strange individual 
 had balked me of his company and shut his door in my 
 face. 
 
 For a moment I wondered whether I had been mistaken; 
 but, on reflection, mistake was impossible. Had not this man 
 already, and for years, proved his extravagant secretiveness ? 
 It was he certainly who persistently refused to have anything 
 to say to me, and not I who had blundered. I proceeded to 
 pull his bell with some energy, quite determined to persist till 
 I knew the reason of this fixed purpose of ignoring me. For 
 some little time the besieged party put up with the turmoil 
 I was making; but I suddenly remarked that the bell had 
 ceased to sound. It had evidently been muffled ; the obstinate 
 foe would not come to the door, and the only way of getting 
 at him would be to beat it in. That, however, is not thought 
 mannerly. 
 
 I went down again to the door-porter and told him of my 
 failure, without saying anything about the reasons that had 
 led to it ; and I so far invited his confidence that I extracted 
 some information concerning the impenetrable M. Jacques 
 Bricheteau. But though it was given with all desirable will-
 
 166 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 ingness, it threw no light whatever on the situation. M. 
 Bricheteau was a quiet resident, polite but not communica- 
 tive; punctual in paying his rent, but not in easy circum- 
 stances, for he kept no servant not even a maid to clean for 
 him, and he never took a meal at home. He was always out 
 by ten in the morning, and never came in till the evening, 
 and was probably a clerk in an office, or perhaps a music 
 master giving lessons. 
 
 Only one fact in this heap of vague and useless information 
 seemed to be of the slightest interest. For some months 
 past M. Jacques Bricheteau had pretty frequently been the 
 recipient of heavy letters, which, to judge by the cost of 
 postage, were no doubt from some distant country; but, with 
 the best will in the world, the worthy porter had never been 
 able to decipher the postmark, and at any rate the name, 
 which he had but guessed at, had quite escaped his memory; 
 so for the moment this observation, which might have been of 
 some use, was absolutely valueless. 
 
 On my return home I persuaded myself that a pathetic 
 epistle addressed to my recalcitrant friend would induce him 
 to admit me. Seasoning my urgent supplication with a spice 
 of intimidation, I gave him to understand that I was immov- 
 ably bent on penetrating, at any cost, the mystery of my birth, 
 of which he seemed to be fully informed. Now that I had 
 some clue to the secret, it would be his part to consider 
 whether my desperate efforts, blindly rushing against the 
 dark unknown, might not entail much greater trouble than 
 the frank explanation I begged him to favor me with. 
 
 My ultimatum thus formulated, to the end that it should 
 reach the hands of M. Jacques Bricheteau as soon as pos- 
 sible, on the following morning, before nine, I arrived at the 
 door. But, in a frenzy of secrecy unless he has some really 
 inexplicable reason for avoiding me at daybreak that morn- 
 ing, after paying the rent for the current term and for a 
 term's notice, the organist had packed off his furniture ; and it 
 is to be supposed that the men employed in this sudden flitting 
 were handsomely bribed for their silence, since the concierge
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 167 
 
 could not discover the name of the street whither his lodger 
 was moving. The men did not belong to the neighborhood, 
 so there was not a chance of unearthing them and paying 
 them to speak. The man, whose curiosity was at least as 
 eager as my own, had, to be sure, thought of a simple plan 
 for gratifying it. This, not indeed a very creditable one, 
 was to follow the van in which the musician's household goods 
 were packed. But the confounded fellow was prepared for 
 everything: he kept an eye on the over- zealous porter, and 
 remained. on sentry duty in front of the house till his cargo 
 was too far on its way for any risk of pursuit. 
 
 Still, and in spite of the obstinacy and cleverness of this 
 unattainable antagonist, I would not be beaten. I felt there 
 was still a connecting thread between us in the organ of 
 Saint-Louis'; so on the following Sunday, before the end of 
 High Mass, I took up a post at the door of the organ loft, 
 fully determined not to let the sphinx go till I had made it 
 speak. Here was a fresh disappointment: M. Jacques 
 Bricheteau was represented by one of his pupils, and for 
 three Sundays in succession it was the same. On the fourth 
 I ventured to speak to the substitute and ask him if the 
 maestro were ill. 
 
 "No, monsieur. M. Bricheteau is taking a holiday; he 
 will be absent for some time, and is away on business." 
 
 "Where then can I write to him?" 
 
 "I do not exactly know. Still, I suppose that you can 
 write to his lodgings, close at hand, Quai de Bethune." 
 
 "But he has moved. Did you not know?" 
 
 "No. Indeed ! and where is he now living ?" 
 
 I was out of luck asking for information from a man 
 who, when I questioned him, questioned me. And as if to 
 drive me fairly beside myself, while investigating matters 
 under such hopeful conditions, I saw in the distance that con- 
 founded deaf and dumb dwarf, who positively laughed as he 
 looked at me. 
 
 Happily for my impatience and curiosity, which were en- 
 hance<i by e v ery defeat, and rising by degrees to an almost
 
 168 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 intolerable pitch, daylight presently dawned. A few days 
 after this last false scent, a letter reached me; and I, a 
 better scholar than the concierge of the Quai de Bethune, at 
 once saw that the postmark was Stockholm, Sweden, which 
 did not excessively astonish me. When in Eome, I had the 
 honor of being kindly received by Thorwaldsen, the great 
 sculptor, and I had met many of his fellow-countrymen in 
 his studio some commission perhaps, for which he had 
 recommended me so imagine my surprise and emotion when, 
 on opening it, the first words I read were: 
 
 "Monsieur mon fils." 
 
 The letter was long, and I had not patience enough to 
 read it through before looking to see whose name I bore. So 
 I turned at once to the signature. This beginning, Monsieur 
 mon fils, which we often find in history as used by kings 
 when addressing their scions, must surely promise aristocratic 
 parentage! My disappointment was great: there was no 
 signature. 
 
 "Monsieur mon fils," my anonymous father wrote, "I can- 
 not regret that your inveterate determination to solve the 
 secret of your birth should have compelled the man who 
 watched over your youth to come here and confer with me 
 as to the steps to which we should be compelled by this 
 dangerous and turbulent curiosity. I have for a long time 
 cherished an idea which has now come to maturity, and it 
 has been far more satisfactorily discussed in speech than it 
 could have been by correspondence. 
 
 "Being obliged to leave France almost immediately after 
 your birth, which cost your mother her life, I made a large 
 fortune in a foreign land, and I now fill a high position in 
 the Government of this country. I foresee a time when I 
 may be free to give you my name, and at the same time 
 to secure for you the reversion of the post I hold. But, to 
 rise so high as this, the celebrity which, with my permission, 
 you promise to achieve in Art would not be a sufficient 
 recommendation. I therefore wish you to enter on a political
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 169 
 
 career; and in that career, under the existing conditions in 
 France, there are not two ways of distinguishing yourself 
 you must be elected a member of the Chamber. You are 
 not yet, I know, of the required age, and you have not the 
 necessary qualifications. But you will be thirty next year, 
 and that is just long enough to enable you to become a landed 
 proprietor and prove your possession for more than a twelve- 
 month. On the day after receiving this you may call on the 
 Brothers Mongenod, bankers, Eue de la Victoire; they will 
 pay you a sum of two hundred and fifty thousand francs. 
 This you must at once invest in the purchase of a house, and 
 devote any surplus to the support of some newspaper which, 
 in due course, will advocate your election after another out- 
 lay is met which I shall presently explain. 
 
 "Your aptitude for politics is vouched for by the friend 
 who has watched over you in your deserted existence, with a 
 zeal and disinterestedness that I can never repay. He has for 
 some time followed you and listened to you, and he is con- 
 vinced that you would make a creditable appearance in the 
 Chamber. Your opinions Liberal, and at once moderate 
 and enthusiastic meet my views, and you have, unconsciously, 
 hitherto played into my hand very successfully. 
 
 "I cannot at present reveal to you the place of your proba- 
 ble election. It is being prepared with a deep secrecy and 
 skill which -will be successful in proportion as they are 
 wrapped in silence and darkness. However, your success may 
 be, perhaps, partly insured by your carrying out a work which 
 I commend to your notice, advising you to accept its apparent 
 singularity without demur or comment. For the present you 
 must still be a sculptor, and you are to employ the talent of 
 which you have given evidence in the execution of a statue 
 of Saint Ursula. The subject does not lack poetry or in- 
 terest ; Saint Ursula, virgin and martyr, was, it is generally 
 believed, the daughter of a prince of Great Britain. She was 
 martyred in the fifth century at Cologne, where she had 
 founded a convent of maidens known to popular supersti- 
 tion as the Eleven Thousand Virgins. She was subsequently
 
 17C THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 taken as the patron saint of the Ursuline Sisters who adopted 
 her name; also of the famous House of the Sorbonne. 
 
 "An artist so clever as you are, may, it seems to me, make 
 something of all these facts. 
 
 "Without knowing the name of the place you are to repre- 
 sent, it is desirable that you should at once make due profes- 
 sion of your political tendencies and proclaim your intention 
 of standing for election. At the same time, I cannot too earn- 
 estly impress on you the need for secrecy as to this communi- 
 cation, and for patience in your present position. Leave my 
 agent in peace, I beg of you, and setting aside a curiosity 
 which, I warn you, will involve you in the greatest disasters, 
 await the slow and quiet development of the splendid future 
 that lies before you. By not choosing to conform to my ar- 
 rangements, you will deprive yourself of every chance of 
 being initiated into the mystery you are so eager to solve. 
 However, I will not even suppose that you can rebel ; I would 
 rather believe in your perfect deference to the wishes of a 
 father who feels that the happiest day of his life will be that 
 when he is at last able to make himself known to you. 
 
 "P.S. As your statue is intended for the chapel of an 
 Ursuline convent, it must be in white marble. The height 
 of the figure is to be 1.706 metre, or in other words, five feet 
 three inches. As it will not stand in a niche, it must be 
 equally well finished on all sides. The cost to be defrayed out 
 of the two hundred and fifty thousand francs advised by the 
 present letter." 
 
 The present letter left me cold and unsatisfied; it bereft 
 me of a hope I had long cherished that of some day knowing 
 a mother as kind as yours, of whose adorable sweetness you 
 often told me, my dear friend. This was, after all, no better 
 than twilight in the thick fog of my life ; it did not even tell 
 me whether I had been born in wedlock or no. And it also 
 struck me that, as addressed to a man of my age, there was 
 a very imperious and despotic tone in the paternal instruc- 
 tions. Was it not a strange act to turn my life upside down
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 171 
 
 just as, at school, we were made to wear our coats inside 
 out as a punishment? My first instinct was to address to 
 myself all the arguments that you or any other friend might 
 have found to deny my political vocation. 
 
 However, curiosit}' took me to the bankers; and on finding 
 at Messrs. Mongenod's, in hard and ready cash, the two hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand francs promised me, I confess I 
 reasoned differently. It struck me that the determination 
 which began by advancing so large a sum must in fact be 
 serious; since that power knew all, and I knew nothing, it 
 seemed to me unreasonable and inopportune to attempt to 
 struggle. After all, had I any special dislike to the path 
 pointed out to me? No. Political matters have always in- 
 terested me up to a certain point; and if my attempt to be 
 elected came to nothing, I could come back to my art, not 
 more ridiculous than a hundred other still-born ambitions 
 that see the light under every new administration. 
 
 I bought the house, I took shares in the National, and I 
 found ample encouragement in my political schemes, as well 
 as the certainty of a keen contest whenever I should reveal the 
 name of the place I meant to stand for hitherto I have had 
 no difficulty in keeping that secret. 
 
 I also executed the "Saint Ursula," and I am now waiting 
 for further instructions, which certainly seem to me to be a 
 long time coming, now that I have loudly proclaimed my am- 
 bitions and that the stir of a general election is in the air 
 a fight to which I am by no means equal. To obey the in- 
 structions of paternal caution I need not, I know, ask you 
 to be absolutely secret about all I confide to you. Eeserve is 
 a virtue which I know you to have brought to such perfection 
 that I need not preach it to you. But I am wrong, my dear 
 friend, to allow myself any such malicious allusions to the 
 past, for at this moment I am under greater obligations to you 
 than you fancy. Partly out of interest in me, no doubt, and 
 to a great extent out of a very general aversion for your 
 brother-in-law's arrogance, when I was wounded, the demo- 
 cratic party came in a body to inquire for me, and the talk
 
 172 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 about this duel, which has really helped to make me famous, 
 has no doubt greatly improved my chances of election. So a 
 truce to your perpetual thanks <Lo you not see that I have 
 to thank you? 
 
 Dorlange to Marie-Gaston. 
 
 PARIS, April 1839. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, I am still playing my part as best I 
 may of a candidate without a constituency. My friends are 
 puzzled, and I must confess that I am worried, for there are 
 but a few weeks now till the general election ; and if all these 
 mysterious preparations end in smoke, a pretty figure I shall 
 cut in the eyes of M. Bixiou, whose spiteful comments you re- 
 ported to me not long ago. Still, one thought supports me: 
 It seems hardly likely that anybody should sow two hundred 
 and fifty thousand francs in my furrow without the definite 
 purpose of gathering some sort of crop. Possibly, indeed, if 
 I could see the thing more clearly, this absence of hurry on the 
 part of those who are working for me in such a deliberate 
 and underground manner may, in fact, be the result of perfect 
 confidence in my success. Be this as it may, I am being kept, 
 in consequence, in a state of idle expectancy that is a burden 
 to me ; riding a-straddle, as it were, on two lives, one on which 
 I have as yet no foothold, and one from which I am not yet 
 quite free; I have not the spirit to start on any new work, 
 and feel uncommonly like a traveler who has come much too 
 early for his coach and does not know what to do with himself 
 or where to pass the spare time. 
 
 i You will not, I believe, be sorry that I should turn this 
 far niente to account in favor of our correspondence ; and, now 
 I think of it, I will recur to two passages in your last letter to 
 which at first I was not inclined to pay any particular atten- 
 tion. For one thing, you warned me that my political pre- 
 tension? found no favor with M. Bixiou ; and for another, 
 you insinuated that I might find myself falling in love with 
 Mme. de 1'Estorade, if I had not done so already. First as to 
 the Great Disapprobation of M. Bixiou we used to say the 
 Great Treason of M. de Mirabeau.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 173 
 
 In one word I will paint the man M. Bixiou is envious. 
 There was in him unquestionably the making of a great artist ; 
 but in the economy of his individuality the stomach has killed 
 the heart and head, and by sheer subjection to sensuous appe- 
 tite he is now for ever doomed to remain no more than a cari- 
 caturist, a man, that is to say, who lives from hand to mouth, 
 discounts his talent in frittered work, real penal servitude 
 which enables the man to live jovially, but brings him no 
 consideration, and promises him no future; a man whose 
 talent is a mere feeble abortion ; his mind as much as his face 
 is stamped with the perpetual, hopeless grimace which human 
 instinct has always ascribed to the fallen angels. And just 
 as the Prince of Darkness attacks by preference the greatest 
 saints, as reminding him most sternly of the angelic heights 
 from which he fell, so M. Bixiou sheds his venom on every 
 talent and every character in whose strength, and spirit, and 
 purpose he feels the brave resolve not to waste itself as his 
 has been wasted. But there is one thing which may reassure 
 you as to the outcome of his slander and his abuse for from 
 M. de 1'Estorade's report to you I perceive that he indulges 
 in both : namely, at the very time when he fancies he is most 
 successfully occupied in a sort of burlesque autopsy of my per- 
 son, he is but a plastic puppet in my hands, a jumping-jack of 
 which I hold the string, and into whose mouth I can put what 
 words I please. 
 
 Feeling sure that a little advertisement should prepare the 
 way for my appearance as a statesman, I looked about me 
 for some public criers, deep-mouthed, as Mme. Pernelle would 
 say, and well able to give tongue. If among blatant trum- 
 peters I could have found one more shrill, more deafeningly 
 persistent than the great Bixiou, I would have preferred him. 
 I took advantage of the malignant inquisitiveness that takes 
 that amiable pest into every studio in turn, to fill himself up 
 with information. I told him everything, of my good luck, 
 of the two hundred and fifty thousand francs, ascribing them 
 to a lucky turn on 'Change, of all my parliamentary schemes, 
 to the very number of the house I had purchased. And I am
 
 174 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 much mistaken if that number is not written down somewhere 
 in his notebook. 
 
 This, I fancy, is enough to reduce the admiration of his 
 audience at the Montcornets', and prove that this formidable 
 magpie is not quite so miraculously informed on all points. 
 
 As to my political horoscope, which he condescended to cast, 
 I cannot say that his astrology, strictly speaking, is far from 
 the truth. It is quite certain that by announcing my inten- 
 tion of never attempting to keep step with other men's 
 opinions I shall attain to the position so clearly set forth 
 by a pleader worthy to be the successor of M. de la Palisse : 
 "What do you do, gentlemen, to a man whom you place in 
 solitary confinement? You isolate him." Isolation, in fact, 
 must at first be my lot ; and the life of an artist, a solitary life, 
 in which a man spins everything out of himself, has predis- 
 posed me to accept the situation. And if I find myself in 
 consequence especially as a beginner exempt from all lobby 
 and backstairs influences, this may do me good service as a 
 speaker; for I shall be able to express myself with unbiased 
 strength and freedom. Never being bound by any pledge, by 
 any trumpery party interest, there will be nothing to hinder 
 me from being myself, or from expressing in their sacred 
 crudity any ideas I think wholesome and true. 
 
 I know full well that in the face of an assembled multitude 
 these poor truths for truth's sake do not always get their 
 chance of becoming infectious, or even of being respectfully 
 welcomed. But have you not observed that by knowing how 
 to snatch an opportunity we sometimes hit on a day which 
 seems to be a sort of festival of sense and intelligence, when 
 the right thing triumphs almost without an effort ? On those 
 days, in spite of the utmost prejudice in the hearers, the 
 speaker's honesty makes them generous and sympathetic, at 
 any rate for the moment, with all that is upright, true, and 
 magnanimous. At the same time, I do not deceive myself; 
 though this system of mine may win me some consideration 
 and notoriety as an orator, it is of very little avail in the pur- 
 suit of office, nor will it gain me the reputation as a practical
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 175 
 
 man for which it is now the fashion to sacrifice so much. But 
 if my influence at arm's length should be inconsiderable, 1 
 shall be heard at a distance, because I shall, for the most part, 
 speak out of the window outside the narrow and suffocating 
 atmosphere of parliamentary life, and over the head of its 
 petty passions and mean interests. 
 
 This kind of success will be all I need for the purposes my 
 benevolent parent seems to have in view. What he appears 
 to aim at is that I should make a noise and be heard afar ; and 
 from that side, political life has, I declare, its artistic aspect 
 which will not too monstrously jar with my past life. 
 
 Now, to come to another matter that of my actual or 
 possible passion for Mme. de FEstorade. This is your very 
 judicial epitome of the case: In 1837, when you set out for 
 Italy, Mme. de 1'Estorade was still in the bloom of her beauty. 
 Leading a life so calm, so sheltered from passion as hers has 
 always been, it is probable that the lapse of two years has left 
 no deep marks on her ; and the proof that time has stood still 
 for that privileged beauty you find in my strange and auda- 
 cious persistency in deriving inspiration from it. Hence, if 
 the mischief is not already done, at any rate you will give me 
 warning; there is but one step from the artist's admiration 
 to the man's, and the story of Pygmalion is commended to my 
 prudent meditation. 
 
 In the first place, most sapient and learned mythologist, 
 I may make this observation : The person principally inter- 
 ested in the matter, who is on the spot and in a far better 
 position than you to estimate the perils of the situation, has 
 no anxiety on the subject. M. de 1'Estorade's only complaint 
 is that my visits are not more frequent, and my reticence is, 
 in his eyes, pure bad manners. "To be sure !" you exclaim, 
 "a husband any husband is the last to suspect that his wife 
 is being made love to !" So be it. But what about Mme. de 
 1'Estorade, with her high reputation for virtue, and the cold, 
 almost calculating reasonableness which she so often brought 
 to bear on the ardent and impassioned petulance of another 
 lady known to you? And will you not also allow that the
 
 176 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 love of her children, carried to the last degree of fervor, 
 I had almost said fanaticism, that we see in women, must in 
 her be an infallible protection ? So far, and for her, well and 
 good. 
 
 But it is not her peace of mind, but mine, that concerns 
 your friendship ; for if Pygmalion had failed to animate his 
 statue, much good his love would have done him ! I might, 
 in reply to your charitable solicitude, refer you to my princi- 
 ples though the word and the thing alike are completely 
 out of fashion to a certain very absurd respect that I have 
 always professed for conjugal fidelity, to the very natural 
 obstacle to all such levity of fancy raised in my mind by the 
 serious responsibilities on which I am embarking. And I 
 might also say that, though not indeed by the superiority of 
 my genius, at least by every tendency of mind and character, 
 I am one of that earnest and serious school of a past time 
 who, regarding Art as long, and Life as short Ars longa et 
 vita brevis did not waste their time and their creative powers 
 in silly, dull intrigues. 
 
 But I can do better still. Since M. de 1'Estorade has spared 
 you no detail of the really romantic circumstances under 
 which his wife and I met, you know that it was a reminiscence 
 which made me follow the steps of such a beautiful model. 
 Well, that memory, while it attracted me in one sense to the 
 fair Countess, is the very thing of all others to keep me at a 
 distance. This, of course, seems to you very elaborate and 
 enigmatical. But, patience and I will explain. If you had 
 not thought proper to cut the thread which for so many years 
 connected our lives, I should not at this day have so much 
 to work over again; since, however, you have made it neces- 
 sary that I should pay up arrears, you must, my dear fellow, 
 make the best of my long stories, and be a patient listener. 
 
 In 1835, the last year I spent in Eonie, I was on terms of 
 considerable intimacy with a French Academy student named 
 Desroziers. He was a musician, a man of distinguished and 
 observant mind, who would probably have made a mark in his 
 art if he had not been carried off by typhoid fever the year 
 after I left.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 177 
 
 One day when we had taken it into our heads that we would 
 travel as far as Sicily, an excursion allowed by the rules of the 
 Academy, we found ourselves absolutely penniless, and we 
 were wandering about the streets of Rome considering by 
 what means we could repair the damage to our finances, when 
 we happened to pass by the Braschi palace. The doors stood 
 wide open, admitting an ebb and flow of people of all classes 
 in an endless tide. 
 
 "By the Mass!" cried Desroziers, "this is the very thing 
 for us !" 
 
 And without any explanation as to whither he was leading 
 me, we followed in the stream and made our way into the 
 palace. 
 
 After going up a magnificent marble staircase, and through 
 a long suite of rooms, poorly enough furnished as is usual 
 in Eoman palaces, where all the luxury consists in fine ceil- 
 ings, pictures, statues, and other works of art we found our- 
 selves in a room hung with black and lighted with many 
 tapers. It was, as you will have understood, a body lying in 
 state. In the middle, on a raised bed covered with a canopy, 
 lay the most hideous and grotesque thing you can conceive of. 
 Imagine a little old man, with a face and hands withered to 
 such a state of desiccation that a mummy by comparison would 
 seem fat and well-looking. Dressed in black satin breeches, 
 a violet velvet coat of fashionable cut, a white waistcoat em- 
 broidered with gold, and a full shirt frill of English point lace, 
 this skeleton's cheeks were thickly coated with rouge, which 
 enhanced the parchment yellow of the rest of the skin; and 
 crowning a fair wig, tightly curled, it had a huge hat and 
 feathers tilted knowingly over one ear, and making the most 
 reverent spectator laugh in spite of himself. After glancing 
 at this ridiculous and pitiable exhibition, the indispensable 
 preliminary to a funeral according to the aristocratic eti- 
 quette of Rome : 
 
 "There you see the end/' said Desroziers. "Now, come and 
 look at the beginning." 
 
 So saying, and paying no heed to my questions, because ho
 
 178 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 wanted to give me a dramatic surprise, he led me off to the 
 Albani gallery, and placing me in front of a statue of Adonis 
 reclining on a lion's skin : 
 
 "What do you think of that?" said he. 
 
 "That !" cried I at a first glance ; "it is as fine as an an- 
 tique." 
 
 "It is as much an antique as I am," replied Desroziers, 
 and he pointed to a signature on the plinth: "Sarrasine, 
 1758." 
 
 "Antique or modern, it is a masterpiece," I said, when I 
 had studied this delightful work from all sides. "But how are 
 this fine statue and the terrible caricature you took me to see 
 just now to help us on our way to Sicily ?" 
 
 "In your place, I should have begun by asking who and 
 what was Sarrasine." 
 
 "That was unnecessary," replied I. "I had already heard 
 of this statue. I had forgotten it again, because when I came 
 to see it the Albani gallery was closed for repairs as they 
 say of the theatres. Sarrasine, I was informed, was a pupil 
 of Bouchardon's, and, like us, a pensioner on the King of 
 Rome, where he died within six months of his arrival." 
 
 "But who or what caused his death?" 
 
 "Some illness probably," replied I, never dreaming that my 
 reply was prophetic of the end of the man I was addressing. 
 
 "Not a bit of it," said Desroziers. "Artists don't die in such 
 an idiotic way." 
 
 And he gave me the following details. 
 
 Sarrasine, a youth of genius, but of ungovernable passions, 
 almost as soon as he arrived in Rome, fell madly in love 
 with the principal soprano at the Argentina, whose name 
 was Zambinella. At that time the Pope would not allow 
 women to appear on the stage in Rome. The difficulty was 
 overcome by means well known, and imported from the East. 
 Sarrasine, in his fury at finding his love thus cheated, having 
 already executed an imaginary statue of this imaginary mis- 
 tress, was on the point of killing himself. But the singer 
 was under the protection of a great personage, who, to be be-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 179 
 
 forehand with him, had cooled the sculptor's blood by a 
 few pricks of the stiletto. Zambinella had not approved of 
 this violence, but nevertheless continued to sing at the Argen- 
 tina and on every stag^ in Europe, amassing a splendid for- 
 tune. 
 
 When too old to remain on the stage, the singer shrank 
 into a little old man, very vain, very shy, but as wilful and 
 capricious as a woman. All the affection of which he was 
 capable he bestowed on a wonderfully beautiful niece, whom 
 he placed at the head of his household. She was the Madame 
 Denis of this strange Voltaire, and he intended that she 
 should inherit his vast wealth. The handsome heiress, in love 
 with a Frenchman named the Comte de Lanty, who was sup- 
 posed to be a highly skilled chemist, though, in fact, little was 
 known of his antecedents, had great difficulty in obtaining 
 her uncle's consent to her marriage with the man of her 
 choice. And when, weary of disputing the matter, he gave in, 
 it was on condition of not parting from his niece. The better 
 to secure the fulfilment of the bargain, he gave her nothing 
 on her marriage, parting with none of his fortune, which he 
 spent liberally on all who were about him. 
 
 Bored wherever he found himself, and driven by a per- 
 petual longing for change, the fantastic old man had at dif- 
 ferent times taken up his abode in the remotest parts of the 
 world, always dragging at his heels the family party whose 
 respect and attachment he had secured at least for life. 
 
 In 1829, when he was nearly a hundred years old, and had 
 sunk into a sort of imbecility though still keenly alive when 
 he listened to music a question of some interest to the 
 Lantys and their two children brought them to settle in a 
 splendid house in the Faubourg Saint-Honore. They there 
 received all Paris. The world was attracted by the still splen- 
 did beauty of Madame de Lanty, the innocent charm of her 
 daughter Marian ina, the really royal magnificence of their en- 
 tertainments, and a peculiar flavor of mystery in the atmos- 
 phere about these remarkable strangers. With regard to 
 the old man particularly, comments were endless; he was
 
 180 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 the object of so much care and consideration, but at the same 
 time so like a petted captive, stealing out like a spectre into 
 the midst of the parties, from which such obvious efforts 
 were made to keep him away, while he seemed to find mali- 
 cious enjoyment in scaring the company, like an apparition. 
 
 The gunshots of July 1830 put this phantom to flight. On 
 leaving Paris, to the great annoyance of the Lantys, he in- 
 sisted on returning to Eome, his native city, where his pres- 
 ence had revived the humiliating memories of the past. But 
 Rome was his last earthly stage ; he had just died there, and it 
 was he whom we had seen so absurdly dressed out and lying 
 in state in the Braschi palace he also on whom we now 
 looked, in all his youthful beauty, in the Albani collection. 
 
 These details, given me by Desroziers, were no doubt curi- 
 ous, and a more dramatic contrast was, in truth, inconceiv- 
 able ; still, how would it help us visit Sicily ? That was the 
 question. 
 
 "You have skill enough to make a copy of this statue, I 
 suppose?" said Desroziers. 
 
 "At any rate, I like to think so." 
 
 "Well, I am sure of it. Get leave from the curator, and 
 set to work forthwith. I know of a purchaser for such a 
 copy." 
 
 "Why, who will buy it ?" 
 
 "The Comte de Lanty, to be sure. I am giving his daughter 
 lessons in harmony ; and when I mention in his house that I 
 know of a fine copy of this Adonis, they will never rest till it 
 belongs to them." 
 
 "But does not this savor somewhat of extortion?" 
 
 "Not in the least. Some time since the Lantys had a 
 painting done of it by Vien, as they could not purchase the 
 marble; the Albani gallery would not part with it at any 
 price. Various attempts have been made at reproducing it 
 in sculpture, but all have failed. You have only to succeed, 
 and you will be paid enough for forty trips to Sicily, for you 
 will have gratified a whim which has become hopeless, and 
 which, when the price is paid, will still think itself your 
 debtor."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 181 
 
 Two days later I had begun the work; and as it was quite 
 to my mind, I went 011 so steadily that, three weeks later, the 
 Lanty family, all in deep mourning, invaded my studio, under 
 Desroziers' guidance, to inspect a sketch in a forward stage of 
 completion. M. de Lanty seemed to know what he was about, 
 and he declared himself satisfied. Marianina, who, as her 
 grand-uncle's favorite, had been especially benefited under his 
 will, seemed delighted with what I had done. 
 
 Marianina was at that time one-and-twenty. I need not 
 describe her, since you know Mme. de FEstorade, whom she 
 strikingly resembles. This charming girl, already an accom- 
 plished musician, had a remarkable talent for every form 
 of art. Coming from time to time to my studio to follow the 
 progress of my work which, after all, was never finished, as 
 it happened she, like Princess Marguerite d'Orleans, took 
 a fancy for sculpture, and until the family left Eome some 
 months before I had come away Mile, de Lanty came to me 
 for lessons. Nothing could be further from my thoughts 
 than any idea of playing the part of Abelard or Saint-Preux, 
 but I may say I was most happy in my teaching. My pupil 
 was so intelligent, and so apt to profit by the slightest hint; 
 she had at once such a bright temper and such ripe judgment ; 
 her voice, when she sang, went so straight to the heart ; and I 
 heard so constantly from the servants, who adored her, of her 
 noble, generous, and charitable actions, that, but for my 
 knowing of her vast fortune, which kept me at a distance, I 
 might have run into the danger you are warning me to avoid 
 now. 
 
 Marianina on her part found my teaching luminous. I was 
 ere long received in the house on a somewhat familiar footing, 
 and I could easily see that my beautiful pupil took some 
 pleasure in my conversation. When the question arose of 
 the whole family returning to live in Paris, she suddenly 
 discovered that Eome was a delightful residence, and ex- 
 pressed real regret at leaving; nay, Heaven forgive me if, 
 when we parted, there was not the glitter of a tear in her eye. 
 
 On my return to Paris, my first visit was to the Hotel 
 Lanty.
 
 188 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Marianina was too well bred, and too sweet by nature, ever 
 to make herself disagreeable or to be scornful ; but I at once 
 perceived that a singularly cold reserve had taken the place 
 of the graoious and friendly freedom of her manner. It struck 
 me as probable that the liking she had shown me not, in- 
 deed, for my person, but for my mind and conversation had 
 been commented on by her family. She had no doubt been 
 lectured, and she seemed to me to be acting under strict 
 orders, as I could easil} 7 conclude from the distant and repel- 
 lent manner of M. and Mme. de Lanty. 
 
 A few months later, at the Salon of 1837, I fancied I saw 
 a corroboration of my suspicions. I had exhibited a statue 
 which made some sensation ; there was always a mob round my 
 Pandora. Mingling with the crowd I used to stand incognito, 
 to enjoy my success and gather my laurels fresh. One 
 Friday, the fashionable day, I saw from afar the approach of 
 the Lanty family. The mother was on the arm of a well- 
 known "buck," Comte Maxime de Trailles; Marianina was 
 with her brother ; M. de Lanty, who looked anxious, as usual, 
 was alone; and, like the man in the song of Malbrouck, 
 "ne portait rien" carried nothing. By a crafty manoeuvre, 
 while the party were pushing their way through the crowd, I 
 slipped behind them so as to hear what they thought, without 
 being seen. Nil admirari think nothing fine is the natural 
 instinct of every man of fashion ; so, after a summary inspec- 
 tion of my work, M. de Trailles began to discover the most 
 atrocious faults, and his verdict was pronounced in a loud 
 and distinct voice, so that his dictum could not be lost on 
 anybody for some little distance round. Marianina, thinking 
 differently, listened to this profound critic with a shrug or 
 two of her shoulders ; then when he ceased : 
 
 "How fortunate it is !" said she, "that you should have come 
 with us ! But for your enlightened judgment I should have 
 been quite capable, like the good-natured vulgar, of thinking 
 this statue beautiful. It is really a pity that the sculptor 
 should not be here to learn his business from you." 
 
 "But that is just where lie is, as it happens, behind you/'
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 183 
 
 said a stout woman, with a loud shout of laughter an old 
 woman who kept carriages for hire, and to whom I had just 
 nodded as the owner of the house in which I have my studio. 
 
 Instinct was prompter than reflection; Marianina invol- 
 untarily turned round. On seeing me, a faint blush colored 
 her face. I hastily made my escape. 
 
 A girl who could so frankly take my part, and then betray 
 so much confusion at being discovered in her advocacy, would 
 certainly not be displeased to see me; and though at my first 
 visit I had been so coldly received, having now been made 
 Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, in recognition of my ex- 
 hibited work, I determined to try again. The distinction 
 conferred on me might possibly gain me a better reception 
 from the haughty Comte de Lanty. 
 
 I was admitted by an old servant for whom Marianina had 
 great regard. 
 
 "Ah, monsieur," said he, "terrible things have been happen- 
 ing here !" 
 
 "Why what?" cried I anxiously. 
 
 "I will take in your name, sir," was his only reply. 
 
 A minute later I was shown into M. de Lanty's study. 
 
 The man received me without rising, and greeted me with 
 these words: 
 
 "I admire your courage, monsieur, in showing yourself in 
 this house!" 
 
 "But I have not been treated here, as yet, in a way that 
 should make me need any great courage." 
 
 "You have come, no doubt," M. de Lanty went on, "to fetch 
 the object you so clumsily allowed to fall into our hands. I 
 will return you that elegant affair." 
 
 He rose and took out of his writing-table drawer a dainty 
 little pocket-l5ook, which he handed to me. 
 
 As I looked at it in blank amazement : 
 
 "Oh, the letters, to be sure, are not there," he said. "I 
 supposed that you would allow me to keep them." 
 
 "This pocket-book letters? The whole thing is a riddle 
 to me, monsieur."
 
 184 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 At this moment Mme. de Lanty came in. 
 
 "What do you want ?" asked her husband roughly. 
 
 "I heard that M. Dorlange was here," said she, "and I fan- 
 cied that there might be some unpleasant passages between 
 you and him. I thought it my duty, as a wife, to interpose." 
 
 "Your presence, madame," said I, "is not needed to impose 
 perfect moderation on me; the whole thing is the result of 
 some misunderstanding." 
 
 "Oh, this is really too much !" cried M. de Lanty, going 
 again to the drawer from which he had taken the pocket- 
 book. And rudely pushing into my hands a little packet of 
 ' letters tied up with pink ribbon, he went on : "Now, I imagine 
 the misunderstanding will be cleared up." 
 
 I looked at the letters ; they had not been through the post, 
 and were all addressed "A Monsieur Dorlange," in a woman's 
 writing perfectly unknown to me. 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur/' said I coldly, "you are better informed 
 than I am. You have in your possession letters which seem 
 to belong to me, but which have never reached me." 
 
 "On my word !" cried M. de Lanty, "it must be confessed 
 that you are an admirable actor. I never saw innocence and 
 amazement more successfully assumed." 
 
 But, while he was speaking, Mme. de Lanty had cleverly 
 contrived to place herself behind her husband; and by a 
 perfectly intelligible pantomime of entreaty, she besought 
 me to accept the situation I was so strenuously denying. My 
 honor was too deeply implicated, and I really saw too little of 
 what I might be doing, to feel inclined to surrender at once. 
 So, with the hope of feeling my way a little, I said : 
 
 "But, monsieur, from whom are these letters? Who ad- 
 dressed them to me?" 
 
 "From whom are the letters ?" exclaimed M. de Lanty, in a 
 tone in which irony was merged in indignation. 
 
 "Denial is useless, monsieur," Madame de Lanty put in. 
 "Marianina has confessed everything." 
 
 "Mademoiselle Marianina wrote those letters- A.O me?" re- 
 plied I. "Then there is a simple issue to tb> matter; con-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 185 
 
 front her with me. From her lips I will accept the most 
 improbable statements as true." 
 
 "The trick is gallant enough," retorted M. de Lanty. "But 
 Marianina is 110 longer here ; she is in a convent, sheltered for 
 ever from your audacity and from the temptations of her 
 ridiculous passion. If this is what you came to learn, now 
 you know it. That is enough, for I will not deny that my 
 patience and moderation have limits, if your impudence knows 
 none." 
 
 "Monsieur!" cried I, in great excitement. 
 
 But when I saw that Mme. de Lanty was ready to drop on 
 her knees to entreat me, it struck me that perhaps Maria- 
 nina's future fate might depend on my conduct now. Besides, 
 M. de Lanty was slight and frail, he was near sixty years of 
 age, and seemed thoroughly convinced of this imaginary 
 outrage; so I said no more in reply to his insulting speech, 
 and left without any further words. 
 
 I hoped that I might find the old servant who had given 
 me warning of this scene, on my way as I went out, and obtain 
 some explanation from him; but I did not see him, and was 
 left, with no light whatever, to an indefinite variety of sup- 
 positions. 
 
 I was but just up next morning when I was told that M. 
 1'Abbe Fontanon wished to see me. I desired that he should 
 be shown in, and presently found myself face to face with a 
 tall old man, of a bilious complexion, and a gloomy, stern 
 expression, who, conscious perhaps of his forbidding appear- 
 ance, tried to remedy it by the refinement of excessive polite- 
 ness and an affectation of honeyed but frigid servility. 
 
 As soon as he was seated, he began : 
 
 "Monsieur, Mme. la Comtesse de Lanty does me the honor 
 of accepting me as the keeper of her conscience. From her 
 I have heard of a scene that took place yesterday between you 
 and her husband. Prudence would not at the time allow of 
 her giving some explanations to which you have an undoubted 
 right, and I have undertaken to communicate them to you ; 
 that is the reason of my presence here."
 
 186 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "I am listening, sir/' was all I replied. 
 
 "Some weeks ago/' the priest went on, "M. de Lanty pur- 
 chased an estate in the neighborhood of Paris, and took ad- 
 vantage of the fine weather to go thither with his family. M. 
 de Lanty sleeps badly ; one night when he was lying awake in 
 the dark, he fancied he heard footsteps below his window, 
 which he at once opened, calling out, 'Who's there?' in em- 
 phatic tones, to the nocturnal visitor he suspected. Nor was 
 he mistaken, there was somebody there somebody who made 
 no answer, but took to his heels, two pistol shots fired by M. 
 de Lanty having no effect. At first it was supposed that the 
 stranger was bent on robbery; this, however, did not seem 
 likely; the house was not fnrnished, the owners had only the 
 most necessary things for a short stay ; thieves, consequently, 
 who generally are well informed, could not expect to find 
 anything of value: and besides, some information reached 
 M. de Lanty which gave his suspicions another direction. He 
 was told that, two days after his arrival, a fine young man 
 had taken a bedroom in an inn at the neighboring village ; that 
 this gentleman seemed anxious to keep out of sight, and had 
 several times gone out at night ; so not a robber evidently 
 but a lover." 
 
 "I have never met with a romancer, M. le Abbe," said I, 
 "who told his story in better style." 
 
 By this not very complimentary insinuation, I hoped to 
 induce the speaker to abridge his story ; for, as you may sup- 
 pose, I wanted to hear the end. 
 
 "My romance is, unfortunately, painful fact," replied he. 
 "You will see. M. de Lanty had for some time been watching 
 his daughter, whose vehement passions must, he feared, ere 
 long result in an explosion. You, yourself, monsieur, had in 
 Rome given him some uneasiness " 
 
 "Quite gratuitous, M. le Abbe," I put in. 
 
 "Yes. I know that in all your acquaintance with Mile, 
 de Lanty your behavior has been perfectly correct. And, 
 indeed, their leaving Rome put an end to this first ground 
 for uneasiness ; but in Paris another figure seemea to fill her
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 187 
 
 young mind, and day after day M. de Lanty proposed coming 
 to some explanation with his daughter. The man who seems 
 to have captured her is audacious, enterprising, quite capable 
 of running serious risks if he could but compromise an heiress. 
 But on being questioned as to whether by any levity of manner 
 she had encouraged or given cause for the daring invasion 
 of which they were seeking the perpetrator, Mile, de Lanty's 
 manner showed her to be quite above suspicion." 
 
 "I could have sworn to it !" cried I. 
 
 "Wait a moment," said the Abbe. "A maid was then ac- 
 cused, and desired to leave the house at once. This woman's' 
 father is a violent-tempered man, and if she returned home 
 charged with anything so disgraceful, she would meet with 
 ruthless severity of treatment. Mile, de Lanty that much 
 justice I must do her had a Christian impulse ; she could not 
 allow an innocent person to be punished in her stead; she 
 threw herself at her father's feet, and confessed that the noc- 
 turnal visit had been for her; and though she had not author- 
 ized it, she was not altogether surprised. 
 
 "M. de Lanty at once named the supposed culprit ; but she 
 would not admit that he had guessed rightly, though she re- 
 fused to mention any other name instead. The whole day 
 was spent in altercation; M. de Lanty at last gave up the 
 struggle, desiring his wife to try what she could do where he 
 had failed. He thought, and with reason, that there might be 
 more freedom and candor between the mother and daughter. 
 
 "In point of fact, alone with Mme. de Lanty, Marianina at 
 length confessed that her father's suspicions were correct. 
 At the same time, she gave a reason for her obstinate reserve, 
 which certainly deserved consideration. The man whose au- 
 dacity she had encouraged had fought and won in several duels. 
 By birth he is the equal of M. de Lanty and his son ; he moves 
 in the same society, and consequently they frequently meet. 
 Hence the greatest disasters might ensue. How could the 
 father or brother endure the man's presence without demand- 
 ing satisfaction for conduct so insulting to the honor of the 
 family? What then was to be done? It was the imprudent
 
 188 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 girl herself who suggested the idea of giving a name which, 
 while justifying M. de Lanty's fury, would not cry to him for 
 vengeance/' 
 
 "I understand," I interrupted. "The name of a man of no 
 birth, a person .of no consequence, an artist perhaps, a 
 sculptor, or some such low fellow 
 
 "I think, monsieur," said the Abbe, "that you are ascribing 
 to Mademoiselle de Lanty a feeling to which she is quite a 
 stranger. In my opinion her love of the arts is only too 
 strongly pronounced, and that perhaps is what has led to this 
 unfortunate laxity of imagination. The thing that made her 
 take refuge in the use of your name from the risks she foresaw 
 was her recollection of the suspicions M. de Lanty had already 
 expressed; she thought of you as the most likely seeming 
 accomplice, and I am sure I may say that she saw nothing 
 beyond." 
 
 "And then, M. 1'Abbe, what about the pocket-book the 
 letters which played so strange a part in yesterday's scene ?" 
 
 "That again was a device of Marianina's ; and though, as it 
 has turned out, the strange inventiveness of her wit has had a 
 good result, it was this in her character which, if she had 
 remained in the world, would have given cause for uneasiness. 
 When once she and Mme. de Lanty had agreed that you were 
 to be the night-prowler, the statement had to be supported by 
 evidence to favor its success. Instead of words, this terrible 
 young lady determined to act in that sense. She spent the 
 night in writing the letters you saw. She used different kinds 
 of paper, ink of which she altered the tone, and she carefully 
 varied the writing ; she forgot nothing. Having written them, 
 she placed them in a pocket-book her father had never seen; 
 and then, after having made a hunting dog smell it all over 
 a dog noted for its intelligence and allowed in the house 
 she threw the whole thing into a clump of shrubs in the park, 
 and came back to endure her father's angry cross-examination. 
 
 "The same sharp contest had begun once more when the 
 dog came in carrying the pocket-book to his young mistress. 
 She acted agonized alarm; M. de Lanty pounced on the cb-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 189 
 
 ject, and to him everything was clear he was deluded as 
 had been intended." 
 
 "And all these details/' said I, with no great air of cre- 
 dulity, "were reported to you by Mme. de Lanty?" 
 
 "Confided to me, monsieur, and you yourself had proof 
 yesterday of their exactitude. Your refusal to recognize the 
 situation might have undone everything, and that was why 
 Mme. de Lanty interposed. She desires me to thank you for 
 your connivance passive connivance at any rate in this 
 pious fraud. She thought she could do no less than show her 
 gratitude by putting you in possession of her secret and 
 trusting to your silence." 
 
 "And Mademoiselle Marianina ?" I asked. 
 
 "As M. de Lanty told you, she was immediately sent away 
 to a convent in Italy. To avoid any scandal, she is said to 
 have had a sudden call to the religious life. Her future pros- 
 pects will depend on the attitude she chooses to assume." 
 
 Even if my self-respect had not been so aggrieved by this 
 story if it were true I should have felt some doubts, for 
 does it not strike you as rather too romantic? However, an 
 explanation has since offered itself, which may afford a clue 
 to the facts. Not long ago Marianina's brother married into 
 the family of a German Grand-Duke. The Lantys must have 
 had to sacrifice immense sums to achieve such an alliance. 
 May not Marianina have paid the expenses of this royal alli- 
 ance, since she, by her grand-uncle's will, had the bulk of his 
 fortune, and was disinherited by taking the veil ? Or again, 
 may she not have really felt for me the affection expressed in 
 her letters, and have been childish enough to write them, 
 though she would not go so far as to send them ? Some mis- 
 chance may have led to their discovery, and then to punish 
 her not for having written, but for having thought so she 
 was shut up in a convent; and to disgust me with her, this 
 got-up story of another lover was invented for my benefit, in 
 which I am made to play the part of lightning-conductor. 
 
 I can believe anything of these Lantys. The head of the 
 family has always seemed to me a very deep and crafty char-
 
 190 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 acter, capable at a pinch of the blackest designs; and then, 
 if you remember that these people have all their lives slept, as 
 it were, on the secret knowledge of a fortune so ignobly earned, 
 is it not conceivable that they should be ripe for any kind of 
 intrigues, or can you imagine them dainty in their choice of 
 means to an end ? 
 
 And I may add that the official intervention of the Abbe 
 Fontanon justifies the worst imputations. I have made in- 
 quiries about him ; he is one of those mischief -making priests 
 who are always eager to have a finger in private family af- 
 fairs; and it was he who helped to upset the home of M. de 
 Granville, Attorney-General in Paris under the Restoration. 
 
 Whatever may be true or false in all my hypotheses, I have 
 no means of knowing, and am not likely to learn, at any rate 
 for a long time to come. But, as you may suppose, the 
 thought of Marianina, like a vision floating above this chaos, 
 is to me a spot of light which, in spite of myself, attracts my 
 gaze. May I love her? Must I hate and despise her? This 
 is the question I ask myself daily; and under the shroud of 
 such uncertainty the memory of a woman is, it seems to me, 
 more likely to become permanent than to fade. 
 
 And is it not a really diabolical coincidence that my chisel 
 should be called upon to execute a pale daughter of the 
 cloister ? Under these circumstances was not my imagination 
 inevitably memory; could I invent any image but that which 
 possesses my soul and is so deeply graven on my brain ? And 
 behold ! a second Marianina rises up before me in the flesh ; 
 and when, for the better furtherance of the work, the artist 
 takes advantage of this stroke of fortune, he must be supposed, 
 forsooth, to have transferred his affections. Could that frigid 
 Mme. de 1'Estorade ever fill the place of my enchanting pupil 
 with the added charm and halo of forbidden fruit and of 
 mystery ? In short, you must give up all your imaginings. 
 
 The other day I was within an ace of relating the whole 
 romance of Mademoiselle de Lanty to her supposed rival. 
 And if I really aspired to this woman's favor but she can 
 love no one but her children a pretty way of courting her
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 191 
 
 it would be, I may say, to tell her that little tale. And so, to 
 return to our starting-point, I care no more for M. Bixiou's 
 opinion than for last year's roses. And so, I really do not 
 know whether I am in love with Marianina; but I am quite 
 sure that I am not in love with Madame de 1'Estorade. This, 
 it seems to me, is a plain and honest answer. 
 
 Now, let us leave things to the Future, who is the master 
 of us all. 
 
 The Comtesse de 1'Estorade to Madame Octave de Camps. 
 
 PARIS, April 1839. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAME, M. Dorlange came last evening to take 
 leave of us. He is starting to-day for Arcis-sur-Aube, where 
 he is to see his statue set up in its place. That also is the 
 town where the Opposition are about to propose him as their 
 candidate. M. de 1'Estorade declares that no worse choice 
 could have been made, and that he has not a chance of being 
 elected ; but this is not what I have to write about. 
 
 M. Dorlange called early after dinner. I was alone, for M. 
 de 1'Estorade was dining with the Minister of the Interior; 
 and the children, who had been on a long excursion in the 
 afternoon, had of their own accord begged to go to bed before 
 the usual hour. Thus the conversation previously interrupted 
 by Madame de la Bastie was naturally re-opened ; and I was 
 about to ask M. Dorlange to finish the story, of which he had 
 only given me a hint of the end, when old Lucas came in, 
 bringing me a letter. It was from my Armand, to tell me 
 that he had been in the sickroom all day, very unwell. 
 
 "I want the carriage," said I to Lucas, with such agitation 
 as you may suppose. 
 
 "Well, madame, but monsieur ordered it to fetch him at 
 half-past eight, and Tony is gone," replied Lucas. 
 
 "Then get me a hackney cab." 
 
 "I am sure I don't know whether I can find one," said the 
 old man, who always raises difficulties. "It has just begun 
 to rain."
 
 192 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Without noticing this objection, and quite forgetting M. 
 Dorlange, whom I left somewhat embarrassed, not liking to 
 leave without saying good-bye, I went to my room to put on 
 my bonnet and shawl. Having done so in great haste, I re- 
 turned to the drawing-room, where I still found my visitor. 
 
 "You must excuse me, monsieur," said I, "for leaving yon 
 so abruptly; I am hurrying off to the College Henri IV. I 
 could not endure to spend the night in such anxiety as I am 
 feeling in consequence of a note from my son, who tells me 
 that he has been in the sickroom all day." 
 
 "But surely," said M. Dorlange, "you are not going alone 
 in a hackney coach to such an out-of-the-way part of the 
 town?" 
 
 "Lucas will come with me." 
 
 At this moment Lucas came in again. His words were 
 fulfilled ; there was not a cab to be had, and it was pouring 
 in torrents. Time was flying ; it was almost too late already to 
 visit at the school, where everybody would be in bed by nine 
 o'clock. 
 
 "I must go," said I to Lucas. "Go and put on your thick 
 shoes, and we will go on foot with umbrellas." 
 
 I saw the man's face lengthen; he is no longer young; he 
 likes his ease, and he complains of rheumatism in the winter. 
 He suddenly found a number of objections ; it was very late ; 
 we should revolutionize the school; I should certainly catch 
 cold; M. Armand could not be very ill since he had written 
 himself my plan of campaign was evidently not at all to my 
 old man's mind. 
 
 Then M. Dorlange very obligingly offered to go for me and 
 come back to report the invalid, but such half-measures will 
 not do for me I wanted to see, and satisfy myself. So, with 
 many thanks to him, I said to Lucas, in an authoritative 
 tone: 
 
 "Come, go and get ready, and be quick, for one thing you 
 have said that is perfectly true it is growing late." 
 
 Thus nailed to the point, Lucas boldly hoisted the flag of 
 rebellion.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 193 
 
 "It is simply impossible, madame, that you should go out 
 in such weather, and I do not want to get a scolding from 
 the master for giving in to any such idea." 
 
 "Then you simply do not mean to obey me ?" 
 
 "You know, madame, that for anything useful or reason- 
 able I would do whatever you might order, even if it were to 
 walk through fire." 
 
 "To be sure, warmth is good for the rheumatism, and rain 
 is bad for it." 
 
 Then I turned to M. Dorlange without listening to the old 
 rebel's reply, and said to him: 
 
 "Since you were good enough to offer to go alone on this 
 errand, I venture to hope that you will not refuse me the sup- 
 port of your arm." 
 
 "Like Lucas," said he, "I do not see that this expedition is 
 indispensable ; however, as I have no fear of being scolded by 
 M. de 1'Estorade, I will, of course, have the honor of escorting 
 you." 
 
 We set out; and as I went downstairs, I could not help 
 thinking that life is full of singular coincidences. Here was 
 a man whom I do not wholly trust, who, two months ago, 
 manoeuvred, like a pirate, to get sight of me, and to whom I 
 had now entrusted myself with complete confidence, under 
 conditions which the most favored lover would have hardly 
 dared to dream of. 
 
 The weather really was horrible; we had not gone fifty 
 yards when we were already drenched, in spite of Lucas' vast 
 umbrella, held by M. Dorlange so as to shelter me by sacri- 
 ficing himself. Then a new complication arose. A hackney 
 cab went past; my companion hailed the driver; it was empty. 
 To tell my escort that I could not allow him to get in with 
 me was out of the question. Not only would such an implied 
 doubt have been grossly uncivil, but it would have been de- 
 rogatory to myself even to suggest it. And yet, you see, my 
 dear friend, what slippery ways we tread, and how true it is 
 that from the time of Dido and ^Eneas rain has always served 
 the turn of lovers!
 
 194 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 It is difficult to talk in a cab; the clatter of wheels and 
 windows compels one to shout. M. Dorlange knew too that 
 I was extremely uneasy, and he had the good taste to make no 
 attempt at a prolonged conversation; just now and again he 
 made some trivial remark to break the silence which other- 
 wise would have been awkward under the circumstances. 
 
 When we reached the school, M. Dorlange, after handing 
 me out, understood that he could not go in with me; he got 
 into the coach again to wait for me. 
 
 Master Armand's indisposition was somewhat of a practical 
 joke so far as I was concerned. His illness was no more than 
 a headache, which since his note was written had completely 
 disappeared. The doctor ; who had seen him in the morning, 
 to order something, had prescribed lime-flower tea, and told 
 him he could return to the classroom next day. So I had 
 taken a sledge-hammer to kill a flea, and committed a pre- 
 posterous blunder in arriving at an hour when all the staff 
 were in bed, to find my young gentleman still up and playing 
 a game of chess with one of the attendants. 
 
 By the time I went out again the rain had ceased, and bright 
 moonlight silvered the pavement, which the rain had so thor- 
 oughly washed that there was not a sign of mud. I was so 
 oppressed and vexed that I longed for the fresh air. So I 
 begged M. Dorlange to send away the coach, and we walked 
 home. This was a fine chance for him ; between the Pantheon 
 and the Eue de Varenne there is time to say much. But M. 
 Dorlange was so little inclined to avail himself of the situa- 
 tion, that, taking Master Armand's prank as his text, he ex- 
 patiated on the mischief of spoiling children. The subject 
 is one I have no liking for, and he might have discovered that 
 from the dry reserve with which I took my part in the con- 
 versation. 
 
 "Come," thought I, "we must come to an end of this story, 
 which is always interrupted, like the famous anecdote of San- 
 cho's goatherd which could never be told." 
 
 So, cutting short his theories of education 
 
 "It seems to me," said I to my earnest companion, "that
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 195 
 
 this would be a good opportunity for going on with the con- 
 fidential narrative you were interrupted in. Here we are 
 quite safe from any intrusion." 
 
 "I am afraid," said M. Dorlange, "that I am but a bad nar- 
 rator. I exhausted all my genius the other day in communi- 
 cating the history to Marie-Gaston." 
 
 "That," said I, with a laugh, "is against your principles of 
 secrecy, in which a third person is one too many." 
 
 "Oh, Marie-Gaston and I are but one person. Besides, I 
 had to give some answer to the odd fancies he had formed as 
 to you and me." 
 
 "What as to me !" 
 
 "Yes. He opines that by staring too hard at the sun one 
 may be dazzled by its rays." 
 
 "Which, in less metaphorical language, means? " 
 
 "That seeing how strange the circumstances were that led 
 to my having the honor of your acquaintance, I might possi- 
 bly, madame, in your society, fail to preserve my common- 
 sense and self-possession." 
 
 "And your story answers this hypothesis of Marie-Gas- 
 ton's?" 
 
 "You shall judge," said M. Dorlange. 
 
 And then, without further preamble, he told me a rather 
 long story, which I do not repeat to you, my dear madame, 
 because on the one hand it has really nothing to do with your 
 functions as keeper of my conscience, and on the other it is 
 mixed up with a family secret which demands more discretion 
 on my part than I could have anticipated. 
 
 The upshot of the matter is that M. Dorlange is in love 
 with the woman who had sat in his imagination for the Saint 
 Ursula. Still, as it must be said that she is apparently for 
 ever out of his reach, it did not seem to me quite impossible 
 that he might sooner or later transfer to me the feeling he 
 still preserves for her. Hence, when, having finished his nar- 
 rative, he asked me whether I did not take it as a triumphant 
 refutation of our friend's absurd fears, I could but reply : 
 
 "Modesty makes it incumbent on me to share your confi-
 
 196 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 dence. At the same time, a cannon ball often kills by 
 ricochet." 
 
 "And you believe me guilty of the audacity which Marie- 
 Gaston fears may be so fatal to me ?" 
 
 ''I do not know that it would be audacity," said I, rather 
 harshly; "but if you had such a fancy and took it to heart, 
 I should, I own, think you greatly to be pitied." 
 
 His reply was a home-thrust: 
 
 "Well, madame, you need not pity me. In my opinion, 
 first love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from 
 catching the complaint a second time." 
 
 This closed the conversations the story had been a long one, 
 and we were at home. I asked M. Dorlange to come upstairs, 
 a politeness he accepted, remarking that M. de 1'Estorade 
 had probably come in, and he could say good-bye to him. 
 
 My husband was in fact at home. I do not know whether 
 Lucas, to anticipate the blame I should have cast on him, had 
 done his best to misrepresent my proceedings, or whether my 
 maternal exploit prompted M. de 1'Estorade, for the first time 
 in his life, to a spasm of jealousy of which he was unable to 
 conceal the unfamiliar symptoms; at any rate, he received 
 me with an indignant rating, saying that nothing was so un- 
 heard of as the idea of going out at this hour, and in such 
 weather, to inquire after an invalid who, by announcing his 
 illness himself, showed it was not in the least serious. 
 
 After allowing him to go on for some time in a highly 
 unbecoming manner, I thought it was time to put an end to 
 the scene. 
 
 "Well," said I sharply, "I wished to get some sleep to- 
 night ; I went to the school in pouring rain. Now I have come 
 back in beautiful moonlight, and I beg to remind you that 
 after kindly consenting to escort me, M. Dorlange, who leaves 
 Paris to-morrow, came upstairs to bid you good-bye." 
 
 I have habitually too much influence over M. de 1'Estorade 
 for this call to order to fail of its effect ; still, I could see that 
 there was something of the aggrieved husband in his tone; 
 for, having brought in M. Dorlange to divert his thoughts, I
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 197 
 
 soon perceived that I had but made him a victim to my ogre'a 
 ill-temper, which was now vented on him. 
 
 After telling him that his nomination for election had been 
 much discussed at the Minister's dinner-table, M. de 1'Esto- 
 rade, with evident satisfaction, told him all the reasons which 
 must lead to his failing conspicuously; the constituency of 
 Arcis-sur-Aube was one of those where the Ministry were most 
 secure of the votes; a man of extraordinary ability had 
 already been sent down there, and had for some days been 
 working up the place, and he had sent the most flourishing 
 reports to the Government. All this was dealing in gen- 
 eralities, and M. Dorlange replied with perfect modesty, and 
 the manner of a man who has prepared himself beforehand 
 for all the freaks of chance that may affect his return. But 
 M. de 1'Estorade had a last shaft to fling which certainly 
 could not fail to prove effective, since with the same blow it 
 would hit the candidate and the profligate if profligate he 
 were. 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear sir," said M. de 1'Estorade to his 
 victim, "when a man rushes into a parliamentary career, he 
 must remember that he has to show every card his public 
 and his private life. His adversaries overhaul his past and 
 present with merciless hands, and woe to him whose life has 
 the shadow of a stain ! Well, I may tell you plainly, this 
 evening a little scandal was raked up a very little one in the 
 life of an artist, but one which, as affecting a representative 
 of the people, assumes far more serious proportions. You 
 understand me. I am alluding to the handsome Italian wo- 
 man who lives under your roof. Take care ; you may be called 
 to account by some puritan voter for the more or less doubt- 
 ful morality of her connection with you." 
 
 M. Dorlange's reply was very dignified: 
 
 "I can have but one wish for those who choose to question 
 me on that detail of my domestic life," said he, "and that is 
 that they may have nothing worse to look back upon in theirs. 
 If I had not already bored Madame la Comtesse with one 
 interminable story during our walk home, I would tell you
 
 198 THE MEMBER FOR AROIS 
 
 that of the pretty Italian,, and you would see that her presence 
 in my house need deprive me of none of the esteem you have 
 kindly honored me with." 
 
 "But indeed/' said M. de 1'Estorade, suddenly mollified by 
 hearing that our long walk had been spent in narrating his- 
 tory, "you take my remarks far too seriously ! As I said but 
 just now, an artist needs a handsome model, nothing can be 
 more natural; but it is a piece of furniture that is of no 
 use to gentlemen engaged in politics." 
 
 "What appears to be of more use to them," retorted M. 
 Dorlange, with some vivacity, "is the advantage that may 
 be taken of a calumny greedily accepted with evil haste, and 
 with no effort to verify it. However, far from dreading an 
 explanation on the subject you are pleased to discuss, I am 
 eager for it; and the Ministry would be doing me a service 
 by instructing so clever an inquisitor as they have put on 
 my track to bring this delicate matter before my constituents." 
 
 "So you are going to-morrow?" asked M. de 1'Estorade, 
 finding that he had started on a path where, instead of bring- 
 ing M. Dorlange to confusion, he had afforded him an op- 
 portunity of answering with no little haughtiness of tone 
 and phrase. 
 
 "Yes, and early in the day, so that I will have the honor 
 now of wishing you good-night, for I still have some packing 
 to finish." 
 
 With these words M. Dorlange rose, and after bowing to 
 me rather formally, he left the room, not shaking hands 
 with my husband, who, indeed, did not offer him the op- 
 portunity. 
 
 M. de 1'Estorade, to avoid the impending and inevitable 
 explanation, at once exclaimed : 
 
 "Well, and what was the matter with Armand ?" 
 
 "What was the matter with Armand matters little," replied 
 I, "as you may suppose from my having returned without 
 him and showing no anxiety; what is a far more interesting 
 question is what is the matter with you, for I never saw you 
 BO out of tune, so bitter and cross-grained."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 199 
 
 "What ! Because I told that ridiculous candidate that he 
 might go into mourning at once over his chances ?" 
 
 "In the first place, it was not complimentary, and at any 
 rate the time was ill-chosen, when my motherly alarms had 
 just inflicted an odious amount of trouble on the man you at- 
 tacked." 
 
 "I cannot stand officious people," retorted M. de 1'Estorade, 
 in a higher tone than he usually adopts with me. "And, 
 after all, if this gentleman had not been on the spot to offer 
 you his escort, you would not have set out on this unseemly 
 expedition." 
 
 "You are mistaken. I should have gone in a still more 
 unseemly manner; for I should have gone alone, as your 
 servants are the masters here, and refused to escort me." 
 
 "But, after all, you must confess that if any one had met 
 you at half-past nine at night, walking arm in arm with M. 
 Dorlange, out by the Pantheon, it would have been thought 
 strange, to say the least." 
 
 Then, affecting to have just discovered what I had known 
 for an hour past: 
 
 "Bless me, monsieur!" cried I, "after fifteen years of 
 married life are you doing me the honor of being jealous 
 for the first time? Then, indeed, I can' understand that, in 
 spite of your regard for the proprieties, you took advantage 
 of my being present to question M. Dorlange on the not very 
 proper subject of the woman who is supposed to be his 
 mistress. It was neither more nor less than very basely 
 perfidious ; you were trying to lower him in my eyes." 
 
 Thus riddled with shot, my hapless husband tried indeed 
 to beat about the bush, and at last found no better alternative 
 than to ring for Lucas, whom he lectured pretty sharply; 
 and there the matter ended. 
 
 But although I had won an easy victory, the great little 
 incidents of the evening left a most uncomfortable impres- 
 sion on my mind. I had come in quite satisfied, thinking 
 that I now knew exactly irliere to have M. Dorlange. To 
 be honest- at tte moment when he uttered that magniloquent,
 
 200 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Do not pity me," as a woman is always more or less a 
 woman, my vanity felt a little shock ; but as I came upstairs 
 I reflected that the firm and simple tone in which he spoke 
 commanded belief. It was undoubtedly a natural and frank 
 outburst of genuine feeling, which was not aimed at me, 
 but certainly intended for some one else. So I might be 
 perfectly at my ease. 
 
 But, then, what is to be said of the conjugal tact which, 
 while trying to make the man of whom I had really been 
 thinking too much commit himself in my presence, gave him 
 an opportunity of appearing in a better light than ever, and 
 to the greatest advantage? For there is no doubt whatever 
 that the indignation with which M. Dorlange retaliated on 
 the malignancy of which he was the object was the answer of 
 an easy conscience, sure, too, of being able to refute the 
 calumny. What, my dear madame, I ask you, what is this 
 man whose vulnerable point is not discoverable, whom we 
 have seen on one or two occasions positively heroic and 
 that as if he himself did not perceive the fact, as if he never 
 lived but in that high air, and greatness were his element? 
 Is it possible that, all appearances to the contrary, this Italian 
 woman is nothing to him? 
 
 Are there, then, in the midst of our small and colorless 
 society still some characters so strongly tempered that they 
 can walk on the very precipice of opportunity and never fall ! 
 What a nature must that be that can plunge through thorns 
 and leave no wool! I had fancied I could make a friend 
 of him ! 
 
 Nay, I will not play at that game. Supposing this Dante 
 Alighieri of the chisel to be convinced at last that his Beatrice 
 will never return to him ; supposing that he should again, as 
 he has done once already, look round on me what could 1 do ? 
 Is a woman ever safe against the powerful fascination that 
 such a man must exert? As M. de Montriveau said to the 
 poor Duchesse de Langeais, not only must she never touch 
 the axe, but she must keep as far from it as she can, for 
 fear that a beam reflected from such polished steel should 
 dazzle her eyes.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 201 
 
 Happily, M. de 1'Estorade is already hostile to this danger- 
 ous man; but my husband may be quite easy, I shall take 
 care to encourage and cultivate this germ of enmity. And 
 besides this, if M. Dorlange should be elected, he and my 
 husband will be in opposite camps; and political passions 
 thank Heaven ! have often cut short older and better es- 
 tablished intimacies than this. 
 
 "But he saved your little girl," you will say; "you were 
 afraid of his loving you, and he does not think of you at all ; 
 he is a man of cultivated intellect and magnanimous feeling, 
 with whom there is not a fault to the found? " 
 
 What arguments are these, my dear lady? He frightens 
 me, and that is enough. And when I am frightened, I 
 neither argue nor reason; I only consider whether I have 
 legs and breath, and simply run and run till I feel myself 
 in safety. 
 
 Dorlange to Marie-Oaston. 
 
 PARIS, April 1839. 
 
 On coming in from taking leave of the Estorades, I find 
 your letter, my dear friend, announcing your immediate ar- 
 rival. I will wait here all to-morrow; but in the evening, 
 without any further delay, I must set out for Arcis-sur-Aube, 
 where, vdthin a week, the end of my political struggle is to be 
 fought out. What supporters and abettors I have in that 
 town which as I am informed I am so anxious to repre- 
 sent ; on whose help or opposition I am to build my hopes ; in 
 one word, who it is that is making this electoral bed for me 
 to lie in, of all this I know no more now than I did a year 
 ago when I was first apprised of my parliamentary vocation. 
 
 Only a few days since did I receive a communication 
 emanating from the paternal office, not from Stockholm this 
 time, but with the Paris postmark. From the tenor of this 
 document I should hardly be surprised to hear that the high 
 functions fulfilled in the northern capital by the mysterious 
 author of my being were simply those of a corporal in the 
 Prussian army; for it is impossible to give instructions in a
 
 202 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 more domineering and peremptory tone, 01 with more tire- 
 some regard for the minutest details. 
 The note has a title or heading; as thus-. 
 
 WHAT MY SON IS TO DO 
 
 On receipt of these presents I am to send off the "Saint 
 Ursula," to see it packed myself in a case, and address it, 
 by quick goods vans, to Mother Marie des Anges, Superior of 
 the House of the Ursuline Sisters at Arcis-sur-Aube, AUBE 
 you understand? In fact, but for this added information 
 I might have fancied that Arcis-sur-Aube was situated in 
 the department of the Gironde or of Finisterre. I am there 
 to make an arrangement with the carrier's agents to insure 
 the delivery of the parce'i my "Saint Ursula" a parcel ! 
 at the door of the convent chapel. I am then commanded 
 to start a very few days later, so as to reach the aforenamed 
 town of Arcis-sur-Aube by the second of May at latest. You 
 see, these are military orders ; so much so that I half thought 
 of taking out a soldier's pass instead or an ordinary permit to 
 travel, and of taking my journey at the regulation fare of 
 three sous per league. 
 
 The hotel I am to put up at is expressly mentioned: 
 I am to stay at the Hotel de la Paste; hence, if I should 
 happen to prefer the Three Blackamoors or the Silver Lion, 
 which are to be found there, no doubt, as in every country 
 town, I must not indulge the fancy. Finally, on the day 
 before I start, I am to announce, in any newspapers I can 
 work upon, the fact of my intending to stand as a candidate 
 for election in the electoral district of Arcis-sur-Aube ( Aube), 
 but not to put forward any declaration of my political creed, 
 which would be useless and premature. And the whole con- 
 cludes with instructions a little humiliating perhaps, but 
 giving me some faith in the progress of affairs to call on 
 the morning of the day when I set out on Mongenod Brothers, 
 where I can again draw a sum of two hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand francs, which ought to be lying there in my name. "I
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 203 
 
 am to take the greatest care/' the document goes on, "that 
 in conveying this sum from Paris to Arcis-sur-Aube it is 
 neither lost nor stolen." 
 
 What, my good sir, do you make of this last clause. The 
 money "ought to be lying there" then it may not be; and 
 if not, what then ? What am I to do with it at Arcis ? Am 
 I to work my election in the English fashion? that, no 
 doubt, is why a profession of faith would be "useless and 
 premature." As to the advice not to lose the money or allow 
 myself to be robbed don't you think it makes me wonder- 
 fully young again ? Since reading it I have quite longed to 
 suck my thumb and get a padded cap. 
 
 However, as to my lord and father, though he puts my 
 mind on the rack by all these queer ways of his, I could 
 exclaim but for the respect I owe him like Don Basilio 
 in speaking of Almaviva, "That devil of a man has his 
 pockets full of irresistible arguments!" 
 
 So I shut my eyes and give myself up to the stream that 
 is carrying me on; and in spite of the news of your early 
 advent, I must call to-morrow morning on Mongenod 
 Brothers and set forth with a brave heart, picturing to my- 
 self the amazement of the good folks of Arcis when they see 
 me drop into their midst, as sudden and as startling an ap- 
 parition as a Jack-in-the-box. 
 
 I have already made my mark in Paris.- The National an- 
 nounced me as a candidate yesterday morning in the most, 
 naming terms; and this evening it would seem that I was 
 the subject of much discussion at the house of the Minister 
 of the Interior, where M. de 1'Estorade was dining. I must 
 in honesty add that, according to M. de 1'Estorade, the general 
 impression was that I must inevitably fail. In the district 
 of Arcis, it would seem, the worst the Government had to 
 fear was a Left-Centre candidate ; the democratic party, which 
 I am by way of representing, can hardly be said to have any 
 existence there. The Left-Centre candidate has already been 
 brought to his senses by the dispatch of a particularly alert 
 and skilful canvasser; and at his moment, when I am fling-
 
 204 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 ing my name to the winds, the election of the Conservative is 
 already a certainty. 
 
 Added to these elements of inevitable failure, M. de 
 FEstorade was good enough to speak of a circumstance as 
 to which, my dear fellow, I am surprised that you should 
 never have given me a sermon, for it is one of the most 
 pleasing of the calumnies set rolling in the Montcornet draw- 
 ing-room \)j the honorable and highly honored Monsieur 
 Bixiou. It has to do with a very handsome Italian woman 
 whom I am supposed to have brought with me from Rome, 
 and to be living with in most uncanonical relationship. 
 
 Pray tell me what has kept you from asking for explana- 
 tions of the matter ? Did you think the case so atrocious that 
 you were shy of offending my sense of decency by alluding 
 to it in any way? Or is it that you have such confidence in 
 my high moral sense that you Deed no certificate on that 
 point ? I had not time to go into the necessary explanations 
 with M. de 1'Estorade, nor have I time now to volunteer them 
 to you. I mention the incident only to bring me to a remark 
 which I believe to be true, and which I wonld beg you to verify 
 when you come to Paris. 
 
 I have a strong notion that M. de 1'Estorade would not 
 be best pleased at my succeeding in this electoral campaign. 
 He has never expressed much approbation of my plans, and 
 has constantly done his utmost to divert roe from them 
 always indeed by urging considerations in xny own interest. 
 But now that the idea has taken shape, and i? even discussed 
 in Ministerial circles, my gentleman has turned sour; and 
 while finding malicious pleasure in promising me defeat, he 
 brings up the pretty little activity under which he hopes to 
 smother and bury me as a friendly act. Xow, why ? 
 
 I will tell you. The fact is, that though he is under an 
 obligation to me, the good man by his high social position 
 feels himself my superior in a way which my election to the 
 Chamber would nullify, and he does not like the notion of 
 renouncing it. For, after all, what is an artist even if he 
 were a genius in comparison with a Peer of France, a bigwig
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 205 
 
 who has a finger in the supreme direction of great political 
 and social questions a man who can buttonhole the Ministers 
 and the King, who, if he were capable of such an audacious 
 flight, has a right to blackball the Budget? And is it con- 
 ceivable that 1, in my turn, should want to be such a 
 privileged person, with even greater importance and authority 
 as being a member of the elective body? Is it not a trying 
 piece of insolence and conceit? Hence is M. le Comte 
 furious ! 
 
 Nor is this all. These politicians by right divine have 
 a fixed idea : they believe themselves to have been initiated by 
 long study into a science supposed to be very abstruse, which 
 they call Statecraft, and which they alone have a right to 
 know and practise, as none but physicians may practise 
 medicine. So they cannot endure that without having taken 
 out a license, any low fellow such as a journalist, for 
 instance, or, lower still, an artist, an image-maker should 
 dare to poach on their domain and speak as they do. A poet, 
 an artist, a writer may have great gifts that they are ready 
 to grant ; in fact, their business requires it ; but they cannot 
 be statesmen. Chateaubriand himself, though naturally in 
 a position which justified him in making a place for himself 
 on the Olympus of Government, was nevertheless shown the 
 door, and one morning a very brief note, signed "Joseph 
 Villele," sent him packing as was but proper ! back to 
 Rene, Atala, and other literary trivialities. 
 
 I know that time, and that stalwart posthumous daughter 
 of us all whom we call Posterity, will in the long run do us 
 all full justice and put every man in his right place. In 
 2039, if the world holds out so long, most men will still 
 know who, in 1839, were Canalis, Joseph Bridau, Daniel 
 d'Arthez, Stidmann, and L6on de Lora; while only an in- 
 finitely small number will be aware that at the same time M, 
 le Comte de FEstorade was a Peer of France and President of 
 the Court of Exchequer; that M. le Comte de Rastignac was 
 Minister of Public Works, and M. le Baron Martial de la 
 Eoche-Hugon, his brother-in-law, a diplomatist and privy
 
 206 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 councillor on special service more or less extraordinary. 
 Still, pending this postponed resifting and far-off justice, I 
 do not think it a bad thing that these great men in office 
 should have a reminder to the effect that, short of being a 
 Richelieu or a Colbert, they are subject to competition, and 
 must take the consequences. Thus, merely out of this spirit 
 of contrariness, I am bent on my project; and if I should 
 be elected, unless you can assure me this evening that I have 
 misunderstood FEstorade's behavior, 1 shall find some oppor- 
 tunity for making him and some others feel that a man who 
 has the will can step over the palings of their little enclosure 
 and figure in it as their equal. 
 
 But I have talked too much of myself, my dear friend, with- 
 out thinking of the painful feelings that must attend your 
 return here. How will you bear it ? And will you not, in- 
 stead of setting your sorrows aside, rather go forth to meet 
 them, and take a melancholy pleasure in reviving their bitter- 
 ness? Well, I might say of such great griefs what I said 
 just now of the great men in office: they must be regarded 
 in their place in time and space, and then they are intangible, 
 imperceptible, they are held of no more account in a man's 
 life when his biography is written than the hairs he combs out 
 of his head every morning. That charming lunatic with 
 whom you spent three j r ears of matrimonial ecstasy put out 
 a hand, as she thought, where Death was and Death, mock- 
 ing at her schemes, her plans, at the refinement and graces 
 she added to life, snatched at her suddenly and brutally. 
 You remain: You, with youth on your side and the gifts 
 of intellect, and with what is, believe me, an element of 
 power deep and premature disgust of things. Xow, why 
 not do as I am doing? Why not join me in the political 
 arena ? Then there would be two of us to carry out my plans, 
 and the world would see what can be done by two determined 
 and energetic men, yoked together as it were, and both pulling 
 at the heavy collar of justice and truth. 
 
 But if you think that I am too much bent on becoming 
 infectious, or inoculating all and sundry with my parlia-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 207 
 
 mentary yellow-fever, return at least to the world of letters 
 where you have already made your mark, and exert your 
 imagination to enable you to ignore your heart, which speaks 
 too constantly of the past. I, for my part, will make as much 
 stir for you as I can; and even if it should cost me part 
 of my sleep to keep up our correspondence to divert your mind 
 whether you will or no, I shall take care to keep you in- 
 formed of all the vicissitudes of the drama I am about to 
 play a part in. 
 
 Since, on your arrival in Paris, you will have no fixed 
 habitation, I should take it very kindly, and feel you quite 
 your old self, if you would but make yourself at home in my 
 house instead of going on to Ville-d'Avray, which is a bad 
 and dangerous place for you. Then you can judge of my 
 handsome housekeeper, and see how she is slandered and mis- 
 understood. You will be near to 1'Estorade, who will, I ex- 
 pect, prove quite a comfort to you; and it will be an ad- 
 mirable way of expiating all the involuntary offences of which 
 you have been guilty towards me. Just on the chance, I 
 have given the necessary orders, and your room is ready for 
 you. The quiet part of the town where I live will serve 
 as a transition to the infernally noisy heart of Paris, which 
 I doubt your ever again becoming accustomed to. I 
 live at no great distance from the Eue d'Enfer, where we 
 formerly were at home together, and where we were often so 
 happy. 
 
 What dreams we dreamed, what schemes we laid, and how 
 little life has realized of them all ! Our commonest day- 
 dream was of glory, and that, the only one in which we might 
 perhaps not have become bankrupt, we have voluntarily aban- 
 doned: you to suffer and weep, I to run after a will-o'-the- 
 wisp relationship on which I may not after all have to con- 
 gratulate myself ! The ever-changing current has carried 
 everything before it our dykes, our flower-gardens, our bud- 
 ding rose-trees, our country houses ; one thing alone has hung 
 by its anchor, our old and sacred friendship. Do nothing 
 more to wreck it, I entreat, dear prodigal, nor run the risk of
 
 208 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 a quarrel with the Northern Court of which I may some day 
 be the Suger or the Sully. 
 
 P.8. You have not arrived, my dear friend, and I must 
 close my letter, which will be handed to you by my house- 
 keeper when you call for, of course, your first visit will be 
 to me. Till then you cannot know that I am gone. 
 
 I went this morning to the bankers Mongenod: the two 
 hundred and fifty thousand francs were ready, but with the 
 most extraordinary directions in the name of M. le Comte de 
 Sallenauve, known as Dorlange, sculptor, Rue de I'Ouest, No. 
 2. And in spite of this designation, which has never been 
 mine, the money was handed over to me without a demur. 
 Under the eyes of the cashier I had presence of mind enough 
 not to seem utterly amazed by my new name and title; but 
 I had a private interview with M. Mongenod senior, a man of 
 the highest character in the banking world, and to him I con- 
 fessed my surprise, begging for any explanation he might 
 be able to afford me. He could give me none: the money 
 was forwarded to him through a Dutch bank, his corre- 
 spondent at Rotterdam, and that is all he knows. 
 
 Bless me ! what next I wonder ? Am I now to be a noble- 
 man? Has the moment arrived when my father will reveal 
 himself ? 
 
 I' am just starting in a state of excitement and anxiety 
 that you may imagine. Till further instructions I shall ad- 
 dress to you at my house ; if you will not consent to take up 
 your abode there let me know of your whereabouts, for it 
 strikes me that we shall have a great deal to say to each 
 other. Not a word, I entreat you, to the Estorades all this 
 is strictly between ourselves. 
 
 Dorlange to Marie-Gaston. 
 
 ARCIS-SUR-AUBE, May 3, 183ft 
 
 MY DEAR OLD FRIEND, Last evening, at seven o'clock, in 
 the presence of Maitre Achille Pigoult, notary to the King 
 in the town of Arcis-sur-Aube, 'the obsequies were solemnized
 
 THE MEMBER FOB ARCIS 209 
 
 of Charles Dorlange, who, presently, like a butterfly emerging 
 from the larva, fluttered out on the world under the name 
 and person of Charles de Sallenauve, son of Frangois-Henri- 
 Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve. Hereinafter 
 are set forth the recorded facts which preceded this great and 
 glorious metempsychosis. 
 
 On the evening of May 1st I left Paris in all the official 
 revelry of St. Philip's Day; and on the following afternoon, 
 in obedience to paternal instructions, I made my entry into 
 the good town of Arcis-sur-Aube. On getting out of the 
 chaise my amazement was considerable, as you may imagine, 
 on discerning, in the street where the diligence had just ar- 
 rived, that evasive Jacques Bricheteau whom I had never seen 
 since our strange meeting in the He Saint-Louis. But this 
 time, instead of behaving like Jean de Nivelle, behold him 
 coming towards me with a smile on his face ; and holding out 
 his hand, he said: 
 
 "At last, my dear sir, we are almost at an end of these 
 mysteries, and you will soon, I hope, find no further reason 
 to complain of me." 
 
 At the same time, with an air of anxious solicitude that 
 was too much for him, he added: 
 
 "You have brought the money?" 
 
 "Yes," I replied. "Neither lost nor stolen," and I took out 
 the pocket-book that contained the two hundred and fifty 
 thousand francs in banknotes. 
 
 "That is well," said Jacques Bricheteau. "Now we will go 
 to the Hotel de la Poste. You doubtless know who is waiting 
 for you?" 
 
 "No, indeed," said I. 
 
 "Then you did not observe the name under which the money 
 ras made payable?" 
 
 "On the contrary and anything so strange could not fail 
 to strike me and set my imagination working." 
 
 "Well, presently the veil will be removed of which, so far, 
 a corner has just been lifted that you might not be too sud-
 
 210 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 denly startled by the great and happy event that is about to 
 take place in your life." 
 
 "Is my father here?" 
 
 I asked the question eagerly, and yet without the deep 
 emotion I should probably have felt at the thought of em- 
 bracing my mother. 
 
 "Yes," replied Jacques Bricheteau. "But I think it well to 
 warn you of a possible chill on your meeting. The Marquis 
 has gone through much suffering. The Court life to which he 
 has since been accustomed has made him unready to display 
 any expression of feeling; besides, he has a perfect horror of 
 anything suggesting bourgeois manners; so you must not be 
 surprised at the aristocratically cold and dignified reception 
 you may meet with. He is kind at heart, and you will appre- 
 ciate him more as you know him better." 
 
 "These preliminaries are highly encouraging," thought I. 
 And as I myself did not feel any very ardent predispositions, 
 I augured that this first interview would be at a temperature 
 of some degrees below zero. 
 
 On going into the room where the Marquis awaited me, I 
 saw a very tall, very thin, very bald man, seated at a table on 
 which he was arranging papers. On hearing the door open, 
 he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, rested his hands 
 on the arms of his chair, and looking round at us he waited. 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte de Sallenauve," said Jacques Briche- 
 teau, announcing me with the solemnity of an usher of am- 
 bassadors or a groom of the Chambers. 
 
 But in the presence of the man to whom I owed my life 
 the ice in me was instantly melted ; I stepped forward with an 
 eager impulse, feeling the tears rise to my eyes. He did not 
 move. There was not the faintest trace of agitation in his 
 face, which had that peculiar look of high dignity that used 
 to be called "the grand air"; he merely held out his hand, 
 limply grasped mine, and then said : 
 
 "Be seated, monsieur for I have not yet the right to call 
 you my son." 
 
 When Jacques Bricheteau and I had taken chairs
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 211 
 
 "Then you have no objection/' said this strange kind of 
 father, "to assuming the political position we are trying to 
 secure for you ?" 
 
 "None at all," said I. "The notion startled me at first, but 
 I soon grew accustomed to it; and to insure success, I have 
 punctually carried out all the instructions that were conveyed 
 to me/' 
 
 "Excellent," said the Marquis, taking up from the table a 
 gold snuff-box which he twirled in his fingers. 
 
 Then, after a short silence, he added: 
 
 "Now I owe you certain explanations. Our good friend 
 Jacques Bricheteau, if he will have the kindness, will lay 
 them before you." A sort of echo of the royal formula, 
 "My Chancellor will tell you the rest." 
 
 "To begin at the beginning," said Jacques Bricheteau, ac- 
 cepting the task thus thrust upon him, "I ought to tell you, 
 monsieur, that you are not a Sallenauve in the direct line. 
 On his return from the Emigration, about the year 1808, 
 M. le Marquis here present made the acquaintance of your 
 mother, and you are the issue of that connection. Your 
 mother, as you already know, died at your birth, and as a 
 misfortune never comes single, shortly after this terrible 
 sorrow M. de Sallenauve, being implicated in a plot against 
 the Imperial throne, was obliged to fly the country. M. le 
 Marquis, like myself, a native of Arcis, honored me with his 
 confidence, and on the eve of this second exile he placed your 
 young life in my charge. I accepted the responsibility, I will 
 not say gladly, but with sincere gratitude." 
 
 At these words the Marquis held out his hand to Jacques 
 Bricheteau, who was sitting near him, and after a silent pres- 
 sure which, I may say, did not seem to agitate them deeply 
 Jacques Bricheteau went on: 
 
 "The elaborate and mysterious precautions I so carefully 
 contrived, in order to conceal the functions I had accepted, 
 maybe accounted for by many reasons. I might say that every 
 change of government that we have lived under since your 
 birth has indirectly reacted on you. While the Empire lasted,
 
 212 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 I feared lest a power which was not reputed indulgent to those 
 who attacked it might include you in your father's ban- 
 ishment, and that first suggested the idea of giving you a sort 
 of anonymous identity. Under the Eestoration, I had reason 
 to fear another form of hostility. The Sallenauve family, of 
 which M. le Marquis here present is the sole surviving repre- 
 sentative, was then all-powerful. The circumstances of your 
 birth had got wind, and it had not escaped their perspicacity 
 that monsieur your father had taken care not to admit his 
 paternity, so as to be able to leave you his whole fortune, of 
 which, as a recognized natural child, the law would only have 
 allowed a fixed portion. 
 
 "The obscurity that surrounded you seemed to me the best 
 protection against the investigations of your money-seeking 
 relations; and certain suspicious proceedings on their part to 
 spy on me at different times showed that my anticipations 
 were justified. Finally, after the Eevolution of July, I was 
 afraid for you of your connection with me. I had seen the 
 change of dynasty with deep regret; and having allowed my- 
 self to become involved in some overt acts of rebellion, since 
 I had no belief in its stability for men are always ready to 
 fight a government that is forced upon them, and to which 
 they are averse I found myself on the black list of the 
 police- 
 On this, remembering that at the Cafe des Arts Jacques 
 Bricheteau had been the object of very different suspicions, 
 I could not help smiling, and the Chancellor pausing, said 
 with extreme solemnity : 
 
 "Do these details that I have the honor of giving you by 
 any misfortune appear to you doubtful ?" 
 
 When I had accounted for the expression of my face 
 "The waiter/' said Jacques Bricheteau, "was not altogether 
 in the wrong. I have for many years been employed by the 
 police in the public health department ; but I am not a spy 
 on the contrary, I have more than once very nearly been a 
 victim. Now, to return to the secrecy I still preserved as to 
 our connection, though I did not apprehend positive persecu-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 213 
 
 tion as resulting to you from knowing me, it seemed to me 
 that such an acquaintance might be detrimental to your 
 career. 'Sculptors,' I reflected, 'cannot get on without the 
 support of Government. I might possibly prevent his getting 
 commissions.' I ought also to say that at the time when I 
 gave you notice that your allowance was to cease, I had for 
 some years lost track of Monsieur le Marquis. Of what use 
 was it, then, to tell you the history of the past, since it appar- 
 ently could have no effect on your future prospects ? 
 
 "I decided that it was best to leave you in complete igno- 
 rance, and busied myself in inventing some fiction which, 
 might mislead your curiosity, and at the same time relieve 
 me from the long privation I endured by avoiding any direct 
 intercourse with you " 
 
 "The man you employed as your representative," said I, 
 interrupting him, "was well chosen, no doubt, from the point 
 of view of secrecy, but you must admit that he is not at- 
 tractive." 
 
 "Poor Gorenflot!' said the organist, laughing. "He is 
 simply one of the parish bell-ringers, and I employ him to 
 blow the organ. I do not know whether the author of Notre- 
 Dame de Paris had ever seen him when he invented Quasi- 
 modo." 
 
 During this parenthesis an absurd sound fell on our ears ; 
 a distinct snore from my father gave us to understand that 
 either he took very little interest in all these explanations 
 given in his name, or that he thought them too prolix. 
 Whether it was his conceit as an orator that was nettled, or 
 what else it was that roused Jacques Bricheteau's temper, I 
 know not, but he started to his feet with annoyance, and vio- 
 lently shook the sleeper's arm, exclaiming : 
 
 "What, Marquis! if you sleep like this when sitting in 
 Council, my word ! the country must be well governed !" 
 
 M. de Sallenauve opened his eyes, shook himself, and speak- 
 ing to me, he said : 
 
 "Excuse me, M. le Comte, but I have traveled post for ten 
 days and nights without stopping, in order to be in timQ to
 
 214 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 meet you here ; and though I spent last night in a bed, I am 
 still rather tired." 
 
 He then rose, took a large pinch of snuff, and paced the 
 room, while Jacques Bricheteau went on: 
 
 "It is rather more than a year since I first heard again from 
 your father. He explained his long silence and his purposes 
 for you, saying that, perhaps for some years to come, it was 
 absolutely necessary that he should still maintain the strictest 
 incognito. It was just then that chance threw you in my 
 way. I found you prepared to rush into any folly to get to the 
 bottom of the secret of which you could no longer doubt the 
 existence " 
 
 "You are good at a quick removal !" said I, with a laugh 
 to the erewhile lodger of the Qua! de Bethune. 
 
 "I did better than that. Tormented by the idea that, in 
 spite of my efforts, you would succeed in piercing the dark- 
 ness I had so elaborately left you in, and at the very moment 
 when M. le Marquis might think it most indispensable " 
 
 "You set out for Stockholm ?" 
 
 "No, for your father's residence; but I posted at Stock- 
 holm the letter he gave me for you." 
 
 "But I do not quite understand " 
 
 "Nothing can be simpler," said the Marquis decisively. "I 
 do not live in Sweden, and we wished to put you off the scent." 
 
 "Would you wish to tell the rest of the story yourself?" 
 said Jacques Bricheteau, though not seeming anxious to be 
 superseded in his narrative; for, as you see, he has an easy 
 and elegant flow of language. 
 
 "Not at all, not at all go on," said the Marquis ; "you are 
 doing it admirably." 
 
 "The presence here of M. le Marquis," Jacques Bricheteau 
 went on, "will not, as I must warn you, immediately clear up 
 all the mysteries which have hitherto complicated your rela- 
 tions. For the furtherance of your future prospects, and of 
 his own, he reserves the right of leaving you in ignorance 
 for some time yet of the name of the country where he hopes 
 to see you invited to succeed him, and of certain other details
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 215 
 
 of his biography. In fact, he is here this day chiefly with a 
 view to avoiding further explanations, and to renew the 
 lease, so to speak, of your patient curiosity. Having observed 
 that your equivocal family circumstances were likely to in- 
 volve you in difficulties in the political career you are enter- 
 ing on, or, at least, in mortifications, on my making a remark 
 to that effect in one of my letters, your father determined to 
 delay no longer the legal and official recognition which the 
 extinction of all his family made so desirable for you ; and he 
 set out from his distant residence to carry it into effect. 
 
 "The recognition and legitimization of a natural son is 
 a serious matter, surrounded by legal complications. An 
 authenticated affidavit must be taken in the presence of a 
 notary; and even though the father's personal deposition 
 can be represented by a specially prepared document, M. le 
 Marquis thought that the formalities indispensable to make 
 this power of attorney effective might divulge the secret of 
 his identity, not only to your disadvantage, but in the foreign 
 land where he is married, and to some extent naturalized; 
 and that secret it is still incumbent on him to keep for a 
 time. This decided him. He made an excuse to take a few 
 weeks' absence, arrived, posting all the way, and taking me 
 by surprise, arranged for our meeting here. 
 
 "In the course of such a long and hurried journey he 
 feared that the considerable sum of money he is devoting 
 to secure your election might not be quite safe in his keeping, 
 and he therefore transmitted it through his bankers, to be 
 drawn on a certain day. That is why, on your arrival, I 
 asked you the question which may have surprised you. Now 
 I have to ask you another of far greater importance : Do you 
 consent to take M. de Sallenauve's name and be acknowledged 
 by him as his son?" 
 
 "I am no lawyer," said I ; "but it seems to me that, ever 
 if I did not feel highly honored by it, it does not lie in my 
 hands to decline such a recognition." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Jacques Bricheteau ; "you might 
 be the son of a very undesirable father, and find it to your
 
 216 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 interest to dispute the relationship; in the case as it stands 
 you could plead, probably with success, to decline the favor 
 proposed. I ought also to tell you and I know that I am. 
 expressing the intentions of M. le Marquis that if you do 
 not think a man who has already spent half a million of francs 
 out of pocket with a view to your election a father altogether 
 to your mind, we leave you perfectly free, and have no wish 
 to coerce you." 
 
 "Quite so, quite so," said M. de Sallenauve, in a short, sharp 
 tone and the thin high pipe which is peculiar to these relics 
 of the old aristocracy. 
 
 Mere politeness required me to say that I was only too 
 happy to accept the parentage thus pressed on me; and in 
 reply to the few words I spoke to that effect, Jacques Briche- 
 teau went on : 
 
 "And we do not ask you to *buy a father in a poke.' Not 
 so much with a view to command your confidence, which he 
 believes he has won, as to enable you to judge of the family 
 whose name you will bear, M. le Marquis will place before yor., 
 all the title-deeds and parchments that are in his possession ; 
 and besides this, though it is a long time since he left France, 
 he can prove his identity by the evidence of his still living 
 contemporaries, which will serve to corroborate the validity 
 of the act he will put his name to. For instance, among the 
 persons of unimpeachable honor who have already recognized 
 him, I may mention the venerable Mother Superior of the 
 Ursuline Sisters here, Mother Marie des Anges for whom, 
 I may add, you have executed a masterpiece." 
 
 "Yes, on my honor, a very pretty thing," said the Marquis. 
 "If you are as strong in politics " 
 
 "Well, then, Marquis," said Jacques Bricheteau, who 
 seemed to me a little overbearing, "will you and our young 
 friend proceed to verify those family papers?" 
 
 "It is quite unnecessary," said I. 
 
 And I must own that it did not seem to me that I was i un- 
 ning any great risk; for, after all, of what consequence were 
 such papers in the hands of a man who might have forged or 
 stolen them?
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 217 
 
 But my father would iiot let me off; for more than two 
 hours he spread before me deeds, pedigrees, settlements, letters 
 patent, a thousand documents, to prove that the Sallenauves 
 are, with the exception of the Cinq-Cygnes, one of the oldest 
 families in the Province of Champagne generally, and of the 
 department of the Aube in particular. I may add that this 
 display of archives had a running accompaniment of endless 
 details in words, which certainly gave the identity of the last 
 Marquis de Sallenauve a very convincing semblance of genu- 
 ineness. 
 
 On all other subjects my father is apt to be laconic; his 
 mind is not, I should say, remarkably open, and he is always 
 ready to leave his Chancellor to speak for him. But on the 
 subject of his family papers he was bewilderingly full of 
 anecdotes, reminiscences, and heraldic information; in short, 
 the complete gentleman of an older time, ignorant or super- 
 ficial on most subjects, but a Benedictine for erudition on 
 everything connected with his ancestors. 
 
 There we should have sat, I believe, till now but for 
 Bricheteau's intervention: as he saw the Marquis preparing 
 to complete his endless chronicle by reading aloud to me a 
 voluminous memorial, intended to refute a certain passage in 
 the Historiettes of Tallemant des Reaux, which was not writ- 
 ten to the honor and glory of the Sallenauves, the judicious 
 organist remarked that it was dinner-time if we meant to 
 arrive punctually at seven at Maitre Achille Pigoult's office, 
 as had been arranged. 
 
 So we dined, not at the table d'hote, but in a private room. 
 There was nothing remarkable about the meal, unless it were 
 the length of time it lasted in consequence of the absorbed 
 silence and slowness of the Marquis' deglutition, in conse- 
 quence of the loss of all his teeth. 
 
 So by seven o'clock we were at Maitre Pigoult's 
 
 But it is near on two in the morning, and I am dropping 
 asleep ; so, till to-morrow, when, if I have time, I will go on 
 with this letter and the circumstantial account of all that took 
 place in the notary's office. However, you know the upshot
 
 218 THE MEMBER FOB ARCIS 
 
 of it all, like a man who turns to the page of a novel to see 
 whether Evelina marries her Arthur, and you may let me off 
 the details. As I step into bed, I shall say to myself: Good- 
 night, M. de Sallenauve. 
 
 In fact, that old rascal Bricheteau was clumsy enough in 
 foisting on me such a name as Dorlange; it was only fit for 
 some hero of romance under the Empire, or one of the pro- 
 vincial tenors on the lookout for an engagement under the 
 meagre shade of the Palais-Eoyal. You will owe me no 
 grudge, I trust, for leaving you in favor of my bed, where I 
 shall fall asleep to the soft murmurs of the Aube. In the 
 unspeakable stillness of the night in a small country town, 
 I can hear its ripples from this room. 
 
 May 4, five in the morning. 
 
 I had counted on slumbers gladdened by the fairest dreams ; 
 and I had not been asleep one hour when I woke, stung to the 
 quick by a horrible thought. But before communicating it to 
 you for it really has no common-sense -I must tell you 
 what took place last evening at the notary's. Some of the 
 incidents of that scene may perhaps have had something to do 
 with the phantasmagoria that have since danced through my 
 brain. After Maitre Pigoult's maid-servant, a country wench 
 of the purest breed, had led us through an office of the most 
 venerably antique type where, however, no clerks were to be 
 seen working in the evening, as in Paris she showed us into 
 her master's private room, a large room, cold and damp, and 
 barely lighted by two composition candles on the desk. Not- 
 withstanding a sharp north wind that was blowing, in honor 
 of the poet's month of May and of the spring, as declared by 
 law at this season of the year, there was no fire on the hearth, 
 though the wood was laid for a cheerful blaze. 
 
 Maitre Achille Pigoult, a feeble little man, much marked 
 with small-pox, and afflicted with green spectacles, over which, 
 however, he can flash a look of great keenness and intelligence, 
 asked us if we found the room warm enough. On our reply- 
 ing in the affirmative which he must have seen was a mere
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 219 
 
 form of politeness he had carried his incendiary, purpose so 
 far as to strike a match, when, from one of the darkest corners 
 of the room, a broken and quavering voice, whose owner we 
 had not yet discerned, opposed this lavish extravagance. 
 
 "No, no, Achille, do not light the fire," cried the old man. 
 "There are five of us in the room; the candles give a good 
 deal of heat, and we shall be suffocated before long." 
 
 To these words of this hot-blooded Nestor, the Marquis ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 "Why, it is worthy M. Pigoult, the old justice of the 
 peace !" 
 
 The old man, thus recognized, rose and came up to my 
 father, whom he examined narrowly. 
 
 "To be sure !" said he. "And I know you for a native of 
 the province, of the old block ; Achille told me the truth when 
 he promised me that I should meet two old acquaintances. 
 You," said he to the organist, "are little Bricheteau, nephew 
 to the good Mother-Superior Marie des Anges. But that tall 
 fellow, with his face like a duke I cannot put a name to him 
 and you must not be too hard on my memory, for after 
 eighty-six years of hard service it has a right to be a little 
 stiff in the joints." 
 
 "Now, then, grandfather," said Achille Pigoult, "try to 
 furbish up your recollections and you, gentlemen, not a 
 word, not a hint. I want to enlighten my faith. I have not 
 the honor of knowing the client on whose behalf I am about 
 to act, and, to be strictly regular, proof of his identity is re- 
 quired. The act of Louis XII., passed in 1498, and of Fran- 
 gois I. confirming it, in 1535, make this imperative on notaries 
 gardes-notes as they were called to forefend any substitu- 
 tion of parties to such deeds. The law is too reasonable to 
 have fallen into desuetude; and, for my part, I should not 
 have the smallest respect for the validity of an act if it could 
 be proved that such identification had been neglected." 
 
 While his son was speaking, old Pigoult had been racking 
 his memory. My father, by good luck, has a queer nervous 
 twitch of his features, which was naturally aggravated under
 
 220 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 the steady gaze of the certifier. On seeing this muscular 
 movement, the old lawyer at last spotted his man. 
 
 "Ah, I have it !" he exclaimed. "Monsieur is the Marquis 
 de Sallenauve the man we used to call the Grimacier who 
 would, at this day, be the master of the Chateau d'Arcis if he 
 had but married his pretty cousin, who had it for her marriage 
 portion, instead of going off with the rest of the madmen as 
 an emigre." 
 
 "Still a bit of a sans-culotte, it would seem," said the Mar- 
 quis, laughing. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the notary impressively, "the test I had 
 planned seems to me to be decisive. This evidence and the 
 papers which M. le Marquis has been good enough to submit 
 to me, leaving them in my hands, together with the certificate 
 of identity forwarded to me by Mother Marie des Anges, who 
 is prohibited by the rules of her house from coming to my 
 office, certainly justify us in completing the deeds which I 
 have already prepared. One of them requires the signature of 
 two witnesses. For one, we have here M. Bricheteau ; for the 
 other, my father, if you will accept him, and the honor, it 
 seems to me, is his by right, for we may say he has won it at 
 the point of his memory." 
 
 "Well, then, gentlemen, let us take our seats!" exclaimed 
 Bricheteau enthusiastically. 
 
 The notary seated himself at his table; we made a semi- 
 circle, and he began to read the deeds. The object in view 
 was set forth to authenticate the recognition by Frangois- 
 Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, of his 
 son, in my person ; but here a difficulty arose. Deeds under a 
 notary's certificate must mention the place of residence of the 
 contracting parties, otherwise they are void. Now, where 
 did my father reside? A blank space had been left by the 
 notary, who wished to fill it up before proceeding any further. 
 
 "In the first place," said Pigoult, "it would seem that M. 
 le Marquis has no place of residence in France, since, in fact, 
 he does not reside in the country, and has for many years 
 owned no land in it."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 221 
 
 "That is true/' said the Marquis, in a graver tone than the 
 remark seemed to call for ; "in France I am but a vagabond." 
 
 "Aha !" said Jacques Bricheteau, "but vagabonds like you, 
 who can hand over on the nail such gifts to a son as the sum 
 needed to purchase a mansion, are not beggars we need waste 
 our pity on. At the same time, what you say is true equally 
 true in France or elsewhere for with your mania for eter- 
 nally wandering it seems to me pretty difficult to name your 
 place of residence." 
 
 "Well, well," said Achille Pigoult, "we will not be brought 
 to a standstill by such a trifle as that. Monsieur," and he 
 turned to me, "is now the owner of the Chateau d'Arcis, for 
 an agreement to sell is equivalent to a sale when the parties 
 are agreed as to the terms and price. Then, what can be more 
 natural than that the father's domicile should be stated as at 
 one of his son's estates ; especially when it is family property 
 recovered to the original owners by purchase for that son's 
 benefit, though paid for by the father; when, moreover, that 
 father was born in the place where the said residence or domi- 
 cile is situated, and is known and recognized by residents 
 of standing whenever, at long intervals, he chooses to 
 visit it ?" 
 
 "Quite right," said old Pigoult, yielding without hesitation 
 to the argument set forth by his son, in that emphatic tone 
 peculiar to men of business when they believe they have laid 
 their finger on a conclusive opinion. 
 
 "Certainly," said Jacques Bricheteau, "if you think the 
 thing can be worked so " 
 
 "You see that my father, a man of great experience, does 
 not hesitate to support my opinion. So we will say," added 
 the notary, taking up his pen : " 'Frangois-Henri-Pantaleon 
 Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, residing with M. Charles 
 de Sallenauve, his natural son legitimized by this act, in the 
 house known as the Chateau d'Arcis in the district of Arcis- 
 sur-Aube, department of the Aube.' '' And the rest of the 
 deed was read without any hitch. 
 
 Then followed a very ridiculous little scene.
 
 222 THE MEMBER FOE ARCIS 
 
 All having signed, while we were still standing there, 
 Jacques Bricheteau said : 
 
 "Now, M. le Comte, embrace your father." 
 
 My father opened his arms with no small indifference, and 
 I coldly fell into them, vexed with myself, however, for not 
 being more deeply moved or feeling in my heart the glow of 
 kindred blood. 
 
 Were this coldness and dryness the result of my rapid in- 
 crease of fortune ? At any rate, immediately after, by another 
 deed which we had to listen to, I became, in consideration of 
 a sum of a hundred and eighty thousand francs in ready 
 money, possessor of the Chateau d'Arcis, a fine large house 
 which I had noticed from afar, lording it over the country 
 with quite a feudal air, though the prophetic voice of the 
 proprietor was no more heard within me than that of blood 
 relationship. The importance of this property as bearing on 
 my election, even if I had not been instinctively aware of it, 
 would have been made clear to me by a few words that passed 
 between the notary and Jacques Bricheteau. After the man- 
 ner of sellers, who will still run up the value of their goods 
 even after they have parted with them: 
 
 "You may think yourselves lucky," said Achille Pigoult; 
 "you have got that estate for a mere song." 
 
 "Stuff and nonsense !" retorted Bricheteau. "How long 
 have you had it on your hands ? To anybody else your client 
 would have sold it for fifty thousand crowns, but as a family 
 property you made us pay for the chance of having it. We 
 shall have to spend twenty thousand francs in making it hab- 
 itable ; the ground will hardly return four thousand francs a 
 year ; so our money, including expenses, will not bring in two 
 and a half per cent." 
 
 "What have you to complain of ?" replied the notary ; "you 
 will have to employ labor, and that is not bad luck for a 
 candidate." 
 
 "Ah, that election," said Jacques Bricheteau. "We will 
 talk that over to-morrow when we come to pay over the money 
 for tlv house, and our debt to you."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 223 
 
 Thereupon we came away, and returned to the Hotel de la 
 Poste, where, after saying good-night to my father and his 
 mouthpiece, I retired to my room to chat with you. 
 
 And now for the .dreadful idea which drove away sleep and 
 made me take up my pen again ; I must tell you what it was, 
 though, having relieved myself a little by writing these two 
 pages, it does not seem to me so pressingly evident as it did 
 just now. One thing at least is certain everything that has 
 ' come into my life during the past year is prodigiously ro- 
 mantic. You will perhaps say that adventures seem to form 
 the natural current of my life ; that my birth, the coincidence 
 that threw us together with a strange similarity of fate, my 
 position with regard to Marianina, and my handsome house- 
 keeper, even my meeting and acquaintance with Mme. de 
 1'Estorade, seem to suggest that I was born under a whimsical 
 star, and that I am even now living under the influence of one 
 of its vagaries. Absolutely true. Still, if at the same time, 
 and under the same influence, I should be involved, without 
 knowing it, in some diabolical plot of which I am being made 
 the passive tool ! 
 
 To give my ideas some little order, I will begin at that half 
 million of francs spent, as you must allow, on a somewhat 
 nebulous dream that of one day possibly seeing me a Minis- 
 ter to some imaginary 'court heaven knows where, the name 
 being carefully concealed. And who is it that lavishes such 
 fabulous sums on me ? A father tenderly devoted to the child 
 of a lost love? No a father whose demeanor is absolutely 
 cold, who goes to sleep while the balance-sheet, as it were, of 
 our reciprocal relations is being read to me; for whom I on 
 my part, and more's the pity, have no sympathy, whom I 
 should, in fact, describe as an old owl of an emigre, but for 
 the filial respect and affection I try to feel. But now, I say, 
 supposing this man were not my father, were not even the 
 Marquis de Sallenauve. as he assumes to be; supposing that, 
 like that luckless Lucien de Kubempre whose story made 
 such a noise at the time I were wrapped in the coils of some 
 serpent of the type of the sham priest Carlos Herrera, and to 
 wake presently to the frightful truth !
 
 224 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "What possible chance is there of that?" you will say. 
 "Carlos Herrera had an object in fascinating Lucien de Bu- 
 bempre ; but what hold can any one have over you, a man of 
 principle, who have never looked for luxury, who have led a 
 life of study and hard work ? and above all, what is to be got 
 out of you ?" 
 
 Well and good. But is the professed and apparent object 
 of these men any clearer ? Why does the man who recognizes 
 me as his son conceal the name of the place he lives in, and that 
 by which he himself is known in the unknown northern land 
 where he is said to hold office? Why so little confidence and 
 so many sacrifices on my behalf? And does it seem to you 
 that, in spite of his lengthy explanations, Jacques Bricheteau 
 has satisfactorily accounted for the mystery in which he has 
 wrapped my life? Why his dwarf? Why his impudent 
 denial of his own identity the first time I addressed him? 
 Why that frantic flitting? 
 
 All this, my dear fellow, whirling in my brain and culmi- 
 nating in the five hundred thousand francs paid over to me by 
 the brothers Mongenod, seems to lend substance to a queer 
 notion, at which you will laugh perhaps, but which is not 
 without foundation in the annals of crime. As I said at first, 
 I was invaded by it, and its suddenness seems to give it the 
 character of an instinctive apprehension. One thing is cer- 
 tain : If I had had the most distant inkling of it last evening, 
 I would have had my hand cut off sooner than sign that deed, 
 binding up my life and fortunes with those of a stranger 
 whose destiny may be as dark as a canto of Dante's inferno, 
 and who may drag me with him into the blackest depths. 
 
 In short, this idea while I am making you beat about the 
 bush, not liking to be frank with you is in its blank crudity 
 just this : I am afraid lest I am unwittingly the agent of one 
 of those associations of coiners who, in order to put their 
 spurious currency into circulation, have been frequently dis- 
 covered by justice in the act of conspiracies and schemes 
 quite as complicated and inextricable as this with which I 
 am now mixed up. In these trials we constantly see that the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 225 
 
 accomplices make many and long journeys ; they deal in bills 
 drawn in remote spots on banks in important commercial 
 centres, or in such capital cities as Stockholm, Eotterdam, or 
 Paris. And we constantly find their unhappy dupes impli- 
 cated in the case. Now in this man Bricheteau's mysterious 
 proceedings, do you not detect a sort of imitation or mimicry 
 of the manoeuvres to which these ingenious criminals have 
 recourse, using them with such talent and imaginative skill as 
 romance- writers might long for ? 
 
 As you may suppose, I have represented to myself every 
 argument that can tell against this gloomy view of the case; 
 and if I do not state them here, it is because I wish to have 
 them from you, and so give them a value which they would 
 cease to have if I had inspired them. Of one thing I am 
 certain : I am living in an unwholesome atmosphere, thick and 
 heavy ; I want air, and I cannot breathe. 
 
 Still, if you can, reassure ine, convince me ; I shall be only 
 glad, as you may well suppose, to find it all a bad dream. But, 
 at any rate, no later than to-morrow I mean to have an ex- 
 planation with both these men, and get a little more light on 
 the subject than has as yet been vouchsafed me. 
 
 Here is a new aspect to the story. While I was writing 
 I heard the clatter of horses in the street. Having grown 
 distrustful, and inclined to take a serious view of every inci- 
 dent, I opened my window, and by the pale light of daybreak I 
 saw at the inn door a post-chaise horses, postilion, and all 
 ready to start, and Jacques Bricheteau talking to somebody 
 inside, whose face was hidden by the peak of his traveling 
 cap. I acted at once : I ran downstairs ; but before I reached 
 the bottom, I heard the dull clatter of wheels and the ringing 
 cracks of the whip a sort of parting song with all postilions. 
 
 At the foot of the stairs I stood face to face with Jacques 
 Bricheteau. 
 
 Not in the least embarrassed, he said, with perfect sim- 
 plicity : "What ! up already, my dear boy ?"
 
 226 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Of course," said I, "the least I could do was to say good' 
 bye to my most kind father." 
 
 "He did not wish it," said the confounded musician, with a 
 cool solemnity that made me long to thrash him. "He was 
 afraid of the agitation of a parting." 
 
 "He is in a devil of a hurry," said I, "if he could not spare 
 one day to his brand-new paternity." 
 
 "What can I say ? He is an oddity. He has done what he 
 came to do, and he saw no reason to remain any longer." 
 
 "To be sure, the high functions he fulfils in that northern 
 court " 
 
 There could be no mistake as to the deeply ironical tone 
 with which I spoke. 
 
 "Till now," said Bricheteau, "you have put more trust 
 in us." 
 
 "Yes, but I confess that my confidence is beginning to be 
 shaken by the ponderous mysteries that are so unmercifully 
 and incessantly piled upon it." 
 
 "I should really be most distressed," said Jacques Briche- 
 teau, "at seeing you give way, at this critical moment, to these 
 doubts, which are certainly justified by the way you have been 
 dealt with during so many years, if I had none but personal 
 arguments or statements to countervail them. But you may 
 remember that old Pigoult, last evening, spoke of an aunt of 
 mine in these parts, and you will see before long that she is 
 a person of considerable importance. I may add that her 
 sacred dignity gives absolute authority to her word. I had 
 arranged that we should see her in any case to-day ; but give 
 me only time to shave myself, and in spite of its being so early 
 we will go at once to the Ursuline convent. You can then 
 question Mother. Marie des Anges, who is regarded as a saint 
 throughout the department of the Aube, and by the end of the 
 interview, I fancy, no cloud will hang between us." 
 
 All the time this strange man was talking his countenance 
 was so unmistakably honest and benevolent; his language 
 always calm, elegant, and moderate is so persuasive to his 
 audience, that I felt the tide of my wrath ebbing and my confi- 
 dence reviving.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 227 
 
 In fact, the answer was final. The Ursuline convent, bless 
 me ! cannot be a mint for false coin ; and if Mother Marie des 
 Anges will answer for my father, as it would seem she has 
 already done to the notary, I should be mad to feel any fur- 
 ther doubts. 
 
 "Very well," said I, "I will go upstairs for my hat and wait 
 for you on the bank of the river." 
 
 "Do so. And keep an eye on the door of the inn for fear 
 I should make a bolt, as I did from the Quai de Bethune !" 
 
 The man is as clever as can be; he seems to read one's 
 thoughts. I was ashamed of my distrust, and said that while 
 waiting I would finish a letter. This is it, my dear friend, 
 and I must now close it and post it if it is to reach you in due 
 time. Another day I will tell you of our visit to the convent. 
 
 Marie-Gaston to Madame la Comtesse de I'Estorade. 
 
 ARCIS-SUR-ATJBE, May 6, 1839. 
 
 MADAME, I should in any case have availed myself with 
 pleasure of your commands that I should write to you during 
 my stay here ; but you have no idea how great was your kind- 
 ness in grating me so precious a favor. But for you, madame, 
 and the honor I may have of occasionally writing to you, what 
 would become of me, a prey to the accustomed tyranny of my 
 sad thoughts, in a town where there is no society, no commerce, 
 no object of interest, no pretty environs, and where intellec- 
 tual activity is limited to the production of pickled pork, 
 soft soap, stockings, and cotton night-caps? 
 
 Dorlange, whom I shall not continue to call by that name 
 you shall presently learn why is so much absorbed in the 
 cares of his canvass that I scarcely ever see him. I told you, 
 madame, that I was about to join our friend here in conse- 
 quence of some disturbance of mind that I was aware of in a 
 letter telling me of a great change in his life and prospects. 
 I am now allowed to be more explicit on the subject Dor- 
 lange at fast knows his father. He is the natural son of the 
 Marquis de Sallenauve, the last survivor of one of the oldest
 
 228 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 families of this province. The Marquis, though giving no 
 explanation of the reasons that led to his keeping his son's 
 birth so profoundly secret, has just acknowledged him with 
 every legal formality. At the same time, he has purchased 
 for him an estate which had long since ceased to belong to the 
 Sallenauves, and which will now again be a family possession. 
 It is actually in Arcis, and it seems probable that it may be 
 advantageous to the electoral schemes just now under dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 These schemes had their beginnings longer ago than we 
 supposed, and they did not take their rise in Dorlange's brain. 
 The Marquis began his preparations above a year since, by 
 sending his son a large sum to enable him to acquire the neces- 
 sary qualification by the purchase of a freehold; and it is 
 with a view to smoothing the way to political advancement 
 that he has given his son a name and title and property in 
 this town. 
 
 What the ultimate purpose may be of such considerable 
 expenditure the Marquis has never explained to Charles de 
 Sallenauve; and it was this still hazy horizon to his sky that 
 led the poor fellow to such apprehensions that, as a friend, 
 I could do no less than hasten to alleviate them. The Mar- 
 quis, in fact, seems to be as eccentric as he is wealthy; in- 
 stead of remaining at Arcis, where his presence and his name 
 might have contributed to the success he is so anxious for, 
 on the very day after carrying out all the formalities re- 
 quired by the law, he set out privily for some distant country 
 where he has, it would seem, some important function not 
 even giving his son the opportunity of bidding him good-bye. 
 This coldness has a good deal embittered Charles' satisfaction ; 
 however, fathers must be taken as we find them, for Dorlange 
 and I both live to prove that they are not to be had for the 
 wishing. 
 
 Another whim of my Lord Marquis is having selected as his 
 son's chief elector an old Ursuline nun, by a sort of bargain 
 in which subsequently you, madame, were a factor. Yes; 
 for the "Saint Ursula" for which you unawares were the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 229 
 
 model will probably have no little influence over our friend's 
 return to Parliament. 
 
 This is what happened. For many years Mother Marie des 
 Anges, Superior of the Ursuline Sisters at Arcis-sur-Aube, 
 had dreamed of erecting a statue of the patron 'saint in the 
 convent chapel. But the Abbess, being a woman of taste and 
 culture, would have nothing to do with the peddler's images 
 of saints, sold ready-made by the dealers ; on the other hand, 
 she could not in conscience rob the poor of a sum so consider- 
 able as would pay for a work of art on commission. This 
 excellent lady's nephew is an organist in Paris, and the Mar- 
 quis de Sallenauve while he was traveling all over the world 
 had confided his son to this man's care; for all these years 
 his first object has been to keep the poor boy in absolute igno- 
 rance of his birth. When it occurred to him to make Salle- 
 nauve a deputy, Arcis was naturally thought of as the place 
 where his family was still remembered, and every way and 
 means was considered of making acquaintance, and utilizing 
 all possible aids to his election. 
 
 Then the organist remembered his aunt's long-cherished 
 ambition ; he knew her to have influence in the district, where 
 she is in great odor of sanctity, and also a touch of the spirit 
 of intrigue, ever ready to rush into an affair that may be diffi- 
 cult and arduous. He went to see her with the Marquis de 
 Sallenauve's concurrence, and told her that one of the most 
 eminent of Paris sculptors was prepared to offer her a statue 
 of the most masterly execution, if she, on her part, would un- 
 dertake to secure his return as member for the district of Arcis 
 at the next election. 
 
 The old Abbess did not think this at all beyond her powers. 
 So now she is the proud possessor of the object of her pious 
 ambition; it came safely to hand a few days since, and 
 is already in its place in the convent chapel, where, ere 
 long, it will be solemnly dedicated. Now it remains to 
 be seen how the good Mother will perform her share of the 
 bargain. 
 
 Well, madame, strange to say, all things weighed and coiv-
 
 230 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 sidered, I should not at all wonder if this singular .woman 
 were to succeed. From the description given me by Charles, 
 Mother Marie des Anges is a little woman, short but thick- 
 set, with a face that still contrives to be attractive in spite 
 of her wrinkles and the saffron-tinted pallor induced by time 
 and by the austerities of a cloister. She carries the burden 
 of a stout figure and seventy-six years with ease, and is as 
 quick, bright, and spirited as the youngest of us. A thoroughly 
 capable woman, she has governed her House for fifty years, 
 and it has always been the best regulated, the most efficient, 
 and at the same time the richest convent in the whole diocese 
 of Troyes. N"o less well qualified for educating girls the 
 great end, as you know, of the Ursuliue Sisterhoods she has 
 for the same length of time, through varying fortunes, man- 
 aged a lay school which is famous in the department and in 
 all the country round. Having thus presided over the educa- 
 tion of almost all the daughters of the better families of the 
 province, it is easy to understand that she has ubiquitous in- 
 fluence in the aristocratic circles of Champagne, for a well- 
 conducted education always leads to permanent friendship 
 between teacher and pupils. She probably knows very well 
 how to turn these family connections to the best advantage in 
 the contest she has pledged herself to engage in. 
 
 It would seem, too, that on the other hand, this remarkable 
 woman can absolutely command all the democratic votes in 
 the district. So far, indeed, on the scene of the struggle, this 
 party has but a sickly and doubtful existence ; still, it is by 
 nature active and busy, and it is under that flag, with some 
 little modifications, that our candidate comes forward. Hence, 
 any support from that side is useful and important. You, 
 madame, like me, will certainly admire the bicephalous pow- 
 ers, so to speak, of this old Abbess, who contrives at the same 
 time to be in good odor with the nobility and the secular 
 clergy, while wielding the conductor's stick for the radical 
 party, their perennial foes. As a woman of admirable charity 
 and enlightenment, regarded as a saint by the country folks, 
 and the object of bitter persecutions during the Revolution,
 
 THE MEMBER FOE ARCIS 231 
 
 enduring them with immense fortitude, it is easy to under- 
 stand the position she holds among the higher and Conserva- 
 tive circles; but that she should be no less welcome to demo- 
 crats and destructives seems almost incredible. 
 
 Her great influence over the popular party is based on a 
 little contest she once had with them. About the year '93 that 
 amiable faction proposed to cut her head off. Turned out of 
 her convent, and convicted for having sheltered a contuma- 
 cious priest, she was imprisoned, brought before the revolu- 
 tionary tribunal, and condemned to the guillotine. The thing 
 came to Danton's knowledge; he was then a member of the 
 Convention. Danton had been acquainted with Mother Marie 
 des Anges; he believed her to be the most virtuous and en- 
 lightened woman he had ever seen. On hearing of her sen- 
 tence, he flew into a terrific rage, wrote a letter from his high 
 horse to the revolutionary municipality, and commanded a 
 respite with such authority as no man in Arcis would have 
 dreamed of disputing. He stood up in the Tribune that very 
 day; and after alluding in general terms to certain sanglants 
 imbeciles whose insane folly was damaging the prospects of 
 the Eevolution, he explained who and what Mother Marie des 
 Anges was, spoke of her wonderful gifts for the training of 
 the young, and laid before the meeting a sketch for a decree 
 by which she was to be placed at the head of a Great National 
 Gynecasum, the details to be regulated by subsequent enact- 
 ment. 
 
 Robespierre, who would have regarded the Ursuline nun's 
 superior intelligence as an additional qualification for the 
 scaffold, was not that day present at the sitting; the motion 
 was carried with enthusiasm. As Mother Marie des Anges 
 could not possibly carry out the decree thus voted without a 
 head on her shoulders, she was allowed to retain it, and the 
 executioner cleared away his machinery. And though the 
 former decree, authorizing the Grand National Gynecaeum, 
 was presently forgotten, the Convention having quite other 
 matters to occupy it, the good Sister carried it out on her own 
 lines; and instead of something Grand, Greek, and National,
 
 232 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 with the help of some of her former associates she started a 
 simple lay school at Arcis, to which, as soon as order was to 
 some degree restored in the land and in men's minds, pupils 
 flocked from all the neighboring country. 
 
 Under the Emperor, Mother Marie des Anges reconstituted 
 her House, and her first act of government was a signal piece 
 of gratitude. She decided that on the 5th of April every 
 year, the anniversary of Danton's death, Mass should be said 
 in the convent chapel for the repose of his soul. 
 
 To some who objected to this service for the dead 
 
 "Do you know many persons," she would reply, "for whom 
 it is more necessary to implore Divine mercy?" 
 
 After the Eestoration, the performance of this Mass became 
 a matter of some little difficulty ; but Mother Marie des Anges 
 would never give it up, and the veneration with which she was 
 regarded even by those who were most set against what they 
 called a scandal, ended in their making the best of it. Under 
 the July Eevolution, as you may suppose, this courageous 
 perversity had its reward. Mother Marie des Anges is now in 
 high favor at Court ; there is nothing she cannot obtain from 
 the most august; persons in command; still, it is but fair to 
 add that she asks for nothing, not even to help the poor ; she 
 finds the means of supplying most of their wants by her judi- 
 cious economy in dealing with the funds of the community. 
 What is even more obvious is that her gratitude to the great 
 revolutionary leader is a strong recommendation to that 
 party; this, however, is not the whole secret of her influence 
 with them. The representative in Arcis of the extreme Left 
 is a wealthy miller, named Laurent Goussard, who owns two 
 or three mills on the river Aube. It was this man, formerly 
 a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis, and a 
 particular friend of Danton's, who wrote to that terrible 
 Cordelier to tell him of the axe that hung over the Ursuline 
 prioress' head, though this did not hinder that worthy sans- 
 culotte from purchasing a large part of the convent lands 
 when they were sold as nationalized property. 
 
 Then, when Mother Marie des Anges was enabled to re-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 233 
 
 constitute her Sisterhood, Laurent Goussard, who had not as 
 it happened found the estate very profitable, came to the 
 worthy Abbess and proposed to reinstate her in the former 
 possessions of the Abbey. Laurent Goussard, a man with a 
 keen eye to business, whose niece Mother Marie des Anges had 
 brought up gratuitously (the young lady died in Paris in 
 1809), affected to make this a point of honor, offering to re- 
 store to the community the lands he had bought for the price 
 he had paid for them. The good man was not making a bad 
 bargain; the mere difference of value between silver and the 
 assignats he had paid in was a handsome turn of profit. But 
 Mother Marie des Anges, who had not forgotten that but for 
 his intervention Danton could have known nothing, deter- 
 mined to do better than that for the man who had really 
 saved her life. The Ursuline Sisterhood, when Laurent 
 Goussard proposed this arrangement, was, financially speak- 
 ing, in a flourishing position. Since its re-establishment it 
 had come in for some liberal donations, and the Mother Su- 
 perior had put away a considerable sum during her long man- 
 agement of the lay school ; this she generously handed over for 
 the use of the convent. Laurent Goussard was, no doubt, 
 somewhat amazed when she spoke to this effect : 
 
 "I cannot accept your offer; I cannot buy at the lowest 
 price; my conscience forbids it. Before the Eevolution the 
 convent lands were valued at so much ; this is the price I pro- 
 pose to pay, not that to which they were brought down as a 
 result of the general depreciation in value of all the national- 
 ized lands. In short, my good sir, I mean to pay more if 
 that meets your views." 
 
 Laurent Goussard thought at first that he misunderstood 
 her, or had been misunderstood; but when it dawned upon 
 him that the Mother Superior's scruples of conscience would 
 bring him a profit of about fifty thousand francs, he had no 
 wish to coerce so delicate a conscience, and pocketing this 
 godsend, which had really fallen from heaven, he made the 
 astonishing facts known far and wide ; and this, as you may 
 suppose, madame, raised Mother Marie des Anges to such
 
 234 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 estimation in the eyes of every buyer of nationalized lands, 
 that she will never have anything to fear from any revolution. 
 Personally, Laurent Goussard is her. fanatical adorer; he 
 never does a stroke of business or moves a sack of corn with- 
 out consulting her; and, as she said jestingly the other day, 
 if she had a mind to treat the Sous-prefet like John the Bap- 
 tist, in a quarter of an hour Laurent Goussard would bring 
 her that official's head in a sack. Does not that sufficiently 
 prove, madame, that at a nod from our Abbess he will vote, 
 and get all his friends to vote, for the candidate of her 
 choice ? 
 
 Mother Marie des Anges has, of course, a wide connection 
 among the clergy, both by reason of her habit and her reputa- 
 tion for distinguished virtue; and among her most devoted 
 allies may be numbered Monseigneur Troubert, the bishop of 
 the diocese, who, though formerly an adherent of the Congre- 
 gation, would, under the dynasty of July, put up with an 
 archbishopric as preliminary to the cardinal's hat. Now if, 
 to assist him in this ambition justified, it must be said, by 
 great and indisputable capabilities Mother Marie des Anges 
 were to write a few lines to the Queen, it is probable that his 
 promotion would not be too long deferred. But it will be 
 give and take. If the Ursuline Abbess works for the arch- 
 bishopric, Monseigneur de Troyes will work the election. 
 Kor will his share of the bargain be at all difficult, since 
 the candidate in whom he is required to interest himself is 
 a declared advocate of freedom in teaching, which is 
 the only political principle for which the clergy care at this 
 moment. 
 
 Winning the clergy almost certainly secures the Legitimist 
 vote, for that party is no less passionately bent on freedom 
 in teaching; and, out of hatred for the new (Orleans) 
 dynasty, does not even take fright at seeing that principle in 
 monstrous alliance with radical politics. The head of that 
 party in this district is the family of Cinq-Cygne. The old 
 Marquise, whose haughty temper and determined will are 
 known to you, madame, never comes to the Chateau of Cinq-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 235 
 
 Cygne without visiting Mother Marie des Anges, whose pupil 
 her daughter Berthe formerly was now the Duchesse de 
 Mauf rigneuse ; as to the Duke, he will certainly support us, 
 for, as ycu know, Daniel d'Arthez is a great friend of mine, 
 and through Arthez we are certain to secure the interest of 
 the Princesse de Cadignan, our handsome Duke's mother, so 
 we may count on him. 
 
 If we now turn to a more obdurate party the Conserva- 
 tives, who must not be confounded with the Ministerialists 
 their leader is the Comte de Gondreville, your husband's col- 
 league in the Upper Chamber. At his heels comes a very 
 influential voter, his old friend, the former mayor and notary 
 of Arcis, who in his turn drags in his train a no less important 
 elector, Maitre Achille Pigoult, to whom, on retiring, he sold 
 his connection. But Mother Marie des Anges has a strong 
 hold on the Comte de Gondreville through his daughter, the 
 Marechale de Carigliano. This great lady, who, as you are 
 aware, is immensely devout, comes every year to the Ursuline 
 Convent for a penitential retreat. Mother Marie des Anges 
 says, moreover, though she gives no explanations, that she has 
 a hold on the old Count through some circumstances known 
 only to herself ; and, in fact, this regicide's career becoming 
 a Senator, a Count of the Empire, and now a peer of France 
 must have led him through devious and subterranean ways, 
 making it probable that there have been secret passages which 
 he would not care to have brought to light. Now, Gondreville 
 is one with Grevin, for fifty years his second self and active 
 tool ; and even supposing that by some impossible chance their 
 long union should be severed, at least we should be sure of 
 Achille Pigoult, Grevin's successor as notary to the Ursuline 
 Sisterhood ; indeed, at the time of the acquisition of the estate 
 in Arcis by the Marquis de Sallenauve, which was effected 
 through him, the purchaser took care to pay him a hono- 
 rarium so large so electoral that he pledged himself merely 
 by accepting it. 
 
 As to the ruck of the voters, our friend is certain to recruit 
 a strong force, since he is about to give them employment
 
 236 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 on the important repairs he proposes to begin at once ; for the 
 chateau, of which he is now the proprietor, is, fortunately, 
 falling into ruin in many places. We may trust also to the 
 effect of a magniloquent profession of principles which Charles 
 de Sallenauve has just had printed, setting forth in lofty 
 terms that he will accept neither favors nor office from the 
 Government. And then the oratorical display we may look 
 for at the preliminary meeting, which is already fixed; the 
 support of the opposition papers in Paris as well as here ; the 
 abuse and calumny with which the ministerial papers have al- 
 ready opened fire everything combines to make me hopeful. 
 And there is a further consideration which seems to me final : 
 It would surely not be strange if the good folks of Cham- 
 pagne, with a view to counteracting their reputation as 
 Boeotians, should be eager to elect a man distinguished in art, 
 whose masterpiece they have under their very eyes, who has 
 made himself their fellow-townsman by purchasing an estate 
 which has for ten years been in the market, and who is now 
 about to restore the house, one of the finest in the province, to 
 its former splendor, with prodigal disregard of cost. 
 
 After this voluminous essay on our military resources and 
 movements, it hardly beseems me, madame, to complain of 
 any want of mental occupation. I know not whether it is in 
 consequence of the interest I feel in my friend, but I really 
 believe that I have caught a touch of the electoral fever 
 which is raging here; you may even think that this letter, 
 crammed with local details, in which your utmost kindness 
 will scarcely enable you to feel much interest, is a symptom 
 of a terribly bad attack. Again, will you thank me, I wonder, 
 for representing this man as likely to be seen ere long through 
 the halo of parliamentary glory, when, only the other day, 
 you were saying that it was not safe to make a friend of him, 
 in view of his superhuman, and consequently rather aggres- 
 
 sive pre-eminence r 
 
 To be quite frank, madame, whatever successes may await 
 Charles de Sallenauve in his political career, I fear he may 
 some day regret the calmer glory he would have achieved in
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARC1S 23T 
 
 the realm of art, but neither he nor I was born under a tran- 
 quil star; we have paid dear for our very existence, and that 
 you should not like us is doubly cruel. You have some kind 
 feeling for me, because the fragrance still clings to me of our 
 beloved Louise; have then some little regard for the man 
 whom I have dared to speak of throughout this letter as our 
 friend. If indeed, do what he will, he betrays a sort of in- 
 sufferable greatness, should we not rather pity him than call 
 him to a strict account ? Do we not know, you and I, by cruel 
 experience, that the noblest and most glorious lights are 
 those which first sink into the extinction of eternal darkness ? 
 
 Marie-Gaston to the Comtesse de I'Estorade. 
 
 ARCIS-SUR-AUBE, May 9, 18?9. 
 
 MADAME, You too have the election fever, and you have 
 been good enough to transmit as a message from M. de I'Es- 
 torade a certain list of discouragements, which no doubt de- 
 serve consideration. I may however say at once that this 
 communication does not seem to me to be so important as 
 you perhaps think; and even before your official warning 
 reached us, the difficulties in our course had not failed to 
 occur to us. We knew already of the confidential mission 
 undertaken by M. de Trailles, though for some days he tried, 
 not very successfully, to disguise it under a pretence of com- 
 mercial business. We even knew what you, madame, do not 
 seem to have known, that this ingenious instrument of the 
 ministerial mind had contrived to combine the care of his 
 personal interests with that of party politics. 
 
 M. Maxime de Trailles, if we are correctly informed, was 
 not long since on the point of sinking under the last and 
 worst attack of a chronic malady from which he has long 
 suffered. This malady is his Debt for we do not speak of 
 M. de Trailles' debts, but of his Debt, as of the National Debt 
 of England. In extremis, the gentleman, bent on some des- 
 perate remedy, seems to have hoped for a cure in marriage 
 a marriage in extremis, as it might well be called, since he is
 
 238 THE MEMBER FOB ARCIS 
 
 said to be very near fifty. Being well known that is to say. 
 in his case, much depreciated in Paris, like tradespeople 
 whose goods are out of date, he packed himself off to the coun- 
 try, and unpacked himself at Arcis-sur-Aube just as the fun 
 of the election was beginning, wisely supposing that the rather 
 uproarious tumult of this kind of political scrimmage might 
 favor the slightly shady character of his proceedings. He cal- 
 culated well ; the unlooked-for death of young Charles Keller, 
 who was first chosen as the ministerial candidate, threw the 
 whole electoral district into great perturbation. M. Maximo 
 de Trailles, fishing in these turbid waters, contrived to har- 
 poon a candidate recommended by two very dissimilar kinds 
 of merit and suitability. 
 
 From the point of view of public affairs, M. Beauvisage, 
 whose name, madame, you will certainly remember, has the 
 immense advantage of having thoroughly beaten and crusjied 
 the nomination of a little attorney named Simon Giguet, who, 
 to the great indignation of the Government, wanted to take 
 his seat with the Left Centre. This ousting of a pert upstart 
 on the side of the Opposition was thought such an inestimable 
 boon, that it led folks to overlook the notorious and indis- 
 putable ineptitude of this Beauvisage, and the ridicule 
 which his return could not fail to bring on those who should 
 vote for his election. On the private side of the question 
 that is to say, M. de Trailles' personal interest M. Beau- 
 visage has the great merit of owning an only daughter, toler- 
 ably pretty, who, without any exaggeration, it would seem, 
 Will bring her husband a fortune of five hundred thousand 
 francs, amassed in the cotton night-cap trade, of which I 
 spoke in such ribald terms in my last letter. So now the wire- 
 pulling is all exposed to view. M. de Trailles had to ignite 
 and feed an ambition and hope of sitting in the Chamber 
 in the mind of a man who certainly would never have thought 
 of it unaided; to insinuate that, in return for his help and 
 disbursements, he meant, of course, to win the daughter and 
 the dowry; to dazzle her by a made-up semblance of youth, 
 by supreme elegance of manner, and by the title of Countess ;
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 239 
 
 to begin carefully by seeming to hesitate between the daughter 
 and the mother, and make a crowning display of disinter- 
 estedness and reformation by insisting that the settlements 
 should protect the lady's fortune from his extravagance by 
 every restriction the law can devise; this was the task, the 
 really herculean work, accomplished by M. de Trailles in less 
 than a fortnight ! 
 
 But then we appeared on the scene. We are of the 
 province; Champenois by the name that dropped on us one 
 morning from the skies; we make ourselves even more so 
 by acquiring land in the district; and, as it happens, the 
 country is bent at this election on sending no one to the 
 Chamber but a specimen of its own vintage ! For that very 
 reason you will say Beauvisage is certain to win; he is the 
 purest and most unmitigated product of the soil. 
 
 So you might think, madame, but then we are not quite 
 se idiotic as Beauvisage; we do not invariably make our- 
 selves ridiculous; we do not indeed make cotton night-caps, 
 but we make statues for which we have earned the Legion, 
 of Honor; religious statues, to be dedicated with much pomp 
 in the presence of Monseigneur the Bishop, who will con- 
 descend to give an address, and of the municipal authorities ; 
 statues which the whole of the town that part of it which 
 is not admitted to the ceremony is crowding to admire at 
 the House of the Ursulines, who are vain enough of this 
 magnificent addition to their gem of a chapel, and threw 
 open their public rooms and oratory to all comers for the 
 whole day and this you may be sure tends to make us 
 popular. 
 
 What contributes even better to this popularity is that we 
 are not mean like Beauvisage, and do not hoard our income 
 sow by sou; that we are employing thirty workmen at the 
 chateau painters, masons, glaziers, gardeners, trellis-makers ; 
 and that while the mayor of the town trudges shabbily on 
 foot, we are to be seen driving through Arcis in an elegant 
 open chaise with two prancing steeds, which our father not 
 in heaven, but in Paris anxious to be even more delightful
 
 240 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 at a distance than on the spot, sent hither post haste, with 
 a view, I believe, to snuffing out M. de Trailles' tilbury and 
 tiger. These, I may tell you, before our arrival were the 
 talk of the town. 
 
 This evening, madame, to crown the great occasion of the 
 dedication of the "Saint Ursula," we are giving a dinner to 
 fifty guests at our chateau; and we have been so clever as to 
 invite not only all the principal magnates of the neighbor- 
 hood, but every official, permanent or temporary, without dis- 
 tinction. These last, now that we have announced our in- 
 tention of standing for election, will, we know, certainly not 
 accept. So much the better! there will be more room for 
 those who do; and the defaulters, whose names will all be 
 known to-morrow, will be caught in the very act of such 
 flagrant servility and subserviency as will, we hope, strike a 
 fatal blow to their influence. 
 
 Yesterday, madame, we drove out in our chaise to the 
 Chateau of Cinq-C} r gne, where Arthez introduced us to the 
 Princesse de Cadignan. That woman is really miraculously 
 preserved ; she seems to have been embalmed by the happiness 
 of her liaison with the great writer. "They are the prettiest 
 picture of happiness ever seen," you said, I remember, of 
 M. and Mme. de Portenduere; and you might say the same 
 of Arthez and the Princess, altering the word "pretty" in 
 consideration of their Indian summer. 
 
 From what I knew of a scene that took place, long ago 
 now, at Mme. d'Espard's at the very beginning of that con- 
 nection, I felt quite sure of not finding M. de Trailles in 
 high favor at Cinq-Cygne; for, on that occasion, he had 
 done his utmost to be offensive to Arthez ; and Arthez, though 
 content with making him ridiculous, regarded him with con- 
 tempt; and that lofty and noble spirit can never get over 
 that. On his first arrival here the ministerial envoy was met 
 with some civilities at Cinq-Cygne; but he was no more than 
 a floating stick Arthez soon sent him to the bottom. One 
 man, who flattered himself that he should find a fulcrum for 
 intrigue at Cinq-Cygne, is now so entirely out of court that
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 241 
 
 it was from the Due de Maufrigneuse to whom M. de 
 Trailles was so imprudent as to detail his schemes, as having 
 known him at the Jockey Club that I obtained the informa- 
 tion set forth at the beginning of this letter, to be handed 
 on to M. de 1'Estorade if you will undertake the commission. 
 
 Mme. de Maufrigneuse and the old Marquise de Cinq- 
 Cygne were wonderfully kind in their reception of Dorlange 
 Sallenauve, I should say, but I find it difficult to remember ; 
 as they are less humble than you are, they were not frightened 
 at any loftiness they might meet with in our friend, and he, 
 in an interview which was really rather difficult, behaved to 
 perfection. It is very strange that after living so much 
 alone, he should at once have turned out perfectly presentable. 
 Is it perhaps that the Beautiful, which has hitherto been the 
 ruling idea of his life, includes all that is pleasing, elegant, 
 and appropriate things which are generally learned by prac- 
 tice as opportunity offers? But this cannot be the case, for 
 I have seen very eminent artists, especially sculptors, who, 
 outside their studios, were simply unendurable. 
 
 I must here make a break, madame; I am at an end of 
 my facts, and drifting into twaddle. To-morrow I shall have 
 to give you an account of the great banquet, which will be 
 more interesting tftan my reflections philosophical and 
 moral. 
 
 May 10. 
 
 The dinner is over, dear madame; it was a magnificent 
 affair, and will, I fancy, be long talked of in Arcis. Salle- 
 nauve has in the organist who, by the way, at the 
 ceremony of the statue yesterday, displayed his exquisite 
 talent on the good Sisters' organ a sort of steward and 
 factotum transcending all the Vatels that ever lived. He is 
 not the man to fall on his sword because the fish is late. 
 Colored lamps, transparencies, garlands, and drapery to deco- 
 rate the dining-room, even a little packet of fireworks which 
 had been stowed in the boot of the chaise by that surly and 
 invisible father who has his good side however nothing 
 was wanting to the festivities. They were kept up till a late
 
 242 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 hour in the gardens of the chateau, to which the plebs were 
 admitted to dance and drink copiously. 
 
 Almost all our guests appeared, excepting those whom we 
 had asked merely to compromise them. The invitation was so 
 short a difficulty inevitable and pardonable under the cir- 
 cumstances that it was quite amusing to see notes of excuse 
 arriving up to the very dinner hour, for Sallenauve had 
 ordered that they should all be brought to him as soon as 
 they arrived. And as he opened each letter he took care to 
 say quite audibly: "M. le Sous-prefet M. le Procureur du 
 Eoi The Deputy Judge expresses his regrets at being un- 
 able to accept my invitation." 
 
 All these "refusals of support" were listened to with signifi- 
 cant smiles and whispering; but when a note was brought 
 from Beauvisage, and Dorlange read aloud that M. le Maire 
 "found it impossible to correspond to his polite invitation," 
 laughter was loud and long, as much at the matter as the 
 manner of the refusal. It ended only on the arrival of a M. 
 Martener, examining judge here, who showed the highest 
 courage in accepting this dinner. At the same time, it may be 
 noted that an examining judge is in his nature a divisible 
 entity. As a judge he is a permanent official ; all the change 
 he can be subject to is that of his title* and the loss of the 
 small additional salary he is allowed, with the right to issue 
 summonses and catechize thieves, grand privileges of which 
 he may be deprived by the fiat of the Keeper of the Seals. 
 However, allowing that only half of M. Martener was bold, 
 he was hailed like a "full moon." 
 
 In the presence of the Due de Maufrigneuse, of Arthez, 
 and, above all, of Monseigneur the Bishop, who is spending 
 a few days at Cinq-Cygne, one absentee was much commented 
 on, though his reply, sent early in the day, was not read to 
 the company. This was the old notary Grevin. As to the 
 Comte de Gondreville, also absent, nothing could be said ; the 
 recent death of his grandson Charles Keller prohibited his 
 presence at this meeting; and Sallenauve, by making his in- 
 vitation in some sort conditional, had been careful to suggest
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 243 
 
 the excuse ; but Grevin, the Comte de Gondreville's right hand, 
 who has certainly made greater and more compromising efforts 
 for his friend than that of dining out Grevin's absence 
 seemed to imply that his patron was still a supporter of Beau- 
 visage, now almost deserted. And this influence lying low, 
 in sporting phrase is really of no small importance to us. 
 Maitre Achille Pigoult, Grevin's successor, explained, it is 
 true, that the old man lives in complete retirement, and 
 can hardly be persuaded to dine even with his son-in-law two 
 or three times a year; but the retort was obvious that when 
 the Sous-prefet had lately given a dinner to introduce the 
 Beauvisage family to M. Maxime de Trailles, Grevin had 
 been ready to accept his invitation. So there will be some 
 little pull from the Gondreville party, and Mother Marie 
 des Anges will, I believe, have to bring her secret thrust into 
 play. 
 
 The pretext for the dinner being the dedication of the 
 "Saint Ursula," an event which the Sisterhood could not 
 celebrate by a banquet, Sallenauve had a fine opportunity at 
 dessert for proposing a toast: 
 
 "To the Mother of the poor ; to the noble and saintly spirit 
 which for fifty years has shone on our Province, and to whom 
 is due the prodigious number of cultivated and accomplished 
 women who adorn this beautiful land !" 
 
 If you, madarne, knew this corner of Champagne as well 
 as I do, you would, when you read this sentence which I 
 have transcribed with tolerable exactitude, exclaim at Salle- 
 nauve for a contemptible wretch, and wonder that the 
 passion for power should make any man capable of such horri- 
 ble enormities. And is it worth a man's while a man 
 usually so self-respecting to find courage to tell a lie so great 
 as to be almost a crime, when a mere trifle of which he 
 had never once thought, which is no merit of his own, and of 
 which all the credit must be referred to the fortuitous con- 
 course of linked atoms, recommended him to the sympathy of 
 the voters better than all the speeches in the world? 
 
 You yourself mentioned to me that your son Armand saw
 
 244 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 a strong resemblance in Sallenauve to the portraits of Dan- 
 ton; it would seem that the remark is true, for I heard it 
 on all sides, applied not to the portraits, but to the man him- 
 self, by guests who had known the great revolutionary well. 
 Laurent Goussard, as the head of a party, had of course been 
 invited. He was not only Danton's friend, he was in a way 
 his brother-in-law; Danton, who was a scapegrace wooer, 
 having paid his court for several years to one of the honest 
 miller's sisters. Well, the likeness must in fact be striking; 
 for after dinner, while we were drinking our coffee, the wine 
 of the country having mounted a little to the good man's 
 brain for there had been no stint, as you may suppose he 
 went up to Sallenauve and asked him point-blank if he could 
 by any chance be mistaken as to his father, and if he were 
 sure that Danton had had nothing to do with the begetting 
 of him. 
 
 Sallenauve laughed at the idea, and simply did a little 
 Bum: 
 
 "Danton died on April 5, 1793. To be his son I must 
 have been born in 1794 at the latest, and should be five- 
 and-forty now. Now, as the register in which my birth was 
 entered father and mother unknown is dated 1809, that 
 and I hope my face as well prove me to be but just 
 thirty." 
 
 "Quite true," said Laurent Goussard, "the figures bowl me 
 over. Never mind ; we will get you in all the same." 
 
 And I believe the man is right; this whimsical likeness 
 will be of immense weight in turning the scale of the elec- 
 tion. And it must not be supposed that Danton is an object 
 of execration and horror to the citizens of Arcis, in spite of 
 the dreadful associations that surround his memory. In the 
 first place, time has softened them, and there yet remains the 
 recollection of a strong mind and great brain that they are 
 proud of owning in a fellow-countryman. At Arcis curiosi- 
 ties and notabilities are scarce; here the people speak of 
 Danton as at Marseilles they would speak of the Cannebiere. 
 So good luck to this likeness to the demigod, whose worship
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 245 
 
 is not confined to the town only, but extends throughout the 
 suburbs and district. 
 
 These voters, extra muros, are sometimes amusingly art- 
 less; a little contradiction does not stick in their throat. 
 Some agents sent out into the neighboring country have al- 
 ready made good use of this resemblance; and as in canvass- 
 ing the rustics it is more important to strike hard than to 
 strike straight, Laurent Goussard's explanation, apocryphal 
 as it is, has gone the round of the rural hamlets with a 
 precision that has met with no contradiction. And while 
 this revolutionary parentage, though purely imaginary, is 
 serving our friend well, on the other hand we say to those 
 worthy voters who are to be caught by something at once 
 more accurate and not less striking: 
 
 "He is the gentleman who has just bought the Chateau 
 d'Arcis." 
 
 And as the Chateau d'Arcis towers above the town and 
 is known to everybody for miles round, it is a sort of land- 
 mark; and at the same time, with a perennial instinct of re- 
 version to old world traditions, less dead and buried than 
 might be supposed. 
 
 "Oho ! he is the lord of the chateau," they say, a free but 
 respectful version of the idea suggested to them. 
 
 So this, madame, saving your presence, is the procedure 
 in the electoral kitchen, and the way to dress and serve up a 
 Member of the Chamber. 
 
 Marie-Gaston to Madame de I'Estorade. 
 
 AKCIS-SUE-AUBE, May 11, 1839. 
 
 MADAME, Since you do me the honor to say that my 
 letters amuse you, I am bound not to be shy of repeating 
 them. But is not this a little humiliating ? and when I think 
 of the terrible grief which was our first bond of union, is it 
 possible that I should be an amusing man all the rest of my 
 days? Here, as I have told you, I am in an atmosphere 
 that intoxicates me. I have made a passion of Sallenauve's
 
 246 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 success, and being, as I am, of a gloomy and hopeless nature, 
 an even greater passion perhaps of the wish to hinder the 
 triumph of ineptitude and folly under the patronage of base 
 interest and intrigue. Thank you, M. de Trailles, for the 
 exhibition you have favored us with of your really burlesque 
 father-in-law ! For you have succeeded in interesting me in 
 something; every now and then I laugh rather than rage; 
 but at those moments, at any rate, I forget. 
 
 To-day, madame, the grotesque is paramount; we are on 
 full parade. Notwithstanding M. de 1'Estorade's discourag- 
 ing warnings, we are led to suppose that the Ministry has not 
 very exultant tidings from its agent ; and this is what makes 
 us think so: We are no longer at the Hotel de la Poste; we 
 have left it for our chateau. But, thanks to a long-standing 
 rivalry between the two inns, la Poste and le Mulet where 
 M. de Trailles has his headquarters we still have ample in- 
 formation from our former residence; and our host there is 
 all the more zealous and willing because I strongly suspect 
 that he had a hand, greatly to his advantage I should think, 
 in arranging and furnishing the banquet of which I had the 
 honor to send you full particulars. 
 
 From this man, then, we learn that immediately after our 
 departure, a journalist from Paris put up at the hotel. This 
 gentleman, whose name I have forgotten which is well for 
 him, considering how glorious a mission he bears also an- 
 nounced that he came as a champion to lend the vis of his 
 Parisian wit to the war of words to be opened on us by the 
 local press, subsidized by the "office of public spirit." So far 
 there is nothing very droll or very depressing in the proceed- 
 ings ; ever since the world began, Governments have been able 
 to find pens for hire, and have never been shy of hiring them. 
 Where the comedy begins is at the co-arrival at the Hotel de 
 la Poste of a damsel. of very doubtful virtue, who is said 
 indeed to have accompanied His Excellency the Ministerial 
 newsmonger. The young lady's name, by the way, I happen 
 to remember: she is designated on her passport as Made- 
 moiselle Chocardelle, of independent means; but the journal-
 
 THE MEMBER FOB ARCIS 247 
 
 ist in speaking of her never calls her anything but Antonia, 
 or, if he yearns to be respectful, Mademoiselle or Miss 
 Antonia. 
 
 But what has brought Mile. Chocardelle to Arcis? A 
 little pleasure trip, no doubt ; or perhaps to serve as an escort 
 to monsieur the journalist, who is willing to give her a share 
 in the credit account opened for him on the secret service fund 
 for the daily quota of defamation to be supplied by contract ? 
 No, madame, Mile. Chocardelle has come to Arcis on busi- 
 ness to recover certain moneys. It would seem that before 
 leaving for Africa, where he has met a glorious death, young 
 Charles Keller signed a bill in favor of Mademoiselle Antonia, 
 an order for ten thousand francs, value received in furniture, 
 a really ingenious quibble, the furniture having obviously 
 been received by Mademoiselle Chocardelle, who thus priced 
 the sacrifice she made in accepting it at ten thousand francs. 
 At any rate, the bill being nearly due, a few days after hear- 
 ing of the death of her debtor Mile. Antonia called at the 
 Kellers' office to know whether it would be paid. The cashier, 
 a rough customer, as all cashiers are, replied that he did not 
 know how Mademoiselle Antonia could have the face to pre- 
 sent such a claim ; but that in any case the Brothers Keller, 
 his masters, were at present at Gondreville, where all the 
 family had met on hearing the fatal news, and that he should 
 not pay without referring the matter to them. 
 
 "Very well, I will refer it myself," said the young lady, 
 who would not leave her bill to run beyond its date. 
 
 Thereupon, just as she was arranging to set out alone for 
 Arcis, the Government suddenly felt a call to abuse us, if not 
 more grossly, at any rate more brilliantly than the provincials 
 do; and the task of sharpening these darts was confided to a 
 journalist of very mature youth, to whom Mile. Antonia had 
 been kind in the absence of Charles Keller ! 
 
 "I am off to Arcis !" the scrivener and the lady said at the 
 same moment ; the commonest and simplest lives offer such 
 coincidences. So it is not very strange that, having set out 
 together, they should have arrived together, and have put 
 up at the same inn.
 
 248 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 And now I would beg you to admire the concatenation of 
 things. Mile. Chocardelle, coming here with an eye solely 
 to finance, the lady has suddenly assumed the highest political 
 importance ! And, as you will see, her valuable influence will 
 amply compensate for the stinging punishment to be dealt 
 us by her gallant fellow-traveler. 
 
 In the first place, it appears that on learning that M. de 
 Trailles was in Arcis, Mile. Chocardelle's remark was : 
 
 "What I he here that horrid rip?" 
 
 The expression is not parliamentary, and I blush as I write 
 it. But it refers to previous relations business relations 
 again between Mile. Antonia and the illustrious confidant of 
 the Ministerial party. M. de Trailles, accustomed as he is to 
 pay his court only to ladies of position who help to reduce 
 his debt rather than to add to the burden once in his life 
 took it into his head to be loved not "for himself alone," and 
 to be useful rather than expensive. He consequently bought 
 a circulating library for Mademoiselle Antonia in the Rue 
 Coquenard, where for some time she sat enthroned. But 
 the business was not a success; a sale became necessary; and 
 M. Maxime de Trailles, with an eye to business as usual, 
 complicated matters by the purchase of the furniture, which 
 slipped through his fingers by the cleverness of a rascal more 
 rascally than himself. By these manoeuvres Mile. Antonia 
 lost all her furniture, which the vans were waiting to remove : 
 and another young lady Hortense, also "of private means," 
 and attached to old Lord Dudley gained twenty-five louis 
 by Antonia's mishap. 
 
 Of course, madame, I do not pretend to make all these 
 details absolutely clear; they came to us only at second hand 
 from the landlady of the Poste, to whom they were confided 
 by Mademoiselle Antonia with more coherency and lucidity 
 no doubt. At any rate, M. de Trailles and Mile. Chocardelle 
 parted on no friendly terms, and the young lady believes her- 
 self justified in speaking of him with the levity, the total 
 absence of moderation, which will have struck you as it did 
 me. In fact, since that first little outburst on her part, things
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 249 
 
 seem to have come to such a pass that M. de Trailles, in 
 consequence of this or of other similar remarks, considered 
 himself seriously compromised, and desired the journalist 
 whom he frequently sees, of course to give his ready-tongued 
 companion a "talking to." She, however, cared not a jot, 
 and by the constant dropping of her sarcasms and anecdotes 
 she is producing the effect, I will not say of a countermine, 
 but of a counter-Maxime, which is a paralyzing check on 
 the poisonous malignity of our terrible foe. The matter of 
 the bill meanwhile hangs fire: she has twice been out to 
 Gondreville, but was not admitted. 
 
 The journalist has much to do : to write his articles in the 
 first place, and to do various small jobs for M. de Trailles, 
 at whose service he is to be. Hence Mile. Antonia is often 
 left to herself, and, idle and bored as she is, so bereft of any 
 kind of Opera, Kanelagh, Boulevard des Italiens, she has 
 found for herself a really desperate pastime. Incredible as it 
 seems, this amusement is not, after all, utterly incompre- 
 hensible, as the device of a Parisienne of her class exiled to 
 Arcis. Quite close to the Hotel de la Paste is a bridge over 
 the Aube. Below the bridge, down a rather steep slope, a path 
 has been made leading to the water's edge, and so far beneath 
 the highroad which, indeed, is not much frequented as to 
 promise precious silence and solitude to those who choose to 
 go there and dream to the music of the waters. Mile. Antonia 
 at first betook herself to sit there with a book ; but perhaps, 
 from a painful association with the remembrance of her read- 
 ing-room, "books," as she says, "are not much in her line"; 
 and at last the landlady of the inn, seeing how tired the poor 
 soul was of herself, happily thought of offering her guest the 
 use of a very complete set of fishing-tackle belonging to her 
 husband, whose multifarious business compels him to leave it 
 for the most part idle. 
 
 The fair exile had some luck with her first attempts, and 
 took a great liking for the pastime, which is evidently very 
 fascinating, since it has so many fanatical devotees ; and now 
 the few passers-by, who cross the bridge, may admire, on the
 
 250 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 banks of the Aube, a charming water-nymph in flounced 
 skirts and a broad-brimmed straw hat, casting her line with 
 the conscientious gravity of the most sportsman-like Paris 
 arab, in spite of the changes of our yet unsettled temperature. 
 
 So far so good, and at present the lady's fishing has not 
 much to do with our election; but if you should happen to 
 remember in Don Quixote a book you appreciate, madame, 
 for the sake of the good sense and mirthful philosophy that 
 abound in it a somewhat unpleasant adventure that befalls 
 Eosinante among the Muleteers, you will anticipate, before I 
 tell you, the good luck to us that has resulted from Made- 
 moiselle Antonia's suddenly developed fancy. Our rival, 
 Beauvisage, is not merely a hosier (retired) and an exemplary 
 mayor, he is also a model husband, never having tripped in 
 the path of virtue, respecting and admiring his wife. Every 
 evening, by her orders, he is in bed by ten o'clock, while Ma- 
 dame Beauvisage and her daughter go into what Arcis is 
 agreed to call Society. But stagnant waters are the deepest, 
 they say, and nothing could be less chaste and well regulated 
 than the calm and decorous Kosinante in the meeting I have 
 alluded to. In short, Beauvisage, making the rounds of his 
 town his laudable and daily habit standing on the bridge, 
 happened to remark the damsel, her arm extended with manly 
 vigor, her figure gracefully balanced, absorbed in her favorite 
 sport. A bewitching, impatient jerk as the fair fisher-maiden 
 drew up the line when she had not a nibble, was, perhaps, 
 the electric spark which fired the heart of the hitherto blame- 
 less magistrate. None, indeed, can tell how the matter came 
 about, nor at what precise moment. 
 
 I may, however, observe that in the interval between his 
 retirement from the cotton night-cap trade and his election 
 as mayor, Beauvisage himself had practised the art of angling 
 with distinguished skill, and would do so still but for his 
 higher dignity, which unlike Louis XIV. keeps him from 
 the shore. It struck him, no doubt, that the poor girl, with 
 more good-will than knowledge, did not set to work the right 
 way - t and it is not impossible that, as she is temporarily under
 
 
 Mile. Antonia Chocardelle.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 251 
 
 his jurisdiction, the idea of guiding her into the right way 
 was the origin of his apparent misconduct. This alone is 
 certain : crossing the bridge with her mother, Mile. Beauvi- 
 sage, like an enfant terrible, suddenly exclaimed: 
 
 "Why, papa is talking to that Paris woman !" 
 
 To make sure, by a glance, of the monstrous fact; to rush 
 down the slope; to face her husband, whom she found beam- 
 ing with smiles and the blissful look of a sheep in clover; to 
 crush him with a thundering "Pray, what are you doing 
 here?" to leave him no retreat but into the river, and issue 
 her sovereign command that he should go this, madame, 
 was the prompt action of Mme. Beauvisage nee Grevin ; while 
 Mile. Chocardelle, at first amazed, but soon guessing what had 
 happened, went into fits of the most uncontrollable laughter. 
 And though these proceedings may be regarded as justifiable, 
 they cannot be called judicious, for the catastrophe was known 
 to the whole town by the evening, and M. Beauvisage, con- 
 victed of the most deplorable laxity, saw a still further thin- 
 ning of his reduced phalanx of followers. 
 
 However, the Gondreville-Grevin faction still held its own, 
 till would you believe it ? Mile. Antonia once more was the 
 means of overthrowing their last defences. 
 
 This is the history of the marvel. Mother Marie des 
 Anges wished for an interview with the Comte de Gondre- 
 ville ; but she did not know how to manage it, as she thought 
 it an ill-timed request. Having some severe remarks to make, 
 it would seem, she would not ask the old man to visit her 
 on purpose ; it was too cruel an offence to charity. Besides, 
 comminations fired point-blank at the culprit miss their aim 
 quite as often as they frighten them; whereas observations 
 softly insinuated are far more certain to have the desired 
 effect. Still, time was fleeting; the election takes place to- 
 morrow Sunday, and to-night the preliminary meeting is to 
 be held. The poor, dear lady did not know which way to turn, 
 when some information reached her which was not a little 
 flattering. A fair sinner, who had come to Arcis intending 
 to get some money out of Keller, Gondreville's son-in-law, had
 
 252 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 heard of the virtues of Mother Marie des Anges, of her in- 
 defatigable kindness and her fine old age in short, all that 
 is said of her in the district where she is, next to Danton, the 
 chief object of interest ; and this minx's great regret was that 
 she dared not ask to be admitted to her presence. 
 
 An hour later, this note was delivered at the Hotel de la 
 Poste : 
 
 "MADEMOISELLE, I am told that you wish to see me, and 
 do not know how. Nothing can be easier: ring at the door 
 of my solemn dwelling, ask the Sister who opens it for me, 
 do not be overawed by my black dress and grave face, nor 
 fancy that I force my advice on pretty girls who do not ask 
 it, and may one day be better saints than I am. 
 
 "That is the whole secret of an interview with Mother Marie 
 des Anges, who greets you in the Lord Jesus Christ. flB" 
 
 As you may suppose, madame, there was no refusing so 
 gracious an invitation, and before long Mile. Antonia, in the 
 soberest garb at her command, was on her way to the convent. 
 I much wish I could give you authentic details of the meet- 
 ing, which must have been a curious one; but nobody was 
 present, nor have I been able to hear what report of it was 
 given by the wandering lamb, who came away moved to 
 tears. 
 
 When the journalist tried to make fun of her converted 
 airs: 
 
 "There, hold your tongue!" said Mile. Antonia. "You 
 never in your life wrote such a sentence !" 
 
 "What was the sentence, come?" 
 
 " 'Go, my child,' said the good old lady, 'the ways of God 
 are beautiful and little known; there is more stuff to make 
 a saint of in a Magdalen than in many a nun/ ' : 
 
 And I may add, madame, that as she repeated the words 
 the poor girl's voice broke, and she put her handkerchief 
 to her eyes. The journalist a disgrace to the press, one of 
 those wretches who are no more typical of the press than a
 
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 253 
 
 bad priest is of religion the journalist began to laugh, but 
 scenting danger, he added, "And, pray, when do you mean 
 really to go to Gondreville to speak to Keller, whom I shall 
 certainly end by kicking in a corner of some article in 
 spite of all Maxime's instructions to the contrary ?" 
 
 "Am I going to meddle with any such dirty tricks ?" asked 
 Antonia, with dignity. 
 
 "What ? So now you do not mean to present your bill !" 
 
 "I?" replied the devotee of Mother Marie des Anges, 
 probably echoing her sentiments, but in her own words. "/ 
 try to blackmail a family in such grief? Why, the recollec- 
 tion of it would stab me on my deathbed, and I could never 
 hope that God would have mercy upon me." 
 
 "Well, then, become an TJrsuline and have done with it." 
 
 "If only I had courage enough, I should perhaps be happier ; 
 but, at any rate, I will not go to Gondreville. Mother Marie 
 des Anges will settle everything." 
 
 "Why, wretched child, you never left the bill with her !" 
 
 "I was going to tear it up, but she stopped me, and told 
 me to give it to her, and that she would manage to pull me 
 through by hook or by crook." 
 
 "Oh, very well ! You were a creditor you will be a 
 beggar " 
 
 "No, for I am giving- alms. I told Madame the Abbess to 
 keep the money for the poor." 
 
 "Oh, if you are going to be a benefactress to convents with 
 your other vice of angling, you will be pleasant company !" 
 
 "You will not have my company for long, for I am off 
 this evening, and leave you to your dirty job." 
 
 "Hallo ! Going to be a Carmelite ?" 
 
 "Carmelite is good," retorted Antonia sharply ; "very good, 
 old boy, when I am leaving a Louis XIV." 
 
 For even the most ignorant of these girls all know the 
 story of la Valliere, whom they would certainly adopt as 
 their patron saint, if Saint Louise of Mercy had ever been 
 canonized. 
 
 Now, how Mother Marie des Anges worked the miracle
 
 254 THE MEMBER FOE ARCIS 
 
 I know not, but the Comte de Gondreville's carriage was 
 standing this morning at the convent gate; the miracle, be 
 it understood, consisting not in having brought that old owl 
 out, for he hurried off, you may be sure, as soon as he heard of 
 ten thousand francs to be paid, though the money was not to 
 come out of his purse but Kellers it was the family's, and 
 such misers as he have a horror of other folks spending when 
 they do not think the money well laid out. But Mother 
 Marie des Anges was not content with having got him to the 
 convent ; she did our business too. On leaving, the Peer drove 
 to see his friend Grevin; and in the course of the day the 
 old notary told a number of persons that really his son-in-law 
 was too stupid by half, that he had got himself into ill odor 
 through this affair with the Parisian damsel, and that nothing 
 could ever be made of him. 
 
 Meanwhile, it was rumored that the priests of the two 
 parishes had each received, by the hand of Mother Marie des 
 Anges, a sum of a thousand crowns for distribution among the 
 poor, given to her by a benevolent person who wished to re- 
 main unknown. Sallenauve is furious because some of our 
 agents are going about sa} r ing that he is the anonymous bene- 
 factor, and a great many people believe it, though the story 
 of Keller's bill has got about, and it would be easy to trace 
 this liberality to the real donor. But when once the wind 
 is favorable, it is difficult to trim the sails with mathematical 
 exactitude, and you often get more way on than you wish. 
 
 M. Maxime de Trailles cannot get over it, and there is 
 every probability that the defeat, which he must now see is 
 inevitable, will wreck his prospects of marriage. All that 
 can be said with regard to his overthrow is what we always 
 say of an author who has failed he is a clever man, and will 
 have his revenge. 
 
 A very strange man, madame, is this organist, whose name, 
 Bricheteau, is the same as that of one of our great physicians, 
 though they are not related. It is impossible to have more 
 energy, more presence of mind, more devotion and intelligence, 
 and there are not two men in Europe who can play the organ
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 255 
 
 as he does. You, who wish Nai's to be something better than 
 a sirummer, should certainly get him to teach her. He is a 
 man who would really teach her music, and he will not oppress 
 you with his superiority, for he is as modest as he is gifted. 
 He is Sallenauve's poodle just as clever, just as faithful I 
 might say just as ugly, if a man with so good and honest e 
 countenance could be anything but good-looking. 
 
 Marie-Gaston to the Comtesse de I'Estorade* 
 
 ARCIS-STK-AUBE, Sunday, May 12, 183S. 
 
 MADAME, Yesterday evening the preliminary meeting 
 was held, a somewhat ridiculous business, and uncommonly 
 disagreeable for the candidates; however, it had to be faced. 
 When people are going to pledge themselves to a representa- 
 tive for four or five years, it is natural that they should 
 wish to know something about him. Is he intelligent ? Does 
 he really express the opinions of which he carries the ticket ? 
 Will he be friendly and affable to those persons who may 
 have to commend their interests to his care? Has he deter- 
 mination? Will he be able to defend his ideas if he has 
 any? In a word, will he represent them worthily, steadily, 
 and truly? This is the serious and respectable side of the 
 institution, which, not being enjoined in any code, must have 
 some good reason for its existence to have established itself so 
 firmly as a matter of custom. 
 
 But every medal has its reverse; and on the other side we 
 may see the voter at such meetings puffed up with arrogance, 
 eager to display the sovereign authority which he is about to 
 transfer to his deputy, selling it as dear as he is able. From 
 the impertinence of some of the questions put to the can- 
 didate, might you not suppose that he was a serf, over whom 
 each voter had the power of life and death? There is not a 
 corner of his private life which the unhappy mortal can be 
 sure of hiding from prying curiosity; as to merely stupid 
 questions, anything is conceivable as "Does he prefer the 
 wines of Champagne to those of Bordeaux?" At Bordeaux,
 
 256 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 where wine is the religion, such a preference would prove a 
 lack of patriotism, and seriously endanger his return. Many 
 voters attend solely to enjoy the confusion of the nominees. 
 They cross-examine them, as they call it, to amuse themselves, 
 as children spin a cockchafer ; or as of yore old judges watched 
 the torture of a criminal, and even nowadays young doctors 
 enjoy an autopsy or an operation. Many have not even so 
 refined a taste; they come simply for the fun of the hubbub, 
 the confusion of voices which is certain to arise under such 
 circumstances; or they look forward to an opportunity for dis- 
 playing some pleasing accomplishment; for instance, at the 
 moment when as the reports of the sittings in the Chamber 
 have it the tumult is at its height, it is not uncommon to 
 hear a miraculously accurate imitation of the crowing of a 
 cock, or the yelping of a dog when his foot is trodden on. 
 Intelligence, which alone should be allowed to vote, having, 
 like d'Aubign6 Mme. de Maintenon's brother taken its pro- 
 motion in cash, we cannot be surprised to find stupid folks 
 among the electors, and indeed they are numerous enough in 
 this world to have a claim to be represented. 
 
 The meeting was held in a good-sized hall, where an eating- 
 house keeper gives a dance every Sunday. There is a raised 
 gallery for the orchestra, which was reserved as a sort of 
 platform, to which a few non-voters were admitted; I was 
 one of these privileged few. Some ladies occupied front seats : 
 Mme. Marion, the aunt of Giguet the advocate, one of the 
 candidates ; Mme. and Mile. Mollot, the wife and daughter of 
 the clerk of assize, and a few others whose names and position 
 I have forgotten. Mme. and Mile. Beauvisage, like Brutus 
 and Cassius, were conspicuous by their absence. 
 
 Before M. Beauvisage presented himself for election, M. 
 Simon Giguet, it would seem, was supposed to have a good 
 chance; now, the appearance in the field of our friend 
 Sallenauve, who in his turn has outstripped the mayor, leaves 
 the lawyer two rungs behind. His father, an old Colonel of 
 the Empire, is greatly respecte 1 in the neighborhood; and as 
 a testimony of their regret at not being able to elect his
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 257 
 
 son, they unanimously voted him into the president's chair. 
 
 Giguet was the first candidate to address the meeting; his 
 speech was long, a medley of commonplace ; very few questions 
 were put to him to be recorded in this report. Every one 
 felt that the real battle was not to be fought here. 
 
 Then M. Beauvisage was called for. Maitre Achille Pigoult 
 rose and begged to be allowed to speak, and said: 
 
 "M. le Maire has been very unwell since yesterday " 
 
 Shouts and roars of laughter interrupted the speaker. 
 
 Colonel Giguet rang the bell with which he had been duly 
 provided for a long time before silence was restored. At the 
 first lull, Maitre Pigoult tried again : 
 
 "As I had the honor of saying, gentlemen, M. le Maire, 
 suffering as he is from an attack, which, though not seri- 
 ous " 
 
 A fresh outbreak, more noisy than the first. Like all 
 old soldiers, Colonel Giguet's temper is neither very long- 
 suffering nor altogether parliamentary. He started to his 
 feet, exclaiming: 
 
 "Gentleman, this is not one of Frappart's balls" (the name 
 of the owner of the room) ; "I must beg you to behave with 
 greater decency, otherwise I shall resign the chair." 
 
 It is to be supposed that a body of men prefer to be rough- 
 ridden, for this exhortation was received with applause, and 
 silence seemed fairly well restored. 
 
 "As I was saying, to my regret," Maitre Achille began once 
 more, varying his phrase each time, "having a tiresome in- 
 disposition which, though not serious, will confine him to his 
 room for some days " 
 
 "Loss of voice !" said somebody. 
 
 "Our excellent and respected Mayor," Achille Pigoult went 
 on, heedless of the interruption, "could not have the pleasure 
 of attending this meeting. However, Madame Beauvisage, 
 whom I had the honor of seeing but just now, told me, and 
 commissioned me to tell you, that for the present M. Beau- 
 visage foregoes the honor of claiming your suffrages, begging
 
 258 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 such gentlemen as had expressed their interest ID his election 
 to transfer their votes to M. Simon Giguet." 
 
 This Achille Pigoult is a very shrewd individual, who had 
 very skilfully brought about the intervention of Mme. Beau- 
 visage, thus emphasizing her conjugal supremacy. The as- 
 sembly were, however, too thoroughly provincial to appreciate 
 this little dirty trick. In the country women are constantly 
 mixed up with their husbands' concerns, even the most 
 masculine ; and the old story of the priest's housekeeper, who 
 replied quite seriously, "We cannot say mass so cheap as 
 that," has to us a spice of the absurd which in many small 
 towns would not be recognized. 
 
 Finally, Sallenauve rose, and I was at once struck by the 
 calm ease and dignity of his demeanor on the platform. This 
 is a most reassuring promise for other and more serious oc- 
 casions, for of one thing there can be no doubt the char- 
 acter and quality of a man's audience have hardly anything to 
 do with his sensations. To the speaker who has fear at his 
 heels it is all the same whether he is addressing lords or 
 louts. They are eyes to stare at him, ears to hear him; what 
 he sees before him are not men, but one man the meeting, 
 of whom he is conscious as a mass, not analyzing it into 
 elements. 
 
 After briefly enumerating the facts which tie him to the 
 district, and alluding with skill and dignity to his birth, as 
 not being the same as most people's, Sallenauve set forth his 
 political views. He esteems a republic as the best form of 
 government, but believes it impossible to maintain in France ; 
 hence he cannot wish for it. He believes that really repre- 
 sentative government, with the politics of the camarilla so 
 firmly muzzled that there is nothing to be feared from its 
 constant outbreaks and incessant schemes, may tend largely 
 to the dignity and prosperity of a nation. Liberty and 
 Equality, the two great principles which triumphed in '89, 
 have the soundest guarantees from that form of government. 
 As to the possible trickery that kingly power may bring to 
 bear against them, institutions cannot prevent it. Men and
 
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 259 
 
 the moral sense, rather than the laws, must be on the alert 
 in such a case; and he, Sallenauve, will always be one of 
 these living obstacles. He expressed himself as an ardent sup- 
 porter of freedom in teaching, said that in his opinion further 
 economy might be brought to bear on the budget, that there 
 were too many paid officials in the Chamber, and that the 
 Court especially was too strongly represented. The electors 
 who should vote for him were not to expect that he would 
 ever take any step in their behalf which was not based on rea- 
 son and justice. It had been said that the word "impossible" 
 was not French. Yet there was one impossibility that he 
 recognized, and by which he should always feel it an honor 
 to be beaten, namely, any infringement of justice or the least 
 attempt to defeat the right. (Loud applause.) 
 
 Silence being restored, one of the electors spoke: 
 
 "Monsieur," said he, after due license from the chairman, 
 "you have said that you will accept no office from the Govern- 
 ment. Is not that by implication casting a slur on those who 
 are in office ? My name is Godivet ; I am the town registrar ; 
 I do not therefore conceive myself open to the scorn of my 
 respected fellow-citizens." 
 
 Said Sallenauve: 
 
 "I am delighted, monsieur, to hear that 'the Government 
 has conferred on you functions which you fulfil, I am sure, 
 with perfect rectitude and ability. But may I inquire 
 whether you were from the first at the head of the office you 
 manage ?" 
 
 "Certainly not, monsieur. I was for three years super- 
 numerary ; I then rose through the various grades ; and I may 
 honestly say that my modest promotion was never due to 
 favor." 
 
 "Well, then, monsieur, what would you say if I, with 
 my title as deputy supposing me to secure the suffrages of 
 the voters in this district I, who have never been a 
 supernumerary, and have passed no grade, who should have 
 done the Ministry no service but that of voting on its side 
 if I were suddenly appointed to be director-general of your 
 department and such things have been seen?"
 
 260 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "I should say I should say, monsieur, that the choice 
 was a good one, since the King would have made it." 
 
 "No, monsieur, you would not say so: or if you said it 
 aloud, which I cannot believe possible, you would think to 
 yourself that such an appointment was ridiculous and unjust. 
 'Where the deuce did the man learn the difficult business of 
 an office when he has been a sculptor all his life ?' you would 
 ask. And you would be right not to approve of the royal 
 caprice; for acquired rights, long and honorable service, and 
 the regular progression of advancement would be nullified 
 by this system of selection by the Sovereign's pleasure. And 
 it is to show that I disapprove of the crying abuse I am 
 denouncing; it is because I do not think it just, or right, or 
 advantageous that a man should be thus raised over other 
 men's heads to the highest posts in the public service, that I 
 pledge myself to accept no promotion. And do you still think, 
 monsieur, that I am contemning such functions? Do I not 
 rather treat them with the greatest respect ?" 
 
 M. Godivet expressed himself satisfied. 
 
 "But look here, sir," cried another elector, after requesting 
 leave in a somewhat vinous voice, "you say you will never 
 ask for anything for your electors; then what good will you 
 be to us?" 
 
 "I never said, my good friend, that I would ask for noth- 
 ing for my constituents; I said I would ask for nothing but 
 what was just. That, I may say, I will demand with de- 
 termination and perseverance, for justice ought always to 
 be thus served." 
 
 "Not but what there are other ways of serving it," the man 
 went on. "For instance, there was that lawsuit what they made 
 me lose against Jean Eemy we had had words, you see, about 
 a landmark " 
 
 "Well," said Colonel Giguet, interposing, "you are not, I 
 suppose, going to tell us the history of your lawsuit and speak 
 disrespectfully of the magistrates ?" 
 
 "The magistrates, Colonel? I respect them, which I was 
 a member of the municipality for six weeks in '93, and I know
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 261 
 
 the law. But to come back to my point. I want to ask the 
 gentleman, who is here to answer me just as much as the 
 others, what is his opinion of the licensed tobacco jobs." 
 
 "My opinion of tobacco licenses? That would be a little 
 difficult to state briefly. However, I may go so far as to say 
 that, if I am correctly informed, they do not seem to me to 
 be always judiciously granted." 
 
 "Well done you ! You are a man !" cried the voter, "and 
 I shall vote for you, for they won't make a fool of you in a 
 hurry. I believe you; the tobacco licenses are given away 
 anyhow. Why, there is Jean Eemy's girl a bad neighbor he 
 was ; he has never been a yard away from his plough tail, and 
 he fights with his wife every day of the week, and " 
 
 "But, my good fellow," said the chairman, interrupting 
 him, "you are really encroaching on these gentlemen's pa- 
 tience " 
 
 "No, no; let him speak !" was shouted on all sides. 
 
 The man amused them, and Sallenauve gave the Colonel 
 to understand that he too would like to know what the fellow 
 was coming to. So the elector went on : 
 
 "Then what I say is this, saving your presence, my dear 
 Colonel, there was that girl of Jean "Kemy's and I will never 
 give him any peace, not even in hell, for my landmark was 
 in its right place and your experts were all wrong well, what 
 does the girl do? There she leaves her father and mother, 
 and off she goes to Paris: what is she up to in Paris? Well, 
 I didn't go to see ; but if she doesn't scrape acquaintance with 
 a member of the Chamber, and at this day she has a licensed 
 tobacco shop in the Eue Mouffetard, one of the longest streets 
 in Paris; whereas, if I should kick the bucket to-day or to- 
 morrow, there is my wife, the widow of a hardworking man, 
 crippled with rheumatism all along of sleeping in the woods 
 during the terror of 1815 and where's the tobacco license she 
 would get, I should like to know!" 
 
 'But you are not dead yet," said one and another in reply 
 to this wonderful record of service. And the Colonel, to put 
 an end to this burlesque scene, gave the next turn to a little 
 pastrycook, a well-known republican.
 
 262 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 The new speaker asked Sallenauve in a high falsetto voice 
 this insidious question, which at Arcis indeed may be called 
 national. 
 
 "What, sir, is your opinion of Danton?" 
 
 "Monsieur Dauphin," said the President, "I must be al- 
 lowed to point out to you that Danton is now a part of his- 
 tory." 
 
 "The Pantheon of History, Monsieur le President, is the 
 proper term." 
 
 "Well, well ! History, or the Pantheon of History Dan- 
 ton seems to me to have nothing to do with the matter in 
 hand." 
 
 "Allow me, Mr. President," said Sallenauve. "Though the 
 question has apparently no direct bearing on the objects of 
 this meeting, still, in a town which still rings with the fame 
 of that illustrious name, I cannot shirk the opportunity offered 
 me for giving a proof of iny impartiality and independence by 
 pronouncing on that great man's memory." 
 
 "Yes, yes! hear, hear!" cried the audience, almost unani- 
 mously. 
 
 "I am firmly convinced," Sallenauve went on, "that if 
 Danton had lived in times as calm and peaceful as ours, he 
 would have been as indeed he was a good husband, a good 
 father, a warm and faithful friend, an attaching and amiable 
 character, and that his remarkable talents would have raised 
 him to an eminent position in the State and in Society." 
 
 "Hear, hear ! bravo ! capital !" 
 
 "Born, on the contrary, at a period of great troubles, iu 
 the midst of a storm of unchained and furious passions, Dan- 
 ton, of all men, was the one to blaze up in this atmosphere 
 of flame. Danton was a burning torch, and his crimson 
 glow was only too apt for such scenes of blood and horror as 
 I will not now remind you of. 
 
 "But, it has been said, the independence of the nation had 
 to be saved ; traitors and sneaks had to be punished ; in short, 
 a sacrifice had to be consummated, terrible but necessary for 
 the requirements of public safety. Gentlemen, I do not ac-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 263 
 
 cept this view of the matter. To kill wholesale, and, as has 
 been proved twenty times over, without any necessity to kill 
 unarmed men, women, and prisoners is under any hypothesis 
 an atrocious crime; those who ordered it, those who allowed 
 it, those who did the deeds are to me included in one and the 
 same condemnation !" 
 
 I wish, madame, that I could adequately describe Salle- 
 nauve's tone and face as he pronounced this anathema. You 
 know how his countenance is transfigured when a glowing 
 thought fires it. The audience sat in gloomy silence; he 
 had evidently hit them hard, but under his strong hand the 
 steed dared not rear. 
 
 "Still," he went on, "there are two possible sequels to a 
 crime committed and irreparable repentance and expiation. 
 Danton expressed his repentance not in words, he was too 
 proud for that he did better, he acted; and at the sound 
 of the knife of the head-cutting machine, which was working 
 without pause or respite, at the risk of hastening his turn 
 to lose his own, he ventured to move for a Committee of 
 Clemency. It was an almost infallible way of expiation, 
 and when the day of expiation came we all know that he did 
 not shrink! By meeting his death as a reward for his brave 
 attempt to stay the tide of bloodshed, it may be said, gentle- 
 men, that Danton's figure and memory are purged of tltt 
 crimson stain that the terrible September had left upon them. 
 Cut off at the age of thirty-five, flung to posterity, Danton 
 dwells in our memory as a man of powerful intellect, of fine 
 private virtues, and of more than one generous action 
 these were himself; his frenzied crimes were the contagion 
 of the age. 
 
 "In short, in speaking of such a man as he was, the jus- 
 tice is most unjust which is not tempered with large allow- 
 ances and, gentlemen, there is a woman who understood 
 and pronounced on Danton better than you or I, better than 
 any orator or historian the woman who, in a sublime spirit 
 of charity, said to the relentless, 'He is with God! Let us 
 pray for the peace of his soul !' ' J
 
 264 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 The snare thus avoided by this judicious allusion to Mother 
 Marie des Anges, the meeting seemed satisfied, and we might 
 fancy that the candidate was at the end of his examination. 
 The Colonel was preparing to call for a show of hands when 
 several voters demurred, saying that there were still two mat- 
 ters requiring explanation by the nominee Sallenauve had 
 said that he would always stand in the way of any trickery 
 attempted by the Sovereign authority against National In- 
 stitutions. What were they to understand by resistance; did 
 he mean armed resistance, riots, barricades?'' 
 
 "Barricades," said Sallenauve, "have always seemed to 
 me to be machines which turn and crush those who erected 
 them; nay, we are bound to believe that it is in the nature 
 of a rebellion to serve, ultimately, the purpose of the Govern- 
 ment, since on every occasion the police is presently accused 
 of beginning it. The resistance I shall offer will always be 
 legal, and carried on by lawful means the press, speeches 
 in the Chamber, and patience the real strength of the op- 
 pressed and vanquished." 
 
 If you knew Latin, madame, I would say, "In cauda 
 venenum," that is to say, that the serpent's poison is in its 
 tail a statement of the ancients which modern science has 
 failed to confirm. 
 
 M. de 1'Estorade was not mistaken: Sallenauve's private 
 life was made a matter of prying inquiry; and, under the 
 inspiration, no doubt, of Maxime, the virtuous Maxime, who 
 had flung out several hints through the journalist intrusted 
 with his noble plot, our friend was at last questioned as to 
 the handsome Italian he keeps "hidden" in his house in Paris. 
 Sallenauve was no more put out of countenance than he was 
 in your presence and M. de 1'Estorade's; he merely wished 
 to know in return whether the meeting thought proper to 
 waste its time in listening to a romance worthy to fill the 
 space at the bottom of a newspaper. When a body of men 
 are assembled together, madame, as your husband may have 
 told you, they are like grown-up children, who are only too 
 glad to hear a long story
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 265 
 
 But Sallenauve has come in, and he tells me that the 
 committee chosen by the constituents is such as to make his 
 election presumably certain. So I put the pen in his hands ; 
 he himself will tell you the story of which you were cheated 
 at his last visit, and he will close this letter. 
 
 Sallenauve to Madame de I'Estorade. 
 
 Seven o'clock in the evening. 
 
 MADAME, The rather abrupt manner of my leave-taking 
 when I bid you and M. de I'Estorade farewell, that night 
 after our excursion to the College Henri IV., is by now quite 
 accounted for, no doubt, by the anxieties of every kind that 
 were agitating me; Marie-Gaston, I know, has told you the 
 result. I must own that in the state of uneasy excitement 
 in which I then was, the belief which M. de I'Estorade seemed 
 inclined to give to the scandal he spoke of caused me both 
 pain and surprise. "What," thought I to myself, "is it possi- 
 ble that a man of so much moral and common sense as M. de 
 I'Estorade can a priori suppose me capable of loose conduct, 
 when on all points he sees me anxious to give my life such 
 gravity and respectability as may command esteem? And if 
 he has such an opinion of my libertine habits, it would be 
 so amazingly rash to admit me on a footing of intimacy in 
 his house with his wife, that his present politeness must be 
 essentially temporary and precarious. The recollection of 
 the service I had so recently done him may have made him 
 think it necessary for the time being, but I shall be dropped 
 at the first opportunity." And it occurred to me, madame, 
 that evening, that the places assigned to us, perhaps ere long 
 in hostile political camps, might be the pretext on which M. 
 de I'Estorade would dismiss .me, as it were, to what he called 
 my shameless connection. 
 
 An hour or so before I observed these distressing signs, 
 I had given you my confidence concerning a matter which 
 might, at any rate, have preserved me from the mortification 
 of finding that you had as bad an impression of me as M. 

 
 266 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 de 1'Estorade. I did not, therefore, see any immediate need 
 for justifying myself, and two long stories in one evening 
 seemed to me too severe a trial for your patience. 
 
 As to M. de 1'Estorade, I was, I confess, nettled with him, 
 finding him so recklessly ready to echo a calumny against 
 which I thought he might have defended me, considering the 
 nature of the acquaintance we had formed, so to him I would 
 not condescend to explain: this I now withdraw, but at the 
 time it was the true expression of very keen annoyance. 
 
 The chances of an election contest have necessitated my 
 giving the explanation, in the first instance, to a public 
 meeting, and I have been so happy as to find that men in a 
 mass are more capable perhaps than singly of appreciating 
 a generous impulse and the genuine ring of truth. I was 
 called upon, madame, under circumstances so unforeseen 
 and so strange as to trench very nearly on the ridiculous, to 
 make a statement of almost incredible facts to an audience 
 of a very mixed character. M. de 1'Estorade, in his own 
 drawing-room, might have accepted them only as pending 
 further evidence; here, on the contrary, they met with trust 
 and sympathy. 
 
 This is my story, very much as I told it to my constituents 
 at their requisition : 
 
 Some months before I left Eome, we received a visit al- 
 most every evening in the cafe where the Academy pupils are 
 wont to meet from an Italian named Benedetto. He called 
 himself a musician, and was not at all a bad one; but we 
 were warned that he was also a spy in the employment of the 
 Eoman police, which accounted for his constant regularity 
 and his predilection for our company. At any rate, he was 
 a very amusing buffoon; and as we cared not a straw for the 
 Eoman police, we were more than tolerant of the fellow; we 
 tempted him to frequent the place a matter of no great 
 difficulty, since he had a passion for zabajon, poncio spongato, 
 and spuma di lat'te. 
 
 One evening as he came in, he was asked by one of our 
 party who the woman was with whom he had been seen walk- 
 ing that morning.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 267 
 
 "My wife, signor !" said the Italian, swelling with pride. 
 
 "Yours, Benedetto ? You the husband of such a beauty ?" 
 
 "Certainly, by your leave, signor." 
 
 "What next ! You are stumpy, ugly, a toper. And it 
 is said that you are a police agent into the bargain; she, on 
 the other hand, is as handsome as the huntress Diana." 
 
 "I charmed her by my musical gifts; she dies of love for 
 me." 
 
 "Well, then, if she is your wife, you ought to let her pose 
 for our friend Dorlange, who at this moment is meditating a 
 statue of Pandora. He will never find such another model." 
 
 "That may be managed," replied the Italian. 
 
 And he went off into the most amusing tomfoolery, which 
 made us all forget the suggestion that had been made. 
 
 I was in my studio next morning, and with me certain 
 painters and sculptors, my fellow-pupils, when Benedetto 
 came in, and with him a remarkably beautiful woman. I 
 need not describe her to you, madame; you have seen her. 
 A cheer of delight hailed the Italian, who said, addressing 
 me: 
 
 "Ecco la Pandora! Well, what do you think of her?" 
 
 "She is beautiful; but will she sit?" 
 
 "Peugh !" was Benedetto's reply, as much as to say, "I 
 should like to see her refuse." 
 
 "But," said I, "so perfect a model will want high pay." 
 
 "No, the honor is enough. But you will make a bust of 
 me a terra-cotta head and make her a present of it." 
 
 "Well, then, gentlemen," said I to the others, "you will 
 have the goodness to leave us to ourselves." 
 
 No one heeded; judging of the wife by the husband, all 
 the young scapegraces crowded rudely round the woman, who, 
 blushing, agitated, and scared by all these eyes, looked rather 
 like a caged panther baited by peasants at a fair. Benedetto 
 went up and took her aside to explain to her in Italian thai 
 the French signore wanted to take her likeness at full length, 
 and that she must dispense with her garments. She gave 
 him one fulminating look and made for the door. Benedetto
 
 568 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 rushed forward to stop her, while my companions the 
 virtuous brood of the studio barred the way. 
 
 A struggle began between the husband and wife; but as 
 I saw that Benedetto was defending his side of the argument 
 with the greatest brutality, I flew into a passion; with one 
 arm, for I am luckily pretty strong, I pushed the wretch 
 off, and turning to the youths with a determined air 
 "Come," said I, "let her pass !" I escorted the woman, still 
 quivering with anger, to the door. She thanked me briefly 
 in Italian, and vanished without further hindrance. 
 
 On returning to Benedetto, who was gesticulating threats, 
 I told him to go, that his conduct was infamous, and that if 
 I should hear that he had ill treated his wife, he would have 
 an account to settle with me. 
 
 "Debole!" (idiot!) said the wretch with a shrug. 
 
 But he went, followed, as he had been welcomed, by a 
 cheer. 
 
 Some days elapsed. We saw no more of Benedetto, and 
 at first were rather uneasy. Some of us even tried to find 
 him in the Trastevere suburb, where he was known to live; 
 but research in that district is not easy; the French students 
 are in ill odor with the Trasteverini, who always suspect 
 them of schemes to seduce their wives and daughters, and the 
 men are always ready with the knife. By the end of the 
 week no one, as you may suppose, ever thought of the buffoon 
 again. 
 
 Three days before I left Eome his wife came into my studio. 
 She could speak a little bad French. 
 
 "You go to Paris," said she. "I come to go with you." 
 
 "Go with me? And your husband?" 
 
 "Dead," said she calmly. 
 
 An idea flashed through my brain. 
 
 "And you killed him?" said I to the Trasteverina. She 
 nodded : 
 
 "But I try to killed me too." 
 
 "How?" asked I. 
 
 "After he had so insult me/' said she, "he came to our
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 269 
 
 house, he beat me like always, and then went out all day. 
 The night he came back and showed me a pistol-gun. I 
 snatch it away; he is drunk; I throw that briccone (wretch) 
 on his bed; and he go to sleep. Then I stuff up the door 
 and the window, and I put much charcoal on a brasero, and 
 I light it; and I have a great headache, and then I know 
 nothing till the next day. The neighbors have smell the char- 
 coal, and have make me alive again but he he is dead be- 
 fore." 
 
 "And the police?" 
 
 "The police know; and that he had want to sell me to an 
 English. For that he had want to make me vile to you, then 
 I would not want to resist. The judge he tell me go quite 
 right. So I have confess, and have absolution." 
 
 "But, cara mia, what can you do in France? I an? not 
 rich as the English are." 
 
 A scornful smile passed over her beautiful face. 
 
 "I shall cost you nothing," said she. "On the contrary, 
 I shall save much money." 
 
 "How?" said I. 
 
 "I will be the model for your statues; yes, I am willing. 
 Benedetto used to say I was very well made and a very good 
 housewife. If Benedetto would have agreed, we could have 
 lived happily, perche I have a talent too." 
 
 And taking down a guitar that hung in a corner of my 
 studio, she sang a bravura air, accompanying herself with 
 immense energy. 
 
 "In France," she said when it was finished, "I shall have 
 lessons and go on the stage, where I shall succeed that was 
 Benedetto's plan." 
 
 "But why not go on the stage in Italy?" 
 
 "Since Benedetto died, I am in hiding; the Englishman 
 wants to carry me off. I mean to go to France; as you see, 
 I have been learning French. If I stay here, it will be in 
 the Tiber." 
 
 M. de 1'Estorade will admit that by abandoning such a 
 character to its own devices, I might fear to be the cause of
 
 270 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 some disaster, so I consented to allow Signora Luigia to ac- 
 company me to Paris. She manages my house with remark- 
 able ability and economy; she herself begged to stand as 
 model for my Pandora; but you will believe me, madame, 
 when I say that the corpse of Benedetto lay ever between 
 his wife and me during this perilous test. I gave my house- 
 keeper a singing master, and she is now ready to appear in 
 public. 
 
 In spite of her dreams of the stage, she is pious, as all 
 Italian women are ; she has joined the fraternity of the Virgin 
 at Saint-Sulpice, my parish church, and during the month 
 of Mary, now a few days old, the good woman who lets chairs 
 counts on a rich harvest from her fine singing. She attends 
 every service, confesses and communicates frequently; and 
 her director, a highly respectable old priest, came to me lately 
 to beg that she might no longer serve as the model for my 
 statues, saying that she would never listen to his injunctions 
 on the subject, fancying her honor pledged to me. I yielded, 
 of course, to his representations, all the more readily because 
 in the event of my being elected, as seems extremely probable, 
 I intend to part with this woman. In the more conspicuous 
 position which I shall then fill, she would be the object of 
 comments not less fatal to her reputation and prospects than 
 to my personal dignity. I must be prepared for some re- 
 sistance on her part, for she seems to have formed a sincere 
 attachment to me, and gave me ample proof of it when I 
 was wounded in that duel. Nothing could hinder her from 
 sitting up with me every night, and the surgeon told me that 
 even among the Sisters at his hospital he had never met with 
 a more intelligent nurse or more fervid charity. 
 
 I have spoken with Marie-Gaston of the difficulty I an- 
 ticipate in the way of this separation. He fears it, he says, 
 even more than I. Hitherto, to this poor soul, Paris has 
 been my house; and the mere idea of being cast alone into 
 the whirlpool which she has never even seen, is enough to 
 terrify her. One thing struck Marie-Gaston in this connec- 
 tion. He does not think that the intervention of the con-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 271 
 
 fessor can be of any use ; the girl, he says, would rebel against 
 the sacrifice if she thought it was imposed on her by rigorous 
 devotion. Also the worthy man had failed in his authority 
 on a point on which he had far more right to speak loudly 
 and decisively; she would not submit till I had released 
 her from what she thought a strange pledge of honor to 
 me. 
 
 Marie-Gaston is of opinion that the intervention and 
 counsels of a person of her own sex, with a high reputation 
 for virtue and enlightenment, might in such a case be more 
 efficacious, and he declares that I know a person answering 
 to his description, who, at our joint entreaty, would consent 
 to undertake this delicate negotiation. But, madame, I ask 
 you what apparent chance is there that this notion should 
 be realized? The lady to whom Marie-Gaston alludes is to 
 me an acquaintance of yesterday; and one would hardly un- 
 dertake such a task even for an old friend. I know you did 
 me the honor to say some little while since that some ac- 
 quaintanceships ripen fast. And Marie-Gaston added that 
 the lady in question was perfectly pious, perfectly kind, per- 
 fectly charitable, and that the idea of being the patron saint 
 of a poor deserted creature might have some attractions for 
 her. In short, madame, on our return we propose to consult 
 you, and you will tell us whether it may be possible to ask 
 for such valuable assistance. 
 
 In any case, I beg you will be my advocate with M. de 
 1'Estorade, and tell him that I indulge a hope of seeing not a 
 vestige of the little cloud that had come between us. 
 
 By this time to-morrow, madame, I shall have met with 
 a repulse which will send me back, once for all, to my work 
 as an artist, or I shall have my foot set on a new path. Need 
 I tell you that I am anxious at the thought? The effect 
 of the unknown, no doubt. 
 
 I had almost forgotten to tell you a great piece of news 
 which will be a protection to you against the ricochet of cer- 
 tain projectiles. I confided to Mother Marie des Anges of 
 whom Marie-Gaston had told you wonders all my suspicions
 
 272 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 as to some violence having been used towards Mile. Lanty, 
 and she is sure that in the course of no very long time she 
 can discover the convent where Marianina is probably de- 
 tained. The good woman, if she sets her heart upon it, is 
 quite capable of success; and with this chance of rediscover- 
 ing the original, the copy cannot surely fear my committing 
 any misdemeanor ! 
 
 I am not quite satisfied about Marie-Gaston ; he seems 
 to me to be in a state of feverish excitement as a consequence 
 of the immense importance his friendship ascribes to my 
 election. He is like an honest debtor who, having made up 
 his mind to pay a sacred debt, puts everything aside, even his 
 sorrows, till that is done. But I cannot but fear lest, after 
 such an effort, he should have a relapse; his grief, though 
 for the moment he suppresses it, has not really lost its 
 poignancy. Have you not been struck by the light, sardonic 
 tone of his letters, of which I have read portions? This is 
 not natural. When he was happy he never had these bursts 
 of turbulent gaiety. This cheerfulness is assumed for the 
 occasion, and I greatly fear that when the electoral breeze 
 dies away he will collapse into prostration, and slip through 
 our fingers. 
 
 He has consented to stay with me on arriving in Paris, 
 and not to go to Ville-d'Avray till I return, and in my 
 society. Such prudence, though I begged it of him with no 
 hope of his consenting alarms and troubles me. He is 
 evidently afraid of the memories that await him there, and 
 shall I be able to deaden the shock ? Old Philippe, whom he 
 would not take with him to Italy, has been ordered to change 
 nothing in the chalet, and from what I know of him, he is 
 too well drilled a servant to fail in carrying out the order to 
 the letter; thus the unhappy fellow, in the midst of all the 
 objects that will speak of the past, will find himself back on 
 the day after his wife's death. And there is a still more 
 alarming fact ! He has never once mentioned her to me, 
 has never even allowed me to approach the subject. We
 
 273 
 
 can but hope that this is but a crisis to be got over, and that 
 by uniting to do our best we may succeed in calming him. 
 
 Adieu, then, till we meet, dear madame. Conquering 
 or conquered, I am always your most devoted and respectful 
 servant. 
 
 Marie Gaston.to the Comtesse de I'Estorade. 
 
 ARCIS-BBK-AUBE, May 13, 1839. 
 
 We have had a narrow escape, madame, while sleeping. And 
 those blundering rioters, of whose extraordinary outbreak 
 we have news to-day by telegraph, for a moment imperiled 
 our success. No sooner was the news of the rising in Paris 
 yesterday known, through the bills posted by order of the 
 Sous-prefet, than it was cleverly turned to account by the 
 Ministerial party. 
 
 "Elect a democrat if you will !" they cried on all sides, 
 "that his speeches may make the cartridges for insurgent 
 muskets !" 
 
 This argument threw our phalanx into disorder and doubt. 
 Fortunately, as you may remember, a question not ap- 
 parently so directly to the point had been put to Sallenauve 
 at the preliminary meeting, and there was something pro- 
 phetic in his reply. 
 
 Jacques Bricheteau had the happy thought of getting a 
 little handbill printed and widely distributed forthwith: 
 
 "A EIOT WITH HARD FIGHTING TOOK PLACE YESTERDAY IN 
 
 PARIS. 
 
 "Questioned as to such criminal and desperate methods of 
 opposition, one of our candidates, M. de Sallenauve, at the very 
 hour when those shats were being fired, was using these words" 
 followed by some of Sallenauve's speech, which I reported 
 to you. Then came, in large letters: 
 
 "THE RIOT WAS SUPPRESSED ; WHO WILL BENEFIT 
 BY IT?" 

 
 274 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 This little bill did wonders, and balked M. de Trailles* 
 supreme efforts, though, throwing aside his incognito, he 
 spent the day speechifying in white gloves in the market- 
 place and at the door of the polling-room. 
 
 This evening the result is known: Number of voters, 
 201. 
 
 Beauvisage, ........ 2 
 
 Simon Giguet 29 
 
 Sallenauve, 170 
 
 Consequently M. Charles de Sallenauve is elected 
 
 MEMBER FOR ARCIS.
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE COMTE DE SALLENAUVE 
 
 ON the evening of the day following the election that had 
 ended so disastrously for his vanity, Maxime de Trailles re- 
 turned to Paris. 
 
 On seeing him make a hasty toilet and order his carriage 
 as soon as he reached home, it might have been supposed that 
 he was going to call on the Comte de Rastignac, Minister 
 of Public Works, to give an account of his mission and ex- 
 plain its failure; but a more pressing interest seemed to 
 claim his attention. 
 
 "To Colonel Franchessini's," said he to the coachman. 
 
 When he reached the gate of one of the prettiest houses 
 in the Breda quarter, the concierge, to whom he nodded, gave 
 M. de Trailles the significant glance which conveyed that 
 "Monsieur was within." And at the same moment the por- 
 ter's bell announced his arrival to the man-servant who 
 opened the hall door. 
 
 "Is the Colonel visible?" said he. 
 
 "He has just gone in to speak to madame. Shall I tell 
 him you are here, Monsieur le Comte?" 
 
 "No, you need not do that. I will wait in his study." 
 
 And, without requiring the man to lead the way, he went 
 on, as one familiar with the house, into a large room with 
 two windows opening on a level with the garden. This study, 
 like the Bologna lute included in the Avare's famous in- 
 ventory, was "fitted with all its strings, or nearly all"; in 
 other words, all the articles of furniture which justified its 
 designation, such as a writing-table, book-cases, maps, and 
 globes, wore there, supplemented by other and very hand- 
 some furniture; but the Colonel, an ardent sportsman, and 
 one of the most energetic members of the Jockey Club, had 
 
 (275)
 
 276 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 by degrees allowed this sanctuary of learning and science 
 to be invaded by the appurtenances of the smoking-room, 
 the fencing-school, and the harness-room. Pipes and weapons 
 of every form, from every land, including the Wild Indian's 
 club, saddles, hunting-crops, bits and stirrups of every pat- 
 tern, fencing-gloves, and boxing-gloves, lay in strange and 
 disorderly confusion. However, by thus surrounding him- 
 self with the accessories of his favorite occupations and 
 studies, the Colonel showed that he had the courage of his 
 opinions. In fact, in his opinion no reading was endurable 
 for more than a quarter of an hour, unless indeed it were 
 the Stud-journal. 
 
 It must be supposed, however, that politics had made their 
 way into his life, devoted as it was to the worship of mus- 
 cular development and equine science, for Maxime found 
 strewn on the floor most of the morning's papers, flung aside 
 with contempt when the Colonel had looked them through. 
 From among the heap M. de Trailles picked up the National, 
 and his eye at once fell on these lines, forming a short para- 
 graph on the front page: 
 
 "Our side has secured a great success in the district of 
 Arcis-sur-Aube. In spite of the efforts of local functionaries, 
 supported by those of a special agent sent by the Government 
 to this imperiled outpost, the Committee is almost entirely 
 composed of the adherents of the most advanced Left. We 
 may therefore quite confidently predict the election to-mor- 
 row of M. Dorlange, one of our most distinguished sculptors, 
 a man whom we have warmly recommended to the suffrages 
 of our readers. They will not be surprised at seeing him 
 returned, not under the name of Dorlange, but as Monsieur 
 Charles de Sallenauve. 
 
 "By an act of recognition, signed and witnessed on May 
 2nd, at the office of Maitre Achille Pigoult, notary at Arcis, 
 M. Dorlange is authorized to take and use the name of one 
 of the best families in Champagne, to which he did not till 
 then know that he belonged. But Dorlange or Sallenauve,
 
 THE MEMBER F.OR ARCIS 277 
 
 the new member is one of Us, a fact of which the Government 
 will ere long be made aware in the Chamber. As we read the 
 eloquent utterances of this candidate when addressing the 
 preliminary meeting, without flattery and quite apart from 
 party feeling, we may predict his brilliant success on the 
 parliamentary platform." 
 
 Maxime tossed the sheet aside with petulant annoyance 
 and picked up another. This was an organ of the Legitimist 
 party. In it he read under the heading of Elections: 
 
 "The staff of the National Guard and the Jockey Club, 
 who had several members in the last Chamber of Deputies, 
 have just sent one of their most brilliant notables to the 
 newly-elected Parliament, of which the first session is about 
 to open. Colonel Franchessini, so well known for his zealous 
 prosecution of National Guards who shirk service, was elected 
 almost unanimously for one of the rotten boroughs of the 
 Civil List. It is supposed that he will take his seat with the 
 phalanx of the Aides-de-Camp, and that in the Chamber, as 
 in the office of the Staff, he will be a firm and ardent sup- 
 porter of the policy of the Status quo." 
 
 As Maxime got to the end of this paragraph, the Colonel 
 came in. 
 
 Colonel Franchessini, for a short time in the Imperial 
 Army, had, under the Eestoration, figured as a dashing officer ; 
 but in consequence of some little clouds that had tarnished 
 the perfect brightness of his honor, he had been compelled 
 to resign his commission, so that in 1830 he was quite free to" 
 devote himself with passionate ardor to the "dynasty of 
 July." He had not, however, re-entered the service, because, 
 not long after his little misadventure, he had found great 
 consolation from an immensely rich Englishwoman who had 
 allowed herself to be captivated by his handsome face and 
 figure, at that time worthy of Antinous, and had annexed him 
 as her husband. He had ultimately resumed his epaulettes as
 
 278 
 
 a member of the Staff of the Citizen Militia. He had revealed 
 himself in that position as the most turbulent and conten- 
 tious of swashbucklers, and by the aid of the extensive con- 
 nections secured to him by his wealth and this influential posi- 
 tion, he had now pushed his way the news was correct into 
 a seat in the Chamber. 
 
 Colonel Franchessini, like his friend Maxime de Trailles 
 nearly fifty years of age, had an air of second youth, for which 
 his lightly-knit frame and agile military figure promised 
 long duration. Though he had finally made up his mind to 
 iron-gray hair, concealing the silver sheen by keeping it cut 
 very short, he was less resigned to a white moustache ; wearing 
 it turned up with a jaunty and juvenile curl, he did his best 
 to preserve its original hue by the use of Pomade Hongroise. 
 But those who try to prove too much prove nothing; and in 
 the application of this black dye, art exaggerating nature was 
 betrayed by an intensity and equality of hue too perfect to 
 be thought genuine. This gave his strongly marked counte- 
 nance, with its dark complexion and conspicuous stamp of 
 the Italian origin indicated by his name, a strangely hard- 
 set expression, which was far from being corrected or softened 
 by angular features, piercing eyes, and a large nose like the 
 beak of a bird of prey. 
 
 "Well, Maxime," said he, holding out a hand to his ex- 
 pectant visitor, "where the devil do you come from ? We have 
 not seen a sign of you at the club this fortnight past." 
 
 "Where have I come from ?" repeated Monsieur de Trailles. 
 "I will tell you. But first let me congratulate you." 
 
 "Yes," said the Colonel airily, "they took it into their heads 
 to elect me. On my word, I am very innocent of it all ; if no 
 one had worked any harder for it than I " 
 
 "My dear fellow, you are a man of gold for any district, 
 and if only the voters I have had to deal with had been equally 
 intelligent " 
 
 "What, have you been standing for a place ? But from the 
 state the somewhat entangled state of your finances I did 
 not think you were in a position "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 279 
 
 "35o; and I was not working on my own account. Ras- 
 tignac was worried about the voting in Arcis-sur-Aube, and 
 asked me to spend a few days there." 
 
 "Arcis-sur-Aube ! But, my dear fellow, if I remember 
 rightly some article I was reading this morning in one of 
 those rags, they are making a shocking bad choice some 
 plaster-cast maker, an image-cutter, whom they propose to 
 send up to us ?" 
 
 "Just so, and it is about that rascally business that I came 
 to consult you. I have not been two hours in Paris, and I 
 shall see Rastignac only as I leave this." 
 
 "He is getting on famously, that little Minister !" said the 
 Colonel, interrupting the skilful modulation through which 
 Maxime by every word had quietly tended to the object of 
 his visit. "He is very much liked at the Chateau. Do you 
 know that little Nucingen girl he married?" 
 
 "Yes, I often see Rastignac; he is a very old friend of 
 mine." 
 
 "She is a pretty little thing," the Colonel went on. "Very 
 pretty; and when the first year of matrimony is dead and 
 buried, I fancy that a mild charge in that quarter might be 
 ventured on with some hope of success." 
 
 "Come, come !" said Maxime, "a man of position like you, 
 a legislator ! Why, after merely stirring the electoral pot 
 for somebody else, I have come back quite a settled and re- 
 formed character." 
 
 "Then you went to Arcis-sur-Aube to hinder the election 
 of this hewer of stone ?" 
 
 "Not at all; I went there to scotch the wheels of a Left 
 Centre candidate." 
 
 "Peugh ! I am not sure that it is not as bad as the Left 
 out and out. But take a cigar ; I have some good ones there 
 the same as the Princes smoke." 
 
 Maxime would have gained nothing by refusing, for the 
 Colonel had already risen to ring for his valet, to whom he 
 merely said: "Lights." 
 
 Their cigars fairly started, M. de Trailles anticipated an-
 
 280 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 other interruption by declaring, before he was asked, that he 
 had never smoked anything so fine. The Colonel, lounging 
 comfortably in his chair, and, so to say, ballasted by the occu- 
 pation he had secured, seemed likely to give less volatile at- 
 tention to the conversation. So M. de Trailles resumed: 
 
 "At first everything was going splendidly. To oust the 
 candidate who had scared the Ministry a lawyer, the very 
 worst kind of vermin I disinterred a retired hosier, the 
 mayor of the town, idiot enough for anything, whom I per- 
 suaded to come forward. This worthy was convinced that he, 
 like his opponent, belonged to the Opposition. That is the 
 prevalent opinion in the whole district at the present time, 
 so that the election, by my judicious manoeuvring,, was as 
 good as won. And our man once safe in Paris, the great 
 wizard at the Tuileries would have spoken three words to 
 him, and this rabid antagonist, turned inside out like a stock- 
 ing of his own making, would have been anything we wished." 
 
 "Well played," said the Colonel; "I see the hand of my 
 Maxime in it all." 
 
 "You will see it yet plainer when he tells you that in this 
 little arrangement, without taking toll from his employers, 
 he expected to turn an honest penny. To engraft on that 
 dull stock some sort of parliamentary ambition, I had to 
 begin by making myself agreeable to his wife, a not unpal- 
 atable country matron, though a little past the prime " 
 
 "Yes, yes; very good " said Franchessini. "The hus- 
 band a deputy satisfied ?" 
 
 "You are not near it, my dear fellow. There is a daughter 
 m the house, an only child, very much spoilt, nineteen, nice- 
 looking, and with something like a million francs of her 
 own." 
 
 "But, my dear Maxime, I passed by your tailor's yesterday 
 and your coachmaker's, and I saw no illuminations." 
 
 "They would, I am sorry to say, have been premature. 
 But so matters stood: the two ladies crazy to make a move 
 to Paris; full of overflowing gratitude to the man who could 
 get them there through the door of the Palais Bourbon; the
 
 281 
 
 girl possessed with the idea of being a Countess; the mother 
 transported at the notion of holding a political drawing- 
 room you see all the obvious openings that the situ- 
 ation afforded, and you know me well enough to believe that 
 I was not behindhand to avail myself of such possibilities 
 when once I had discerned them." 
 
 "I am quite easy on that score," said the Colonel, as he 
 opened a window to let out some of the cigar smoke that by 
 this time was filling the room. 
 
 "So I was fully prepared," Maxime went on, "to swallow 
 the damsel and the fortune as soon as I had made up my 
 mind to leap plump into this mesalliance; when, falling from 
 the clouds, or to be accurate, shot up from underground, the 
 gentleman with two names, of whom you read in the National 
 this morning, suddenly came on the scene." 
 
 "By the way," said the Colonel, "what may this act of 
 recognition be which enables a man to take a name he had 
 never heard of only a day since?" 
 
 "The recognition of a natural son in the presence of a 
 notary. It is perfectly legal." 
 
 "Then our gentleman is of the interesting tribe of the 
 nameless? Yes, yes, those rascals often have great luck. I 
 am not at all surprised that this one should have cut the 
 ground from under your feet." 
 
 "If we were living in the middle ages," said Maxime, "I 
 should account for the unhorsing of my man and the success 
 of this fellow by magic and witchcraft; for he will, I fear, 
 be your colleague. How can you account for the fact that an 
 old tricoteuse, formerly a friend of Danton's, and now the 
 Mother Superior of an Ursuline convent, with the help of 
 a nephew, an obscure Paris organist whom she brought out 
 as the masculine figure-head of her scheme, should have 
 hoodwinked a whole constituency to such a point that this 
 stranger actually polled an imposing majority?" 
 
 ''Well, but some one knew him, I suppose?" 
 
 "Not a soul, unless it were this old hypocrite. Till the 
 moment of his arrival he had no fortune, no connections not
 
 282 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 even a father ! While he was taking his boots off he was made 
 Heaven knows how the proprietor of a fine estate. Then, 
 in quite the same vein, a gentleman supposed to be a native 
 of the place, from which he had absented himself for many 
 years, presented himself with this ingenious schemer in a 
 notary's office, acknowledged him post-haste as his son, 
 and vanished again in the course of the night, no one knowing 
 by which road he went. This trick having come off all right, 
 the Ursuline and her ally launched their nominee; republi- 
 cans, legitimists, and conservatives, the clergy, the nobility, 
 the middle classes one and all, as if bound by a spell cast 
 over the whole land, came round to this favorite of the old 
 nun-witch; and, but for the sacred battalion of officials who, 
 under my eye, put a bold face on the matter, and did not 
 break up, there was nothing to hinder his being returned 
 unanimously, as you were." 
 
 "And so, my poor friend, good-bye to the fortune?" 
 
 "Well, not so bad as that. But everything is put off. 
 The father complains that the blissful peace of his existence 
 is broken, that he has been made quite ridiculous when 
 the poor man is so utterly ridiculous to begin with. The 
 daughter would still like to be a Countess, but the 
 mother cannot make up her mind to see her political 
 drawing-room carried down stream; God knows to what 
 lengths I may have to go in consolation ! Then, I myself am 
 worried by the need for coming to an early solution of the 
 problem. There I was there was the girl I should have 
 got married; I should have taken a year to settle my affairs, 
 and then by next session, I should have made my respectable 
 father-in-law resign, and have stepped into his seat in the 
 Chamber. You see what a horizon lay before me." 
 
 "But, my dear fellow, apart from the political horizon, 
 that million must not be allowed to slip." 
 
 "Oh well, so far as that goes, I am easy; it is only post- 
 poned. My good people are coming to Paris. After the 
 repulse they have sustained, Arcis is no longer a possible 
 home for them. Beauvisage particularly I apologize for the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 283 
 
 name, but it is that of my fair one's family Beauvisage, like 
 Coriolanus, is ready to put the ungrateful province to fire 
 and sword. And indeed the hapless exiles will have a place 
 here to lay their heads, for they are the owners, if you please, 
 of the Hotel Beauseant." 
 
 "Owners of the Hotel Beauseant!" cried the Colonel in 
 amazement. 
 
 "Yes indeed ; and, after all Beauseant Beauvisage ; only 
 the end of the name needs a change. My dear fellow, you 
 have no idea of what these country fortunes mount up to, 
 accumulated sou by sou, especially when the omnipotence of 
 thrift is supported by the incessant suction of the leech we 
 call trade ! We must make the best of it ; the middle classes 
 are rising steadily like a tide, and it is really very kind of 
 them to buy our houses and lands instead of cutting our heads 
 off, as they did in '93 to get them for nothing." 
 
 "But you, my dear Maxime, have reduced your houses and 
 lands to the simplest expression." 
 
 "No since, as you perceive, I am thinking of reinstating 
 myself." 
 
 "The Hotel Beauseant !" said the Colonel, calling up a 
 long-buried reminiscence. "I have never set foot there since 
 the last ball given by the Viscountess who then owned it, on 
 the very evening when, in love and despair, she made up her 
 mind to go and bury herself in Normandy on one .of her 
 estates. I was there with poor Lady Brandon, and the effect 
 was startling; but I remember the splendor of the rooms; it 
 was quite a royal- residence." 
 
 "Happily, everything has been completely spoilt. It was 
 let for years to some English people, and now extensive re- 
 pairs are needed. This is a capital bond between me and 
 my country friends, for without me they have no idea how 
 to set to work. It is understood that I am to be director 
 general of the works ; but I have promised my future mother- 
 in-law another thing, and I need your assistance, my dear 
 fellow, to enable me to perform it." 
 
 "You do not want a license for her to sell tobacco and 
 stamps ?"
 
 284 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "No, nothing so difficult as that. These confounded wo- 
 men, when they are possessed by a spirit of hatred or revenge, 
 have really wonderful instinct ; and Madame Beauvisage, who 
 roars like a lioness at the mere name of Dorlange, has taken 
 it into her head that there must be some dirty intrigue 
 wriggling at the bottom of his incomprehensible success. It 
 is quite certain that the apparition and disappearance of this 
 'American' father give grounds for very odd surmises ; and it 
 is quite possible that if we pressed the button, the organist, 
 who is said to have taken entire charge of this interesting 
 bastard's education, and to know the secret of his parentage, 
 might afford the most unexpected revelations. 
 
 "And thinking of this, I remembered a man over whom 
 you have, I fancy, considerable influence, and who in this 
 'Dorlange hunt' may be of great use to us. You recollect 
 the robbery of Jenny Cadine's jewels, which she lamented 
 so bitterly one evening when supping with you at Very's? 
 You called to the waiter for paper and ink ; and in obedience 
 to a line from you, sent at three in the morning to M. de 
 Saint-Esteve, the police took up the matter so effectively 
 that the thieves were caught and the jewels restored by the 
 following evening." 
 
 "Yes," said the Colonel, "I remember very well. My au- 
 dacity was lucky. But I may tell you frankly, that with 
 more time for thought, I should not have dealt so cavalierly 
 with Monsieur de Saint-Esteve. He is a man to be approached 
 with respect." 
 
 "Bless me! Why, is not he a retired criminal who has 
 served his time on the hulks, and whose release you helped to 
 obtain who must have for you some such veneration as 
 Fieschi showed to one of his protectors?" 
 
 "Very true. Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, like his predecessor 
 Bibi-Lupin, has had his troubles. But he is now at the head 
 of the criminal police, with very important functions that he 
 fulfils with remarkable address. If this were a matter 
 strictly within his department, I should not hesitate to give 
 you an introduction ; but the affair of which you speak is a
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 285 
 
 delicate business, and first and foremost I must feel my way 
 to ascertain whether he will even discuss it with you." 
 
 "Oh, I fancied he was entirely at your commands. Say no 
 more about it if there is any difficulty." 
 
 "The chief difficulty is that I never see him. I cannot, of 
 course, write to him about such a thing ; I lack opportunity 
 the chance of a meeting. But why not apply to Rastignac, 
 who would simply order him to take steps?" 
 
 "Rastignac, as you may understand, will not give me a very 
 good reception. I had promised to succeed, and I have come 
 back a failure; he will regard this side issue as one of those 
 empty dreams a man clutches at to conceal a defeat. And, in 
 any case, I should be glad to owe such a service solely to your 
 tried friendship." 
 
 "It will not prove lacking," said the Colonel, rising. "I 
 will do my best for you, only it will take time." 
 
 Maxime had paid a long visit, and took the hint to cut it 
 short; he took leave with a shade of coolness, which did not 
 particularly disturb the Colonel. 
 
 As soon as Monsieur de Trailles was gone, Franchessini 
 took the knave of spades out of a pack of cards, and cut the 
 figure out from the background. Placed between two thick 
 folds of letter-paper, he tucked it into an envelope, which he 
 addressed in a feigned hand to Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, 
 Petite Rue Sainte-Anne, Pres du Quai des Orfevres. 
 
 This done, he rang, countermanded his carriage, which he 
 had ordered before Maxime's visit, and setting out on foot, 
 posted the strange missive with his own hand in the first 
 letter-box he came to. He took particular care to see that it 
 was securely sealed. 
 
 At the close of the elections, which were now over, the 
 Government, against all expectations, still had a majority in 
 the Chamber, but a problematical and provisional majority, 
 promising but a struggling and sickly existence to the Min- 
 istry in power. Still, it had won the numerical success 
 which is held to be satisfactory by men who wish to remain in
 
 286 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 office at any price. Every voice in the Ministerial camp was 
 raised in a Te Deum, which as often serves to celebrate a 
 doubtful defeat as an undoubted victory. 
 
 On the evening of the day when Colonel Franchessini and 
 Maxime de Trailles had held the conversation just recorded, 
 the general result of the elections was known ; the ministers 
 living on the left bank of the Seine who held receptions that 
 day saw their rooms mobbed ; and at the house of the Minister 
 of Public Works, the Comte de Rastignac, the throng was 
 immense. Though not conspicuous as an orator, this diminu- 
 tive statesman, by his dexterity, by the elegance of his man- 
 ners, by his inexhaustible fund of resource, and, above all, 
 by his complete devotion to personal policy, was sure to rise 
 to a post of the first importance in a Cabinet which lived 
 only by expedients. 
 
 Madame de FEstorade, who was too much taken up by her 
 children to be very punctual in her social duties, had long 
 owed Madame de Rastignac a visit in return for that paid by 
 the Minister's wife on the evening when the sculptor, now 
 promoted to be deputy, load dined there after the famous 
 occasion of the statuette, as related by her to Madame Octave 
 de Camps. Monsieur de 1'Estorade, a zealous Conservative, 
 as we know, had insisted that, on a day when politics and 
 politeness were both on the same side, his wife should dis- 
 charge this debt already of long standing. Madame de 1'Es- 
 torade had gone early to have done with the task as soon as 
 possible, and so found herself at the upper end of the group 
 of seated ladies; while the men stood about, talking. Her 
 chair was next to Madame de Rastignac, who sat nearest to 
 the fire. At official receptions this is usual, a sort of guide 
 to the newcomers who know where to go at once to make their 
 bow to the lady of the house. 
 
 But Madame de 1'Estorade's hopes of curtailing her visit 
 had not taken due account of the fascinations of conversation 
 in which, on such an occasion, her husband was certain to be 
 involved. 
 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade, though no great orator, was influ^
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 28T 
 
 ential in the Upper Chamber, and regarded as a man of great 
 foresight and accurate judgment ; and at every step he took as 
 he moved round the rooms, he was stopped either by some 
 political bigwig or by some magnate of finance, of diplomacy, 
 or merely of the business world, and eagerly invited to give 
 his opinion on the prospects of the opening session. To 
 every question, the President of the Court of Exchequer an- 
 p.wered at more or less length, and now and again he had the 
 keen satisfaction of finding himself the centre of a group 
 who anxiously took note of his views. 
 
 This success made him quite indifferent to his wife's agi- 
 tated signals; and she, keeping her eye on his various evolu- 
 tions, telegraphed to him whenever he came within her ken 
 that she wished to end the sitting. The little heed he paid 
 to her impatience was in itself a fact to be noted in the record 
 of the usually clear and serene sky that bent over the couple. 
 Ten years even after their marriage, Monsieur de 1'Estorade, 
 who had been accepted by his wife with anything rather than 
 enthusiasm, would have been horrified at the idea of such 
 obviously slack obedience ; but three .lustres had now elapsed 
 since he had won the hand of the beautiful Eenee de Man- 
 combe ; and though she had not yet lost any of her magnificent 
 beauty, he, on the contrary, had grown a good deal older. 
 The twenty years that lay between his age of fifty-two and 
 hers of thirty-two was all the more marked now because, even 
 at seven-and-thirty, when he had married and settled, his hair 
 was already gray and his health wrecked. A malady of the 
 liver from which he then suffered, after lying dormant for 
 some years, had of late seemed to assume an active form ; and 
 while this morbid condition, a common one among statesmen 
 and ambitious workers, produced a stronger taste in him for 
 political interests, it no doubt made his mouth harder, so to 
 speak, to the matrimonial bit. 
 
 It is, however, quite possible that the absurd fit of jealousy 
 to which we once saw him yield was caused solely by the 
 obscure disorder which had already tinged his worn face with 
 the yellowish hue of pronounced liver-disease.
 
 288 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade talked so long and so well, that at 
 last the drawing-room was almost empty, and only a small 
 circle was left of intimate friends, gathered round his wife 
 and Madame de Eastignac. The Minister himself, as he re- 
 turned from seeing off the last of his guests to whose im- 
 portance such an attention was due, rescued Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade from the clutches as he thought somewhat peril- 
 ous of a Wurtemberg Baron, the mysterious agent of some 
 Northern Power, who, helped by his Orders and his gibberish, 
 had the knack of acquiring rather more information about 
 any given matter than his interlocutor intended to give him. 
 
 Hooking his arm confidentially through that of the guile- 
 less Monsieur de 1'Estorade, who was lending a gullible ear to 
 the trans- Ehenish rhodomontade in which the wily Teuton 
 carefully wrapped up the curiosity he dared not frankly avow : 
 
 "That man, you know, is a mere nobody," said Eastignac, 
 as the foreigner made him a humbly obsequious bow. 
 
 "He does not talk badly," replied Monsieur de 1'Estorade. 
 "If it were not for his villainous accent " 
 
 "That, on the contrary, is his strong point, as it is Nu- 
 cingen's, my father-in-law. With their way of mutilating 
 the French language, and always seeming to be in the clouds, 
 these Germans have the cleverest way of worming out a 
 secret " 
 
 As they joined the group about Madame de Eastignac 
 
 "Madame," said the Minister to the Countess, "I have 
 brought you back your husband, having caught him red- 
 handed in 'criminal conversation' with a man from the Zoll- 
 verein who would probably not have released him this night." 
 
 "I was about to ask Madame de Eastignac if she could 
 give me a bed, to set her free at any rate, for Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade's interminable conversations have hindered me 
 from leaving her at liberty." 
 
 Madame de Eastignac protested as to the pleasure it had 
 been to enjoy Madame de 1'Estorade's society as long as possi- 
 ble, only regretting the necessity for frequent interruptions 
 to respond to the civilities of the extraordinary looking newly-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 289 
 
 elected deputies who had come in an endless stream to make 
 their bow to her. 
 
 "Oh, my dear !" cried Rastignac. "The session will open 
 immediately ; pray give yourself no scornful airs to the elect 
 representatives of the nation! Besides, you will get into 
 Madame de 1'Estorade's black books. One of our newly-made 
 sovereigns is, I am told, high in her good graces." 
 
 "In mine?" said Madame de 1'Estorade with a look of 
 surprise, and she colored a little. Her complexion, still brill- 
 iantly clear, lent itself readily to this expression of emotion. 
 
 ''To be sure ! quite true," said Madame de Rastignac. "I 
 had quite forgotten that artist who, on the last occasion of 
 my seeing you at your own house, was cutting out such charm- 
 ing silhouettes for your children, in a corner. I must own 
 that I was then far from supposing that he would become one 
 of our masters." 
 
 "But even then he was talked of as a candidate," replied 
 Madame de 1'Estorade; "though, to be sure, it was not taken 
 very seriously." 
 
 "Quite seriously by me," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, eager 
 to add a stripe to his reputation as a prophet. "From the very 
 first talk on political matters that I had with our candidate, 
 I expressed my astonishment at his breadth of view Mon- 
 sieur de Ronquerolles is my witness." 
 
 "Certainly," said this gentleman, "he is no ordinary youth; 
 still, I do not build much on his future career. He is a man 
 of impulse, and, as Monsieur de Talleyrand well observed, 
 the first impulse is always the best." 
 
 "Well, then, monsieur?" said Madame de 1'Estorade in- 
 nocently. 
 
 "Well, madame," replied Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who 
 piqued himself on scepticism, "heroism is out of date; it is 
 a desperately heavy and clumsy outfit, and sinks the wearer 
 on every road." 
 
 "And yet I should have supposed that great qualities of 
 heart and mind had something to do with the composition 
 of a man of mark."
 
 290 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Qualities of mind, yes you are right there; but even so, 
 on condition of their tendency in a certain direction. But 
 qualities of heart of what use, I ask you, can they be in a po- 
 litical career? To hoist you on to stilts on which you walk 
 far less firmly than on your feet, off which you tumble at the 
 first push and break your neck." 
 
 "Whence we must conclude," said Madame do Rastignac, 
 laughing, while her friend preserved a disdainful silence, 
 "that the political world is peopled with good-for-nothings." 
 
 "That is very near the truth, madame; ask Lazarille!" 
 And with this allusion to a pleasantry that is still famous 
 on the stage, Monsieur de Ronquerolles laid his hand famil- 
 iarly on the Minister's shoulder. 
 
 "In my opinion, my dear fellow, your generalizations are 
 rather too particular," said Rastignac. 
 
 "Nay," said Monsieur de Ronquerolles, "come now; let us 
 be serious. To my knowledge, this Monsieur de Sallenauve 
 the name he has assumed, I believe, instead of Dorlange, 
 which he himself said frankly enough was a name for the 
 stage has committed two very handsome deeds within a 
 short time. In my presence, aiding and abetting, he was 
 within an ace of being killed by the Due de Rhetore 
 for. a few unpleasant remarks made on one of his friends. 
 Now he really need not have heard those remarks ; and, hav- 
 ing heard them, it was straining a point to consider that he 
 had, I will not say a claim, but even a right to take up the 
 quarrel." 
 
 "Ah !" said Madame de Rastignac, "it was he then who 
 fought the duel with Monsieur de Rhetore which was so 
 much discussed?" 
 
 "Yes, madame, and I may add that he behaved at the meet- 
 ing with splendid courage and I know what I am talking 
 about." 
 
 Before the other "handsome deed" could be brought into 
 the discussion, at the risk of seeming rude by interrupting 
 the course of the argument, Madame de 1'Estorade rose and 
 gave her husband an imperceptible nod to signify that she 
 wished to leave.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 291 
 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade took advantage of the slightness 
 of the signal to ignore it, and remained immovable. Mon- 
 sieur de Ronquerolles went on: 
 
 "His other achievement was to fling himself under the 
 feet of some runaway horses and snatch Madame de 
 1'Estorade's little daughter from certain death." 
 
 Everybody looked at Madame de 1'Estorade, who this time 
 blushed crimson; but at the same instant she found words, 
 feeling that by some means she must keep her countenance, 
 and she said with some spirit : 
 
 "It would seem, monsieur, that you wish to convey that 
 Monsieur de Sallenauve was a great fool for his pains, since 
 he risked his life, and would thus have cut short all his 
 chances in the future. I may tell you, however, that there 
 is one woman whom you would hardly persuade to share that 
 opinion and that is my child's mother." 
 
 As she spoke, Madame de 1'Estorade was almost in tears. 
 She warmly shook hands with Madame de Rastignac, and 
 so emphatically made a move, that this time she got her 
 fixture of a husband under way. 
 
 Madame de Rastignac, as she went with her friend to the 
 drawing-room door, spoke in an undertone: 
 
 "I really thank you," said she, "for having boldly held your 
 own against that cynic. Monsieur de Rastignac has some 
 unpleasant allies left from his bachelor days." 
 
 As she returned to her seat, Monsieur de Ronquerolles was 
 speaking : 
 
 "Aha," said he, "these life-preservers ! Poor 1'Estorade is, 
 in fact, as yellow as a lemon !" 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur, you are atrocious !" said Madame de 
 Rastignac indignantly. "A woman whom calumny has never 
 dared to blight, who lives solely for her husband and children, 
 and who has tears in her eyes at the mere remote recollection 
 of the danger that theatened one of them !" 
 
 "Bless me, madame," said Monsieur dc Ronquerolles, heed- 
 less of this little lecture, "I can only tell you that your New- 
 foundland dog is a dangerous and unwholesome breed. After
 
 292 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 all, if Madame de 1'Estorade should think herself too seriously 
 compromised, she has always this to fall back on she can 
 get him to marry the girl he saved." 
 
 Monsieur de Konquerolles had no sooner spoken than he 
 was conscious of the hideous blunder he had made by uttering 
 such a speech in Augusta de Xucingen's drawing-room. It 
 was his turn to redden though he had lost the habit of it, 
 and deep silence, which seemed to enfold him, put the crown- 
 ing touch to his embarrassment. 
 
 "That clock is surely slow," said Rastignac, to make some 
 sound of whatever words, and also to put an end to a sitting 
 at which speech was so luckless. 
 
 "It is indeed," said Monsieur de Ronquerolles, after look- 
 ing at his watch. "Just on a quarter-past twelve" the hour 
 was half-past eleven. 
 
 He bowed formally to the mistress of the house, and went, 
 as did the rest of the company. 
 
 "You saw how distressed he was," said Rastignac to his 
 wife, as soon as they were alone. "He was a thousand miles 
 away from any malicious intent." 
 
 "No matter; as I was saying just now to Madame de 
 1'Estorade, your bachelor life has left you heir to some odious 
 acquaintances." 
 
 "But, my dear child, the King is civil every day to people 
 he would be only too glad to lock up in the Bastille, if there 
 still were a Bastille, and if the Charter would allow it." 
 
 Madame de Rastignac made no reply; she went up to her 
 room without saying good-night. 
 
 Not long after, the Minister tapped at a side door of the 
 room, and finding it locked: 
 
 "Augusta," said he, in the voice which the most ordinary 
 bourgeois of the Rue Saint-Denis would have adopted under 
 similar circumstances. 
 
 The only answer he heard was a bolt shot inside. 
 
 "There are some things in the past," said he to himself, 
 with much annoyance, "that are quite unlike that door they 
 always stand wide open on the present."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 293 
 
 "Augusta," he began again, "I wanted to ask you at what 
 hour I might find Madame de 1'Estorade at home. I mean 
 to call on her to-morrow after what has happened ' 
 
 "At four o'clock," the lady called back, "when she comes 
 in from the Tuileries, where she always walks with the 
 children." 
 
 One of the questions which had been most frequently 
 mooted in the world of fashion since Madame de Kastignac's 
 marriage was this "Does Augusta love her husband?" 
 
 Doubt was allowable ; Mademoiselle de Nucingen's marriage 
 had been the ill-favored and not very moral result of an 
 intimacy such as is apt to react on the daughter's life when 
 it has lasted in the mother's till the course of years and long 
 staleness have brought it to a state of atrophy and paralysis. 
 In such unions, where love is to be transferred to the next 
 generation, the husband is usually more than willing, for he 
 is released from joys that have turned rancid, and avails him- 
 self of a bargain like that offered by the magician in the 
 Arabian Nights to exchange old lamps for new. But the wife 
 is in the precisely opposite predicament; between her and 
 her husband there stands an ever-present memory which 
 may come to life again. Even apart from the dominion of the 
 senses, she must be conscious of an older power antagonistic 
 to her newer influence; must she not almost always be a vic- 
 tim, and can she be supposed to feel impassioned devotion to 
 the maternal leavings? Rastignac had stood waiting outside 
 the door for about as long as it has taken to give this brief 
 analysis of a not uncommon conjugal situation. 
 
 "Well, good-night, Augusta," said he, preparing to de- 
 part. 
 
 As he piteously took his leave, the door was suddenly 
 opened, and his wife, throwing herself into his arms, laid her 
 head on his shoulder, sobbing. 
 
 The question was answered: Madame de Rastignac loved 
 her husband. And yet the distant murmuring of a nice 
 little hell might be heard under the flowers of this paradise. 
 
 Rastignac was less punctual than usual next morning; and
 
 294 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 by the time he went into his private office, the ante-room 
 beyond was already occupied by seven applicants armed with 
 letters of introduction, besides two peers and seven members 
 of the Lower Chamber. 
 
 A bell rang sharply, and the usher, with such agitation as 
 proved contagious among the visitors, hurried into the Minis- 
 ter's room. A moment later he reappeared with the stereo- 
 typed apology: 
 
 "The Minister is called to attend a Council. He will, how- 
 ever, have the honor of receiving the members of the Upper 
 and Lower Chambers. The rest of the gentlemen are re- 
 quested to call again." 
 
 "But when again?" asked one of the postponed victims. 
 "This is the third time I have called within three days, and 
 all for nothing." 
 
 The usher shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, "That 
 is no fault of mine; I only obey orders." However, hearing 
 some murmurs as to the privilege accorded to the Honorable 
 Members : 
 
 "Those gentlemen," said he, with some pomposity, "come 
 to discuss matters of public interest." 
 
 The visitors having been paid in this false coin, the bell 
 rang again, and the usher put on his most affable smile. 
 
 By some obscure natural affinity the happier portion of 
 this little crowd had gravitated into one corner. Though they 
 had never met before, since most of them were the offspring 
 of the latest national travail, they had somehow recognized 
 each other by a representative manner, very difficult to define, 
 but quite unmistakable. It was to this upper side of the sieve, 
 so to speak, that the man directed his insinuating glance; 
 not daring to decide among so many great men, he mutely 
 suggested : 
 
 "Whom shall I have the honor of announcing first?" 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Colonel Franchessini, "I believe I have 
 seen you all come in?" 
 
 And he went towards the door which the usher threw open, 
 announcing in a loud, distinct voice :
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARC1S 295 
 
 "Monsieur le Colonel Franchessini." 
 
 "Ah, a good beginning this morning!" said the Minister, 
 going forward a few steps and holding out his hand. "What 
 do you want of me, my dear fellow? A railway, a canal, a 
 suspension bridge ?" 
 
 "I have come, my dear friend, to trouble you about a little 
 private affair a matter that concerns both you and me?" 
 
 "That is not the happiest way of urging the question, for 
 I must tell you plainly I hold no good recommendation to 
 myself." 
 
 "You have had a visitor lately ?" said the Colonel, proceed- 
 ing to the point. 
 
 "A visitor? Dozens. I always have." 
 
 "Yes. But on the evening of Sunday the 12th. the day 
 of the riot?" 
 
 "Ah ! now I know what you mean. But the man is going 
 mad." 
 
 "Do you think so ?" said the Colonel dubiously. 
 
 "Well, what am I to think of a sort of visionary who makes 
 his way in here under favor of the relaxed vigilance which 
 in a Ministerial residence always follows on musket-firing in 
 the streets; who proceeds to tell me that the Government is 
 undermined by the Republican party, at the very moment 
 when the Staff-officers of the National Guard assure me that 
 we have not had even a skirmish, and who finally suggests 
 that he is himself the only man who can insure the future 
 safety of the dynasty?" 
 
 "So that you did not welcome him very cordially?" 
 
 "So that I soon showed him out, and rather peremptorily, 
 in spite of his persistency. At any time, and under any cir- 
 cumstances, he is a visitor I could never find agreeable; but 
 when, on my pointing out to him that he holds a post for 
 which he is admirably fitted, and which he fills with the 
 greatest skill, so that it must be the utmost limit of his 
 ambition, the maniac replies that unless his services are ac- 
 cepted France is on the brink of a precipice, you may suppose 
 I had but one thing to say namely, that we hope to save it 
 without his help."
 
 296 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Well, it is done !" said the Colonel. "But now, if you 
 will allow me to explain matters 
 
 The Minister, sitting at his table with his back to the fire, 
 leaned round to look at the clock. 
 
 "Look here, my dear fellow," said he, after seeing what 
 the time was, "I have a suspicion that you will not be brief, 
 and there is a hungry pack waiting outside that door; even 
 if I could give you time, I could not listen properly. Be so 
 kind as to go for an airing till noon, and come back to break- 
 fast. I will introduce you to Madame de Eastignac, whom 
 you do not know, I believe, and when we rise from table we 
 will take a turn in the garden ; there I shall be wholly at your 
 service, and can give you all the time you need." 
 
 "That will suit me perfectly," said the Colonel, leaving. 
 As he crossed the waiting-room: 
 
 "Well, gentlemen," said he, "I have not kept you long, 
 have I?" 
 
 He shook hands with one and another, and went away. 
 
 Three hours later, when the Colonel appeared in Madame 
 de Rastignac's drawing-room where he was introduced to 
 her he found there ISTucingen, the Minister's father-in-law, 
 who came almost every day to breakfast there on his way to 
 the Bourse; fimile Blondet, of the Debats; Messrs. Moreau 
 (de 1'Oise), Dionis, and Camusot, three fiercely Conservative 
 members; and two of the newly elect, whose names it is not 
 certain that Rastignac himself knew. Franchessini also rec- 
 ognized Martial de la Roche-Hugon, the Minister's brother- 
 in-law ; the inevitable des Lupeaulx, a Peer of France ; and a 
 third figure, who talked for a long time with Rastignac in 
 a window recess. He, fimile Blondet explained in reply to 
 the Colonel's inquiries, was a former functionary of the secret 
 police, who still carried on his profession as an amateur, mak- 
 ing the round of all the Government offices every morning, 
 under every Ministry, with as much zeal and punctuality as if 
 it still were his duty. 
 
 In consequence of the somewhat keen remarks that had 
 passed between the Colonel and Maxime de Trailles as to the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 297 
 
 frame of mind in which Madame de Rastignac might find her- 
 self when marriage should have palled a little, he was bound 
 to give some attention to the last and fourteenth person, a 
 fresh-colored, rosy youth who was, he heard, the Minister's 
 private secretary. It is well known that private secretaries, 
 when they are caught young, if they are but zealous and guile- 
 less, have to some extent taken the place of the aides-de-camp 
 of the past. However, as soon as he heard Madame de Ras- 
 tignac address this young official with the familiar tu, asking 
 him after his mother Madame de Restaud, he troubled him- 
 self no further. This was merely a little cousin, not a danger- 
 ous rival, whatever the playwrights may say, when a young 
 wife has a due sense of her dignity. Monsieur de Rastignac 
 had taken as his private secretary Felix Restaud, second son 
 of his mother-in-law Madame de Nucingen's sister. Ernest, 
 the elder, was pledged to the Legitimist party as having 
 married Camille, daughter of the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, 
 who must not be confounded with the Duchess of the same 
 name. 
 
 Madame de Rastignac, seen close, was fair but not 
 lymphatic. She was strikingly like her mother, but with the 
 shade of greater elegance, which in parvenu families grows 
 from generation to generation as they get further from the 
 source. The last drop of the original Goriot seemed to have 
 evaporated in this lovely young woman, who was especially 
 distinguished by the fine hands and feet, which show breeding, 
 and of which the absence in Madame de Nucingen, in spite 
 of her beauty, had always stamped her so distressingly as the 
 vermicelli-maker's daughter. 
 
 The Colonel, as a man who might subsequently have ideas 
 of his own, showed repressed eagerness in his attentions to 
 Madame de Rastignac, with the gallantry, now rather out of 
 date, which seems addressed to Woman rather than to the 
 individual woman; idle men alone, especially if they have 
 been soldiers, seem to preserve a reflection of this tradition. 
 The Colonel, whose successes in the boudoir had been many, 
 knew that this distant method of preparing the approaches
 
 298 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 is a very effective strategy in besieging a place. An air of 
 adoration and worship, though so much out of fashion, never 
 displeases a woman; and, with the exception of a few who 
 are Voltairean sceptics as to love, regarding it as mere good- 
 fellowship, and laughing at the respectful feeling of a man 
 who hesitates to approach them with a cigar between his teeth, 
 so to speak, most women are grateful to an adorer, particularly 
 if he is not a Celadon, when he treats them with pious rever- 
 ence and rather like sacred relics. 
 
 The Colonel, as he meant to be asked to the house again, 
 took care to speak of his wife. "She lived," he said, "very 
 much in the old English way, in her own home ; but he would 
 be happy to drag her out of her habitual retirement to in- 
 troduce her to a lady of such distinguished merit as Madame 
 de Rastignac, if indeed she would allow him to bring her. 
 In spite of a wide difference in age between his wife and his 
 friend the Minister's, they would find, he thought, one happy 
 point of contact in a similar zeal for good works." 
 
 In fact, Franchessini had hardly entered the room when 
 he found himself obliged to take from Madame de Rastignac 
 a ticket for a ball of which she was a lady patroness, to be 
 got up for the benefit of the victims of the recent earthquake 
 in Martinique. 
 
 It was the fashion then among women to display in such 
 acts of charity an audacity beyond all bounds; now, as it 
 happened, Madame Franchessini was an Irishwoman of great 
 piety, who spent in good works most of her spare time after 
 superintending the management of her house, and a large 
 part of the sums she reserved for her own use apart from her 
 husband's. So the offer of an intimacy with a woman who 
 would be so ready to give her money and her exertions when 
 needed for a creche, or infant schools, or children orphaned 
 by the cholera, was a really skilful stroke of diplomacy; and 
 it shows that the sportsman in the Colonel had not altogether 
 killed the faculty of foresight. 
 
 Breakfast over, the guests left or withdrew to the drawing- 
 room ; and Franchessini, who had sat at Madame de Ras- 
 tignac's right hand, continued his conversation with her.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 299 
 
 While he, like Hercules at the feet of Omphale, devoted 
 his anxious attention to the worsted work for the benefit of 
 the poor which the Countess held in her pretty fingers, the 
 Minister, in obedience to the proverb, "Give every dog his 
 day," had taken fimile Blondet's arm Blondet of the Debats 
 and made a couple of rounds of the grass plot that lay out- 
 side the glass doors of the drawing-room. As he parted from 
 him he gave him this final hint : 
 
 "You understand? We do not want to drive a bargain; 
 however, the majority is ours." 
 
 "Now for you and me, my friend !" said he to the Colonel, 
 and they went into the garden. 
 
 "I, less fortunate than you," said Franchessini, taking up 
 his story at the point where it had been interrupted a few 
 hours previously, "have kept up communications with the 
 man we spoke of not constant, indeed; but a sort of evil 
 concatenation of contact. To avoid ever having him in my 
 house, we agreed that whenever he wanted to speak to me he 
 should write to me without any signature and tell me where 
 to meet him. In the almost impossible event of my wishing 
 to see him, I was to send a playing card figure cut out to 
 his den in the Eue Sainte-Anne, and he would notify the spot 
 where we might meet undisturbed. He may be trusted for a 
 clever choice of a suitable place; no man knows his Paris 
 better, or the ways of moving about underground" 
 
 "High political qualifications!" said Rastignac sarcastic- 
 ally. 
 
 "I tell you the whole truth, you see," replied the Colonel, 
 "to prove to you that, in my opinion, this is a man to be 
 treated with respect ; and, at the same time, that you may not 
 suppose that I am showing you a mere phantasmagoria with 
 a view to persuading you into doing a thing quite contrary to 
 your first intentions." 
 
 "Pray go on," said Eastignac, pausing to gather a full- 
 blown China rose by way, perhaps, of showing his perfect 
 openness of mind. 
 
 "On the evening of the very day when you had given him
 
 300 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 so rough a reception, and my election was already known by 
 telegraph and announced in an evening paper. I received a 
 note from him, a thing that had not happened for the last 
 eighteen months very short and concise : 'To-morrow morn- 
 ing, six o'clock Eedoute de Clignancourt.' >: 
 
 "Like a challenge/' observed Eastignac. 
 
 "A reminder of one, certainly; for, as you may remember, 
 it was at Montmartre that, in that unfortunate duel with 
 my own hands about 1820 poor young Taillefer ! Some- 
 times, at dusk, I think of that luckless fellow, though the 
 wound, as you know, was honestly given " 
 
 "Ay, one of those ugly stories," said Eastignac, "which save 
 us from regretting our young days when such things were 
 done." 
 
 "The man whom you call a visionary," Franchessini went 
 on, "was, when I joined him, sitting on a knoll, his head be- 
 tween his hands. When he heard me, and as I went close 
 to him, he rose in a state of high excitement, took me by the 
 hand, led me to the spot very little altered where the duel 
 took place, and in the strident voice you know so well : 'What 
 did you do here, nearly five-and-twenty years ago ?' said he. 
 'A thing/ said I, 'of which, on my honor, I repent.' 'And I 
 too. And for whom?' As I made no reply, he went on: 
 'For a man whose fortune I wanted to make. You killed the 
 brother to please me, that the sister might be a rich heiress 
 for him to marry ' " 
 
 "But it was all done without my knowledge," Eastignac 
 hastily put in ; "and I did everything in my power to prevent 
 it." 
 
 "So I told him," said the Colonel, "and he paid no heed 
 
 to the remark, but only grew more frantic, exclaiming : 'Well, 
 
 .and when I go to that man's house, not to ask him a favor, 
 
 but to offer him my services, he shows me the door ! And 
 
 does he think I am going to overlook it ?' '' 
 
 "He is remarkably touchy," said Eastignac quietly. "I 
 did not show him the door. I only rather roughly cut short 
 his boasting and exaggeration."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 301 
 
 "He then went on/' said the Colonel, "to relate his inter- 
 view with you the previous evening ; the proposal he had made 
 to give up his place in the criminal police in favor of a post 
 as superintendent far more needed, in his opinion of 
 political malefactors. 'I am sick/ said he, 'of liming twigs 
 to catch thieves, such an idiotic kind of game-bird that all 
 their tricks are stale to me. And, then, what interest can I 
 find in nabbing men who would steal a silver mug or a* few 
 banknotes, when there are others only waiting for a chance 
 to grab at the crown ?' ' : 
 
 "Very true," said Eastignac, with a smile, "if it were not 
 for the National Guard, and the army, and the two Chambers, 
 and the King who can ride." 
 
 "He added," said Franchessini, "that he was not ap- 
 preciated, and, with a reminiscence of the lingo of the past, 
 that he was fagged out over mere child's play; that he had 
 in him very powerful qualities adapted to shine in a higher 
 sphere; that he had trained a man to take his place; that I 
 must positively see and talk to you; and that now I was a 
 member, I had a right to speak and impress on you the possible 
 results of a refusal." 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Rastignac decisively, "I can but 
 say, as I did at the beginning of our conversation, the man is 
 a lunatic, and I have never been afraid of a madman, whether 
 a cheerful or furious one." 
 
 "I do not deny that I myself saw great difficulties in the 
 way of satisfying his demand. However, I tried to soothe 
 him by promising to see you, pointing out to him that noth- 
 ing could be done in a hurry , and in point of fact, but for 
 an accessory circumstance, I should probably not have men- 
 tioned the matter for some long time to come." 
 
 "And that circumstance ?" asked the Minister. 
 
 "Yesterday morning," replied the Colonel, "I had a visit 
 from Maxime, who had just returned from Arcis-sur- 
 Aube " 
 
 "I know," said Rastignac. "He mentioned the matter to 
 me an idea devoid of common-sense. Either the man en
 
 302 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 whom he wants to set your bloodhound is good for something 
 or he is not. If he is not, it is perfectly useless to employ 
 a dangerous and suspected instrument to destroy the thing 
 that does not exist. If, on the other hand, we have to do 
 with a good man in the right place, he has, on the platform 
 of the Chamber, and in the newspapers, every means, not only 
 of parrying such blows as we may be able to strike with 
 muffled swords, but of turning them against ourselves. Take 
 it as a general rule, in a country like ours, crazy for publicity, 
 wherever the hand of the police is seen, even if it were to un- 
 veil the basest turpitude, you may be sure that there will be 
 an outcry against the Government. Opinion in such a case 
 behaves like the man to whom some one sang an air by Mozart 
 to prove how great a composer he was. The hearer, conquered 
 by the evidence, said at last to the singer, 'Well, Mozart may 
 be a great musician, but you, my good friend, may congratu- 
 late yourself on having a great cold !' '' 
 
 "Indeed, there is much truth in your remark," said 
 Franchessini. "Still, the man Maxime wants to unmask can 
 only be of respectable mediocrity; and without being able to 
 lunge with such force as you suppose, he may nevertheless 
 tease you a good deal. The most dangerous adversaries are 
 not all giants of formidable eloquence." 
 
 "I expect to ascertain the true worth of your new colleague 
 ere long from a quarter where I may count on better informa- 
 tion than Monsieur de Trailles can command. On this oc- 
 casion he has let himself in, and is trying to make up for 
 lack of skill by vehemence. As to your incubus whom I 
 should not, in any case, employ to carry out Maxime's dream 
 as he seems not altogether useless, at least from the point 
 of view of your connection with him, just to give him an 
 answer I should say " 
 
 "Well, what?" said Franchessini, with increased attention. 
 
 "I should tell him that, quite apart from his criminal ex- 
 perience, which, as soon as he heads the political ranks, might 
 expose him to serious outrages that would recoil on us, there 
 are in his past life some very ugly records "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 303 
 
 "But records only," replied Francliessini. "For you un- 
 derstand that when he ventured into your presence it was, so 
 to speak, in a new skin." 
 
 "I know all," said Eastignac. "You do not suppose that 
 he is the only police spy in Paris. After his visit I made 
 inquiries, and I heard that since 1830, when he was placed at 
 the head of his department, he had lived a middle-class life 
 of the strictest respectability ; the only fault I have to fim} 
 with it is that it is too perfect a disguise." 
 
 "Nevertheless " said the Colonel. 
 
 "He is rich," Eastignac went on ; "his salary is twelve thou- 
 sand francs a year from the Government ; with three hundred 
 thousand he inherited from Lucien dc Eubempre, and the 
 profits from a patent-leather factory which he has near 
 Gentilly, and which is paying very well. His aunt Jacqueline 
 Collin, who keeps house with him, still dabbles in certain dirty 
 jobs, from which, of course, she derives large profits; and I 
 have strong reason to believe that they have both gambled 
 successfully on the Bourse. The deuce is in it, my dear fel- 
 low, if, under such circumstances, a man cannot whitewash 
 himself and turn over a new leaf. In the age in which we 
 live, luxury is a power; it does not, indeed, secure considera- 
 tion and respect, but it presents their counterfeit, which 
 comes to much the same thing. Just set some great financiers 
 or statesmen I could name in a garret, or going about on foot 
 why, the street boys would run after them and hoot them 
 like drunkards or carnival guys ! And your man, who, to 
 escape tramping the mud, wanted to perch his life on a 
 pedestal, could find no better plan than to get himself sud- 
 denly transferred to the furthest social pole from his own. 
 Every evening now, in a cafe close to the Prefecture, at the 
 foot of the Pont Saint-Michel, he sits down sociably to his 
 game of dominoes; and on Sundays he goes with a party of 
 retired tradesmen to spend the day in philosophical retire- 
 ment in a shanty he has bought not far from the woods of 
 Romainville in the PITS Saint-dervais; ihere lie tries to grow 
 blue dahlias, and was talking last year of crowning a rose- 
 queen !
 
 304 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Now all this, my dear Colonel, is too bucolic to lead up 
 to the superintendence of the political police. Let him be- 
 stir himself a little this old Germeuil, fling a little money 
 about, give some dinners ! Why, the executioner could get 
 men to dine with him if he wished it." 
 
 "I quite agree with you," said Franchessini. "I think 
 that he keeps himself too much curled up for fear of attract- 
 ing notice." 
 
 "Tell him, on the contrary, to uncurl; and, since he wants 
 to have a finger in public business, he should find some credit- 
 able opportunity for being talked about. Does he fancy that, 
 hide in what corner he will, the press will not know where to 
 find him? Let him do as the niggers do; they do not try 
 to wash themselves white, but they have a passion for bright 
 colors, and dress in scarlet coats covered with gold braid. 
 I know what I should do in his place: to appear thoroughly 
 cleaned, I should take up with some actress, some one very no- 
 torious, conspicious, before the public. I do not say that I 
 would ruin myself, but I would seem to ruin myself for her, 
 with all the airs of one of those frenzied passions for which 
 the public is always indulgent, if not sympathetic. I should 
 display all my luxury on this idol's account; people would 
 come, not to my house, but to hers. Then, thanks to my mis- 
 tress, I should be endured at my own table, and by degrees 
 I should make a connection. All the leading men in our 
 sphere of life gather round a famous actress as inevitably as 
 moths round a candle ; the men who can make or unmake, or 
 which is the crowning feat of art can remake a reputation. 
 Politicians, men on 'Change, journalists, artists, men of let- 
 ters, I would harness them all to drag me out of the mud, 
 while feeding them well, and showing myself ever ready with 
 my sympathy, and yet more with my money, to help them in 
 a hundred little ways. 
 
 "All this, my dear fellow, will not, of course, make him a 
 Saint Vincent de Paul though he too had been on the 
 galleys but it would get him classed among the third 01 
 fourth rate notabilities a man possible to deal with. The
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 305 
 
 road thus laid, Monsieur de Saint-Esteve might prove 'ne- 
 gotiable' ; and if he then came to me, and I were still in power, 
 I might be able to listen to him." 
 
 "There is certainly something to be said for this plan," 
 replied Franchessini. But in his own mind he reflected that 
 his friend the Minister had made great strides since the days 
 of the Pension Vauquer, and that he and Vautrin as Saint- 
 Esteve was then called had exchanged parts. 
 
 "But at any rate," added Eastignac, going up the steps 
 to return to the drawing-room, "make him clearly understand 
 that he misinterpreted my way of receiving him. That even- 
 ing I was naturally absorbed in anxious reflections." 
 
 "Be quite easy," said Franchessini, "I will talk to him in 
 the right way ; for, as I must repeat, he is not a man to drive 
 to extremities ; there have been incidents in our past which 
 cannot be wiped out." 
 
 And as the Minister made no reply, it was sufficiently 
 obvious that he appreciated the observation at its true value. 
 
 "You will be here for the King's speech, I hope," said Eas- 
 tignac to the Colonel ; "we want a little enthusiasm." 
 
 Franchessini, before leaving, asked Madame de Eastignac 
 to name a day when he might have the honor of bringing his 
 wife to call. 
 
 "Any day," replied Augusta, ' "but more especially any 
 Friday." 
 
 At the hour when Eastignac, by his wife's instructions, 
 thought himself sure to find Madame de FEstorade, he did 
 not fail to call. Like all who had been present at the little 
 scene to which Monsieur de Eonquerolles' remarks had given 
 rise, the Minister had been struck by the Countess' agitation ; 
 and without concerning himself to gauge the nature or depth 
 of her feelings towards the man who had saved her child, 
 he was convinced that she was at least greatly interested by 
 him. 
 
 The unexpected feat of winning his election attracted the 
 attention of the Government to Sallenauve, all the more be-
 
 306 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 cause at first his nomination had hardly been taken seriously. 
 It was known, too, that at the preliminary meeting on the 
 eve of the election he had shown himself a clever man. 
 He might easily become a fairly resonant voice, speaking 
 for a dangerous and restless party, represented in the Cham- 
 ber by an almost imperceptible minority. His fortune, what- 
 ever its origin, would enable him to dispense with Ministerial 
 favors, and all the information obtainable represented him 
 as a man not easily turned from the path he had chosen, and 
 characterized by a certain gravity of demeanor and purpose. 
 On the other hand, the obscurity that hung over his history 
 might at any moment serve to extinguish him. 
 
 Kastignac, while affecting to discard with vehemence the 
 idea of an attack from that side, in his own mind did not al- 
 together renounce the possibility of using means which he 
 foresaw would be difficult to handle; he would fall back on 
 them only if it were obviously necessary. In this state of things 
 Madame de 1'Estorade might be useful in two ways : through 
 her it seemed easy to arrange an accidental meeting with the 
 new deputy, so as to study him at ease and ascertain whether 
 there were any single point at which he might prove accessible 
 to terms. And since this, it would seem, was improbable, it 
 would at any rate be easy, by confiding to Madame de 
 1'Estorade in a friendly but official way the underhand plot- 
 ting that was going on against Sallenauve, to warn him to 
 be cautious, and consequently less aggressive. 
 
 And all this would follow naturally from the step the 
 Minister was now taking. By seeming to call on purpose to 
 apologize for Monsieur de Eonquerolles' mode of speech, he 
 would allude in the most natural manner possible to the man 
 who had been the occasion and the object of it ; and the con- 
 versation once started on these lines, he must be clumsy in- 
 deed if he could not achieve one or the other, or possibly 
 both, of the results he aimed at. 
 
 Monsieur de Eastignac's plan of action was, however, des- 
 tined to be modified. The servant, who happened to be speak- 
 ing to the gate keeper, had just informed the visitor that
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 307 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade was not at home, when Monsieur de 
 FEstorade came in on foot, and seeing the Minister's carriage, 
 rushed forward. However well a man may stand with the 
 world, it always seems a pity to dismiss a visitor of such im- 
 portance; and the accountant-general was not the man to re- 
 sign himself to such a misfortune without a struggle. 
 
 "But my wife will soon be in," he insisted as he saw his 
 house threatened with the loss of such a piece of good fortune. 
 "She is gone to Ville-d'Avray with her daughter, and Mon- 
 sieur and Madame Octave de Camps. Monsieur Marie- 
 Gaston, a great friend of ours the charming poet, you know, 
 who married Louise de Chaulieu has a house there, where 
 his wife died. He has never till now set foot in it since that 
 misfortune. These ladies were so charitable as to accompany 
 him, so as to break the shock of his return; and a little out 
 of curiosity too, for the villa is said to be one of the most 
 perfect retreats ever imagined." 
 
 "But in that case Madame de 1'Estorade's visit may last 
 till late," said Eastignac. "It was to her, and not to you, 
 my dear Count, that I came to offer my apologies for the 
 little scene last evening, which seemed to annoy her a good 
 deal. Will you kindly express to her from me " 
 
 "I will stake my head on it, my dear sir, that by the time 
 you turn the street corner, my wife will be here; she is abso- 
 lutely punctual in everything she does, and to me it is simply 
 miraculous that she should be even a few minutes late." 
 
 Seeing him so bent on detaining him, Rastignac feared 
 to be disobliging, and made up his mind to be dragged out 
 of his carriage, and await the Countess' return in her draw- 
 ing-room ; for, often enough, for less than this a faithful 
 voter has been lost. 
 
 "So Madame Octave de Camps is in Paris?" said he, for 
 the sake of saying something. 
 
 "Yes, she made her appearance unexpectedly without letting 
 my wife know, though they are in constant correspondence. 
 Her husband has, I think, some request to make to you. You 
 have not seen him?"
 
 308 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "No ; but I think I remember seeing his card." 
 
 "It is some mining business he is projecting; and as I have 
 your ear, allow me to tell you something about it." 
 
 "Mercy !" thought Rastignac, "I am very kind, I am sure, 
 to have come here merely to stand a fire of recommendations, 
 point-blank." 
 
 So, cutting short the explanation 1'Estorade had already 
 begun, and seeing no reason why he should not quite un- 
 ceremoniously ask the husband one of the things which he had 
 proposed to ask the wife: 
 
 "Excuse my interrupting you," said he, "we will return to 
 the subject; but at this moment I am in some uneasiness." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 "Your friend Sallenauve's election has made a devil of 
 a rumpus. The King was speaking of him to me this morn- 
 ing, and he was not particularly delighted when I com- 
 municated to him the opinion you expressed only last even- 
 ing as to our new adversary." 
 
 "Bless me ! But, as you know, the tribune is a rock on 
 which many a ready-made reputation is wrecked. And I am 
 sorry too that you should have spoken of Sallenauvc to the 
 King as a friend of ours. It is not I who direct the elections. 
 You should appeal to the Minister of the Interior. I can 
 only say that I tried fifty ways to hinder the tiresome man 
 from standing." 
 
 "But you must see that the King can owe } r ou no grudge 
 because you happen to know a candidate so absolutely un- 
 dreamed of " 
 
 "No. But last evening in your own drawing-room you 
 remarked to my wife that she seemed greatly interested in 
 him. I could not contradict before others, because it is 
 monstrous to deny knowledge of a man to whom we lie under 
 so serious an obligation. But, in fact, my wife especially 
 has felt that obligation a burden since the day when he went 
 off to stand for election. Though she never troubles her head 
 about politics, she prefers the society of those who swim in our 
 OWD waters, and she probably foresees that an intimacy with a
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 309 
 
 man whose daily business it is to attack our side may be 
 difficult and very moderately pleasant. She even said to me 
 the other day that he was an acquaintance to be quietly 
 dropped 
 
 "Not, I hope," interrupted Rastignac, "before you have 
 done me the service I came to ask." 
 
 "At your service, my dear Minister, whatever it may be." 
 
 "To plunge in head foremost, then : before seeing this man 
 in the Chamber I want to take his measure, and for that 
 purpose I want to meet him. To invite him to dine with us 
 would be useless; under the eye of his party he would not 
 dare to accept, even if he wished it. Besides, he would be on 
 his guard, and I should not see him as he is. But if we came 
 across each other by chance, I should find him, as it were, in 
 undress, and could feel my way to discover if he has a weak 
 spot." 
 
 "If I asked him to meet you at dinner here, there would 
 be the same difficulty. Supposing I were to find out some 
 evening that he intended to call, and sent you word in the 
 course of the day ?" 
 
 "We should be too small a party," said Rastignac, "and 
 then a separate conversation between two is hard to manage ; 
 the meeting is so intimate that any tete-a-tete betrays the ag- 
 'gravating circumstance of premeditated arrangement " 
 
 "Stay!" cried Monsieur de 1'Estorade, "I have a bright 
 idea " 
 
 "If the idea is really bright," thought the Minister, "I 
 shall have gained by not finding the lady in, for she cer- 
 tainly would not have been so anxious to carry out my 
 wishes." 
 
 "One day soon," FEstorade went on, "we are giving a little 
 party, a children's dance. It is a treat my wife, tired of 
 refusing, has promised our little girl, in fact as a festival to 
 celebrate our joy at still having her with us. The Preserver, 
 as you perceive, is an integral and indispensable item, and 
 I think I may promise you noise enough to enable you to take 
 your man aside without any difficulty, while at a party of that 
 kind premeditation can hardly be suspected."
 
 310 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "The idea is certainly a good one probability alone is 
 wanting." 
 
 "Probability ?" 
 
 "Certainly. You forgot that I have been married scarcely 
 a year, and that I have no contingent to account for my pres- 
 ence that evening among your party." 
 
 "That is true. I had not thought of that." 
 
 "But let me consider," said the Minister. "Among your 
 guests will there be the little Roche-Hugons ?" 
 
 "No doubt; the children of a man I should esteem most 
 highly even if he had not the honor of so near a relationship 
 to you." 
 
 "Well, then, all is plain sailing. My wife will come with 
 her sister-in-law, Madame de la Roche-Hugon, to see her 
 nieces dancing nothing is more complimentary on such oc- 
 casions than to drop in without the formality of an invitation; 
 and I, without saying anything to my wife, am gallant enough 
 to come to take her home." 
 
 "Admirable !" said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, "and we by 
 this little drama gain the delightful reality of your presence 
 here !" 
 
 "You are too kind," said Rastignac, shaking hands cordially. 
 "But I believe it will be well to say nothing to Madame de 
 1'Estorade. Our puritan, if he got wind of the plan, is the 
 man to stay away. It will be better that I should pounce 
 on him unexpectedly like a tiger on its prey." 
 
 "Quite so. A surprise for everybody !" 
 
 "Then I am off," said Rastignac, "for fear I should drop 
 a word to Madame de FEstorade. I shall be able to amuse 
 the King to-morrow by telling him of our little plot and the 
 education of children to be political go-betweens." 
 
 "Well, well," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade philosophically, 
 "is not this the whole history of life: great effects from small 
 causes ?" 
 
 Rastignac had only just left when Madame de 1'Estorade, 
 her daughter Xa'is, and her friends Monsieur and Madame 
 Octave de Camps came into the drawing-room where the con-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 311 
 
 spiracy had been laid against the new member's independence 
 a plot here recorded at some length as a specimen of the 
 thousand-and-one trivialities to which a constitutional minis- 
 ter not unfrequently has to attend. 
 
 "And do you not smell the smell of a Minister here ?" said 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "Not such a very delicious scent, I am sure," replied Mon- 
 sieur de Camps, who, as a Legitimist, belonged to the Opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 "That is a matter of taste," said the Peer. "My dear," he 
 went on, addressing his wife, "you have come so late that you 
 have missed a distinguished visitor." 
 
 "Who is that?" the Countess asked indifferently. 
 
 "The Minister of Public Works, who came to offer you 
 an apology. He had noted with regret the unpleasant im- 
 pression made upon you by the theories put forward by that 
 wretched Eonquerolles." 
 
 "That is disturbing himself for a very small matter," re- 
 plied Madame de 1'Estorade, who was far from sharing her 
 husband's excitement. 
 
 "At any rate/' replied he, "it was very polite of him to 
 have noticed the matter." 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade, without seeming to care much, 
 asked what had passed in the course of the visit. 
 
 "We discussed indifferent subjects," said Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade craftily. "However, I took the opportunity of 
 getting a word in on the subject of Monsieur de Camps' 
 business." 
 
 "Much obliged," said Octave, with a bow. "If only you 
 could have persuaded the gentleman to grant me a sight of 
 his private secretary, who is as invisible as himself, between 
 them they might arrange to give me an interview." 
 
 "You must not be annoyed with him," said Monsieur dc 
 1'Estorade. "Though his office is not strictly political, Ras- 
 tignac has, of course, been much taken up with election mat- 
 ters. Now that he is freer, we will, if you like, call on him 
 together one morning."
 
 312 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "I hesitate to trouble you about a matter that ought to 
 go smoothly of itself ; I am not asking a favor. I never will 
 ask one of this Government ; but since Monsieur de Rastignac 
 is the dragon in charge of the metallic treasures of the soil, 
 I am bound to go through the regular channel and apply 
 to him." 
 
 "We can settle all that, and I have started the thing in the 
 right direction," replied Monsieur de 1'Estorade. 
 
 Then, to change the conversation, he said to Madame de 
 Camps : 
 
 "Well, and the chalet, is it really such a marvel ?" 
 
 "Oh," said Madame Octave, "it is a fascinating place; you 
 can have no idea of such elegant perfection and such ideal 
 comfort." 
 
 "And Marie-Gaston ?" asked Monsieur de 1'Estorade, much 
 as Orgon asks, "And Tartuffe?" but with far less anxious 
 curiosity. 
 
 "He was I will not say quite calm," replied Madame de 
 1'Estorade, "but certainly quite master of himself. His be- 
 havior was all the more satisfactory because the day began 
 with a serious disappointment." 
 
 "What happened ?" asked Monsieur de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "Monsieur de Sallenauve could not come with him," cried 
 Nai's, making it her business to reply. 
 
 She was one of those children brought up in a hot-house 
 who intervene rather oftener than they ought in matters that 
 are discussed in their presence. 
 
 "Nai's," said her mother, "go and ask Mary to put your 
 hair up." 
 
 The child perfectly understood that she was sent away to 
 her English nurse for having spoken out of season, and she 
 went off with a little pout. 
 
 "This morning," said Madame de 1'Estorade, as soon as 
 Nai's had closed the door, "Monsieur Marie-Gaston and Mon- 
 eieur de Sallenauve were to have set out together for Ville- 
 d'Avray, to receive us there, as. had been arranged; last even- 
 ing they had a visit from the organist who was so active in
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 313 
 
 promoting Monsieur de Sallenauve's election he came to 
 hear the Italian housekeeper sing and decide as to whether 
 she were fit to appear in public." 
 
 "To be sure !" said Monsieur de 1'Estorade. "Now we have 
 ceased to make statues, we must quarter her somewhere !" 
 
 "As you say/' answered his wife, rather tartly. "Mon- 
 sieur de Sallenauve, to silence slander, was anxious to enable 
 her to follow out her own idea of going on the stage; but he 
 wished first to have the opinion of a judge who is said to be 
 remarkably competent. The two gentlemen went with the 
 organist to Saint-Sulpice, where the handsome Italian sings 
 every evening in the services for the month of Mary. After 
 hearing her : 'That contralto has at least sixty thousand francs 
 in her throat !' the organist remarked." 
 
 "Just the income I derive from my forges !" remarked 
 Octave de Camps. 
 
 "On returning home," Madame de 1'Estorade went on, 
 "Monsieur de Sallenauve told his housekeeper of the opinion 
 pronounced on her performance, and with the utmost cir- 
 cumspection he insinuated that she must now soon be think- 
 ing of making her living, as she always intended. 'Yes, I 
 think the time is come,' said Signora Luigia. Then she closed 
 the conversation, saying, 'We will speak of it again.' This 
 morning at breakfast they were much surprised at having seen 
 nothing of the Signora, who was habitually an early riser. 
 Fancying she must be ill, Monsieur de Sallenauve sent a wo- 
 man who comes to do the coarser cleaning to knock at her 
 door. No answer. More and more anxious, the two gentle- 
 men went themselves to find out what was happening. 
 
 "After knocking and calling in vain, they determined to 
 turn the key and go in. In the room nobody ; but instead, a 
 letter addressed to Monsieur de Sallenauve. In this letter 
 the Italian said that, knowing herself to be in his way, she 
 was retiring to the house of a woman she knew, and thanked 
 him for all his kindness to her." 
 
 "The bird had felt its wings !" said Monsieur de 1'Estorade. 
 "It had flown away."
 
 314 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "That was not Monsieur de Sallenauve's idea," said the 
 Countess. "He does not for an instant suspect her of an im- 
 pulse of ingratitude. Before explaining to the meeting of 
 voters the relation in which they stood, Monsieur de Salle- 
 nauve, having ascertained that he would be questioned about 
 it, had with great delicacy written to ask her whether this 
 public avowal would not be too painful to her. She replied 
 that she left it entirely to him. At the same time, he noticed 
 on his return that she was out of spirits, and treated him with 
 more than usual formality; whence he now concludes that, 
 fancying herself a burden to him, in one of those fits of folly 
 and temper of which she is peculiarly capable, she has thought 
 it incumbent on her to leave his house without allowing him 
 in any way to concern himself with providing for her in the 
 future." 
 
 "Well, well," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, "luck go with 
 her ! A good riddance." 
 
 "'Neither Monsieur de Sallenauve nor Monsieur Marie- 
 Gaston takes such a stoical view of the matter. Knowing 
 the woman's determined and headstrong nature, they fear 
 lest she should have laid violent hands on her life an idea 
 which her previous history justifies. Or else they fear that 
 she has been ill advised. The under-servant I mentioned had 
 observed that while the gentlemen were in the country, 
 Signora Luigia two or three times had a mysterious visitor 
 in the person of a middle-aged lady, handsomely dressed, 
 who came in a carriage, but whose appearance was singular, 
 and who made a great show of secrecy about their inter- 
 views." 
 
 "Some charitable visitor," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, 
 "since the runaway is one of the very devout." 
 
 "At any rate, that must be ascertained ; and it was to dis- 
 cover what has become of the luckless creaiure that Monsieur 
 de Sallenauve, by Monsieur Marie-Gaston's earnest desire, 
 spent the day in the search instead of accompanying him to 
 Ville-d'Avray. 
 
 "I adhere to my opinion," replied Monsieur de 1'Estorade.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 315 
 
 "And in spite of immaculate virtue on both sides, I maintain 
 that he has been caught by her." 
 
 "At any rate/' remarked Madame de 1'Estorade, emphasiz- 
 ing the word, "it does not geem that she has been caught." 
 
 "I do not agree with you," said Madame de Camps. "Fly- 
 ing from a person is often a proof of very true love." 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade looked at her friend with some vexa- 
 tion, and a faint color flushed her cheeks. But this no one 
 noticed, the servant having thrown the double doors open and 
 announced that dinner was served. 
 
 After dinner, they proposed to go to the play ; it is one of 
 the amusements that Parisians most miss in the country; 
 and Monsieur Octave de Camps, whose odious ironworks, as 
 Madame de 1'Estorade called them, had made him a sort of 
 "Wild Man of the Woods," had come to town eager for this 
 diversion, for which his wife, a serious and stay-at-home wo- 
 man, was far from sharing his taste. 
 
 So when Monsieur de Camps spoke of going to the Porte 
 Saint-Martin to see a fairy piece that was attracting all Paris, 
 his wife replied: 
 
 "Neither I nor Madame de 1'Estorade have any wish to 
 go out. We are very tired with our expedition, and will give 
 up our places to Na'is and Rene, who will enjoy the marvels 
 of the Rose-fairy far more than we should." 
 
 The two children awaited the ratification of this plan with 
 such anxiety as may be imagined. Their mother made no 
 objection ; and thus, a few minutes later, the two ladies, who 
 since Madame de Camps' arrival in Paris had not once been 
 able to escape from their surroundings for a single chat, 
 found themselves left to an evening of confidential talk. 
 
 "Xot at home to anybody," said Madame de 1'Estorade to 
 Lucas, when the party were fairly off. 
 
 Then, taking as her starting-point the last words spoken 
 by Madame de Camps before dinner: 
 
 "You really have, my dear friend," said she, "a stock of 
 the sharpest little arrows, which go as straight to their mark as 
 BO many darts."
 
 316 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Now that we are alone," replied Madame Octave, "I am 
 going to deal you blows with a bludgeon; for, as you may 
 suppose, I have not traveled two hundred leagues and aban- 
 doned the care of our business, which Monsieur de Camps 
 has trained me to manage very competently when he is absent, 
 only to tell you sugared truths." 
 
 "I am willing to hear anything from you," said Madame 
 de 1'Estorade, pressing her friend's hand her dear conscience- 
 keeper, as she called her. 
 
 "Your last letter simply frightened me." 
 
 "Why? Because I myself told you that this man fright- 
 ened me, and that I would find some means of keeping him 
 at a distance?" 
 
 "Yes. Until then I had doubted what my advice ought 
 to be; but from that moment I became so uneasy about you, 
 that, in spite of all Monsieur de Camps' objections to my 
 making the journey, I was determined to come and here I 
 am." 
 
 "But. I assure you, I do not understand " 
 
 "Well, supposing Monsieur de Camps, Monsieur Marie- 
 Gaston or even Monsieur de Eastignac, though his visits in- 
 toxicate your husband with delight were either of them to 
 get into the habit of calling, would it disturb you as much?" 
 
 "No, certainly not; but neither of these men has any such 
 claim on me as this man has." 
 
 "Do you believe, tell me truly, that Monsieur de Sallenauve 
 is in love with you?" 
 
 "Xo. I believe, I am perfectly certain, that he is not; 
 but I also believe that on my part " 
 
 "We will come to that presently. What I want io know 
 now is whether you wish that Monsieur de Sallenauve should 
 fall in love with you?" 
 
 "God forbid !" 
 
 "Well, an excellent way of drawing him to your heel is 
 to hurt his conceit, to be unjust and ungrateful to compel 
 him, in short, to think about you." 
 
 "But is not that a rather far-fetched notion, my dear ?"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 317 
 
 "Why, my dear child, have you never observed that men, 
 if they have any subtlety of feeling, are more readily caught 
 hy severity than by softness; that we plant ourselves most 
 solidly in their minds by a stern attitude; that they are very 
 like those little lap-dogs who never want to bite till you 
 snatch away your hand ?" 
 
 "If that were the case, every man we scorn and never even 
 think of glancing at would be a lover!" 
 
 "Now, my dear, do not put nonsense into my mouth. It 
 is self-evident that in order to catch fire a man must be pre- 
 disposed to combustion; that, to go to a man's head there 
 must be some beginnings of a fancy on both sides; and it 
 seems to me that between you and Monsieur de Sallenauve 
 there has been ample introduction ! Though he may not love 
 you, he loves your semblance ; and, as you said the other day, 
 wittily enough, what is there to prevent him, now that the 
 other is evidently lost beyond recall, from a ricochet into love 
 for you?" 
 
 "But, on the contrary, he has better hopes than ever of 
 finding the lady, by the help of a very clever seeker who is 
 making inquiry." 
 
 "Well and good ; but supposing he should not find her for 
 a long time to come, are you to spend the time in getting him 
 on your hands ?" 
 
 "Dear Dame Morality, I do not at all accept your theory, 
 at any rate so far as he is concerned: he will be very busy; 
 he will be far more devoted to the Chamber than to me; he 
 is a man of high self-respect, who would be disgusted by such 
 mean behavior on my part, and think it supremely unjust and 
 ungrateful ; and if I try to put two feet of distance between 
 us, he will put four, you may be quite certain." 
 
 "But you, my dear?" said her friend. 
 
 "How I ?" 
 
 "Yes you who are not so busy, who have not the Cham- 
 ber to absorb you, who have I will allow plenty of self- 
 respect, but who know as much about affairs of the heart as 
 a school-girl or a wet-nurse what is to become of }'ou under 
 the perilous regimen you propose to follow?"
 
 318 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "I ! If I do not love him when I see him, I shall still less 
 love him when he is absent." 
 
 "So that if you found him accepting this ostracism with 
 indifference, your woman's pride would not be in the least 
 shocked ?" 
 
 "Of course not ; it is that I aim at." 
 
 "And supposing, on the other hand, that he complains of 
 your behavior, or without complaining, suffers acutely, will 
 your conscience have really nothing to say to you?" 
 
 "It will say that I have acted for the best that I could not 
 do otherwise." 
 
 "And if his success is so great that it comes to your ears, 
 if his name fills all the hundred mouths of Fame, you will 
 still forget his existence?" 
 
 "I shall think of him as I do of Monsieur Thiers or Mon- 
 sieur Berryer." 
 
 "And Nai's, who dreams only of him, and who will say 
 even more emphatically than on the day when he first dined 
 with you, 'How well he talks, mamma !' ' : 
 
 "Oh ! if you take a child's silly chatter into account " 
 
 "And Monsieur de 1'Estorade, who annoys you already 
 when, in his blind devotion to party spirit, he utters some ill- 
 natured insinuation about Monsieur de Sallenauve will you 
 silence him on every occasion when he is perpetually talking 
 about this man, denying his talents, his public spirit ? You 
 know the verdict men always pronounce on those who do not 
 agree with their opinions." 
 
 "In short," said Madame de 1'Estorade, "you mean to say 
 that I shall never be so much tempted to think of him as 
 when he has gone quite out of my ken ?" 
 
 "What has happened to you once, my dear, when he fol- 
 lowed you about, and his sudden disappearance surprised you, 
 like the silence when a drum that has been deafening you for 
 an hour on end abruptly stops its clatter." 
 
 "In that there was reason. His absence upset a plan." 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear," said Madame de Camps gravely ; 
 "I have read and re-read your letters. In them you were more
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 319 
 
 natural and less argumentative; and they left me one clear 
 impression that Monsieur de Sallenauve had certainly 
 touched your heart if he had not invaded it." 
 
 At a gesture of denial from Madame de 1'Estorade, her 
 strenuous Mentor went on: 
 
 "I know you have fortified yourself against such a notion. 
 And how could you admit to me what you have so carefully 
 concealed from yourself ?_ But the thing that is, is. You 
 cannot feel the magnetic influence of a man; you cannot be 
 aware of his gaze even without meeting his eyes; you can- 
 not exclaim, 'You see, madame, I am invulnerable to love,' 
 without having been more or less hit already." 
 
 "But so many things have happened since I wrote those 
 preposterous things !" 
 
 "It is true, he was only a sculptor, and now, in the course 
 of time, he may possibly be in the Ministry, like I will not 
 say Monsieur de Rastignac, for that is not saying much, but 
 like Canalis the great poet." 
 
 "I like a sermon to have some conclusion," said Madame 
 de 1'Estorade pettishly. 
 
 "You say to me," replied Madame de Camps, "exactly what 
 Vergniaud said to Eobespierre on the 31st of May, for in the 
 solitude of our wilderness I have been reading the history of 
 the French Revolution ; and I reply in Robespierre's words, 
 'Yes, I am coming to the conclusion' a conclusion against 
 your pride as a woman, who having reached the age of two- 
 and-thirty without suspecting what love might be even in 
 married life, cannot admit that at so advanced an age she 
 should yield to the universal law; against the memory of 
 all your sermons to Louise de Chaulieu, proving to her that 
 there is no misfortune so great as a passion that captures the 
 heart very much as if you were to argue that an inflammation 
 of the lungs was the worst imprudence a sick man could 
 commit; against your appalling ignorance, which conceives 
 that merely saying '/ will not' in a resolute tone is stronger 
 than an inclination complicated by a concurrence of circum- 
 stances from which the cleverest woman, my cousin tho
 
 320 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Princesse de Cadignan let us say, could scarcely shake herself 
 free." 
 
 "But the practical conclusion ?" said Madame de FEstorade, 
 impatiently patting her knee with her pretty hand. 
 
 "My conclusion is this," replied her friend. "I do not 
 really see any danger of your drowning unless you are so 
 foolish as to try to stem the stream. You are firm-tempered, 
 you have good principles, and are religious; you worship 
 your children, and for their sakes you esteem their father Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade, who has now for more than fifteen years 
 been the companion of your life. With so much ballast you 
 will not upset, and, believe me, you are well afloat." 
 
 "Well, then ?" said Madame de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "Well, then, there is no necessity for violent efforts, with 
 very doubtful results, in my opinion, to preserve an unmoved 
 attitude under impossible conditions, when you have already 
 to a great extent abandoned it. You are quite sure that 
 Monsieur de Sallenauve will never think of inviting you to 
 take a step further; you have said that he is leagues away 
 from thinking of such a thing. Keep still then where you 
 are; make no barricades when nobody it attacking you; do 
 not excite yourself over a useless defence which would only 
 involve you in painful tempests of feeling and conscience, 
 while endeavoring to pacify your conscience and bring peace 
 to your heart just rippled by a breath of wind. 
 
 "The bond of friendship between man and woman always, 
 no doubt, bears some hue of the usually warmer sentiments 
 that exist between the two sexes; but it is not a mere empty 
 illusion, nor an ever-yawning gulf. If Louise de Chaulieu 
 and her adorable first husband had lived, were you not already 
 on such a footing of intimacy with him as never existed be- 
 tween you and any other man? And now, with her second 
 husband, Monsieur Marie-Gaston, are you not on quite ex- 
 ceptional terms in memory of the friend you have lost ? And 
 even with the escort of your little girl, my husband, and my- 
 self, would you have thought of paying the kindly visit we 
 carried out to-day to {ho first comer, just anybody, without 
 some previous knowledge and recommendation ?"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 321 
 
 "Then I am to make a friend of Monsieur de Sallenauve ?" 
 said Madame de 1'Estorade pensively. 
 
 "Yes, my dear, to save yourself from his becoming a fixed 
 idea a regret a remorse three things which poison life." 
 
 "With the world looking on; with my husband, who has 
 already had one fit of jealousy !" 
 
 "My dear, you may compromise yourself just as much or 
 more in the eyes of the world by your efforts to mislead it as 
 by the liberty you frankly allow yourself. Do not imagine, 
 for instance, that your abrupt departure last evening from 
 the Rastignacs', in order to avoid any discussion of your obli- 
 gations to Monsieur de Sallenauve, can have escaped observa- 
 tion. And would not calmer demeanor have more effectually 
 disguised the sense of indebtedness which you displayed, on 
 the contrary, by so much agitation?" 
 
 "In that you are quite right. But some people's impu- 
 dence when they talk has the gift of putting me beside my- 
 self " 
 
 "Your husband is, I think, somewhat altered, and not for 
 the better. What used to be attractive in him was the per- 
 fect respect, the unlimited deference he showed for your per- 
 son, your ideas, your impressions, everything about you ; that 
 sort of dog-like submissiveness gave him a dignity he had no 
 idea of, for there is real greatness in knowing how to obey 
 and to admire. I may be mistaken, but I think politics 
 have spoilt him ; as you cannot fill his seat in the Upper 
 Chamber, it has dawned on his mind that he could quite 
 well live without you. In your place I should keep a sharp 
 eye on such fancies for independence; and since this ques- 
 tion is the order of the day, I should make it a cabinet 
 question on the point of Monsieur de Sallenauve." 
 
 "But do you know, my dear friend," said Madame de 
 1'Estorade, laughing, "that you are delightfully pestilential, 
 and that if I acted on your advice I should bring down fire and 
 sword?" 
 
 "Not at all, my child; I am simply a woman of five-and- 
 forty, who has always looked on things in their practical
 
 322 TEE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 aspect ; and I did not marry my husband, to whom I am pas- 
 sionately attached, till I was well assured, by putting him 
 to a severe test, that he also was worthy of my esteem. It is 
 not I who make life what it is ; I take it as I find it, trying to 
 bring order and possibility into the incidents that may occur. 
 I am not frantic passion like Louise de Chaulieu, nor am I 
 exaggerated good sense like Renee de 1'Estorade. I am a 
 sort of Jesuit in petticoats, convinced that rather wide sleeves 
 are more serviceable than sleeves that are too tight about the 
 wrists; and I never set my heart on the Quest of the Abso- 
 lute." 
 
 At this moment Lucas opened the drawing-room door and 
 announced Monsieur de Sallenauve. As his mistress gave 
 the old man a look as much as to ask him how he dared 
 take so little account of her orders, Lucas replied with a 
 shrug, Avhich seemed to say that this visitor was an article 
 he could not have supposed would be included in the code of 
 prohibition. 
 
 As Sallenauve took his seat in a chair the man pushed for- 
 ward for him : 
 
 "You see," Madame de Camps whispered to her friend, 
 "the servants even have an instinctive idea that he is not 
 a mere anybody" 
 
 Madame de Camps, who had never met the new deputy, 
 devoted her whole attention to studying him, and saw no 
 reason to repent of preaching that he was not to be outraged. 
 Sallenauve accounted for his visit by his anxious curiosity 
 to know how matters had gone off at Ville-d'Avray ; if he 
 should hear that Marie-Gaston had been too much upset, he 
 was quite prepared, though it was already late, to set out at 
 once and join him. 
 
 As to the business that had occupied his day, he had as 
 yet had no form of success. He had availed himself of his 
 title of Deputy, a sort of universal pass-key, to interview the 
 prefect of police, who had referred him to Monsieur de Saint - 
 Esteve of the detective department. Sallenauve, knowing, 
 as all Paris knew, the past history of this man, was amazed
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 323 
 
 to find him an official of good manners. But the great detec- 
 tive had not given him much hope. 
 
 "A woman hidden in Paris," said he, "is literally an eel 
 hidden in the deepest hole." 
 
 He himself, with the help of Jacques Bricheteau, meant 
 to continue the search during the whole of the next day; 
 but if, by the evening, neither he nor the great official in- 
 quisitor had discovered anything, he was determined to go 
 then to Ville-d'Avray to be with Marie-Gaston, concerning 
 whom he was far more uneasy than Madame de 1'Estorade 
 was. 
 
 As he said good-night, before the return of Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade and Monsieur de Camps who was to call for his 
 wife : 
 
 "Do not forget," said Madame de 1'Estorade, "that NaiV 
 party is on the evening after to-morrow. You will offend her 
 mortally if you fail to appear. Try to persuade Marie^ 
 Gaston to come with you ; it will be a little diversion at any 
 rate." 
 
 On coming in from the theatre, Monsieur Octave de 
 Camps declared that it would be many a long day before he 
 would ever go to another fairy extravaganza. N"ai's, on the 
 contrary, still bewitched by the marvels she had seen, began 
 to give an eager report of the play, which showed how deeply 
 it had struck her young imagination. 
 
 As Madame de Camps went away with her husband, she 
 remarked : 
 
 "That little girl would make me very anxious ; she reminds 
 me of Moi'na d'Aiglemont. Madame de FEstorade has 
 brought her on too fast, and I should not be surprised if in 
 the future she gave them some trouble." 
 
 It is difficult to fix the exact date in the history of modern 
 manners, when a sort of new religion had its rise which may 
 be called the worship of children. NOT would it be any easier 
 to determine what the influence was under which this cultus 
 acquired the extensive vogue it has now attained. But while
 
 324 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 it remains inexplicable, the fact exists, and must be recorded 
 by every faithful chronicler of the greater and minor impulses 
 of social life. 
 
 Children now fill the place in the family which was held 
 among the ancients by the household gods; and the individual 
 who should fail to share this devotion would be thought not 
 so much a fractious and cross-grained person, perverse and 
 contradictory, as simply an atheist. The influence of Kous- 
 seau, however who for a while persuaded all mothers to 
 suckle their infants has now died out; still, he must be 
 a superficial observer who would find a contradiction in this 
 to the next remark. Any one who has ever been present at the 
 tremendous deliberations held over the choice of a wet nurse 
 to live in the house, and understood the position this queen 
 of the nursery at once takes up in the arrangements of the 
 household, may be quite convinced that the mother's renun- 
 ciation of her rights is on her part only the first of many acts 
 of devotion and self-sacrifice. The doctor and the accoucheur, 
 whom she does not try to influence, declare that she is not 
 equal to the task; and it js an understood thing that, solely 
 for the sake of the being she has brought into the world, she 
 resigns herself to the inevitable. But, then, having secured 
 for the child what schoolmasters describe as excellent and 
 abundant board, what frantic care and anxiety surround it ! 
 How often is the doctor called up at night to certify that the 
 mildest indigestion is not an attack of much-dreaded croup ! 
 How often is he snatched away from the bedside of the dying, 
 and urgently plied with agonized questions by a mother in 
 tears, who fancies that her cherub looks peeky or pasty, or 
 has not soiled its napkins quite as usual ! 
 
 At last the baby has got over this first difficult stage; re- 
 leased from the wet nurse's arms, it no longer wears a Henri 
 IV. hat, bedizened with plumes and tufts like an Andalusian 
 mule ; but then the child, and its companions, still remind us 
 of Spain : dedicated to the Virgin and arrayed in white, they 
 might be taken for young statues of the Commendatore in the 
 opera of Don Giovanni. Others, reminding us of Walter
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 325 
 
 Scott and the "White Lady," look as if they had come down 
 from the Highlands, of which they display the costume the 
 short jacket and bare knees. 
 
 More often the sweet idols supply in their dress what M. 
 Ballanche would have called a palingenesis of national his- 
 tory. As we see, in the Tuileries, hair cut square a la Charles 
 VI., the velvet doublets, lace and embroidered collars, the 
 Cavalier hats, short capes, ruffles and shoes with roses, of 
 Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., we can go through a course of 
 French history related by tailors and dressmakers with 
 stricter exactitude than by Mezeray and President Renault. 
 
 Next come anxieties, if not as to the health, at any rate as to 
 the constitution of our little household gods for they are 
 always so delicate; and to strengthen them, a journey every 
 year to the sea, or the country, or the Pyrenees, is impera- 
 tively ordered. And, of course, during the five or six months 
 spent by the mother in these hygienic wanderings, the hus- 
 band, if he is detained in Paris, must make the best of his 
 widowhood, of his empty and dismantled house, and the up- 
 heaval of all his habits. 
 
 Winter, however, brings the family home again; but do 
 you suppose that these precious darlings, puffed up with pre- 
 cocity and importance, can be amused, like the children born 
 in the ages of heartless infanticide, with rattles, dolls, and 
 twopenny Punches ? What next, indeed ! The boys must 
 have ponies, cigarettes, and novels; the little girls must be 
 allowed to play on a grand scale at being grown-up mistress 
 of the house ; they give afternoon dances, and evening parties 
 with the genuine Guignol puppets from the Champs-filysees, 
 or Robert Houdin promised on the invitation card; nor are 
 these like Lambert and Moliere, you may depend on it; once 
 on the programme, they are secured. 
 
 Finally, now and again these little autocrats, like Na'is de 
 1'Estorade, get leave to give a party on a sufficiently grown-up 
 scale to make it necessary to engage a few police to guard 
 the door; while at Nattier's, at Delisle's, and at Prevost's 
 the event casts its shadow before in the purchase of silks,
 
 326 THE MEMBER FOR AROIS 
 
 artificial flowers, and real bouquets for the occasion. From 
 what we have seen of Xais, it will be understood that no one 
 was more capable than she of filling the part and the duties 
 that devolved on her by her mother's temporary abdication 
 in her favor of all her power and authority. 
 
 This abdication had dated from some days before the even- 
 ing now arrived; for it was Mademoiselle Nai's de 1'Estorade 
 who, in her own name, had requested the guests to do her 
 the honor of spending the evening with her ; and as Madame 
 de FEstorade would not carry the parody to such a length as 
 to allow the cards to be printed, Nai's had spent several days 
 in writing these invitations, taking care to add in the corner 
 the sacramental formula 'Dancing." 
 
 Nothing could be stranger, or, as Madame Octave de 
 Camps would have said, more alarming than the perfect cool- 
 ness of this little girl of thirteen, standing, as she had seen 
 her mother do on similar occasions, at the drawing-room door, 
 and toning the warmth of her welcome to the finest shades 
 as she received her guests, from the most affectionate cor- 
 diality to a coolness verging on disdain. With her bosom 
 friends she warmly shook hands a I'Anglaise; for others, she 
 had smiles graduated for different degrees of intimacy ; a bow 
 or nod to those whom she did not know or care for; and 
 from time to time the most amusing little motherly air and 
 pet words for the tiny ones who are necessarily included in 
 these juvenile routs, difficult and perilous as such company is 
 to manage. 
 
 To the fathers and mothers of her guests, as the party was 
 not given for them, and she was acting strictly on the Evan- 
 gelical precept, Sinite parvulos venire ad me, Nais aimed at 
 distant but respectful politeness. But when Lucas, reversing 
 the usual order of things, in obedience to her instructions, 
 announced, "Mesdemoiselles de la Eoche-Hugon, Madame la 
 Baronne de la Eoche-Hugon, and Madame la Comtesse de 
 Eastignac," the cunning little puss abandoned this studied 
 reserve ; she rushed forward to meet the Minister's wife, and, 
 with the prettiest possible grace, she seized her hand and 
 kissed it.
 
 Monsieur and Madame de 1'Estorade also pressed forward 
 to welcome their unexpected visitor; and without allowing 
 her to make any apology as to the liberty she had taken in 
 coming with her sister-in-law without an invitation, they led 
 her to a good seat, whence she could have a complete view of 
 the proceedings, by this time of a very lively character. 
 
 Na'is could not accept every invitation to dance which the 
 elegant little dandies vied with each other in pressing on her, 
 and, indeed, she got a little confused over the order of her 
 engagements. In spite of the famous "entente cordiale" her 
 heedlessness was near causing a revival of the perennial 
 rivalry of France and perfidious Albion. A, quadrille prom- 
 ised twice over, to a young English nobleman, aged ten, and 
 a boy from a preparatory naval school Barniol's school 
 was about to result in something more than railing accusa- 
 tions, for the young heir to the English peerage had already 
 doubled his fist in attitude to box. 
 
 This squabble being settled, another disaster befel : a very 
 small boy, seeing the servant bring in a tray of cakes and cool- 
 ing drinks after a polka, which had made him very hot, was 
 anxious to refresh himself; but as he was too short to reach 
 the level at which the objects of his desire were held by the 
 footman, he unfortunately tried clinging to the rim of the 
 tray to bring it within reach ; the tray tilted, lost its balance, 
 and one of its corners serving as a gutter, there flowed, as 
 from the urn of a mythological river-god, a sort of cascade of 
 mingled orgeat, currant-syrup, and capillaire, of which the 
 fountain-head was the overturned glasses. It would have 
 been well if only the rash infant himself had suffered from 
 the sudden sticky torrent ; but in the confusion caused by the 
 catastrophe, ten innocent victims were severely splashed, 
 among them five or six infant bacchantes, who, enraged at 
 seeing their garments stained, seemed ready to make a second 
 Orpheus of the luckless blunderer. 
 
 While he was rescued with difficulty from their hands, and 
 delivered over to those of a German governess, who had has- 
 tened to the scene of the uproar :
 
 328 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "What could Nai's be thinking of," said a pretty, fair-haired 
 little girl to a youthful Highlander with whom she had been 
 dancing all the evening, "to invite little children no bigger 
 than that?" 
 
 "Oh, I quite understand," said the Highlander; "he is a 
 little boy belonging to the Accountant Office people; Nais 
 was obliged to ask him on account of his parents; it was a 
 matter of civility." 
 
 At the same time putting his hand through a friend's arm : 
 
 "I say, Ernest," he went on, "I could smoke a cigar ! Sup- 
 pose we try and find a corner out of all this riot." 
 
 "I cannot, my dear fellow," replied Ernest mysteriously. 
 "You know that Leontine always makes a scene when she 
 finds out that I have been smoking. She is in the sweetest 
 mood to-night. There, look what she has just given me !" 
 
 "A horse-hair ring, with two flaming hearts!" said the 
 Highlander scornfully. "Why, every schoolboy makes them !" 
 
 "Then, pray, what have you to show?" retorted Ernest, 
 much nettled. 
 
 "Oh !" said the Highlander, "better than that." 
 
 And with a consequential air he took out of the sporran, 
 which formed part of his costume, a sheet of scented blue 
 paper. 
 
 "There," said he, holding it under Ernest's nose, "just 
 smell that." 
 
 Ernest, with conspicuous lack of delicacy, snatched at the 
 note and got possession of it; the Highlander, in a rage, 
 struggled to get it back. Then Monsieur de 1'Estorade in- 
 tervened, and having not the remotest suspicion of the cause 
 of the fray, separated the combatants, so that the spoiler could 
 enjoy the fruits of his crime unmolested in a corner. The 
 paper was blank. The young rascal had stolen the sheet of 
 scented paper that morning from his mamma's blotting- 
 book she perhaps would have. made some less immaculate 
 thing of it. 
 
 Ernest presently returned it to the Highlander:
 
 THE MEMBER FOE ARCIS 32a 
 
 "Here; I give you back your letter," said he, in a tone of 
 derision. "It is desperately compromising !" 
 
 "Keep it, sir," replied the other. "I will ask you for it 
 to-morrow under the chestnut-trees in the Tuileries. Mean- 
 while, you must understand that we can have nothing more 
 to say to each other !" 
 
 Ernest's demeanor was less chivalrous. His only reply 
 was to put the thumb of his right hand to his nose, spreading 
 his fingers, and turning an imaginary handle an ironical 
 demonstration which he had learned from seeing it per- 
 formed by his mother's coachman. Then he went off to find 
 his partner for a quadrille that was being formed. 
 
 But why are we wasting time over such trivialities when 
 we know that interests of a superior order are obscurely 
 working themselves out beneath this childish surface? 
 
 Sallenauve, who had returned at about four in the after- 
 noon from spending two days at Ville-d'Avray, could not 
 give Madame de 1'Estorade a good report of his friend. 
 Under a mask of cold resignation, Marie-Gaston was in deep 
 dejection; and the most serious cause of anxiety, because it 
 was so unnatural, was that he had not yet been to visit his 
 wife's grave; it was as though he foresaw the risk of such 
 agitation as he really dared not face. This state of mind 
 had so greatly disturbed Sallenauve, that, but for fear of 
 really distressing Nai's by not appearing at her ball, he would 
 not have left his friend, who was by no means to be persuaded 
 to come to Paris with him. 
 
 It really seemed as though Marie-Gaston had expended 
 his remaining powers in the perfervid enthusiasm and cheer- 
 fulness to which he had wound himself up during the Arcis 
 election, and that now the most disastrous prostration had set 
 . in as a reaction from the excitement of which his letters to 
 Madame de 1'Estorade were but a faint reflection. One thing, 
 however, had made Sallenauve feel that his patient was safe 
 during the few hours of his absence ; before he had fully de- 
 cided to come away, an English gentleman had been an-
 
 330 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 nounced whom Marie-Gaston had known in Florence, and 
 whose arrival he hailed with apparent joy. So some happy 
 effect might perhaps be hoped for from this unforeseen visit. 
 
 To divert Sallenauve's mind from these anxieties and, 
 in fact, she thought them exaggerated Madame de 1'Estorade 
 at once made him acquainted with Monsieur Octave de 
 Camps, who had expressed a strong wish to know him; and 
 by the time the deputy had been conversing a quarter of an 
 hour with the ironmaster, he had quite won this gentleman's 
 good opinion by the extent of his knowledge in metallurgy. 
 
 It may be remembered that one of Bixiou's chief griev- 
 ances against Dorlange had been the sculptor's ambition, if 
 not indeed to know everything, at any rate to examine every- 
 thing. During the last year especially Sallenauve, having 
 spent no time in his art but what was needed for the "Saint 
 Ursula," had been at leisure to devote himself to the scientific 
 studies which justify a parliamentary representative in speak- 
 ing with authority when they can serve to support or illustrate 
 his political views. 
 
 Hence, though in talking to Monsieur Godivet, the Eegis- 
 trar of Taxes at Arcis, he had modestly expressed himself as 
 ignorant of the details of that official's functions, he had 
 given his attention to the various elements on which they bore 
 the customs, conveyancing-fees, stamps, and direct or indi- 
 rect taxes. Then, in turning to the science so problematical, 
 and yet so self-confident that it has assumed a name 
 Political Economy, Sallenauve had studied with no less care 
 the various sources which contribute to form the mighty river 
 of the nation's wealth ; and the branch of the subject relating 
 to mines, the matter just now of preponderating interest to 
 Monsieur de Camps, had not been neglected. The ironmaster 
 had been so exclusively interested in the question of iron ores, 
 that he had much to learn in the other branches of metallurgy, 
 and his delight may be imagined on hearing from the newly- 
 made deputy a sort of Arabian Nights' tale of the riches of 
 the land, though, certified by science, there could be no doubt 
 of the facts.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 331 
 
 "Do you mean, monsieur," cried Monsieur de Camps, "that 
 besides our coal and iron mines we have deposits of copper, 
 lead, and even of silver?" 
 
 "If you will only consult some specialist, he will tell you 
 that the famous mines of Bohemia and Saxony, of Russia and 
 of Hungary, are not to be compared to those that exist in the 
 Pyrenees; in the Alps from Briangon to the Isere; in the 
 Cevennes, especially about the Lozere; in the Puy-de-D6me; 
 in Brittany and in the Vosges. In the Vosges, not far from 
 the town of Saint-Die, I can tell you of a single vein of silver 
 ore that runs with a width of from fifty to eighty metres for a 
 distance of about eight miles." 
 
 "How is it, then, that this mineral wealth has never been 
 worked ?" 
 
 "It was, at one time," said Sallenauve, "at a distant period, 
 especially during the Eoman dominion in Gaul. These mines 
 were abandoned at the fall of the Roman Empire, but worked 
 again during the Middle Ages by the clergy and the lords of 
 the' soil ; then, during the struggle between the feudal nobles 
 and the sovereign, and the long civil wars which devastated 
 the country, the working was given up, and no one has taken 
 it up since." 
 
 "And you are sure of the facts ?" 
 
 "Ancient writers, Strabo and others, all speak of these 
 mines ; the tradition of their working survives in the districts 
 where they lie; imperial decrees and the edicts of kings bear 
 witness to their existence and to the value of their output; 
 and in some places there is still more practical evidence in 
 excavations of considerable length and depth, shaft:' and 
 caverns hewn out of the living rock, and all the traces which 
 bear witness to the vast undertakings that immortalized 
 Roman enterprise. To this may be added the evidence of 
 modern geological science, which has everywhere confirmed 
 and amplified these indications." 
 
 Monsieur de Camps' imagination had been sufficiently fired 
 by the prospects of a mere iron-mine to bring him to Paris 
 as a petitioner to a Government he despised, and at the sug-
 
 832 
 
 gestion of all this buried wealth it positively blazed; he was 
 about to ask his informant what his ideas might be as to the 
 process of extracting the treasure that was so strangely neg- 
 lected, when, by a coincidence for which the reader is pre- 
 pared, Lucas threw open the drawing-room door, and an- 
 nounced in his loudest and most impressive tones, "Monsieur 
 the Minister of Public Works." 
 
 The effect on the assembly was electrical; it even broke in 
 on the tete-a-tete of the two new friends. 
 
 "Let us have a look at this little Kastignac who has blos- 
 somed into a public personage," said Monsieur de Camps dis- 
 dainfully, as he rose. 
 
 But in his heart it struck him that this was an opportunity 
 of getting hold of the inaccessible Minister ; in virtue of the 
 sound principle that a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, 
 he left the hidden fortune revealed to him by Sallenauve to 
 rest in peace, and went back to his iron-mine. Sallenauve, 
 on his part, foresaw an introduction to be inevitable; it 
 seemed to him impossible but that Monsieur de 1'Estorade's 
 Conservative zeal would contrive to bring it about. 
 
 And what would his allies of the Opposition say to the 
 news, which would certainly be reported on the morrow, that 
 a representative of the Extreme Left had been seen in a 
 drawing-room in conversation with a Minister so noted for his 
 ardor and skill in making political proselytes? Sallenauve 
 had already had a taste of his party's ideas of tolerance in 
 the office of the National; he had heard it insinuated that the 
 affectation of moderation promised by his profession of polit- 
 ical faith was not to be taken literally as to his parliamentary 
 conduct ; that, in fact, he would soon find himself deserted if 
 he should attempt to make his practice agree with his theories. 
 
 Anxious as he was, too, about Marie-Gaston, having put in 
 an appearance at Nai's' party, he was eager now to return to 
 Ville-d'Avray, and for all these reasons he determined to profit 
 by the general excitement and beat a retreat. By quiet and 
 simple tactics he got round to the door, and hoped to escape 
 without being observed. But he had reckoned without Nai's,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 333 
 
 to whom he had promised a quadrille. The instant he laid 
 his hand on the door-handle the little girl sounded the alarm, 
 and Monsieur de FEstorade, with what precipitancy may be 
 imagined, took her part to detain the deserter. Seeing that 
 his ruse had failed, Sallenauve dared not commit himself to a 
 retreat which would have been in bad taste by assuming an 
 importance suggestive of political priggishness ; so he took his 
 chance of what might happen, and allowing himself to be 
 reinstated on Nai's' list of partners, he remained. 
 
 Monsieur de FEstorade knew Sallenauve to be too clever 
 a man to become the dupe of any finessing he might attempt 
 to throw him in the Minister's way. He therefore acted with 
 perfect simplicity; and a quarter of an hour after Monsieur 
 de Rastignac's arrival, they came to the deputy arm in arm, 
 the host saying: 
 
 "Monsieur de Rastignac, Minister of Public Works, has 
 desired me before the battle begins to introduce him to one 
 of the generals of the hostile force." 
 
 "Monsieur le Ministre does me too much honor," said Salle- 
 nauve ceremoniously. "Far from being a general, I am but 
 one of the humblest and least known of the rank and file." 
 
 "Nay!" said the Minister, "the fight at Arcis-sur-Aube 
 was no small victory ; you sent our men pretty smartly to the 
 right about, monsieur." 
 
 "There was nothing very astonishing in that, monsieur; 
 as you may have heard, we had a Saint on our side." 
 
 "At any rate," replied Rastignac, "I prefer such an issue 
 to that which had been planned for us by a man whom I had 
 believed to be more capable, and whom we sent down to the 
 scene of action. That Beauvisage would seem to be hopelessly 
 stupid; he would have reflected on us if we had got him in; 
 and, after all, he was only Left Centre, like that lawyer 
 Giguet. Now the Left Centre is in fact our worst enemy, 
 because, while traversing our polities, it aims principally at 
 getting into office." 
 
 "Oh !" said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, "from what you were 
 told of the man, he would have been whatever he was bidden. 
 to be."
 
 334 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "No, no, my dear fellow, don't fancy that. Fools often 
 cling more closely than you might believe to the flag under 
 which they have enlisted. Going over to the enemy implies a 
 choice, and that means a rather complicated mental process; 
 obstinacy is far easier." 
 
 "I quite agree with the Minister," said Sallenauve; "the 
 extremes of innocence and cunning are equally proof against 
 being talked over." 
 
 "You kill your man kindly," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, 
 patting Sallenauve on the shoulder. 
 
 Then seeing, or pretending to see, in the mirror over the 
 chimney-shelf by which they stood, a signal that he was 
 wanted : 
 
 "Coming," said he over his shoulder, and having thus 
 thrown the foes together, he went off, as if he were required 
 for some duty as host. 
 
 Sallenauve was determined not to look like a school-girl 
 frightened out of her wits at the notion of being left alone 
 with a gentleman ; since they had met, he would put a good 
 face on the matter, and, speaking at once, he asked whether 
 the Ministry had any large number of bills to lay before the 
 Houses, which would meet a few days hence. 
 
 "No, very few," replied Rastignac. "We honestly did not 
 expect to remain in office ; we appealed to an election because 
 in the confusion of public opinion forced on by the Press, we 
 felt it our duty to bring it to its bearings, and compel it to 
 know its own mind by requiring it to declare itself. We had 
 no hope of the result proving favorable to ourselves ; and the 
 victory, it must be confessed, finds us quite unprepared." 
 
 "Like the peasant," said Sallenauve, laughing, "who, ex- 
 pecting the end of the world, did not think it worth while to 
 sow his field." 
 
 "Oh !" said Eastignac modestly, "we did not regard our 
 retirement as the end of the world. We believe that there 
 will be men after us, and many of them, perfectly able to 
 govern ; only, in that temporary sojourn known as office, as we 
 expected to give very few performances, we did not unpack
 
 THE MEMKEK FOR ARCIS 335 
 
 our scenery and dresses. The session was not in any case to 
 be one of business ; the question now to be decided is between 
 what is called the Chateau, the personal influence of the 
 sovereign, and parliamentary supremacy. This question will 
 inevitably come to the front when we are required to ask for 
 the secret service fund. When it has been settled one way 
 or the other, when the budget is passed, and a few acts of 
 minor importance, Parliament will have got through its task 
 with credit, for it will have put an end to a heartbreaking 
 struggle, and the country will know once for all to which of 
 the two powers it is to look with assurance for the promotion 
 of its prosperity." 
 
 "Then you think," said Sallenauve, "that this is a very use- 
 ful question to settle in the economy of a constitutional gov- 
 ernment ?" 
 
 "Well, it was not we who raised it," said Eastignac. "It is 
 perhaps the outcome of circumstances ; and, to a great extent, 
 of the impatience of some ambitious men, and of party 
 tactics." 
 
 "So that, in your opinion, sir, one of those powers is in oo 
 respect to blame, and has nothing whatever to repent of?" 
 
 "You are a Republican," replied Eastignac, "and conse- 
 quently a priori an enemy of the dynasty. It would be, I 
 conceive, pure waste of time on my part to try to rectify your 
 ideas as to the course of conduct of which you accuse it." 
 
 "You are quite mistaken," said the supporter of the theo- 
 retical, imaginable future republic. "I have no preconceived 
 hatred of the reigning dynasty. I even think that in its past 
 history, variegated, if I may say so, with royal relationship 
 and revolutionary impulses, there are all the elements that 
 should commend it to the liberal and monarchical instincts 
 of the people. At the same time, you will fail to convince me 
 that the present head of the royal family is untainted by those 
 extravagant notions of personal prerogative which, in the long 
 run, must undermine, disfigure, and wreck the most admirable 
 and the strongest institutions." 
 
 "Yes," said Eastignac sarcastically, "their salvation is to
 
 330 
 
 be found in the famous saying of the member for Sancerre, 
 'The King reigns ; he does not govern !' ' : 
 
 Whether it was that he was tired of standing, or that he 
 wished to show that he was quite at his ease in avoiding the 
 pitfall that had so evidently been laid for him, Sallenauve, 
 before he answered, pulled forward an armchair for the Min- 
 ister, and, after seating himself, replied : 
 
 "Will you allow me, monsieur, to quote the example of an- 
 other royal personage ? a Prince who was not thought tc be 
 indifferent to the prerogatives of his crown, and who cer- 
 tainly was not ignorant of constitutional procedure. In the 
 first place, because, like our present King, he was not ignorant 
 on any subject whatever; and, in the second place, because 
 he himself had introduced the constitutional system into our 
 country." 
 
 "Louis XVIII.," said Rastignac, "or, as the newspapers 
 have it, 'The illustrious author of the Charter'?" 
 
 "Just so," said Sallenauve. "Now, let me ask you, where 
 did he die?" 
 
 "At the Tuileries, of course." 
 
 "And his successor?'' 
 
 "In exile. I see your point." 
 
 "My point is not, in fact, very difficult to discern. But 
 have you observed, sir, the inference to be drawn from that 
 royal career for which I, for my part, profess entire respect? 
 Louis XVIII. was not a citizen king. He vouchsafed the 
 Charter; it was not wrung from him. He was born nearer 
 to the throne than the King whose unfortunate tendencies 
 I have mentioned, and was bound to inherit a larger share 
 of the ideas, infatuations, and prejudices of Court life. His 
 person was laughable and this in France means degeneracy ; 
 he had to make the best of a new regime following a govern- 
 ment which had intoxicated the people with that fine giMvd 
 smoke called glory; also, if lie was not actually brought in by 
 foreigners, he at least came in at the heels of an invasion 
 by Europe in arms. And now, shall I tell you why, in spite of 
 his own original sin, and in spite of a standing conspiracy
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 337 
 
 against his rule, he was allowed to die in peace under his 
 canopy at the Tuileries ?" 
 
 "Because he was constitutional?" said Rastignac, with a 
 shrug. "But can you say that we are not ?" 
 
 "In the letter you are; in the spirit, no. When Louis 
 XVIII. placed his confidence in a prime minister, it was com- 
 plete and entire ; he played no underhand game, but supported 
 him to the utmost. Witness the famous edict of the 5th of 
 September, and the dismissal of the undiscoverable Chamber, 
 which was more royalist than himself a thing he was well 
 advised enough to disapprove. Later, a revulsion of opinion 
 shook the Minister who had prompted him to this action. 
 That Minister was his favorite his child, as he called him. 
 No matter; yielding to constitutional necessity, after wrap- 
 ping him in orders and titles, and everything that could 
 deaden the shock of a fall, he courageously sent him abroad; 
 and then he did not dig mines, or set watch, or try to make 
 opportunities for surreptitiously recalling him to power. 
 That Minister never held office again." 
 
 "For a man who does not hate Us," said Rastignac, "you 
 are pretty hard upon Us. We are little short of forsworn to 
 the constitutional compact, and Our policy, by your account, 
 is ambiguous, and tortuous, and suggests a certain remote 
 likeness to M. Doublemain, the clerk in the Mariage de 
 Figaro." 
 
 "I would not say that the evil lay so deep, or came from 
 so far," replied Sallenauve. "We are perhaps merely a busy- 
 body only in the sense, of course, of loving to have a finger 
 in everything." 
 
 "Well, monsieur, but if We were the cleverest politician in 
 the kingdom !" 
 
 "That does hinder the kingdom which is all the world 
 from having the luck now and again of being as clever as 
 We are." 
 
 "On my word !" said Rastignac, in the tone which seems to 
 emphasize the climax of a conversation, "I wish I could 
 realize a dream "
 
 338 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Of what ?" said Sallenauve. 
 
 "Of seeing you face to face with that meddlesome clever- 
 ness which you seem to me to hold so cheap." 
 
 "You know, monsieur, that three-quarters of every man's 
 life are spent in imagining the impossible." 
 
 ''Impossible ! Why ? Would you be the first Opposition 
 member ever seen at the Tuileries? And an invitation to 
 dinner quite publicly and ostensibly given that would 
 bring you near to what you judge so hardly from a dis- 
 tance ?" 
 
 "I should do myself the honor of refusing it, monsieur," 
 and he accentuated the honor in such a way as to give his 
 own meaning to the word. 
 
 "That is just like you, all you men of the Opposition," cried 
 Eastignac, "refusing to see the light when the occasion offers 
 incapable of seeing it, in fact!" 
 
 "Do you see the light to any particular advantage, mon- 
 sieur, when, in the evening, as you pass a druggist's shop, 
 you get full in your eyes a glare from those gigantic glass jars 
 which seem to have been invented expressly to blind people ?" 
 
 "You are not afraid of Our beams, but of the dark lantern 
 of your colleagues making their rounds." 
 
 "There is perhaps some truth in that, Monsieur le Ministre. 
 A party, and the man who craves the honor of representing it, 
 are like a married couple, who, if they are to get on together, 
 must treat each other with mutual consideration, sincerity, 
 and fidelity, in fact as well as in form." 
 
 "Then try to be moderate! Your dream, indeed, is far 
 more impossible to realize than mine; you will have some 
 experience yet of the consideration shown you by your chaste 
 spouse." 
 
 "If there was any misfortune I might be certain of, it was 
 that, no doubt." 
 
 "You think that! And you with the noble and generous 
 feeling that is evident in you can you even endure unmoved 
 the slander which is perhaps already sharpening its darts ?" 
 
 "Have you yourself, monsieur, never felt its sting? or, if
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 339 
 
 you have, did it turn you aside from the road you were fol- 
 lowing?" 
 
 "But if I were -to tell you," said Eastignac, lowering his 
 voice, "that I have already had occasion to decline certain 
 officious proposals to stir the depths of your private life, on a 
 side, which, being a little less open to daylight than the 
 others, has seemed particularly adapted for the setting of a 
 snare ?" 
 
 "I will not thank you, sir, for merely doing yourself justice 
 by scorning the attempts of these meddlers, who are neither 
 of your party nor of mine whose only party is that of their 
 own low greed and interest. But even if by some impossible 
 chance they had found a loophole through which to approach 
 you, believe me, that any purpose sanctioned by my conscience 
 would not have been in the least affected." 
 
 "Still, do but consider the constituent elements of your 
 party: a rabble of disappointed schemers, of envious bru- 
 tality, base imitators of '93, despots disguised as devotees of 
 liberty." 
 
 "My party has not, and wants to have. Yours calls itself 
 Conservative and with good reason its principal aim being 
 to keep power, places, fortune, everything it has, in its 
 clutches. But at bottom, monsieur, the cooking is the same : 
 eat, but do not see the process; for, as la Bruyere says, 'If 
 you see a meal anywhere but on a well-laid table, how foul 
 and disgusting it is !' ' : 
 
 "But, at any rate, monsieur, We are not a blind alley We 
 lead to something. Now, the more you rise by superior char- 
 acter and intelligence, the less will you be allowed to get 
 through with your horde of democrats in your train, for its 
 triumph would mean not a mere change of policy, but a revo- 
 lution." 
 
 "But who says that I want to get through, to arrive any- 
 where ?" 
 
 "What, merely march without trying to attain ! A certain 
 breadth of faculty not only gives a man the right to aim at 
 the conduct of affairs, it makes it his duty."
 
 340 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "To keep an eye on those who conduct them is surely a 
 useful function too, and, I may add, a very absorbing one." 
 
 "You do not imagine, my dear sir," said Rastignac, "that 
 I should have taken so much trouble to convince Beauvisage : 
 to be sure, it must be said that with him I should have had an 
 easier task." 
 
 "One happy result will ensue from the introduction which 
 chance has brought about," said Sallenauve. "We shall feel 
 that we know each other, and in our future meetings shall be 
 pledged to courtesy which will not diminish the strength of 
 our convictions." 
 
 "Then I am to tell the King, for I had special instructions 
 from his Majesty " 
 
 Rastignac could not finish the sentence which was his 
 last cartridge, as it were; for, as the band played the intro- 
 ductory bars of a quadrille, Nais rushed up to him, and, with 
 coquettish courtesy, said: 
 
 "Monsieur le Ministre, I am very sorn r , but you have taken 
 possession of my partner, and you must give him up to me. 
 I have his name down for the eleventh quadrille, and if I 
 miss a turn it makes such dreadful confusion !" 
 
 "You will excuse me, monsieur," said Sallenauve, laughing. 
 "You see I am not a very red Republican." 
 
 And he went with jSTa'is, who dragged him away by the 
 hand. 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade had had a kindly thought. It had 
 occurred to her that Sallenauve's good-natured consent to 
 humor Nais might cost his dignity a prick, so she had con- 
 trived that some papas and mammas should join in the 
 quadrille he had been drawn into; and she herself, with the 
 young Highlander, the hero of the blank billets-doux who, 
 little as she suspected it, was quite capable of making mis- 
 chief for her took the place of vis-a-vis to the little girl. 
 
 NVis was beaming with pride and delight; and at a mo- 
 ment, when in the figure of the dance she had to take her 
 mother's hand: 
 
 "Poor mamma," said she, giving it an ecstatic clutch, "but 
 for him you would not have me here now !"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 341 
 
 The sudden and unexpected impression of this reminis- 
 cence so startled Madame de FEstorade that she was seized 
 with a return of the nervous spasm that had attacked her at 
 the sight of the child's narrow escape. She was obliged to 
 take a seat, and seeing her turn pale, Sallenauve, Xa'is, and 
 Madame de Camp all three came up to know if she was ill. 
 
 "It is nothing," said Madame de 1'Estorade, as she turned 
 to Sallenauve "only this child reminded me of our immense 
 obligation to you. 'But for him/ she said to me, 'you would 
 not have me here, poor mamma !' And it is true, monsieur, 
 but for your magnanimous courage, where would she be 
 now ?- " 
 
 "Come, come, be calm," said Madame Octave, hearing that 
 her friend's voice was broken and hysterical. "Have you no 
 sense that you can be so upset by a little girl's speech ?" 
 
 "She has more feeling than we have," replied Madame de 
 FEstorade, throwing her arms round Nais, who, with the rest, 
 was saying, "Come, mamma, be 'calm." 
 
 "There is nothing in the world that she thinks more of than 
 her preserver while her father and I we have hardly ex- 
 pressed our gratitude." 
 
 "Why, you have overwhelmed me, madame," said Salle- 
 nauve politely. 
 
 "Overwhelmed?" said Nai's, shaking her pretty head dubi- 
 ously. "If any one had saved my daughter, I should treat 
 him very differently !" 
 
 "Na'is," said Madame de Camps severely, "little girls should 
 be seen and not heard when their opinion is not asked." 
 
 "What is the matter?" said Moiinc-nr de 1'Estorade, who 
 now joined the group. 
 
 "Xothing," said Madame de Camps. "Dancing made 
 Renee a little giddy." 
 
 "And is she all right again ?" 
 
 "Yes, I have quite recovered," replied Madame de 1'Es- 
 torade. 
 
 "Then come to say good-night to Madame de Rastignac; 
 she is just going."
 
 342 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 In his eagerness to attend the Minister's wife, Monsieur 
 de 1'Estorade did not think of giving his arm to his own wife. 
 Sallenauve offered her his. As they crossed the room, Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade leading the way so that he could not hear, 
 his wife said to Sallenauve: 
 
 "You were talking to Monsieur de Eastignac for a long 
 time. He tried, no doubt, to convert you ? ' 
 
 "Do you think he has succeeded ?" asked Sallenauve. 
 
 "No; but these attempts at inveiglement are always un- 
 pleasant. I can only beg you to believe that I was no party 
 to the conspiracy. I am not such a frenzied Ministerialist 
 as my husband.", 
 
 "Nor am I such a rabid revolutionary as seems to be sup- 
 posed." 
 
 "I only hope that these vexatious politics, which will 
 bring you more than once into antagonism with Monsieur 
 de 1'Estorade, will not sicken you of including us among 
 your friends." 
 
 "Nay, madame, that is an honor I can be only happy in." 
 
 "It is not honor but pleasure that I would have you look 
 for," said Madame de 1'Estorade eagerly. "I must parody 
 Nais 'If I had saved anybody's daughter, I should be less 
 ceremonious/ ' : 
 
 And having said this, without waiting for a reply, she re- 
 leased her hand from Sallenauve's arm, and left him not a 
 little surprised at her tone. 
 
 My readers will hardly be surprised to find Madame de 
 1'Estorade so entirely obedient to Madame Octave's advice, 
 ingenious perhaps rather than judicious. In fact, they must 
 long since have suspected that the unimpressionable Countess 
 had yielded to a certain attraction towards the man who had 
 not only saved her child's life, but also appealed to her 
 imagination through such singular and romantic accessory 
 facts. No one but herself, it is quite certain, had been de- 
 luded into security by a conviction of Sallenauve's perfect 
 indifference. The certainty of his not caring for her was, in
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 343 
 
 fact, the only snare into which she could trip; as a declared 
 lover he would have been infinitely less dangerous. 
 
 On closer acquaintance, Madame de 1'Estorade was far 
 from being one of those imperturbable natures which can 
 withstand every contagion* of love outside the family circle. 
 Her beauty was almost of the Spanish type, with eyes, of 
 which her friend Louise de Chaulieu used to say that they 
 ripened the peaches when they looked at them; her coldness, 
 then, was not what medical men term congenital; it was 
 acquired self-control. Married, and not for love, to a man 
 whose intellectual poverty has been seen, she had, in opposi- 
 tion to an axiom of the comic opera, forced her contempt to 
 take the form of affection ; and by means of a certain atrophy 
 of the heart into which she had drilled herself, she had suc- 
 ceeded till the present - time, without ever stumbling, in 
 making Monsieur de 1'Estorade the happiest of husbands. 
 To the same end she had fostered her maternal feeling to 
 a hardly credible fervency, thus cheating her other instincts. 
 
 But in considering the success that had hitherto crowned 
 her stern task, one of the first elements to be reckoned with 
 was the circumstance of Louise de Chaulieu. To her that 
 poor reasonless woman had been like the drunken slaves, by 
 whose example the Spartans were wont to give a living lesson 
 to their children, and a sort of tacit wager had existed between 
 the two friends. Louise de Chaulieu having thrown herself 
 into the part of unchecked passion, Renee had assumed that 
 of sovereign reason ; and to gain the stakes, she had exerted 
 such brave good sense and prudence as, but for this incite- 
 ment, would perhaps have seemed a far greater sacrifice. 
 At the age she had now attained, with such confirmed habits 
 of self-control, it is quite intelligible that if she had seen, 
 advancing down the highroad, the temptation to love against 
 which she had so loudly preached, she would at once have 
 recognized and dismissed it. But here was a man who cared 
 not for her, though he thought her beauty ideal, who perhaps 
 loved another woman; a man who, after snatching her child 
 from death t looked for no reward ; who was dignified, reserved,
 
 344 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 and absorbed in quite other interests how, when he came 
 into her life by a side path, was she to think of him as danger- 
 ous, or to refuse him from the first the calm cordiality of 
 friendship ? 
 
 Sallenauve, meanwhile, was on ftis way to Ville-d'Avray, 
 whither he had set out in spite of the lateness of the hour, 
 possessed by his fears for his friend. And this was what he 
 was thinking about: 
 
 As he looked back on the incidents of the evening, the 
 deputy, as may be supposed, attached no great importance 
 either to Rastignac's attempts at gaining him, or to Na'is' 
 impassioned demonstrations, which indeed could have no 
 result but that of making him ridiculous ; but he was far from 
 being so indifferent to Madame de 1'Estorade's effusive burst 
 of gratitude; it was this perfervid expression of thanks that 
 occupied his mind. Without having anything definite to 
 complain of in the Countess' attitude, Sallenauve had cer- 
 tainly never found her at all warm in her regard, and he had 
 formed the same estimate of her temper and character as the 
 rest of the world around her. He had seen her as a woman 
 of remarkable intellectual gifts, but paralyzed as to her heart, 
 by her absorbing and exclusive passion for her children. "The 
 ice-bound Madame de 1'Estorade," Marie-Gaston had once 
 called her, and it was correct if he had ever thought of making 
 a friend of her that is to say, of becoming her lover. 
 
 Nor was it only as regarded Madame de 1'Estorade, but as 
 regarded her husband too, that Sallenauve had doubted the 
 future permanency of their alliance. "We shall quarrel over 
 politics," he had told himself a dozen times, and the reader 
 may remember one of his letters in which he had contem- 
 plated this conclusion with some bitterness. So when Ma- 
 dame de 1'Estorade had seemed to encourage him to take up 
 an attitude of more effusive intimacy with her, what had 
 most surprised him was the marked distinction she had drawn 
 between her husband's probable demeanor and her own. Be- 
 fore a woman would say with such agitation as she had put 
 into the inviting words, "I only hope that these vexatious
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 345 
 
 politics will not disgust you with us as friends," she must 
 have, Sallenauve thought, to speak so warmly, a warmer heart 
 than she was generally credited with; and this profession of 
 alliance was not, he felt sure, to be taken as a mere drawing- 
 room civility, or the thoughtless utterance of a transient 
 and shallow impulse, as the little nervous attack had been 
 which had led to it all. 
 
 Having thus analyzed this somewhat serious flirtation, to 
 repay Madame de 1'Estorade's politeness the statesman did 
 not scorn to descend to a remark, which was illogical, it must 
 be owned, as regards his usual reserve, and certain memories 
 of his past life. He recollected that more than once, at 
 Eome, he had seen Mademoiselle de Lanty dance, and com- 
 paring the original with the duplicate, he could assure him- 
 self that, notwithstanding the difference in their age, the 
 girl had not a more innocent air, nor had she struck him as 
 more elegant and graceful. 
 
 And in view of this fact, will not the clear-sighted reader 
 who may some time since have begun to suspect that these 
 two natures, apparently so restrained, so entrenched in their 
 past experiences, might ultimately come into closer contact 
 discern a certain convergence of gravitation though hitherto 
 scarcely perceptible? It was, if you please, solely out of 
 deference to Madame de Camps' advice that Madame de 1'Es- 
 torade had so completely modified her austere determination ; 
 still, short of admitting some slight touch of the sentiment 
 her friend had hinted at, is it likely that she would have 
 given such singular vehemence to her expression of grateful 
 regard, or that a mere remark from a child would have 
 strung her nerves up to such a point as to surprise her into 
 the outburst? 
 
 On his part, not having taken advantage of the privileged 
 position thus recklessly thrown open to him, our deputy was 
 tempted to think, with a persistency which, if not very im- 
 prudent, was at least very unnecessary, of these superficial 
 graces. Madame de Camps had spoken truly: "Friendship 
 between a man and woman is neither an impossible dream
 
 346 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 nor an ever-yawning gulf." But in practice, it must be said, 
 that this sentiment, by which we delude ourselves, proves to 
 be a very narrow and baseless bridge across a torrent, needing 
 in those who hope to cross it without difficulty much presence 
 of mind on both sides and nerves less sensitive than Madame 
 de 1'Estorade's ; while it is a necessary precaution never to 
 look to right and left, as Sallenauve had just been doing. 
 
 From this elaborate observation, subtle as it may appear, 
 there is, it would seem, a conclusion to be drawn: namely, 
 that there would presently be a rise of temperature between 
 these two whose affinities were as yet so negative and so slow 
 to develop. 
 
 However, on arriving at Ville-d'Avray, Sallenauve found 
 himself face to face with a strange event; and who does not 
 know how, in spite of our determination, events often disperse 
 our maturest plans ? 
 
 Sallenauve had not been mistaken in his serious anxiety as 
 to his friend's mental condition. 
 
 When Marie-Gaston abruptly fled after his wife's death 
 from the spot where that cruel parting had occurred, he 
 would have been wise to pledge himself never to see it again. 
 Nature and Providence have willed it that in presence of the 
 stern decrees of Death he who is stricken through the person 
 of those he loves, if he accepts the stroke with the resignation 
 demanded under the action of every inevitable law, does not 
 for long retain the keen stamp of the first impression. In his 
 famous letter against suicide, Eousseau says : "Sadness, weari- 
 ness, regret, despair are but transient woes which never take 
 root in the soul, and experience exhausts the feeling of bitter- 
 ness which makes us think that our sorrow must be eternal." 
 
 But this is no longer true for those rash beings who, trying 
 to escape from the first grip of the jaws of grief, evade it 
 either by flight or by some immoderate diversion. All mental 
 suffering is a kind of illness for which time is a specific, and 
 which presently wears itself out, like everything violent. If, 
 on the contrary, instead of being left to burn itself out slowly 
 on the spot, it is fed by change of scene or other extreme meas-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 347 
 
 ares, the action of Nature is hampered. The sufferer deprives 
 himself of the balm of comparative forgetfulness promised to 
 those who can endure; he merely transforms into a chronic 
 disease, less visible perhaps, but more deeply seated, an acute 
 attack, thrown in by checking its healthy crisis. The imagi- 
 nation sides with the heart, and, as the heart is by nature 
 limited while the fancy is boundless, there is no possibility 
 of calculating the violence of the excesses by which a man may 
 be carried away under its ere long absolute dominion. 
 
 Marie-Gast'on, as he wandered through this home where he 
 had believed that after the lapse of two years he should find 
 only the pathos of remembrance, had not taken a step, had 
 not met with an object in his path that could fail to revive 
 all his happiest days and at the same time the disaster that 
 had ended them. The flowers his wife had loved, the lawns 
 and trees verdurous under the soft breath of spring, while 
 she who had formed the lovely spot lay under the cold earth 
 all the dainty elegance brought together to decorate this ex- 
 quisite nest for their love, combined to sing a chorus of lamen- 
 tation, a long drawn wail of anguish in the ears of him who 
 dared to breathe the dangerous atmosphere. Terrified when 
 half-way by the overwhelming sorrow that had seized on him, 
 Marie-Gaston, as Sallenauve had observed, had not dared ac- 
 complish the last station of his Calvar}^. In absence, he had 
 calmly busied himself with drawing up an estimate for the 
 private tomb he had intended to build for the remains of his 
 beloved Louise ; but here he could not endure even to do them 
 pious homage in the village graveyard where they were laid. 
 
 The worst, in short, might be feared from a sorrow which, 
 instead of being soothed by the touch of time, was, on the 
 contrary, aggravated by duration, having as it seemed found 
 fresh poison for its sting. 
 
 As Sallenauve approached this melancholy dwelling, think- 
 ing less of himself and of the joys or disappointments possi- 
 bly in store for him, he was more and more vaguely anxious, 
 and two or three times he urged the coachman to whip up his 
 horses and get on faster.
 
 348 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 The door was opened by Philippe, the old man who in 
 Madame Marie-Gaston's time had been the house steward. 
 
 "How is your master?" asked Sallenauve. 
 
 "He is gone, sir," replied Philippe. 
 
 "Gone where ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, with the English gentleman who was here when 
 you left." 
 
 "But without a word for me, without telling you where thev 
 are gone?" 
 
 "After dinner, when all was well, my master suddenly said 
 that he wanted a few things packed for a journey, and he saw 
 to them himself. At the same time, the Englishman, 
 after saying he would walk in the park and smoke a cigarette, 
 mysteriously asked me where he could write a letter without 
 being seen by my master. I took him into my own room, but 
 I dared not ask him anything about this journey, for I never 
 saw any one less communicative or open. When he had 
 written the letter everything was ready; and then, without 
 a word of explanation, the two gentlemen got into the Eng- 
 lish gentleman's chaise, and I heard them tell the coachman 
 to drive to Paris " 
 
 "But the letter?" said Sallenauve. 
 
 "It is addressed to you, sir, and the Englishman gave it 
 me in secret, as he had written it." 
 
 "Then give it me, my good man!" cried Sallenauve; and 
 without going any further than the hall where he had stood 
 questioning Philippe, he hastily read it. 
 
 His features, as the man studied them, showed great dis- 
 tress. t 
 
 "Tell them not to take the horses out," said he. And he 
 read the letter through a second time. 
 
 When the old servant came back from delivering the order: 
 
 "At what hour did they start?" Sallenauve inquired. 
 
 "At about nine o'clock." 
 
 "They have three hours' start," said he to himself, looking 
 at his watch, which marked some minutes past midnight. 
 
 He turned to get into the carriage that was to take him
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 346 
 
 away again. Just as he was stepping into it, the steward 
 ventured to ask, "There is nothing alarming, I hope, in that 
 letter, sir?" 
 
 "No, nothing. But your master may be absent some little 
 time ; take care to keep the house in good order." 
 
 And then, like the two who had preceded him, he said: 
 "To Paris." 
 
 Next morning, pretty early, Monsieur de 1'Estorade was in 
 his study very busy in a strange way. It may be remembered 
 that Sallenauve had sent him a statuette of Madame de 
 1'Estorade; he had never been able to find a place where the 
 work stood to his mind in a satisfactory light. But ever since 
 the hint given him by Eastignac that his friendship with the 
 sculptor might serve him but ill at court, he had begun to 
 agree with his son Armand that the artist had made Madame 
 de 1'Estorade look like a milliner's apprentice ; and now, when 
 by his obduracy to the Minister's inveiglements, Sallenauve 
 had shown himself irreclaimably opposed to the Government, 
 the statuette its freshness a little dimmed, it must be 
 owned, by the dust no longer seemed presentable, and the 
 worthy peer was endeavoring to discover a corner, in which 
 it would be out of sight, so that he might not be required 
 to tell the name of the artist, which every visitor asked, 
 without making himself ridiculous by removing it altogether. 
 So he was standing on the top step of a library ladder with 
 the sculptor's gift in his hands and about to place it on the top 
 of a tall cabinet. There the hapless sketch was to keep com- 
 pany with a curlew and a cormorant, shot by Armand during 
 his last holidays. They were the first fruits of the young 
 sportsman's prowess, and paternal pride had decreed them 
 the honors of stuffing. 
 
 At this juncture Lucas opened the door to show in : 
 
 "Monsieur Philippe." 
 
 The worthy steward's age, and the confidential position he 
 held in Marie-Gaston's household, had seemed to the 1'Es-
 
 350 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 torades' factotum to qualify him for the title o"f Monsieur 
 a civility to be, of course, returned in kind. 
 
 The master of the house, descending from his perch, asked 
 Philippe what had brought him, and whether anything had 
 happened at Ville-d'Avray. The old man described his 
 master's strange departure, followed by the no less strange 
 disappearance of Sallenauve, who had fled as if he were at 
 the heels of an eloping damsel, and then he went on : 
 
 "This morning, as I was putting my master's room tidy, a 
 letter fell out of a book, addressed to Madame la Comtesse. 
 As it was sealed and ready to be sent off, I thought that, per- 
 haps in the hurry of packing, my master had forgotten to give 
 it me to post. At any rate, I have brought it; Madame la 
 Comtess may, perhaps, finds that it contains some explanation 
 of this unexpected journey I have dreamed of nothing else 
 all night." 
 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade took the letter. 
 
 "Three black seals !" said he, turning it over. 
 
 "It is not the color that startles me," said Philippe. "Since 
 madame died, monsieur uses nothing but black ; but I confess 
 the three seals struck me as strange." 
 
 "Very good," said Monsieur de FEstorade ; "I will give the 
 letter to my wife." 
 
 "If there should be anything to reassure me about my mas- 
 ter," said Philippe wistfully, "would you let me know, Mon- 
 sieur le Comte ?" 
 
 "You may rely on it, my good fellow. Good-morning." 
 
 "I humbly beg pardon for having an opinion to offer," 
 said the old servant, without taking the 'hint thus given him; 
 "but for fear of there being any bad news in the letter, do not 
 you think, Monsieur le Comte, that it would be well to know 
 it, so as to prepare Madame la Comtesse?" 
 
 "Why ! What ! Do you suppose ? " Monsieur de 1'Es- 
 torade began, without finishing his question. 
 
 "I do not know. My master has been very much depressed 
 these last few days." 
 
 "It is always a very serious step to open a letter not ad-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 351 
 
 dressed to oneself," said the Accountant-General. "This case 
 is peculiar the letter is addressed to my wife, but in fact was 
 never sent to her it is really a puzzling matter " 
 
 "Still, if by reading it you could prevent something dread- 
 ful- 
 
 "Yes that is just what makes me hesitate." 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade settled the question by coming into 
 the room. Lucas had told her of old Philippe's arrival. 
 
 "What can be the matter ?" she asked, with uneasy curiosity. 
 
 All Sallenauve's apprehensions of the night before recurred 
 to her mind. 
 
 When the steward had repeated the explanations he had 
 already given to Monsieur de 1'Estorade, she unhesitatingly 
 broke the seals. 
 
 "I know so much now," she said to her husband, who tried 
 to dissuade her, "that the worst certainty would be preferable 
 to the suspense we should be left in." 
 
 Whatever the contents of this alarming epistle, the Count- 
 ess' face told nothing. 
 
 "And you say that your master went off accompanied by this 
 English gentleman," said she, "and not under any com- 
 pulsion ?" 
 
 "On the contrary, madame, he seemed quite cheerful." 
 
 "Well, then, there is nothing to be frightened about. This 
 letter has been written a long time ; and, in spite of the three 
 black seals, it has no bearing on anything to-day." 
 
 Philippe bowed and departed. When the husband and wife 
 were alone : 
 
 "What does he say ?" asked Monsieur de 1'Estorade, and he 
 put out his hand for the letter his wife still held. 
 
 "No. Do not read it," said the Countess, not surrender- 
 ing it. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "It will pain you. It is quite enough that I should have 
 had the shock, and in the presence of the old steward, before 
 whom I had to control myself." 
 
 "Does it speak of any purpose of suicide?"
 
 ,352 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade did not speak, but she nodded affima- 
 tively. 
 
 "But a definite, immediate purpose?" 
 
 "The letter was written yesterda}^ morning; and to all ap- 
 pearance, but for the really providential presence of this 
 stranger, last evening, during Monsieur de Sallenauve's ab- 
 sence, the wretched man would have carried out his fatal 
 purpose." 
 
 "The Englishman has, no doubt, carried him off solely to 
 hinder it. That being the case, he will not lose sight of him." 
 
 "We may also count on Monsieur de Sallenauve's inter- 
 vention/' observed Madame de 1'Estorade. "He has probably 
 followed them." 
 
 "Then there is nothing so very alarming in the letter," 
 said her husband. And again he held out his hand for it. 
 
 "But when I entreat you not to read it," said Madame de 
 1'Estorade, holding it back. "Why do you want to agitate 
 yourself so painfully ? It is not only the idea of suicide our 
 unhappy friend's mind is completely unhinged." 
 
 At this instant piercing shrieks were heard, uttered by 
 Eene, the youngest of the children, and this threw his mother 
 into one of those maternal panics of which she was quite 
 unable to control the expression. 
 
 "Good God ! What has happened ?" she cried, rushing out 
 of the room. 
 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade, less easily perturbed, only went as 
 far as the door to ask a servant what was the matter. 
 
 "It is nothing, Monsieur le Comte. Monsieur Eene in 
 shutting a drawer pinched the tip of his finger." 
 
 The Peer of France did not think it necessary to proceed to 
 the scene of the catastrophe; he knew that in these cases he 
 must leave his wife to give free course to her extravagant 
 motherly solicitude, or take a sharp wigging. As he returned 
 to his seat by the table he felt a paper under his foot; it was 
 the famous letter, which Madame de 1'Estorade had dropped 
 as she flew off without observing its fall. 
 
 Opportunity and a sort of fatality that frequently rules
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 353 
 
 human affairs, prompted Monsieur de 1'Estorade, who could 
 not understand his wife's objections; he hastened to gratify 
 his curiosity. 
 
 Marie-Gaston wrote as follows: 
 
 "MADAME, This letter will not be so amusing as those I 
 wrote ymi from Arcis-sur-Aube. But you must not be fright- 
 ened by the determination I have come to. I am simply going 
 to join my wife, from whom I have been too long parted, and 
 to-night, soon after midnight, I shall be with her, never to 
 leave her again. You and Sallenauve have, no doubt, re- 
 marked that it is strange that I should not yet have been to 
 visit her tomb; two of my servants were saying so the other 
 day, not knowing that I could overhear them. But I should 
 have been a great fool to go to a graveyard and stare at a 
 block of stone that cannot speak to me, when every night as 
 midnight strikes, I hear a little tap at my bedroom door, 
 which I open at once to our dear Louise, who is not altered 
 at all; on the contrary, I think she is fairer and lovelier. 
 She has had great difficulty in getting my discharge from this 
 world from Mary the Queen of the Angels ; but last night she 
 brought me my papers properly made out, sealed with a large 
 seal of green wax', and at the same time she gave me a tiny 
 phial of hydrocyanic acid. One drop sends me to sleep, and 
 when I wake I am on the other side. 
 
 "Louise also gave me a message for you; to tell you that 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade has a liver complaint and cannot live 
 long ; and that when he is dead you are to marry Sallenauve, 
 because over there you are always restored to the husband you 
 loved; and she thinks our party of four will be much pleas- 
 anter with you and me and Sallenauve than with your Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade, who is enough to bore you to death, and 
 whom you married against your will. 
 
 "My message delivered, I have only to wish you good 
 patience, madame, during the time you have still to spend 
 down here, and to subscribe myself your affectionate humble 
 servant." 

 
 354 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 If, on finishing this letter, it had occurred to Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade to look at himself in a glass, he would have seen 
 in the sudden crestfallen expression of his features the effects 
 of the unavowed but terrible blow he had dealt himself by his 
 luckless curiosity. His feelings, his mind, his self-respect 
 had all felt one and the same shock; and the quite obvious 
 insanity revealed in the prediction of which he was the subject 
 only made it seem more threatening. Believing, like the 
 Mussulmans, that madmen are gifted with a sort of second 
 sight, he gave himself over at once, felt a piercing pain in his 
 diseased liver, and was seized with a jealous hatred of Salle- 
 nauve, his designate successor, such as must cut off any kind 
 of friendly relations between them. 
 
 At the same time, as he saw how ridiculous, how absolutely 
 devoid of reason, was the impression that had taken posses- 
 sion of him, he was terrified lest any one should suspect its 
 existence ; and with the instinctive secretiveness which always 
 prompts the mortally sick to hide the mischief, he began to 
 consider how he could keep from his wife the foolish act that 
 had blighted his whole existence. It would seem incredible 
 that lying under his very eye the fatal letter should have 
 escaped his notice; and from this to the suspicion that he had 
 read it the inference was only too plain. 
 
 He rose, and softly opening the door of his room, after 
 making sure that there was nobody in the drawing-room be- 
 yond, he went on tiptoe to throw the letter on the floor at the 
 furthest side of the room, where Madame de 1'Estorade would 
 suppose that she had dropped it. Then, like a schoolboy who 
 had been playing a trick, and wishes to put the authorities 
 off the scent by an affectation of studiousness, he hastily 
 strewed his table with papers out of a bulky official case, so as 
 to seem absorbed in accounts when his wife should return. 
 
 Meanwhile, as need scarcely.be said, he listened in case any- 
 body but Madame de 1'Estorade should come into the outer 
 room where he had laid his trap ; in that case he would have 
 intervened at once to hinder indiscreet eyes from investigating 
 the document that held such strange secrets.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 355 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade's voice speaking to some one, and 
 her appearance in his room a few minutes after with Monsieur 
 Octave de Camps, showed that the trick had succeeded. By 
 going forward as his visitor came in, he could see through the 
 half-open door the spot where he had left the letter. Not only 
 was it gone, but he could detect by a movement of his wife's 
 that she had tucked it into her morning gown in the place 
 where Louis XIII. dared not seek the secrets of Mademoiselle 
 de Hautefort. 
 
 "I have come to fetch you to go with me to Eastignac, as 
 we agreed last evening," said de Camps. 
 
 "Quite right," said his friend, putting up his papers with a 
 feverish haste that showed he was not in a normal frame of 
 mind. 
 
 "Are you ill?" said Madame de 1'Estorade, who knew her 
 husband too well not to be struck by the singular absence of 
 mind he betrayed; and at the same time, looking him in 
 the face, she observed a strange change in his countenanced 
 
 "You do not look quite yourself, indeed," said Monsieur de 
 Camps. "If you had rather, we will put off this visit." 
 
 "Not at all," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade ; "I have worried 
 myself over this work, and want pulling together But what 
 about Rene?" said he to his wife, whose inquisitive eye op- 
 pressed him. "What was the matter that he screamed so 
 loud?" 
 
 "A mere trifle !" said Madame de 1'Estorade, still studying 
 his face. 
 
 "Well, then, my dear fellow," said her husband, assuming 
 as indifferent a manner as he could command, "I have only to 
 change my coat and I am yours." 
 
 When the Countess was alone with Monsieur de Camps : 
 
 "Does it not strike you," said she, "that Monsieur de FEs- 
 torade seems quite upset this morning?" 
 
 "As I said just now, he is not at all himself. But the ex- 
 planation is perfectly reasonable; we disturbed him in the 
 middle of his work. Office work is unhealthy ; I never in my 
 life was so well as I have been since I took over the ironworks 
 you so vehemently abuse."
 
 350 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "To be sure," said Madame de 1'Estorade, with a deep sigh ; 
 "he needs exercise, an active life; there can be no doubt that 
 he has some incipient liver disease." 
 
 "Because he looks yellow? But he has looked so ever 
 since I have known him." 
 
 "Oh ! monsieur, I cannot be mistaken. There is something 
 seriously wrong, and you would do me the greatest ser- 
 vice " 
 
 "Madame, you have only to command me." 
 
 "When Monsieur de 1'Estorade comes back, we will speak of 
 the little damage Rene has done to his finger. Tell me that 
 trifling accidents, if neglected, may lead to serious mischief 
 that gangrene has been known to supervene and make amputa- 
 tion necessary. That will give me an excuse for sending for 
 Dr. Bianchon." 
 
 "Certainly," said Monsieur de Camps. "I do not think 
 medical advice very necessary ; but if it will reassure you 
 
 At this moment Monsieur de 1'Estorade came back; he 
 had almost recovered his usual looks, but a strong smell of 
 Eau de Melisse des Carmes proved that he had had recourse 
 to that cordial to revive him. Monsieur de Camps played 
 his part as Job's comforter to perfection ; as to the Countess, 
 she had no need to affect anxiety ; her make-believe onty con- 
 cerned its object. 
 
 "My dear," said she to her husband, after listening to the 
 ironmaster's medical discourse, "as 7ou come home from the 
 Minister's I wish you would call on Dr. Bianchon." 
 
 "What next!" said he, shrugging his shoulders, "call out 
 such a busy man for what you yourself say is a mere trifle." 
 
 "If you will not go, I will send Lucas. Monsieur de 
 Camps has quite upset me." 
 
 "If you choose to be ridiculous," said her husband sharply, 
 "I know no means of preventing it; but one thing I may 
 remind you, and that is, that if you send for a medical man 
 when there is nothing the matter, under serious circumstances 
 you may find that he will not come." 
 
 "And you will not go ?"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 357 
 
 "I will certainly not," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade; "and 
 if I had the honor of being master in my own house, I should 
 forbid your sending any one in my stead." 
 
 "My dear, you are the master, and since you refuse so 
 emphatically we will say no more about it. I will try not to 
 be too anxious." 
 
 "Are you coming, de Camps?" said Monsieur de 1'Esto- 
 rade, "for at this rate I shall be sent off directly to order the 
 child's funeral." 
 
 "But, my dear, are you ill," said the Countess, taking his 
 hand, "that you can say such shocking things in cold blood? 
 It is not like your usual patience with my little motherly 
 fussiness nor like the politeness on which you pride yourself 
 to everybody, including your wife." 
 
 "No, but the truth is," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, irritated 
 instead of soothed by this gentle and affectionate re- 
 monstrance, "your motherly care is really becoming a mono- 
 mania ; you make life unbearable to everybody but your chil- 
 dren. Deuce take it all ! if they are our children, I am their 
 father; and if I am not adored as they are, at any rate I 
 have the right to expect that my house may not be made un- 
 inhabitable !" 
 
 While he poured out this jeremiad, striding up and down 
 the room, the Countess was gesticulating desperately to Mon- 
 sieur de Camps as if to ask him whether he did not discern 
 a frightful symptom in this scene. 
 
 To put an end to this painful contest, of which he had so 
 involuntarily been the cause, he now said: 
 
 "Are we going?" 
 
 "Come along," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, leading the 
 way, without taking leave of his wife. 
 
 "Oh, I was forgetting a message for you," added the iron- 
 master, turning back. "Madame de Camps will call for you 
 at about two o'clock to choose some spring dress stuffs; she 
 has settled that we shall all four go on afterwards to the 
 flower-show. When we leave Rastignac, 1'Estorade and I will 
 come back to fetch you, and if you are not in we will wait."
 
 358 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 The Countess scarcely heeded this programme; a flash of 
 light had come to her. As soon as she was alone, she took out 
 Marie-Gaston's letter, and finding it folded in the original 
 creases : 
 
 "Not a doubt of it !" she exclaimed. "I remember replac- 
 ing it in the envelope folded inside out. The unhappy man 
 has read it." 
 
 Some hours later Madame de 1'Estorade and Madame de 
 Camps were together in the drawing-room where only a few 
 days since Sallenauve's cause had been so warmly argued. 
 
 "Good heavens! what is the matter with you?" cried Ma- 
 dame de Camps, on finding her friend in tears as she finished 
 writing a letter. 
 
 The Countess told her of all that had passed, and read 
 her Marie-Gaston's letter. At any other time the disaster it 
 so plainly betrayed would have greatly grieved her friend ; 
 but the secondary misfortune which it had apparently oc- 
 casioned absorbed all her thoughts. 
 
 "And are you quite sure that your husband mastered the 
 contents of that ill-starred letter?" she asked. 
 
 "How can I doubt it?" replied Madame de 1'Estorade. 
 "The paper cannot have turned itself inside out ; and besides, 
 when I recall it all, I fancy that at the moment when I flew 
 off to Rene I let something drop. As ill-luck would have it, 
 I did not stop to look." 
 
 "But very often, when you rack your memory, you remem- 
 ber things that did not happen." 
 
 "But, my dear friend, the extraordinary change that so 
 suddenly took place in Monsieur de 1'Estorade could only 
 be due to some overpowering shock. He looked like a man 
 struck by lightning." 
 
 "Very well ; but then if it is to be accounted for by a pain- 
 ful surprise, why do you insist on regarding it as the result 
 of a liver complaint." 
 
 "Oh, that is no new thing to me," said Madame de 1'Esto- 
 rade. "Only, when sick people make no complaints one is
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 359 
 
 apt to forget. Look here, my dear," she went on, pointing 
 to a volume that lay open near her, "just before your arrival 
 I was reading in this medical dictionary that persons with 
 liver disease become gloomy, restless, and irritable. And for 
 some little time past I have noticed a great change in my hus- 
 band's temper ; you yourself remarked on it the other day ; and 
 this little scene, at which Monsieur de Camps was present 
 unprecedented, I assure you, in our married life seems to 
 me a terrible symptom." 
 
 "My dear, good child, you are like all people when they 
 are bent on worrying themselves. In the first place, you 
 study medical books, which is the most foolish thing in the 
 world. I defy you to read the description of a disease with- 
 out fancying that you can identify the symptoms in yourself 
 or in some one you care for. And besides, you are mixing 
 up things that are quite different : the effects of a fright with 
 those of a chronic complaint they have nothing on earth 
 in common." 
 
 "No, no, I am not confusing them ; I know what I am talk- 
 ing about. Do not you know that in our poor human ma- 
 chinery, if any part is already affected, every strong emotion 
 attacks that spot at once ?" 
 
 "At any rate," said her friend, to put an end to the medical 
 question, "if that unhappy madman's letter is likely to have 
 some ulterior influence on your husband's health, it threatens 
 far more immediately to imperil your domestic peace. That 
 must be considered first." 
 
 "There is no alternative," said the Countess. "Monsieur 
 de Sallenauve must never again set foot in the house." 
 
 "There is a good deal to be said on that point, and it is 
 just what I want to talk over with you. Do you know that 
 yesterday I found you lacking in that moderation which has 
 always been a prominent trait in your character " 
 
 "When was that?" asked Madame de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "At the moment when you favored Monsieur de Sallenauve 
 with such a burst of gratitude. When I advised you not to 
 avoid him for fear of tempting him to seek your company, I
 
 S60 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 certainly did not advise you to fling your kindness at his head, 
 so as to turn it ! As the wife of so zealous an adherent of the 
 reigning dynasty, you ought to know better what is meant by 
 Le Juste Milieu" (the happy medium). 
 
 "Oh, my dear, no witticisms at my husband's expense !" 
 
 "I am not talking of your husband, but of you, my dear. 
 You amazed me so much last night, that I felt inclined to re- 
 call all I had said on my first impulse. I like my advice to 
 be followed but not too much followed." 
 
 "At any other moment I would ask you to tell me wherein 
 I so far exceeded your instructions; but now that fate has 
 settled the question, and Monsieur de Sallenauve must be 
 simply cleared out of the way, of what use is it to discuss the 
 exact limit-line of my behavior to him ?" 
 
 "Well," said Madame de Camps, "to tell you the whole 
 truth, I was beginning to think the man a danger to you on 
 quite another side." 
 
 "Which is? " 
 
 "Through Na'is. That child, with her passion" for her pre- 
 server, really makes me very anxious." 
 
 "Oh," said the Countess, with a melancholy smile, "is not 
 that ascribing too much importance to a child's nonsense ?" 
 
 "Nais is a child, no doubt, but who will be a woman sooner 
 than most children. Did you not yourself write to me that 
 she had intuitions on some subjects quite beyond her years?" 
 
 "That is true.' But in what you call her passion for Mon- 
 sieur de Sallenauve, besides its being quite natural, the dear 
 child is so frank and effusive that the feeling has a genuinely 
 childlike stamp." 
 
 "Well trust me, and do not trust to that; not even when 
 this troublesome person is out of the way ! Think, if when 
 the time came to arrange for her marriage this liking had 
 grown up with her a pretty state of things !" 
 
 "Oh, between this and then thank Heaven ! " said 
 
 the Countess incredulously. 
 
 "Between this and then," replied Madame de Camps, "Mon- 
 sieur de Sallenauve may have achieved such success that his
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 361 
 
 name is in everybody's mouth; and with her lively imagina- 
 tion, Nais would be the first to be captivated by such brill- 
 iancy." 
 
 "But still, my dear, the difference of age " 
 
 "Monsieur de Sallenauve is thirty ; Nais is nearly thirteen. 
 The difference is exactly the same as between your age and 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade's, and you married him." 
 
 "Quite true; you may be right," said Madame de 1'Esto- 
 rade ; "what I did as a matter of good sense, Nais might insist 
 on passionately. But be easy ; I will so effectually shatter her 
 idol " 
 
 "That again, like the hatred you propose to act for your 
 husband's benefit, requires moderation. If you do not man- 
 age it gradually, you may fail of your end. You must allow 
 it to be supposed that circumstances have brought about a 
 feeling which should seem quite spontaneous." 
 
 "But do you suppose," cried Madame de 1'Estorade ex- 
 citedly, "that I need act aversion for this man? Why, I 
 hate him ! He is our evil genius !" 
 
 "Come, come, my dear, compose yourself ! I really do not 
 know you. You who used to be unruffled reason !" 
 
 Lucas at this moment came in to ask the Countess if she 
 could see a Monsieur Jacques Bricheteau. 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade looked at her friend, saying : 
 
 "The organist who was so helpful to Monsieur de Salle- 
 nauve at the time of his election. I do not know what he 
 can want of me." 
 
 "Never mind ; see him," said her friend. "Before opening 
 hostilities, it is not amiss to know what is going on in the' 
 enemy's camp." 
 
 "Show him in," said the Countess. 
 
 Jacques Bricheteau came in. So sure had he been, on the 
 other hand, of being among friends, that he had given no 
 special attention to his toilet. A capacious chocolate-brown 
 overcoat, whose cut it would have been vain to assign to any 
 date of fashion ; a checked waistcoat, gray and green, but- 
 toned to the throat; a black cravat, twisted to a rope, and
 
 362 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 worn without a collar, while it showed an inch of very doubt- 
 ful clean shirt front; yellow drab trousers, gray stockings, 
 and tied shoes this was the more than careless array in 
 which the organist ventured into the presence of the elegant 
 Countess. 
 
 Scarcely bidden to take a seat: 
 
 "Madame," said he, "I have perhaps taken a liberty in pre- 
 senting myself to you, unknown ; but Monsieur Marie-Gaston 
 spoke to me of your possibly wishing that I should give some 
 lessons to mademoiselle your daughter. I told him at first 
 that there might be some little difficulty, as all my time was 
 filled up ; but the Prefet of Police has just set me at leisure 
 by dismissing me from a post I held in his department, so I 
 am happy to be able to place myself entirely at your service." 
 
 "And has your dismissal, monsieur, been occasioned by the* 
 part you played in Monsieur de Sallenauve's election ?" asked 
 Madame de Camps. 
 
 "As no reason was assigned, it seems probable ; all the more 
 so that, in the course of twenty years' service, this discharge 
 is the very first hitch that has ever arisen between me and 
 my superiors." 
 
 "It cannot be denied," said Madame de PEstorade, sharply 
 enough, "that you very seriously interfered with the intentions 
 of the Government/' 
 
 "Yes, madame; and I accepted my dismissal as a disaster 
 I was quite prepared for. After all, what was the loss of 
 my small appointment in comparison with the election of 
 Monsieur de Sallenauve?" 
 
 "I am really distressed," the Countess went on, "to make 
 no better return for the eagerness you are good enough to 
 express ; but I may as well tell you that I have no fixed pur- 
 pose as to choosing a master for my daughter, and in spite 
 of the immense talent for which the world gives you credit, 
 I should be afraid of such serious teaching for a little girl of 
 thirteen." 
 
 "Quite the reverse, madame," replied the organist. "No- 
 body credits me with talent. Monsieur de Sallenauve and
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 363 
 
 Monsieur Marie-Gaston have heard me two or three times, 
 but apart from that, I am a mere unknown teacher, and per- 
 haps you are right perhaps a very tiresome one. So, setting 
 aside the question of lessons to mademoiselle your daughter, 
 let me speak of the thing that has really brought me here 
 Monsieur de Sallenauve." 
 
 "Did Monsieur de Sallenauve charge you with any message 
 to my husband?" said Madame de 1'Estorade, with marked 
 coldness. 
 
 "No, madame, he has, I grieve to say, charged me with 
 nothing. I went to call on him this morning, but he was 
 absent. I went to Ville-d'Avray, where I was told that I 
 should find him, and learned that he had started on a journey 
 with Monsieur Marie-Gaston. Then, thinking that you might 
 possibly know the object of this journey, and how long he 
 would be away 
 
 "Nothing of the kind," said Madame de 1'Estorade, in- 
 terrupting him in a hard tone. 
 
 "I had a letter this morning," Jacques Bircheteau went 
 on, "from Arcis-sur-Aube. My aunt, Mother Marie des 
 Anges, warns me, through Monsieur de Sallenauve's notary, 
 that a base conspiracy is being organized, and our friend's 
 absence complicates matters very seriously. I cannot under- 
 stand what put it into his head to vanish without warning any- 
 body who takes an interest " 
 
 "That he should not have given you notice," said Madame 
 de 1'Estorade, in the same tone, "may possibly surprise you. 
 But so far as my husband and I are concerned, there is noth- 
 ing to be astonished at." 
 
 The significance of this uncivil distinction was too clear 
 to be misunderstood. Jacques Bircheteau looked at the 
 Countess, and her eyes fell ; but the whole expression of her 
 face, set due North, confirmed the meaning which it was im- 
 possible to avoid finding in her words. 
 
 "I beg your pardon, madame," said he, rising. "I did not 
 know I could not have supposed that you were so utterly 
 indifferent to Monsieur de Sallenauve's prospects and honor.
 
 364 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 But a minute ago, in the ante-room, when your servant was in 
 doubt about announcing me, mademoiselle your daughter, on 
 hearing that I was a friend of his, eagerly took my part; 
 and I was so foolish as to conclude that she represented the 
 general good feeling of the family." 
 
 After pointing this distinction, which was quite a match 
 for Madame de 1'Estorade's, thus paying her back in her own 
 coin, Jacques Bircheteau bowed ceremoniously, and was about 
 to leave. 
 
 The two ladies exchanged a glance, as if to ask each other 
 whether it would be well to let this man depart thus after 
 shooting so keen a parting dart. 
 
 In fact, a crushing contradiction was at this instant given 
 to the Countess' assumption of indifference: Na'is came fly- 
 ing in. 
 
 "Mamma !" she cried exultantly, "a letter from Monsieur 
 de Sallenauve !" 
 
 The Countess blushed purple. 
 
 "What manners are these, bouncing in like a mad thing?" 
 said she severely. "And how do you know that the letter is 
 from that gentlemen ?" 
 
 "Oh !" said Na'is, turning the blade in the wound, "when 
 he wrote to you from Arcis, I got to know his writing." 
 
 "You "are a silly, inquisitive child," said her mother, roused 
 out of her usual indulgence by so many luckless speeches. 
 "Go to nurse." 
 
 Then to give herself some countenance : 
 
 "Allow me, monsieur," said she to Jacques Bricheteau, as 
 she opened the letter so inappropriately delivered. 
 
 "Nay, Madame la Comtesse," replied the organist, "it is 
 I who crave your permission to wait till you have read your 
 letter. If by any chance Monsieur de Sallenauve should give 
 you any account of his movements, you would perhaps have 
 the kindness to give me the benefit of it " 
 
 Having looked through the letter: 
 
 "Monsieur de Sallenauve," said the Countess, "desires me 
 to tell my husband that he is on his way to England Han-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 365 
 
 well, in the county of Middlesex. He is to be addressed un- 
 der cover to Doctor Ellis." 
 
 Jacques Bricheteau again bowed with due formality, and 
 left the room, 
 
 "Nai's has just treated you to a taste of her girl-in-love 
 tricks," said Madame de Camps. "But you had well earned 
 it. You had behaved to that poor man with a hardness that 
 deserved a severer sally than his parting retort. He seems 
 to have a ready wit of his own; and '// by any chance' Mon- 
 sieur de Sallenauve had. given you any information, was 
 rather neat under the circumstances." 
 
 "What is to be done?" said her friend; "the day began, 
 badly ; all the rest is to match." 
 
 "What about the letter?" 
 
 "It is heartbreaking. Read it." 
 
 "MADAME" (Sallenauve wrote), "I succeeded in overtak- 
 ing Lord Lewin a few leagues beyond Paris he is the Eng- 
 lishman of whom I spoke to you, and Providence sent him to 
 spare us a terrible catastrophe. Possessed of a large fortune, 
 he, like many of his countrymen, is liable to attacks of de- 
 pression, and only his strength of mind has saved him from 
 the worst results of the malady. His indifference to life, and 
 the cool stoicism with which he speaks of voluntary death, 
 won him at Florence, where they met, our unhappy friend's 
 confidence. Lord Lewin, who is interested in the study of 
 vehement emotions, is intimately acquainted with Dr. Ellis, 
 a physician famous for his treatment of the insane, and his 
 Lordship has often spent some weeks at the Hanwell Asylum 
 for Lunatics in Middlesex. It is one of the best managed 
 asylums in England, and Dr. Ellis is at the head of it. 
 
 "Lord Lewin, on arriving at Ville-d'Avray, at once dis- 
 cerned in Marie-Gaston the early symptoms of acute mania. 
 Though not yet obvious to superficial observers, they did not 
 escape Lord Lewin's practised eye. 'He picked and hoarded,' 
 said he, in speaking of our poor friend ; that is to say, as they
 
 366 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 walked about the park Marie-Gaston would pick up such 
 rubbish as straws, old bits of paper, and even rusty nails, 
 putting them carefully in his pocket ; and this, it would seem, 
 is a symptom familiar to those who have studied the progress 
 of mental disease. Then, by recurring to the discussions 
 they had held at Florence, Lord Lewin had no difficulty in 
 discovering his secret purpose of killing himself. Believing 
 that his wife visited him every evening, the poor fellow had 
 determined on the very night of your little dance to follow 
 his adored Louise, as he said. So, you see, my fears were 
 not exaggerated, but were the outcome of an instinct. 
 
 "Lord Lewin, instead of opposing his resolution, affected 
 to participate in it. 
 
 " 'But men like us,' said he, 'ought not to die in any vulgar 
 way, and there is a mode of death of which I had thought 
 for myself, and which I propose that we should seek in com- 
 mon. In South America, not far from Paraguay, there is 
 one of the most tremendous cataracts in the world, known as 
 the Falls of Gayra. The spray that rises from the abyss is to 
 be seen for many leagues, and reflects seven rainbows. A 
 vast volume of water, spreading over a breadth of more than 
 twelve thousand feet, is suddenly pent up in a narrow channel, 
 and falls into a gulf below with a sound more deafening than 
 a hundred thunderclaps at once. That is where I have al- 
 ways dreamed of dying.' 
 
 " 'Let us be off,' said Marie-Gaston. 
 
 " 'This very minute,' said Lord Lewin. 'Pack your things ; 
 we will sail from England, and be there in a few weeks.' 
 
 "And in this way, madame, the clever foreigner succeeded 
 in putting our friend off from his dreadful purpose. As you 
 may understand, he is taking him to England to place him 
 in Dr Ellis' care, since he Lord Lewin says has not his 
 match in Europe for treating the very sad case that is to be 
 confided to him. If I had been present, I should have con- 
 curred entirely in this arrangement, which has this ad- 
 vantage, that in the event of his recovery our friend's attack 
 will remain unknown.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 367 
 
 "Informed by a letter left for me by Lord Lewin at Ville- 
 d'Avray, I immediately set out in pursuit; and at Beauvais, 
 whence I am writing, I came up with them in a hotel, where 
 Lord Lewin had put up to enable the patient to benefit by 
 sleep, which had happily come over him in the carriage, after 
 weeks of almost total insomnia. Lord Lewin looks upon this 
 as a very favorable symptom, and he says that the malady 
 thus treated, as it will be, from the beginning, has the best 
 possible chance of cure. 
 
 "I shall follow them closely to Hanwell, taking care not 
 to be seen by Marie-Gaston, since, in Lord Lewin's opinion, 
 my presence might disturb the comparative tranquillity of 
 mind that he has derived from the thought of the pompous 
 end he is going to find. On reaching the asylum, I shall wait 
 to hear Dr. Ellis' verdict. 
 
 "The session opens so soon that I fear I may not be back 
 in time for the first sittings; but I shall write to the Presi- 
 dent of the Chamber, and if it should happen that any 
 difficulty arose as to the leave of absence for which I must 
 petition, I venture to rely on Monsieur de 1'Estorade's kind- 
 ness to certify the absolute necessity for it. At the same time, 
 I must beg him to remember that I cannot authorize him on 
 any consideration to reveal the nature of the business which 
 has compelled me to go abroad. However, the mere state- 
 ment of a fact by such a man as M. de 1'Estorade must be 
 enough to secure its acceptance without any explanation. 
 
 "Allow me, madame, to remain, etc." 
 
 As Madame de Camps finished reading, carriage wheels 
 were heard. 
 
 "There are our gentlemen back again," said the Countess. 
 "Now, shall I show this letter to my husband?" 
 
 "You cannot do otherwise. There would be too great a 
 risk of what Nais might say. Besides, Monsieur de Salle- 
 nauve writes most respectfully; there is nothing to encourage 
 your husband's notions." 
 
 As soon as Monsieur de 1'Estorade came in, his wife could
 
 368 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 see that he had recovered his usual looks, and she was about 
 to congratulate him, when he spoke first. 
 
 "Who is the man of very shabby appearance," asked Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade, "whom I found speaking to Xais on the 
 stairs ?" 
 
 As his wife did not seem to know what he was talking 
 about, lie went on. "A man very much marked by the small- 
 pox, with a greasy hat and a brown overcoat?" 
 
 "Oh !" said Madame de Camps to her friend, "our visitor ! 
 Nais could not resist the opportunity of talking about her 
 idol." 
 
 "But who is the man?" 
 
 "Is not his name Jacques Bricheteau ?" said the Countess, 
 "a friend of Monsieur de Sallenauve's." 
 
 Seeing a cloud fall on her husband's countenance, Madame 
 de FEstorade hurriedly explained the two objects of the 
 organist's visit, and she gave the Member's letter to Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade. 
 
 While he was reading it: 
 
 "He seems better, do you think ?" the Countess asked Mon- 
 sieur de Camps. 
 
 "Oh, he is perfectly right again," said the ironmaster. 
 "There is not a sign of what we saw this morning. He had 
 worried himself over his work ; exercise has done him good ; 
 and yet it is to be observed that he had an unpleasant shock 
 just now at the Minister's." 
 
 "Why, what happened?" asked Madame de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "Your friend Monsieur de Sallenauve's business seems to 
 be in a bad way." 
 
 "Thank you for nothing!" said Monsieur de PEstorade, 
 returning the letter to his wife. "I shall certainly not do 
 anything he asks me." 
 
 "Then have you heard anything against him?" said she, 
 trying to appear perfectly indifferent as she asked the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 "Yes; Eastignac told me that he had letters from Arcis; 
 some very awkward discoveries have been made there."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 369 
 
 "Well, what did I tell you?" cried Madame de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "What did you tell me?" 
 
 "To be sure. Did I not give you a hint some time ago 
 that Monsieur de Sallenauve was a man to be let drop ? Those 
 were the very words I used, as I happen to remember." 
 
 "But was it I who brought him here?" 
 
 "You can hardly say that it was I. Only just now, before 
 knowing anything of the distressing facts you have just 
 learned, I was speaking to Madame de Camps of another rea- 
 son which should make us anxious to put an end to the ac- 
 quaintance." 
 
 "Very true," said Madame de Camps. "Your wife, but a 
 minute ago, was talking of the sort of frenzy that possesses 
 Nais with regard to her preserver, and she foresaw great 
 difficulties in the future." 
 
 "It is an unsatisfactory connection in every way^" said 
 Monsieur de 1'Estorade. 
 
 "It seems to me," said Monsieur de Camps, who was not 
 behind the scenes, "that you are rather in a hurry. Some 
 compromising discoveries are said to have been made with 
 reference to Monsieur de Sallenauve, but what is the value of 
 these discoveries? Wait before you hang him, at least till 
 he has been tried." 
 
 "My husband can do what he thinks proper," said the 
 Countess. "For my part, I do not hesitate to throw him 
 over at once. My friends, like Caesar's wife, must be above 
 suspicion." 
 
 "The awkward thing," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, "is 
 that we are under such an annoying obligation to him " 
 
 "But, really," exclaimed Madame de 1'Estorade, "if a con- 
 vict had saved my life, should I be obliged to receive him in 
 my drawing-room?" 
 
 "Indeed, my dear, you are going too far," said Madame 
 de Camps. 
 
 "Well, well," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, "there is no 
 occasion to raise a scandal; things must be allowed to take
 
 370 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 their course. The dear man is abroad now ; who knows if 
 he will ever come back?'' 
 
 "What, he has fled at a mere rumor? 7 ' said Monsieur de 
 Camps. 
 
 "Not precisely on that account," replied the Count. "He 
 had a pretext but once out of France " 
 
 "As to that conclusion," said Madame de 1'Estorade, "I do 
 not for a moment believe in it. His pretext is a good reason, 
 and as soon as he hears from his friend the organist he will 
 hurry back. So, my dear, you must take your courage in both 
 hands and cut the intimacy short at a blow if you do not in- 
 tend it to continue." 
 
 "And that is really your meaning?" said Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade, looking keenly at his wife. 
 
 "I? I would write to him without any sort of ceremony, 
 and tell him that he will oblige us by calling here no more. 
 At the same time, as it is a little difficult to write such a 
 letter, we will concoct it together if you like." 
 
 "We will see," said her husband, beaming at the sugges- 
 tion ; "the house is not falling yet. The most pressing matter 
 at the moment is the flower-show we are to go to together. 
 It closes, I think, at four o'clock, and we have but an hour 
 before us." 
 
 Madame de 1'Estorade, who had dressed before Madame 
 de Camps' arrival, rang for the maid to bring her bonnet 
 and shawl. 
 
 As she was putting them on in front of a glass : 
 
 "Then you really love me, Kenee?" said her husband in 
 her ear. 
 
 "Can you be so silly as to ask?" replied she, giving him 
 her most affectionate look. 
 
 "Well, I have a confession to make to you I read the 
 letter Philippe brought." 
 
 "Then I am no longer surprised at the change that came 
 over you. I too must tell you something. When I proposed 
 that we should concoct Monsieur de Sallenauve's dismissal 
 between us, I had already written it directly after you went
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 371 
 
 out; and you can take it out of my blotting-book and post it 
 if you think it will do." 
 
 Quite beside himself with joy at finding that his hypo- 
 thetical successor had been so immediately sacrificed, Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade threw Itis arms round his wife and kissed 
 her effusively. 
 
 "Well done!" cried Monsieur de Camps. "This is better 
 than this morning !" 
 
 "This morning I was a fool," said the Count, as he turned 
 over the blotting-book to find the letter, which he might have 
 taken his wife's word for. 
 
 "Say no more," said Madame de Camps in an undertone 
 to her husband. "I will explain all this pother to you pres- 
 ently." 
 
 Younger again by ten years, the Count offered his arm to 
 Madame de Camps, while his wife took the ironmaster's. 
 
 "And Nais ?" said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, seeing the little 
 girl looking forlorn as they went. "Is not she coming too?" 
 
 "No," said her mother; "I am not pleased with her." 
 
 "Pooh !" said the father, "I proclaim an amnesty: Eun 
 and put your bonnet on," he added to the child. 
 
 Nais looked at her mother for the ratification which she 
 thought necessary under the hierarchy of power as it existed 
 in the 1'Estorade household. 
 
 "Go," said the Countess, "since your father wishes it." 
 
 While they waited for the little girl : 
 
 "To whom are you writing, Lucas ?" asked the Count of the 
 man-servant, who had begun a letter on the table by which 
 he stood. 
 
 "To my son," said Lucas, "who is very anxious to get his 
 sergeant's stripes. I am telling him that you promised me a 
 note to his colonel, Monsieur le Comte." 
 
 "Perfectly true, on my honor; and I had quite forgotten 
 it. Remind me to-morrow morning; I will write it the first 
 thing when I get up." 
 
 "You are very good, sir " 
 
 "Here," said Monsieur de 1'Estorade, putting his fingers
 
 372 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 iii his waistcoat pocket and taking out three gold pieces, "send 
 these to the corporal from me, and tell him to get his men 
 to drink to his stripes." 
 
 Lucas was amazed; he had never known his master so 
 genial and liberal. 
 
 When ISTais was ready, Madame de 1'Estorade, proud of hav- 
 ing had the courage to leave her in disgrace for half an hour, 
 hugged her as if she had not seen her for two years ; then they 
 all set out for the Luxembourg, where the Horticultural 
 Society at that time held its shows. 
 
 Towards the end of the interview which Monsieur Octave 
 de Camps, under the auspices of Monsieur de 1'Estorade, 
 had at last been able to get with Eastignac, the Minister's 
 usher had come in to give him the cards of Monsieur le Pro- 
 cureur-General Vinet and Monsieur Maxime de Trailles. 
 
 "Very well," said the Minister. "Tell the gentlemen I 
 will see them in a few minutes/' 
 
 Soon after, the ironmaster and Monsieur de 1'Estorade rose 
 to leave; and it was then that Rastignac had briefly told the 
 Count of the danger looming on the parliamentary horizon 
 of his friend Sallenauve. At the word "friend," Monsieur 
 de 1'Estorade had protested. 
 
 "I do not know, my dear Minister," said he, "why you 
 persist in giving that name to a man who is really no more 
 than an acquaintance, I might say a provisional acquaintance, 
 if the reports you have mentioned should prove to have any 
 foundation." 
 
 "I am delighted to hear you say so," replied Rastignac. 
 "For in the thick of the hostilities which seem likely to arise 
 between that gentleman and our side, I confess that the warm 
 feeling I imagined you to have towards him would somewhat 
 have fettered me." 
 
 "I am grateful for your consideration," replied the Count ; 
 "but pray understand that I give you a free hand. It is a 
 matter entirely at your discretion to treat Monsieur de Salle- 
 nauve as a political foe, without any fear that the blows you 
 deal him will at all hurt me."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 373 
 
 Thereupon they left, and Messieurs Vinet and de Trailles 
 had been shown in. 
 
 Vinet, the Attorney-General, and father of Olivier Vinet, 
 whom the reader already knows, was one of the warmest 
 champions and most welcome advisers of the existing Govern- 
 ment. Designate as the Minister of Justice at the next 
 shuffling of the Cabinet, he was behind the scenes of every 
 ambiguous situation ; and in every secret job nothing was con- 
 cocted without his co-operation, in the plot at least, if not 
 in the doing. 
 
 The electoral affairs of Arcis had a twofold claim on his 
 interference: First, because his son held a position among 
 the legal magnates of the town; secondly, because as con- 
 nected through his wife with the Chargeboeufs of la Brie, the 
 Cinq-Cygnes of Champagne being a younger branch of that 
 family, this aristocratic alliance made him think it a point 
 of honor to assert his importance in both districts, and never 
 to miss a chance of interfering in their affairs. 
 
 So, that morning, when Monsieur de Trailles had called 
 on the Minister armed with a letter from Madame Beau- 
 visage, full of compromising scandal concerning the new 
 Member for Arcis: 
 
 "Find Vinet, as coming from me," said Eastignac, without 
 listening to any explanations, "and try to bring him here as 
 soon as possible." 
 
 At Maxime's bidding who offered to fetch him in his 
 carriage Vinet was quite ready to go to Rastignac ; and now 
 that he has made his way to the Minister's private room, we 
 shall be better informed as to the danger hanging over SaUe- 
 nauve's head, of which Jacques Bricheteau and Monsieur de 
 1'Estorade have given us but a slight idea. 
 
 "Then you mean, my dear friends," said the Minister as 
 soon as they had settled to their talk, "that we may get some 
 hold on this political purist ! I met him yesterday at 1'Esto- 
 rade's, and he struck me as most undauntedly hostile." 
 
 Maxime, whose presence was in no sense official, knew better 
 than to answer this remark. Vinet, on the contrary, almost
 
 374 THE MEMBER FOB ARCIS 
 
 insolently conscious of his political importance, Public Pros- 
 ecutor as he was, had too much of the advocate in his com- 
 position to miss a chance of speaking. 
 
 "When, only this morning, monsieur" and he bowed to 
 Maximo "did me the honor to communicate to me a letter 
 he had received from Madame Beauvisage, I had just had 
 one from my son, in which he gave me, with slight variations, 
 the same information. I agree with him that the matter 
 looks ugly for our adversary but it will need nice manage- 
 ment." 
 
 "I really hardly know what the matter is," said the Minis- 
 ter. "As I particularly wished for your opinion on the case, 
 my dear Vinet, I begged Monsieur de Trailles to postpone 
 the details till we were all three together. 
 
 This was authorizing Maxime to proceed with the narrative, 
 but Vinet again seized the opportunity for hearing his own 
 voice. 
 
 "This," said he, "is what my son Olivier writes to me, 
 confirming Madame Beauvisage's letter she, I may say in- 
 cidentally, would have made a famous Member of Parliament, 
 my dear sir. On a market day not long since, Pigoult the 
 notary, who has the management of all the new Member's 
 business matters, received a visit, it would seem, from a 
 peasant woman from Eomilly, a large village not far from 
 Arcis. To hear the Marquis de Sallenauve, who has so sud- 
 denly reappeared, you would think that he was the only ex- 
 isting scion of the Sallenauve family ; but this did not prevent 
 this woman from displaying some papers in due form, prov- 
 ing that she too is a living Sallenauve, in the direct line, 
 and related nearly enough to claim her part in any heritable 
 property." 
 
 "Well," said Rastignac, "but did she know no more of the 
 Marquis' existence than he knew of hers ?" 
 
 "That did not plainly appear from her statements," said 
 Vinet ; "but that very confusion seems to me most convincing, 
 for, as YOU know, between relations in such different positions 
 great difficulties are apt to arise."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 375 
 
 "Kindly proceed with the story," said the Minister. "Be- 
 fore drawing conclusions, we must hear the facts though, 
 as you know by experience, that is not the invariable prac- 
 tice in Parliament." 
 
 "Not always to the dissatisfaction of the Ministers," said 
 Maxime, laughing. 
 
 "Monsieur is right," said Vinet; "all hail to a successful 
 muddler ! But to return to our peasant woman, who, in con- 
 sequence of the ruin of the Sallenauve family, has fallen into 
 great poverty and a station far beneath her birth; she first 
 appeared as a petitioner for money, and it seems probable that 
 prompt and liberal generosity would have kept her quiet. 
 But it is also likely that she was but ill pleased by Maitre 
 Achille Pigoult's reception of her demands; for on leaving 
 his office she went to the market square, and seconded by a 
 neighbor, a lawyer from the village, who had come with her, 
 she disburdened herself of various statements relating to my 
 highly-esteemed fellow-member which were not very natter- 
 ing to his character ; declaring that the Marquis de Sallenauve 
 was not his father ; and again, that there was no Marquis de 
 Sallenauve in existence. And at any rate, she concluded, 
 this newly-made Sallenauve was a heartless wretch who would 
 have nothing to say to his relations. But, she added, she 
 could make him disgorge, and, with the help of the clever man 
 who had come with her to support her by his advice, Monsieur 
 le Depute might be sure that they 'would make him jump 
 to another tune.' ' : 
 
 "I have not the slightest objection," said Kastignac. "But 
 the woman has, I suppose, some proof in support of her state- 
 ments?" 
 
 "That is the weak point of the matter," replied Vinet. 
 "But let me go on. At Arcis, my dear sir, the Government 
 has a remarkably devoted and intelligent servant in the head 
 of the police. Moving about among the people, which is his 
 practice on market-days, he picked up some of the woman's 
 vicious remarks, and going off at once to the Mayor's house, 
 he asked to see, not the Mayor himself, but Madame Beau- 
 visage, to whom he told, what was going on."
 
 376 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Then is the candidate whom you had chosen for a crown- 
 ing treat a perfect idiot?" Eastignac asked Maxime. 
 
 "The very man you wanted/' replied Monsieur de Trailles, 
 "imbecile to a degree ! There is nothing I would not do to 
 reverse this vexatious defeat." 
 
 "Madame Beauvisage," Vinet went on, "at once thought 
 she would like to talk to this woman of the ready tongue ; and 
 to get hold of her, it was not a bad idea to desire Groslier, the 
 police sergeant, to go and fetch her with a sternly threatening 
 air, as if the authorities disapproved of her levity in using 
 such language with regard to a member of the National Cham- 
 ber, and to bring her forthwith to the Mayor's house." 
 
 "And it was Madame Beauvisage, you say, who suggested 
 this method of procedure?" said Eastignac. 
 
 "Oh yes, she is a very capable woman," said Maxime. 
 
 "Driven hard," continued the speaker, "by Madame the 
 Mayoress, who took care to secure her husband's presence at 
 the cross-examination, the woman proved to be anything 
 rather than coherent. How she had ascertained that the 
 Member could not be the Marquis' son ; and her confident as- 
 sertion, on the other hand, that the Marquis did not even 
 exist, were not by any means conclusively proved. Hearsay, 
 vague reports, inferences drawn by her village attorney were 
 the best of the evidence she could bring." 
 
 "Well, then," said Eastignac, "what is the upshot of it 
 all?" 
 
 "Nil from the legal point of view," replied Vinet. "For 
 even if the woman could prove that it is a mere whim on the 
 part of the Marquis de Sallenauve to recognize the man Dor- 
 lange as his son, she would have no ground for an action in 
 disproof. According to section 339 of the Civil Code, a posi- 
 tive and congenital right alone can give grounds for disput- 
 ing the recognition of a natural child; in other words, there 
 must be a direct claim on the property in which the child 
 whose birth is disputed is enabled to claim a share." 
 
 "Your balloon collapsed !" observed the Minister. 
 
 "Whereas, on the other hand, if the good woman chooses
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 377 
 
 to dispute the existence of the Marquis de Sallenauve, she 
 would disinherit herself, since she certainly has no claim on 
 the estate of a man who would then be no relation of hers; 
 besides, it is the duty of the crown, and not her part at all, 
 to prosecute for the assumption of a false identity ; the utmost 
 she could do would be to bring the charge." 
 
 "Whence you conclude?" said Eastignac, with the sharp 
 brevity which warns a too diffuse talker to abridge his story. 
 
 "Whence I conclude, legally speaking, that this Romilly 
 peasant, by taking up either charge as the basis for an action, 
 would find it a bad speculation, since in one case she must 
 obviously lose, and in the other which, in fact, she cannot 
 even bring she would get nothing out of it. But, politically 
 speaking, it is quite another story." 
 
 "Let us see the political side then," said Rastignac; "for, 
 so far, I can make nothing of it." 
 
 "In the first place," replied the lawyer, "you will agree 
 with me that it is always possible to fight a bad case?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "And, then, I do not suppose that you would care whether 
 this woman fights an action which would only end in her hav- 
 ing to pay a lawyer's bill." 
 
 "No; I confess it is a matter to me of perfect indiffer- 
 ence." 
 
 "And if you had cared, I should, all the same, have advised 
 you to let matters take their course ; for the Beauvisages have 
 undertaken all the costs, including a visit to Paris for this 
 woman and her legal adviser." 
 
 "Well, well the action brought, what comes of it?" said 
 Rastignac, anxious to end. 
 
 "What comes of it?" cried the lawyer, warming to the 
 subject. "Why, everything you can manage to make of it, 
 if, before it is argued, you can work up comments in the pa- 
 pers and insinuations from your friends. What comes of it ? 
 Why, the utmost discredit for our antagonist, if he is sus- 
 pected of having assumed a name he has no right to.
 
 378 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 What comes of it? Why, an opportunity for a fulminating 
 speech in the Chamber " 
 
 "Which you, no doubt, will undertake?" asked Kastignac. 
 
 "Oh, I do not know. The case must be thoroughly studied ; 
 I must see what turn it is likely to take." 
 
 "Then for the moment," the Minister observed, "it is all 
 reduced to an application, hit or miss, of Basile's famous 
 theory of calumny that it is always well to keep it stirred, 
 and that something will stick." 
 
 "Calumny? Calumny?" replied Vinet. "That we shall 
 see ; it may be no more than honest evil-speaking. Monsieur 
 de Trailles, here, knows what went on much better than we 
 do. He will tell you that all through the district the father's 
 disappearance as soon as he had legally acknowledged his son 
 had the very worst effect; that everybody retained a vague 
 impression of mysterious complications to favor the election 
 of this man we are talking about. 
 
 "You have no idea, my dear fellow, what can be got out 
 of a lawsuit cleverly kept simmering, and in my long and 
 busy career as a pleader I have seen miracles worked by such 
 means. A parliamentary struggle is quite another matter. 
 There proof is not needed ; you may kill your man with noth- 
 ing but hypotheses and asseverations if you stick to them 
 defiantly enough." 
 
 "Well, to. sum up," said Kastignac, speaking as a man of 
 method, "how do you recommend that the affair should be 
 managed ?" 
 
 "In the first place," replied the lawyer, "I should allow 
 the Beauvisages since they have a fancy for it to pay all 
 the expenses of moving the peasant woman and her friend, 
 and subsequently the costs of the action." 
 
 "Do I make any objection?" said the Minister. "Have I 
 either the right or the means ?" 
 
 "The case," Vinet went on, "must be put into the hands 
 of a wily and clever lawyer: Desroches, for instance, Monsieur 
 de Trailles' lawyer. He will know how to fill out the body of 
 a case which, as you justly observe, is very thin."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 379 
 
 "I certainly should not say to Monsieur de Trailles, 'I for- 
 bid you to allow anybody you please to secure the services of 
 your solicitor/ " said Rastignac. 
 
 "Then we want an advocate who can talk with an air of 
 'The Family' as a sacred and precious thing; who will wax 
 indignant at the surreptitious intrigues by which a man may 
 scheme to insinuate himself within its holy pale." 
 
 "Desroches can find your man; and again, the Govern- 
 ment is not likely to hinder a pleader from talking, or from 
 being transported with indignation !" 
 
 "But, Monsieur le Ministre," Maxime put in, startled out 
 of his attitude of passive attention by Eastignac's indiffer- 
 ence, "is non-interference all the support to be hoped for 
 from the Government in this struggle?" 
 
 "I hope you did not think that we should take up the action 
 on our own account?" 
 
 "No, of course not ; but we had a right to imagine that you 
 would take some interest in it." 
 
 "How in what way?" 
 
 "How can I tell? As Monsieur Vinet was saying just 
 now, by tuck of drum in the subsidized newspapers by get- 
 ting your supporters to spread the gossip by using the in- 
 fluence which men in power always have over the Bench." 
 
 "Thank you for nothing," said the Minister. "When you 
 want to secure the Government as an accomplice, my dear 
 Maxime, you must have a rather more solidly constructed 
 scheme to show. Your air of business this morning made me 
 think you really had a strong hand, and I have troubled our 
 excellent friend the Public Prosecutor, who knows how high 
 a value I set on his learning and advice ; but really your plot 
 strikes me as too transparent, and the meshes so thin that 
 I can see through them an inevitable defeat. If I were a 
 bachelor and wanted to marry Mademoiselle Beauvisage, I 
 daresay I might be bolder, so I leave it to you to carry on 
 the action in any way you please. I will not say that Govern- 
 ment will not watch your progress with its best wishes ; but it 
 certainly will not tread the path with you."
 
 380 
 
 "Well, well," said Vinet, hindering Maxime's reply, which 
 would, no doubt, have been a bitter one, "but supposing we 
 take the matter into court; supposing that the peasant wo- 
 man, prompted by the Beauvisages, should denounce the man 
 who was identified before the notary as being a spurious 
 Sallenauve; then the Member is guilty of conspiracy, and 
 for that we have him before the superior court." 
 
 "But, again, where are your proofs?" asked Rastignac. 
 "Have you a shadow of evidence ?" 
 
 "You admitted just now," observed Maxime, "that a bad 
 case may be fought out." 
 
 "A civil action, yes; a criminal charge is quite another 
 matter. And this would break down, for it means disputing 
 the validity of an act drawn up by a public official, and with- 
 out a particle of proof. A pretty piece of work ! The case 
 would be simply dismissed before it came to be argued in 
 court. If we wanted to perch our enemy on a pedestal as 
 high as the column of July, we could not go about it more 
 effectually." 
 
 "So that in your opinion there is nothing to be done?" 
 asked Maxime. 
 
 "By us nothing. But you, my dear Maxime, who have 
 no official position, and can at a pinch use your pistol in 
 support of the attack on Monsieur de Sallenauve's character 
 there is nothing to hinder you from trying your luck in the 
 contest." 
 
 "Yes," said Maxime petulantly, "I am a sort of ( con- 
 dottiere!'" 
 
 "Not at all; you are a man with an instinctive conviction 
 of certain facts that cannot be legally proved, and you would 
 not be afraid to stand at the judgment seat of God." 
 
 Monsieur de Trailles rose, considerably annoyed. Vinet 
 also rose, and giving Rastignac his hand as he took leave: 
 
 "I cannot deny," said he, "that your conduct is dictated by 
 great prudence; and I will not say but that in your place 
 I should do the same." 
 
 "No ill-feeling, at any rate, Maxime," said the Minister, 
 and Maxime bowed with icy dignity.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 381 
 
 When the two conspirators were in the outer room alone: 
 
 "Do you understand what this prudery means?" asked 
 Maxime. 
 
 "Perfectly," said Vinet, "and for a clever man you seem 
 to me easily taken in." 
 
 "No doubt making you lose your time, besides losing 
 my own to have the pleasure of hearing a man lay himself 
 out for the reward of virtue " 
 
 "It is not that. I think you very guileless to believe 
 in the refusal of support that had vexed you so much." 
 
 "What ? You think " 
 
 "I think that the business is a toss-up. If the plan suc- 
 ceeds, the Government, sitting with its arm folded, will get 
 all the benefit; if, on the contrary, success is not for us, it 
 would, as soon as not, keep out of the risk of defeat. But, 
 take my word for it, I know Rastignac; looking quite im- 
 passive, and without compromising himself at all, he will 
 perhaps serve us better than by outspoken connivance. Just 
 reflect: Did he say a single word against the moral side 
 of the attack ? Did he not repeat again and again 'I make 
 no objection. I have no right to hinder you.' And what 
 fault had he to find with the snake's venom ? That its action 
 was not deadly enough ! The fact is, my dear sir, that there 
 will be a sharp tug of war, and it will take all Desroches' 
 skill to put a good face on the business." 
 
 "Then you think I had better see him?" 
 
 "Do I think so? Why, this moment, when we part." 
 
 "Do not you think it would be well that he should go and 
 talk matters over with you?" 
 
 "No, no, no !" said Vinet. "I may be the man to do the 
 talking in the Chamber. Desroches might be seen at my 
 house, and I must seem immaculate." 
 
 Thereupon he bowed to Maxime, and left him in some 
 haste, excusing himself by having to go to the Chamber and 
 hear what was going on. 
 
 "And if I," said Maxime, running after him as he left, 
 "if I should need your advice?"
 
 382 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "I am leaving Paris this evening to look after my court 
 in the country before the session opens." 
 
 "And the question in the Chamber that you may be called 
 upon to ask?" 
 
 "Oh, if it is not I, it will be some one else. I shall return 
 as soon as possible; but you will understand that I must 
 set my shop in order before I come away for at least 
 five or six months." 
 
 "Then Bon voyage, monsieur/' said Maxime sarcastically, 
 and parting from him at last. 
 
 Monsieur de Trailles, left to himself, stood a little dis- 
 concerted as he fancied that here were two political Bertrands, 
 each intending that he should snatch the chestnuts from the 
 fire. 
 
 Eastignac's behavior especially nettled him when he looked 
 back on their first meeting, just twenty years ago, at Madame 
 de Eestaud's. He, then already a formed man holding the 
 sceptre of fashion, and Eastignac a poor student, not know- 
 ing how to enter or leave a room, and dismissed from the 
 door of that handsome house when he called after his first 
 visit, in the course of which he had contrived to commit two 
 or three incongruous blunders ! And now Eastignac was a 
 Peer of France and in office; while he, Maxime, no more 
 than his tool, was obliged to listen with grounded arms when 
 he was told that his man-traps were too artless, and that if 
 he fancied them, he must work them alone. 
 
 But this prostration was but a lightning flash. 
 
 "Well, then!" he said to himself. "Yes, I will try the 
 game single-handed. My instinct assures me that there is 
 something in it. 
 
 "What next ! A Dorlange, a nobody, is to keep me in 
 check, Comte Maxime de Trailles, and make my defeat a 
 stepping-stone? There are too many dark places in that 
 rogue's past life for it not to be possible sooner or later 
 to open one to the light of day 
 
 "To the lawyer's," said he to the coachman as he opened 
 his carriage door.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 383 
 
 And when he was comfortably seated on the cushions: 
 "After all, if I cannot succeed in overthrowing this up- 
 start, I will put myself in the way of his insulting me; I 
 shall have the choice of weapons, and will fire first. I will 
 do better than the Due de Bhetore, my insolent friend ! I 
 will kill you, never fear!" 
 
 It may be observed that Monsieur Maxime de Trailles 
 had been quite upset by the mere idea of being taken for a 
 condottiere. 
 
 Desroches was at home, and Monsieur de Trailles was 
 at once shown in to his private room. 
 
 Desroches was an attorney who, like Raphael, had had 
 many manners. Having in the first instance taken over an 
 office without a connection, he had left no stone unturned, 
 taking every case that offered, and had found himself in 
 very poor esteem in court. But he was hard-working, well 
 up in all the tricks and windings of legal technicalities, an 
 acute observer and keen reader of every impulse of the human 
 heart; thus he had finally made a very good connection, 
 had married a woman with a fine fortune, and had given up 
 all pettifogging double-dealing as soon as he could make 
 his way without it. 
 
 By 1839 Desroches was an honest attorney in good prac- 
 tice; that is to say, he conducted his clients' business with 
 zeal and skill; he never would countenance any underhand 
 proceedings, much less would he have lent them a hand. As 
 to the fine bloom of delicate honesty which existed in Der- 
 ville and some other men of that stamp, besides the impos- 
 sibility of preserving it from rubbing off in the world of 
 business in which, as Monsieur de Talleyrand said, "Busi- 
 ness means other people's money" it can never be the second 
 development of any life. The loss of that down of the soul, 
 like that of anything virginal, is irreparable; so Desroches 
 had made no attempt to restore it. He would have nothing 
 to say to what was ignoble or dishonest; but the above-board 
 tricks allowed by the Code of Procedure, the recognized sur-
 
 384 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 prises and villainies to steal a march on an adversary, he was 
 ready to allow. 
 
 Then, Desroches was an amusing fellow; he liked good 
 living; and, like all men who are incessantly absorbed by 
 the imperious demands of hard thinking, he felt a craving 
 for highly-spiced enjoyments snatched in haste, and strong to 
 the palate. So, while he had by degrees cleansed his ways 
 as a lawyer, he was still the favorite attorney of men of 
 letters, artists, and actresses, of popular courtesans and dandy 
 bohemians such as Maxime; because he was content to live 
 their life, all these people attracted him, and all relished his 
 society. Their slang and wit, their rather lax moral views, 
 their somewhat picaresque adventures, their expedients, their 
 brave and honorable toil in short, all their greatness and all' 
 their misery were perfectly understood by him, and like an 
 ever-indulgent providence, he gave them advice and help 
 whenever they asked for them. 
 
 But to the end that his serious and paying clients should 
 not discover what might be somewhat compromising in hia 
 intimacy with these clients of his heart, he had days when 
 he was the husband and father more especially Sundays. 
 Rarely did he fail to be seen in his quiet little carriage, in 
 the Bois de Boulogne, his wife by his side the largeness of 
 her fortune stamped in her ugliness. On the opposite seat 
 were the three children in a group, all unfortunately like 
 their mother. This family picture, these virtuous Sunday 
 habits, were so unlike the week-day Desroches, dining in any 
 pot-house with all the fastest men and women of the day, 
 that Malaga, a circus-rider, famous for her fun and smart 
 sayings, said that attorneys ought not to be allowed to play 
 such improbable pranks, and cheat the public by showing off 
 papier-mache children. 
 
 So it was to this relatively honest lawyer that Monsieur 
 de Trailles had come for advice, as he never failed to do in 
 every more or less tight place in his career. Desroches, as 
 had long been his habit, listened without interrupting him 
 to the long statement of the case as it was unfolded to him,
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 385 
 
 including the scene that had just taken place at Kastignac's. 
 As Maxime had no secrets from this confessor, he gave all 
 his reasons for owing Sallenauve an ill turn, and represented 
 him, with perfect conviction, as having stolen the name under 
 which he would sit in the Chamber. His hatred appeared 
 to him in the light of positive evidence of a felony that was 
 hardly probable or possible. In the bottom of his heart 
 Desroches had no wish to undertake a case in which he at 
 once foresaw not the smallest chance of success; and his lax 
 honesty was shown in his talking to his client as if it were 
 a quite ordinary legal matter, and in not telling him point- 
 blank his opinion of an action which was simply an intrigue. 
 
 The amount of wrong that is done by such verbal con- 
 nivance, that never goes so far as active complicity, is really 
 incalculable. "What concern is it of mine? Let them fight 
 it out ! Why should I set up for being the bashful knight 
 of virtue?" This is what men of Desroches' nature are apt 
 to think, and it would be hard to guess at their number in a 
 somewhat advanced state of civilization. 
 
 "To begin with, my dear sir," said the attorney, "a civil 
 action is not to be thought of: if your Romilly peasant had 
 her pockets full of proofs, her application would be refused 
 because, so far, she can have no direct interest in disputing 
 the affiliation of the opposing party." 
 
 "Yes, that is what Vinet said just now." 
 
 "As to a criminal prosecution, that, of course, you 
 might bring about by lodging an information of false per- 
 sonation." 
 
 "Vinet seemed in favor of that course," said Maxime. 
 
 "Well, but there are many objections to this method of 
 procedure. In the first place, merely to get the information 
 heard, you must have something resembling proof; next, if 
 the information is lodged and the Crown decides to prosecute, 
 to get a verdict there must be far stronger evidence of the 
 felony; and if, after all, the crime were proved against the 
 self-styled Marquis de Sallenauve, how are you to show that
 
 386 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 his self-styled son is in the conspiracy, since he may have 
 been deceived by an impostor/' 
 
 "But what motive could that impostor have," said Maxime, 
 "for giving this Dorlange all the advantages that accrue to 
 him from being recognized as the Marquis de Sallenauve's 
 son?" 
 
 "Oh, my dear fellow," replied Desroches, "when } r ou come 
 to State questions, any eccentricity is possible. No sort of 
 trials or actions has furnished so many romances to the 
 compilers of causes celebres or to novelists. But there is 
 another point: the assumption of a false identity is not in 
 itself a crime in the eye of the law." 
 
 "How is that?" cried Maxime. "Impossible!" 
 
 "Look here, my lord," said Desroches, taking down the 
 Five Codes, "have the kindness to read section 145 of the 
 Penal Code the only one which seems to lend an opening to 
 the action you propose to bring, and see whether the mis- 
 demeanor we are discussing is contemplated." 
 
 Maxime read aloud section 145, as follows: 
 
 "Any functionary or public officer who shall have com- 
 mitted forgery in the exercise of his functions either by 
 forged signatures, or by defacing and altering deeds, docu- 
 ments, or signatures or by assuming a false identity 
 
 "There, you see," said Maxime, "false identity 
 
 "Read to the end," said Desroches. 
 
 "Or by altering or adding to a register or any other public 
 document, after it has been legally attested and sealed, is 
 liable to penal servitude for life." 
 
 Monsieur de Trailles rolled the words unctuously on his 
 tongue as a foretaste of the fate in store for Sallcnauve. 
 
 "My dear Count," said Desroches, "you read as the parties 
 to a suit always do; they never study a point of law but 
 from their own side of the case. You fail to observe that, in 
 this section, mention is made only of 'functionaries and public 
 officers'; it has no bearing on the false identity of any other 
 class of person." 
 
 Maxime re-read the paragraph, and saw that Desroches was 
 right.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 387 
 
 "Still," he remarked, "there must be something elsewhere 
 to that effect?" 
 
 "Nothing of the kind; take my word for it as a lawyer; 
 the Code is absolutely silent on that point." 
 
 "Then the crime we should inform against has the privilege 
 of impunity?" 
 
 "That is to say," replied Desroches, "that its punishment 
 is doubtful at best. A judge sometimes by induction ex- 
 tends the letter of the law " He paused to turn over a 
 
 volume of leading cases. 
 
 "Here, you see, reported in Carnot's Commentaries on the 
 Penal Code, two judgments delivered at Assizes one of 
 July 7, 1814, and the other of April 24, 1818, both confirmed 
 in the Court of Appeal, which condemned certain individuals 
 who were neither functionaries nor public officers for assum- 
 ing false names and identity; but these two verdicts, ex- 
 ceptional in every way, are based on a section in which this 
 particular misdemeanor is not even mentioned, and it was 
 only by very recondite argument that it was brought to bear 
 on the cases. So you will understand that the outcome of 
 such an action must always be doubtful, since, in the absence 
 of any positive rule, it is impossible to say what the judges' 
 decision may be." 
 
 "Consequently, it is your opinion, as it is Eastignac's, that 
 we may send our countrywoman back to Eomilly, and that 
 there is nothing to be done?" 
 
 "There is always something to be done," replied Desroches, 
 "when you know how to set about it. There is a further 
 complication which does not seem to have occurred to you 
 or Monsieur de Rastignac, or even to Monsieur Vinet; and 
 that is that, apart from the legal point, you need authority 
 from the Chamber before you can prosecute a member of the 
 representative body in a criminal court." 
 
 "That is true," said Maxime ; "but how does a further com- 
 plication help us out of our difficulty?" 
 
 "You would not be sorry, I fancy," said the lawyer, laugh- 
 ing, "to send your enemy to the hulks?"
 
 388 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "A scoundrel," said Maxime, with a droll twinkle, "who 
 has perhaps caused me to miss a good marriage, who sets 
 up for austere virtue, and allows himself such audacious 
 tricks !" 
 
 "Well; you must, nevertheless, put up with some less 
 showy revenge. If you create a scandal, throw utter dis- 
 credit on your man that, I suppose, would, to some extent, 
 achieve your end?" 
 
 "No doubt ; half a loaf is better than no bread." 
 
 "Your ideas thus reduced, this is what I should advise: 
 Do not urge your woman to bring an action against this 
 gentleman who annoys you so much, but get her to place a 
 petition for authority to prosecute in the hands of the Presi- 
 dent of the Chamber. She will most probably not obtain it, 
 and the affair will collapse at that stage ; but the fact of the 
 application will be rumored in the Chamber, the papers will 
 have every right to mention it, and the Government will be 
 free, behind the scenes, to add venom to the imputation by 
 the comments of its supporters." 
 
 "Peste!" exclaimed Maxime, enchanted at seeing an outlet 
 for his instincts of aversion, "you are a clever fellow far 
 cleverer than all your self-styled statesmen. But as to this 
 petition for leave to prosecute, who can draw that up ?" 
 
 "Not I," replied Desroches, who did not care to go any 
 further in such dirty work. "What you want is not a judicial 
 document, but a weapon, and that is no part of my business. 
 But there are dozens of attorneys without clients who are 
 always ready to put a finger into a political pie Hassol, for 
 instance, will do your job as well as any man. But I par- 
 ticularly beg that you will not mention me as having orig- 
 inated the idea." 
 
 "Not a word," said Maxime. "I will take the responsi- 
 bility, and in that shape, perhaps, Rastignac may at last 
 swallow the scheme." 
 
 "Mind you do not make an enemy of Vinet, for he will 
 think you have taken a great liberty in having thought of 
 a thing that ought at once to have occurred to such a prac- 
 tised parliamentary tactician as he is."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 389 
 
 "Oh, before very long," said Maxime, rising, "I hope that 
 Vinet, IJastignac, and the rest well have to reckon with me. 
 Where are you dining to-night?" he added. 
 
 It is a question which one "man about town" often asks 
 another. 
 
 "In a cave," said Desroches, "with the banditti." 
 
 "Where is it?" 
 
 "Why, in the course of your erotic experiences you have, 
 no doubt, had recourse to the good offices of an old ward- 
 robe-buyer named Madame de Saint-Esteve ?" 
 
 "No," said Maxime; "I always manage my own busi- 
 ness." 
 
 "Ah, I was not thinking," said the lawyer. "You have 
 always been a conqueror in high life, where such go-betweens 
 are not employed. However, the woman's name is not un- 
 known to you?" 
 
 "Quite true. Her shop is in the Hue Saint-Marc. It was 
 she who brought about the meeting between Nucingen and 
 that little slut Esther, who cost him something like five 
 hundred thousand francs. She must be related to a villain 
 of the same kidney who is at the head now of the detective 
 force, and goes by the same name." 
 
 "That I do not know," replied Desroches. "But I can 
 tell you this much : she made a fortune by her trade as dresser 
 (appareilleuse, as it was called at a time when the world was 
 less prudish than it is now), and to-day the worthy lady is 
 magnificently housed in the Eue de Provence, where she is at 
 the head of a matrimonial agency." 
 
 "And you are dining there?" 
 
 "Yes, my dear sir, with the manager of the Opera House 
 in London, with fimile Blondet, Andoche Finot, Lousteau, 
 Felicien Vernou, Theodore Gaillard, Hector Merlin, and 
 Bixiou, who was instructed to invite me, because my ex- 
 perience and great knowledge of business are to be called 
 into play." 
 
 "Bless me ! is there some great financial enterprise at the 
 back of that dinner?"
 
 390 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "A joint-stock undertaking, my dear friend, and a theatrical 
 engagement, and I am to read through the two agreements. 
 As regards the last, you understand that the distinguished 
 guests invited to meet me will proceed to blow the trumpet 
 as soon as the deed is signed." 
 
 "And who is the star whose engagement needs so much 
 ceremony." 
 
 "Oh, a star who may look forward, it would seem, to Eu- 
 ropean glory ! An Italian woman discovered by a great 
 Swedish nobleman, Count Halphertius, through the ministra- 
 tions of Madame de Saint-Esteve. To have her brought out 
 on the opera stage in London, the illustrious stranger becomes 
 a sleeping partner with the Impresario to the tune of a hun- 
 dred thousand crowns/' 
 
 "So the Swedish Count is marrying her?" 
 
 "H'm," said Desroches, "I have not as yet been asked to 
 draw up the settlements. Madame de Saint-Esteve, as you 
 may suppose, still has some connection with the 'thirteenth 
 arrondissement' in her agency business." 
 
 "Well, my good fellow, I hope you will enjoy the party," 
 said Maxime, leaving. "If your star is a success in London, 
 we shall probably see her in Paris this winter. I will be off 
 to put a spoke, if I can, in the chariot wheels of the rising 
 sun of Arcis. By the way, where does Massol live ?" 
 
 "On my word, I cannot tell you. I have never taken him 
 a brief; I have no use for pleaders who meddle in politics; 
 but you can send for his address to the office of the Gazette 
 des Tribunaux; he writes for it, I know." 
 
 Maxime himself went to the office to ask where Massol 
 lived; but the office-boy had strict orders not to give his ad- 
 dress to anybody, probably with a view to the calls of duns; 
 and in spite of his hectoring tone, Monsieur de Trailles had 
 wasted his time, and could not obtain the information he had 
 come for. He fortunately remembered that Massol rarely 
 missed a performance at the Opera, and he felt tolerably cer- 
 tain of finding him in the lounging-room after dinner. 
 
 Before dinner, he went to call at some little furnished lodg-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 301 
 
 ings where he had housed the peasant woman and her lawyer, 
 who had already come to Paris. He found them at table, and 
 enjoying a capital dinner at the Beauvisages' expense. He 
 desired them to come to him before breakfast, between eleven 
 and twelve next morning. In the evening he met Massol, 
 as he expected, at the Opera. Addressing him with his usual 
 rather haughty politeness: 
 
 "I should like to talk with you, monsieur," said he, "over 
 a partly legal and partly political matter. If it were not 
 necessary to observe the strictest secrecy in every way, I would 
 have had the honor of calling at 'your office, but I believe we 
 shall discuss it in greater privacy at my house, where I can put 
 you into direct communication with two interested persons. 
 May I hope that you will give me the pleasure of taking a 
 cup of tea with me to-morrow morning soon after eleven ?" 
 
 If Massol had in fact boasted of an office, for the dignity 
 of his robe he would perhaps not have consented to reverse 
 the usual order of things by going to a client instead of re- 
 ceiving him at home. But as he perched rather than lodged 
 in his room, he was glad of an arrangement which preserved 
 the incognito of his residence. 
 
 "I shall have the honor of waiting on you to-morrow at the 
 hour you name," he eagerly replied. 
 
 "You know," said Maxime, "the Rue Pigalle?" 
 
 "Perfectly," replied Massol, "close to the Rue de la 
 Rochefoucauld." 
 
 On the evening when Sallenauve, Marie-Gaston, and 
 Jacques Bricheteau had gone together to Saint-Sulpice to 
 hear Signora Luigia sing, a little incident had occurred in 
 the church which had scarcely been noticed. Thfough the 
 little-used door, opening on the Rue Palatine, opposite the 
 Rue Servandoni, a fair-haired youth hastily came in. He 
 seemed so agitated and hurried that he even forgot to take off 
 a cap of shiny leather, shaped like those worn by the 
 students at German universities. As he pushed forward to 
 where the crowd was thickest, he felt himself gripped
 
 392 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 by the arm, and his face, which was florid and rosy, turned 
 lividly pale; but on turning round he saw that he had been 
 alarmed without cause. It was only the Suisse, or beadle, 
 who said in impressive tones: 
 
 "Young man, is your cap nailed to your head ?" 
 
 "I beg pardon, monsieur," said the youth. "It was an 
 oversight." 
 
 And after obeying this lesson in reverence, human and 
 divine, he lost himself in the densest part of the crowd, 
 through which he roughly made his way with his elbows, 
 getting a few blows in return, about which he did not trouble 
 himself. Having reached an open space, he looked round 
 with a hasty, anxious eye; then leaving by the door on the 
 side to the Rue Garanciere, almost opposite to that he had 
 come in by, he flew oft* at a great pace, and vanished down 
 one of the deserted streets that lie about the Marche Saint- 
 Germain. 
 
 A few seconds after the irruption of this strange wor- 
 shiper, in at the same door came a man with a deeply-seamed 
 face framed in white whiskers; thick hair, also white, but 
 somewhat rusty, and falling to his shoulders, gave him the 
 look of some old member of the Convention, or of Bernardin 
 de Saint-Pierre after having the smallpox. The age of his 
 face and hair was well past sixty; but his robust frame, the 
 vigorous energy of his movements, and, above all, the piercing 
 sharpness of the look he flashed all round the church as he 
 came in, showed a strongly-knit nature, on which the advance 
 of years had told but little. 
 
 He obviously was bent on following the light-haired youth, 
 but he was not so clumsy as to rush after him through the 
 mass of people in front of the high altar, in which, as he 
 understood, the fugitive had tried to be lost. So, working 
 round the building close to the wall, in a contrary direction, 
 he had every chance of reaching the other door as soon as his 
 prey; but, as has happened to many another, his cleverness 
 played him a trick. As he passed a confessional, he per- 
 ceived a kneeling form very like that of the man he was
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 393 
 
 chasing. Attributing to him an ingenuity that would, no 
 doubt, have been his in similar circumstances, it struck him 
 that, to put him off the scent, his escaped victim had suddenly 
 thrown himself on the penitential tribunal. In the time it 
 took him to make sure of the man's identity, which as we 
 know was not confirmed, he was outstripped. So practised 
 a hunter at once gave up the useless chase; he understood 
 that the game was up for to-day, and he had missed his 
 chance. 
 
 He too was about to leave the church, when, after a brief 
 prelude on the organ, Signora Luigia's contralto voice in a 
 few deep notes began the glorious melody to which the 
 Litanies to the Virgin are sung. The beauty of her voice, 
 the beauty of the strain, the beauty of the words of that 
 sacred hymn, which her admirable style gave out with perfect 
 distinctness, seemed to impress this strange man deepl}'. Far 
 from leaving, as he had intended, he took his stand in the 
 shadow of a pillar, not looking for a seat ; but at the moment 
 when the last notes of the canticle died away, he had fallen 
 on his knees, and any one looking at his face would have 
 seen that two large tears were trickling down his cheeks. 
 
 The Benedicite having been pronounced, and the greater 
 part of the crowd having left the church: 
 
 "What a fool I am !" said he, as he rose and wiped his 
 eyes. 
 
 He went out by the same door as he had come in by, turn- 
 ing up the Rue Servandoni, paused for a moment in front 
 of a closed shop, went on to the Place Saint-Sulpice, and 
 getting into one of the hackney cabs that stood there, he said 
 to the driver : 
 
 "Hue de Provence, and look sharp, my good fellow. It 
 will be worth your while." 
 
 On reaching the house where he stopped the coach, he ran 
 past the gatekeeper's lodge and made for the backstairs, not 
 wishing to be seen; but the porter, who was conscientious 
 in the discharge of his duty, came to his door and called 
 after him:
 
 394 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Pray, where are you going, sir ?" 
 
 "To Madame de Saint-Esteve," replied the visitor in a 
 tone of annoyance. 
 
 Immediately after he rang at a back door, which was 
 opened by a negro. 
 
 "Is my aunt in?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh yes, Missy at home," replied the black man, putting 
 on the most gracious smile he could command, which made 
 him look like an ape cracking nuts. 
 
 Making his way along the passages, which gave an idea 
 of the extent of the apartments, the newcomer reached the 
 drawing-room door; the negro threw it open, announcing 
 "Monsieur Saint-Hesteve," with a violent aspirate. 
 
 The head of the detective police went into a room remark- 
 able for it magnificence, but yet more so for the extra- 
 ordinary bad taste of the furniture. Three women of venerable 
 antiquity were sitting at a round table, solemnly playing 
 dominoes. Three glasses, a silver bowl drained empty, and a 
 vinous perfume that was unpleasantly conspicuous on coming 
 into the room, showed that the worship of the double-sixes 
 was not the only cultus solemnized there. 
 
 "Good-evening, ladies," said the great man, taking a chair, 
 "I am glad to find you all together, for I have something to 
 say to each of you." 
 
 "We will listen presently," said his aunt; "let us finish 
 the game. I am playing for fours.'' 
 
 "Double-blank," said one of the antiquities. 
 
 "Domino!" cried Madame de .Saint-Esteve, "and game. 
 You two must certainly have four points between you, and 
 all the blanks are out." 
 
 So speaking, she put out a bony hand to take the punch- 
 ladle and fill the glasses; but finding the bowl empty, instead 
 of rising to pull the bell, she rang a peal with the spoon in the 
 silver bason. The negro came in. 
 
 "Have something put into that," said she, handing it to 
 him ; "and bring a glass for monsieur.'" 
 
 "Thanks ; I will take nothing," said Saint-Esteve.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 395 
 
 "I have had a sufficiency," said one of the old ladies. 
 
 "And I have been put upon milk," said the other, "by the 
 doctor, on account of my gastripes." 
 
 "You are all milksops together," said the mistress of the 
 house. "Here, clear all this away," said she to the negro; 
 "and, above all, don't let me catch you listening at the door ! 
 You remember the clawing you got?" 
 
 "Oh yes I 'member," said the man, his shoulders shak- 
 ing with laughter "me got no ears now." 
 
 And he went away. 
 
 "Well, Tommy, it is your turn now," said the old aunt 
 to Saint-Esteve, after a stormy settlement of accounts be- 
 tween the three witches. 
 
 "You, Madame Fontaine," said the head detective, turn- 
 ing to one of them, who by her fly-away looks, her disorderl\ r 
 gray hair and her frightfully crooked green silk bonnet, might 
 have been taken for a blue-stocking in labor with an article 
 on the fashions, "you forget yourself too much ; you never 
 send us in any report, while, on the contrary, we hear too 
 many reports about you. Monsieur le Prefet does not' at all 
 care for establishments of your class. I only keep you going 
 for the sake of the services you are supposed to do us; but 
 without pretending, as you do, to look into the future, I can 
 positively predict that if you continue to afford us so little 
 information, vour fortune-telling shop will be shut before 
 long." 
 
 "There you go !" retorted the pythoness. "You prevented 
 my taking the rooms Mademoiselle Lenormand had in the 
 Rue de Tournon. Who do you suppose will come to me in 
 the Rue Vieille-du-Temple ? Poor clerks, cooks, laborers, and 
 apprentice girls ! And you want me to go tattling to you of 
 what I pick up from such folks? You should have let me 
 work on a large scale, and you would have got more informa- 
 tion." 
 
 "Madame Fontaine, you didn't ought to say that," said Ma- 
 dame de Saint-Esteve ; "why, I send some of my customers to 
 you most days."
 
 396 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Not more than I send you mine !'' 
 
 "And not above four days since," the matrimonial agent 
 went on, "that Italian woman went to you from me. She 
 is not a milliner's apprentice, she is not ; and she lives with a 
 deputy who is against the Government ! You might have re- 
 ported that. But you do not care to use your pen; and 
 since you quarreled with your little counter- jumper for hav- 
 ing too many waistcoats from the tailor, no more writing for 
 you !" 
 
 "There is one thing in particular," said the detective, 
 "which is constantly mentioned in the reports that reach 
 me about you that foul creature you make use of in your 
 divinations 
 
 "Who? Ashtaroth?" asked Madame Fontaine. 
 
 "Yes; that batrachian, that toad, to speak plainly, whom 
 you pretend to consult. A little while since it would seem 
 a woman was so upset by his horrible appearance that 
 she " 
 
 "There, there," the fortune-teller broke in, "if I am to 
 do nothing now but read the cards, you may as well ruin 
 me at once cut my throat and have done- with it ! Because 
 a woman has a still-born child, are you going to get rid of 
 toads altogether in this world? If so, what did God create 
 them for?" 
 
 "My dear madame," said the man, "there was a time when 
 you would have been less partial to such help. In 1617 a 
 philosopher named Vanini was burned at Toulouse solely be- 
 cause he kept a toad in a bottle." 
 
 "Ay, but we live in an age of enlightenment/' said Ma- 
 dame Fontaine cheerfully, "and the police are not so hard 
 upon us." 
 
 "You, Madame Nourrisson," said the detective, turning 
 to the other old woman, "pick the fruit too green, I am 
 told. Having kept shop so long as you have, you must be 
 well aware of the laws and regulations, and I am surprised 
 at having to remind you that morals must be respected un- 
 der one-and-twenty."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 397 
 
 Madame Nourrisson had, in fact, been, under the Empire, 
 what Parent du Chatelet (whose work is such a curious study 
 of the great plague of prostitution) euphemistically called a 
 Dame de Maison. She had afterwards set up in the Rue 
 Neuve-'Saint-Marc the shop for buying and selling old clothes, 
 where the business of Esther had been managed, to which 
 Maxime de Trailles had referred as having cost Nucingen the 
 banker more than five hundred thousand francs. But on that 
 occasion Madame Nourrisson had screened herself behind 
 Madame Saint-Estcve; and she, advised by Vautrin in con- 
 ducting the affair, had for the time used the old clothes- 
 dealer's shop as the headquarters of her operations. Between 
 persons who have memories of such complicity, extreme fa- 
 miliarity is a foregone conclusion ; so it is not surprising that 
 Madame Nourrisson should retort on Saint-Esteve for the 
 lecture he had given her: 
 
 "And you, you great bully, you respected morality, I sup- 
 posed when, in 1809, you placed that girl of seventeen from 
 Champagne in my care !" 
 
 "If it is thirty years since that folly was committed in my 
 name," replied the man, "that is thirty years' record in my 
 favor; for it was the last into which I was ever drawn by a 
 petticoat. However, dear ladies, you can make such use as 
 you please of my warnings. If mischief overtakes you, you 
 cannot now complain that you had not due notice. 
 
 "As to you, my little aunt, what I have to say to you is 
 private and confidential." 
 
 At this hint the other two prepared to leave. 
 
 "Shall I send for a cab for you ?" Madame de Saint-Esteve 
 asked Madame Fontaine. 
 
 "No, indeed," said the fortune-teller. "I am going to 
 walk; I am told to take exercise. I told my forewoman, 
 Ma'am Jamouillot, to come for me." 
 
 "And you, Madame Nourrisson?" 
 
 "That's a good 'un !" said the woman. "A cab to go from 
 the Rue de Provence to the Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc ! Why, 
 we are quite near neighbors."
 
 398 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 In point of fact, the old-clothes woman had come in every- 
 day attire: a white cap with yellow ribbons, a patent front 
 of jet black curls, a black silk apron, and a cotton print gown 
 with a dark blue ground ; and, as she said facetiously, it was 
 most unlikely that any one should want to run away with her. 
 
 Before reporting the interview now about to take place 
 between Monsieur de Saint-Esteve and his aunt, some expla- 
 nations must find a place here. 
 
 In this public protector, who on the evening of the out- 
 break on the 12th of May had offered his services to Rastignac, 
 every reader will have recognized the notorious Jacques Col- 
 lin, alias Vautrin, one of the most familiar and elaborately 
 drawn figures of the HUMAX COMEDY. 
 
 A little while before the revolution of 1830, this hero of 
 the hulks, very hard hit by the death of a friend, lost heart 
 to carry on the struggle he had maintained for five-and- 
 twenty years against society, and had given in his resignation, 
 so to speak, to Monsieur de Granville, the Attorney-General, 
 under somewhat dramatic circumstances. Since that time he 
 had succeeded the famous Bibi-Lupin as head of the detective 
 police force, under the name of Monsieur de Saint-Esteve ; he 
 was now the terror of those who had formerly been his ac- 
 complices; and by the unrelenting persecution by which he 
 harried them, he had acquired a reputation for skill and 
 energy which remains unmatched in the annals of the crim- 
 inal police. 
 
 But, as he had told his old friend Colonel Franchessini, he 
 was tired of this perpetual thief-hunting ; there was no longer 
 any hazard or anything unforeseen in the game; and, like a 
 too experienced gambler, he had ceased to take an interest 
 in it. For some years there had been still some spice in the 
 business, and that had given him endurance from the endless 
 attacks and ambushes planned against him by his old chums 
 on the hulks, who were furious at what they called his treason ; 
 but by this time his cleverness and his good luck, which had 
 always protected him from their conspiracies, had discouraged
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 399 
 
 his foes, and they had laid down their arms. Since then his 
 duties had lost all their charm ; he was anxious to change his 
 sphere of employment and transfer his marvelous instincts as 
 a spy and his indefatigable energy to that of politics. 
 
 Colonel Franchessini had taken care to see him again after 
 his visit to Kastignac; and his old fellow-boarder at Madame 
 Vauquier's was not the man to underestimate the purport of 
 the Minister's views as to the luxury of such a plain citizen 
 iife as he had suggested to cast oblivion on the odious past 
 that weighed on him. 
 
 "Haha !" said he, "the pupil then has outstripped his 
 master! His advice deserves consideration; I will think 
 about it." 
 
 In fact, he had thought about it, and it was under the 
 influence of much meditation and careful examination of the 
 scheme proposed to him that he had now come to see his aunt 
 Jacqueline Collin otherwise known as Madame de Saint- 
 Esteve an alias they had agreed to adopt, which, while 
 masking the past history of this formidable pair, marked their 
 close relationship. 
 
 Jacqueline Collin herself, besides taking an active part in 
 many of her nephew's enterprises, had led an adventurous 
 life; and on one of the many occasions when Vautrin found 
 himself at variance with the law, an examining judge had 
 thus summed up the antecedent history of this much-re- 
 spected aunt, from certain data furnished by the police, of 
 which there is no reason to doubt the accuracy: 
 
 "She is, it would seem, an extremely cunning receiver of 
 stolen goods for no proof can be brought against her. She 
 is said to have been Murat's mistress, and after his death she 
 lived with a chemist, executed in the year VIII. (1799) as 
 a false coiner. She was witness at the trial. While with him 
 she acquired much dangerous knowledge of poisons. From 
 the year IX. till 1805, she dealt in old clothes. She was in 
 prison for two years, 1807-8, for entrapping girls under age. 
 
 "You, Jacques Collin, were at that time on your trial for 
 forgery; you had left the banking house where your aunt had
 
 400 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 apprenticed you as clerk under favor of the education you had 
 received and the influence she could wield over persons for 
 whose depravity she had entrapped victims." 
 
 Since the time when this edifying biography had been 
 placed in her nephew's hands, Jacqueline Collin, without 
 falling again into the clutches of the public prosecutor, had 
 enlarged her borders ; and when Vautriii renounced the ways 
 of wickedness, she was far from assuming an equally im- 
 maculate garb of innocence. But having as he had made a 
 great deal of money, she would now pick and choose ; she had 
 kept at a safe distance from the arm of the law; and under 
 the pretence of a more or less decent line of business, she had 
 carried on certain underground practices, to which she devoted 
 really diabolical intelligence and energy. 
 
 We have already learned from Desroches that the more or 
 less matrimonial agency managed by Madame de Saint-Es- 
 teve was situated in the Kue de Provence; and we may add 
 that it was carried on on an extensive scale, occupying all the 
 first floor of one of the enormous houses which Paris builders 
 raise from the earth as if by magic. They are scarcely fin- 
 ished, and never free from debt, when they are filled with 
 tenants, at any price, while waiting for a buyer to whom they 
 are sold out of hand. If the builder finds a fool to deal with, 
 he does a fine stroke of business; if, on the other hand, the 
 purchaser is a tough customer, the builder has to be content 
 with recovering his outlay, with a few thousand francs as in- 
 terest ; unless, while the work is going on, the speculation has 
 been hampered by one of those bankruptcies which in the 
 building trade are among the commonest and most familiar 
 complications. 
 
 Women of the town, business agents, still-born insurance 
 companies, newspapers fated to die young, the offices of im- 
 possible railway companies, discount brokers who borrow 
 instead of lending, advertisement agents, who lack the pub- 
 licity they profess to sell ; in short, all descriptions of shy or 
 doubtful enterprise and trade combine to provide the tem- 
 porary inhabitants of these republics.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 401 
 
 They are built merely for show, run up with perfect in- 
 difference to the fact that in the course of a few months 
 settlement will hinder the windows from opening, warping 
 will split the doors, the seams of the flooring will yawn, the 
 drains, gutter-pipes, and sinks will leak, and the whole card- 
 board structure be uninhabitable. That is the purchaser's 
 business; and he, after patching the house up, is at liberty 
 to be more fastidious in the choice of his tenants, and to raise 
 the rents. 
 
 Madame de Saint-Esteve having taken possession of her 
 first floor before the stage of early decay had set in, had se- 
 cured a very comfortable tenement at a low rent ; and the best 
 success, to say nothing of her profits from other unconfessed 
 sources, crowned the efforts of her skilful management. It 
 need hardly be said that Madame de Saint-Esteve, regarding 
 the display of advertisement as beneath her notice, left it 
 to her rivals, and never flaunted her office on the fourth page 
 of a newspaper. This haughtiness, which, in view of the dark 
 passages of her early life, was but prudent, had led to her 
 discovering some other ingenious and less vulgar methods 
 for attracting attention to her agency. In the country, and 
 even abroad, she would employ certain clever commercial 
 travelers, who cautiously distributed a circular drawn up by 
 Gaudissart, one of the most remarkable puff-writers of mod- 
 ern times. 
 
 The ostensible object of this document was to offer the as- 
 sistance of a strictly commercial agency through which, on the 
 most moderate terms, wedding outfits and presents could be 
 procured from Paris, suitable to every fortune or sum in set- 
 tlement. It was only as a modest N.B., after an estimate of 
 cost of the objects commonly included in such lists, divided, 
 somewhat like an undertaker's prospectus, into first, second, 
 third, and fourth classes, that Madame de Saint-Esteve 
 hinted at her "being enabled, through her high social con- 
 nections, to facilitate introductions between persons wishing 
 to marry." 
 
 In Paris the lady herself appealed to public credulity, and
 
 402 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 her means were as ingenious as they were various. She made 
 a bargain with a job-master, who sent two or three decent- 
 looking carriages to stand for hours at her door. Then, in her 
 waiting-room, supposed clients of both sexes, well dressed, 
 and affecting great impatience, took it in turns to come in 
 and out, so as to suggest a constant crowd; and, as may be 
 supposed, the conversation of these confederates who pre- 
 tended not to know each other expatiated in suitable terms 
 on the merits and superior adroitness of Madame de Saint- 
 Esteve. 
 
 The ingenious adventuress, by some donations to the poor, 
 and to the charities of Notre-Dame de Lorette, her parish, 
 got an occasional call from a priest, which was at once a 
 voucher of respectability and of the genuineness of her mat- 
 rimonial undertakings. Another of her ingenious tricks was 
 to keep herself supplied by the market-woman with lists of all 
 the fashionable weddings in Paris, and to be seen in the 
 church very handsomely dressed, arriving in a carriage with 
 men-servants, so as to allow it to be inferred that she had had 
 something to do with bringing about the union she had hon- 
 ored with her presence. 
 
 On one occasion, however, a not very tolerant family ob- 
 jected to the idea of serving her purpose of advertisement, 
 and had treated her with contumely ; so she was now cautious 
 as to how she tried this plan for which she had substituted 
 a system of rumor less compulsory and far less dangerous. 
 Having known Madame Fontaine for many years for there 
 is a natural affinity among all these underground traffickers 
 she had plotted with her for a sort of reciprocal insurance 
 company for working on the credulity of the Parisians; and 
 between these two hags the terms were thus arranged : when a 
 woman goes to have her fortune told, at least eight times out 
 of ten her curiosity turns on the question of marriage. So 
 when the sorceress announced to one of her fair clients in 
 time-honored phraseology, that she would ere long meet her 
 fate in the person of a light-haired or a dark-haired man, she 
 took care to add : "But the union can only be brought about
 
 403 
 
 through the agency of Madame de Saint-Esteve, a very rich 
 and highly respectable woman, living in the Rue de Provence 
 Chaussee-d'Antin, who has a passion for match-making.'' 
 While Madame de Saint-Esteve on her part, when she pro- 
 posed a match, if she thought there was any chance of thus 
 promoting its success, would say: "But go at any rate and 
 consult the famous Madame Fontaine as to the outcome of 
 the negotiation Eue Vieille-du-Temple her reputation as 
 a fortune-teller by the cards is European; she never makes 
 a mistake; and if she tells you that I have made a good hit, 
 you may conclude the bargain in perfect confidence." 
 
 It may easily be understood that the Numa of the Rue 
 Sainte-Anne should have taken so resourceful a woman for 
 his Egeria. 
 
 Rastignac's informant had not been quite correct in saying 
 that the aunt and nephew lived together ; but it was perfectly 
 true that Vautrin, when business allowed of it, never passed a 
 day without coming, as mysteriously as possible, to visit his 
 respectable relation. For many years, if any serious incident 
 occurred in his life, Jacqueline Collin had a finger in it as 
 his adviser, and often as his active assistant. 
 
 "My dear granny I" said Vautrin, to begin the conversation 
 for which he had come, "I have so many things to tell you 
 that I do not know where to begin." 
 
 "I believe you why, I have not seen you for nearly a week." 
 
 "To begin with, I may as well tell you that I just missed 
 a splendid stroke of business." 
 
 "What sort?" asked Jacqueline Collin. 
 
 "Oh, all in the way of my vile trade. But this time the 
 game was worth the trouble. Do you remember that little 
 Prussian engraver about whom I sent you to Berlin ?" 
 
 "Who forged the Vienna banknotes in such an astounding 
 manner?" said the aunt, finishing the story. 
 
 "Well, not an hour ago in the Rue Servandoni, where I 
 had been to see one of my men who is on the sick list, passing 
 by a greengrocer's shop, I fancied I recognized my man buy- 
 ing a slice of Brie cheese which was being wrapped in paper."
 
 404 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "It would seem that he is not much the richer then, for all 
 he knows so much about banknotes " 
 
 "My first thought," Vautrin went on, "was to rush into the 
 shop the door was shut and to collar my rogue; but, not 
 having seen his face very close, I was afraid of being mistaken. 
 He, it would seem, had kept a lookout; he saw some one 
 spying him through the window, and presto ! he vanished into 
 the back-shop, and I saw him no more " 
 
 "Then, old boy, that is what comes of wearing long hair and 
 a beard all round your chin. The game scents you a hundred 
 yards away !" 
 
 "But then, as you know, my fancy for being easily recog- 
 nized is what most impresses my customers. 'He must be 
 jolly well sure of himself/ they say, 'never to want any dis- 
 guise !' Nothing has done so much to make me popular." 
 
 "Well," said Jacqueline, "so your man was in the back- 
 shop." 
 
 "I hastily took stock of the premises," Vautrin went on. 
 "The shop was on one side of an arched entry ; at the bottom 
 of the entry the door was open to a courtyard, into which there 
 would be a door from the back-shop ; consequently, unless the 
 fellow lived in the house, I was in command of all the exits. 
 I waited about a quarter of an hour; it is a long time when 
 you are waiting. I looked into the shop in vain, no sign of 
 him. Three customers went in; the woman served them 
 without seeming to be aware of any one keeping an eye on her, 
 she never gave a glance one way or the other, or seemed at all 
 on the watch. 'Well !' said I to myself at last, 'he must be a 
 lodger; if not, the woman would certainly have been more 
 puzzled at his going out the back way.' So I determined to 
 drop in and ask a question or two. Pff! I had scarcely 
 crossed the threshold when I heard steps in the street the 
 bird had flown." 
 
 "You were in too great a hurry, my dear. And yet, only the 
 other day you said to me 'Police spells patience.' " 
 
 "Without waiting for further information," said Vautrin, 
 "I was off in pursuit. Exactly facing the Eue Servandoni
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 405 
 
 the name of the architect who built Saint Sulpice there is 
 a door into the church, which was open because of the month 
 of Mary, service being held there every afternoon. My rascal 
 having the advantage of me, flew through this door, and was 
 so effectually lost in the crowd, that when I went in I could 
 nowhere find him." 
 
 "Well," said the woman, "I cannot be sorry that the rascal 
 stole a march on you. I always feel some interest in a 
 smasher. Coining is a neat sort of crime, and clean; no 
 blood spilt, no harm done but to that mean hunks the Gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 "And the Frankfort house that was ruined by his for- 
 geries." 
 
 "You may say what you like; it is better form than your 
 Lucien de Eubempre, who ate us out of house and home. 
 Now, if you had but had a lad like this under your thumb 
 in our best days ! " 
 
 "In spite of your admiration, you will have to go to-mor- 
 row and pick up some information from the greengrocer 
 woman, who must certainly know him, since she winked at 
 his escape. When I went back to the shop I found shutters 
 and doors all shut up. I had lost some time in the 
 church " 
 
 "Listening to a singer, I bet," interrupted the aunt. 
 
 "Quite true. How did you know ?" 
 
 "Why, all Paris is crowding to hear her," replied Jacqueline 
 Collin, "and I know her too, in my own little way." 
 
 "What ! That voice that touched me so deeply, that took 
 me back fifty years to my first communion under the good 
 Oratorian fathers, who brought me up that woman who 
 made me cry, and transformed me for five minutes into a 
 saint and you have her on your books ?" 
 
 "Yes," said Madame de Saint-Esteve carelessly, "I have a 
 transaction on hand for her: I am getting her on to the stage." 
 
 "Aha ! So you are a dramatic agent too ? Matrimony is 
 not enough ?" 
 
 "This is the case in two words, my boy. She is an Italian,
 
 406 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 as handsome as can be, come from Rome with an idiot of a 
 sculptor, whom she worships without his suspecting it. In- 
 deed, this Joseph cares so little about her, that after using her 
 as his model for a statue, he has never yet been at the pains 
 to be more than civil." 
 
 "That is a man who ought to 'do well in his art," remarked 
 Jacques Collin, "with such a contempt for women and so 
 much strength of mind." 
 
 "And the proof of that," replied Jacqueline, "is that he has 
 just given his art up to become a member of the Chamber. 
 It was about him that I said to old Fontaine that she might 
 have found something to write to you. I sent my Italian to 
 her, and she told the cards as regards this ice-bound lover.'' 
 
 "And how did you come to know the woman ?" 
 
 "Through old Eonquerolles. Having gone to see the 
 sculptor one day, in the matter of a duel in which he was 
 second, he saw this jewel of a woman, and became quite N"u- 
 cingen about her." 
 
 "And you undertook the negotiations ?" 
 
 "As you say. It was above a month ago, and the poor man 
 had had all his pains for nothing. Now I, having the matter 
 in hand, made inquiries; I found out that the beauty was a 
 member of the Sisters of the Virgin; thereupon I called on 
 her as a Dame de Charite, and imagine what luck for me as 
 a beginning the sculptor was in the country getting himself 
 elected " 
 
 "I have no fears about you; at the same time, a lady of 
 charity who undertakes a theatrical agency !" 
 
 "By the time I had seen her twice she had told me all her 
 little secrets," the old woman went on. "That she could no 
 longer bear life with that man of marble ; that she was deter- 
 mined to owe nothing to him ; and that having studied for the 
 stage, if she could only secure an engagement, she would run 
 away. So one day I went off to her and arrived quite out of 
 breath to tell her that a friend of mine a great lord, highly 
 respectable, old, virtuous to whom I had spoken of her, 
 would undertake to get her an opening, and I asked her to let 
 me take him to see her."
 
 THE MEMBER FOE ARCI8 40? 
 
 "A word and a blow !" said Jacques Collin. 
 
 "Yes ; but she, a devil for suspiciousness, and less bent on 
 deserting her sculptor than she had thought, kept me, shilly- 
 shally, from day to day. So at last, to give her a shove, I 
 hinted that she should go to consult old Fontaine, as indeed 
 she was ready enough to do. But even now, in spite of the 
 cards, she is still very wide awake, and the job is spoiling, I 
 fear, for she has seen her man again; he has come back 
 elected. 
 
 "It is of no use to talk; I must proceed with caution. If 
 he should make difficulties about our enticing away the wo- 
 man, whom he would perhaps think he wanted as soon as she 
 ceased to want him, he would hold a very strong hand. And 
 that selfish old brute Ronquerolles, who is only a member of 
 the Upper House, would not be much protection against a 
 deputy of the Chamber " 
 
 "That old rip Bonquerolles is not the man for that woman," 
 said Jacques Collin. "If she is an honest woman, we must- 
 keep her so. I know a really respectable man who will get her 
 on to the stage on honorable terms, and secure her a splendid 
 position without asking for anything in return." 
 
 "What ! you know of any such phenomenon ? I should be 
 truly glad to have his address ; I would leave a card on him." 
 
 "All right Petite Rue Sainte-Anne, Quai des Orfevres; 
 you will find a man there of your acquaintance." 
 
 "Are you guying me ?" cried the woman, who in her aston- 
 ishment fell back on the low slang which she had spoken so 
 fluently of yore. 
 
 "No, I am quite serious. That woman touched me; she 
 interests me ; and I have another reason " 
 
 Vautrin then related his proceedings with regard to Ras- 
 tignac, Colonel Franchessini's intervention, the Minister's re- 
 ply, and his transcendental theories of social reorganization. 
 
 "And that little ape thinks he can teach us !" exclaimed the 
 aunt. 
 
 "He is in the right," said Vautrin, "only the woman was 
 wanting ; you have found her for me."
 
 408 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Yes, but it will be sheer ruination." 
 
 "And for whom are we saving ? "We have no heirs, and I do 
 not suppose you feel urgently drawn to found a hospital, or 
 prizes for distinguished merit ?" 
 
 "I am not such a softhead," replied the woman. "Besides, 
 as you know, my Jacques, I have never kept an account 
 against you. Still, I foresee one difficulty: this woman is as 
 proud as a Eoman which she is, and your confounded 
 duties " 
 
 "There, you see," Jacques Collin eagerly put in, "I must 
 at any price escape from a life where one is liable to such 
 insults. But be easy; I can avert this particular offence. 
 My business justifies me in playing every part in turn; and, 
 as you will remember, I am not a bad actor. I may put a 
 whole rainbow of orders in my button-hole to-morrow and 
 take a house in any aristocratic name I may choose to assume. 
 The fun of the carnival lasts all the year round for a detective. 
 
 "I had already hit on a plan. I know the man I mean to 
 be. You may tell your Italian that Count Halphertius a 
 great Swedish lord, crazy about music and philanthropy 
 takes a great interest in her advancement. In point of fact, 
 I will furnish a house for her; I will strictly observe the 
 virtuous disinterestedness to which you may pledge me; in 
 short, I will be her recognized patron. As to the engagement 
 she wishes for, I wish it too; for my own future purpose I 
 want her to be glorious and brilliant ; and we are not Jacques 
 and Jacquelin Collin if, with her gifts and our gold and de- 
 termination, we fail in making her so." 
 
 "But then comes the question whether Eastignac will think 
 you have won; it was Monsieur de Saint-Esteve, the head of 
 the detective police, that he told you to whitewash." 
 
 "Not at all, old lady. There is no such person as Saint- 
 Esteve, no Jacques Collin, no Vautrin, no Trompe-la-Mort, 
 no Carlos Herrera; there is a remarkably powerful mind, 
 strong and vigorous, offering its services to the Government. 
 I am bringing it from the North, and christening it with a 
 foreign name, and this makes me all the better fitted for the
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 409 
 
 political and diplomatic police whose functions I henceforth 
 intend to exercise." 
 
 "You forge ahead ! it is wonderful. But first we must catch 
 the jewel who is to make such a show for you, and we have not 
 got her yet." 
 
 "That is no difficulty; I have seen you at work, and when 
 you will you can." 
 
 "I will try," said Jacqueline Collin diffidently. "Come 
 and see me again to-morrow night, at any rate ; perhaps I may 
 have something to show." 
 
 "And meanwhile do not forget the greengrocer's shop in 
 the Hue Servandoni, No. 12, where you are to make inquiries. 
 That capture, as being important to a foreign government, 
 has a political air about it that would be of service towards 
 helping me to my end." 
 
 "I will give you a good account of the shopwoman, never 
 fear," said Jacqueline. "But the other affair is rather more 
 ticklish ; we must not handle it roughly." 
 
 "You have a free hand," replied Vautrin. "I have always 
 found you equal to any undertaking, however difficult. So 
 good-bye till to-morrow." 
 
 On the following day Vautrin was sitting in his office in the 
 Petite Rue Sainte-Anne when he received the following note : 
 
 "You are not much to be pitied, old boy; everything is 
 working out as you want it. Early this morning I was told 
 that a lady wished to speak to me. Who should come in but 
 our Italian, to whom I had given my address in case she 
 should need me in a hurry. Her Joseph having spoken last 
 evening, in cheerful terms, of his intention that they should 
 part company, the poor dear had not closed her eyes all night, 
 and her little brain is in such a pother that she came straight 
 to me, begging me to introduce her to my respectable friend, 
 in whose hands she is prepared to place herself if he is to be 
 trusted, because she feels it a point of honor to owe nothing 
 more to that icicle who can disdain her. So come at once in
 
 410 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 the new skin you have chosen, and then it is your business to 
 make your way to the charmer's good graces. 
 "Your affectionate aunt, 
 
 "J. C. DE SAINT-ESTATE." 
 
 Vautrin replied: 
 
 "I will be with you this evening at nine. I hope the change 
 in my decorative treatment will be so handsome that if I had 
 not told you the name I shall assume, you would find it diffi- 
 cult to recognize me. I have already taken steps in the matter 
 of the engagement, and can speak of it in such a way that 
 the charmer will form a good idea of her Papa's influence. 
 
 "Sell some stock out in the course of the day for a rather 
 considerable sum ; we must have ready money ; I, on my part, 
 will do the same. Till this evening, 
 "Your nephew and friend, 
 
 "SAINT-ESTEVE." 
 
 That evening, punctual to the hour he had fixed, Vautrin 
 went to his aunt's rooms. On this occasion he went up the 
 main staircase, and was announced as Monsieur le Comte 
 Halphertius by the negro, who did not recognize him. 
 
 Warned though she was of his metamorphosis, Jacqueline 
 stood in amazement at this really great actor, who was alto- 
 gether another man. His long hair, a la Franklin, was now 
 short and curled and powdered; his eyebrows and whiskers, 
 cutlet-shaped, in the style of the Empire, were dyed dark 
 brown, in strong contrast with the powdered wig ; and a false 
 moustache of the same hue gave his not naturally noble fea- 
 tures a stamp of startling originality, which might, by a 
 stretch of imagination, be called distinction. A black satin 
 stock gave deportment to his head. He wore a blue tail-coat, 
 buttoned across, and in one button-hole an inch of ribbon 
 displayed the colors of half the orders of Europe. A nankeen 
 waistcoat, visible below the coat-front, effected a harmonious 
 transition to pearl-gray trousers; patent leather boots and 
 lemon kid gloves completed the "get-up," which aimed at
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 411 
 
 careless elegance. The powder, of which the last wearers 
 could now easily be counted, gave the crowning touch to an old 
 foreign diplomate, and a very happy sobriety to a costume 
 which, but for that corrective, might have appeared too juve- 
 nile. 
 
 After giving a few minutes to admiration' of his disguise, 
 Vautrin asked his aunt : 
 
 "Is she here?" 
 
 "Yes," said Jacqueline. "The angel retired to her room 
 half an hour ago to tell her beads, now that she is deprived 
 of attending the services of the month of Mary. But she im- 
 patiently awaits your visit, seeing how I have sung your 
 praises all day." 
 
 "And what does she think of your house ? Does she repent 
 of the step she has taken?" 
 
 "Her pride would in any case be too great to allow of her 
 showing such a feeling. Besides, I have cleverly won her 
 confidence, and she is one of those persons who are deter- 
 mined never to look back when once they have started." 
 
 "The best of the joke," said Vautrin, "is that her Deputy, 
 who is worried about her, was sent to me by Monsieur le 
 Prefet that I might help him to find her." 
 
 "He wants her, then ?" 
 
 "He is not in love with her, you understand, but he con- 
 sidered her as being in his care, and he was afraid that she 
 might have taken it into her head to kill herself, or might 
 have fallen into the hands of some intriguing woman. And 
 you know that, but for my fatherly intervention, he would 
 have laid his finger on the spot." 
 
 "And what did you say to your flat?" 
 
 "Oh, of course I allowed him to hope, but really and truly 
 I was sorry not to be able to do what he asked me. I took a 
 fancy to him at once; he has a pleasant way with him, ener- 
 getic and clever, and it strikes me that our friends the Min- 
 istry will find him a pretty tough customer." 
 
 "So much the worse for him; he should not have driven 
 the dear child to extremities," said tho aunt. "And the en- 
 gagement, for which you said you had the irons in the fire ?'*
 
 412 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "You know what a queer thing luck is, my beauty/' replied 
 Vautrin, taking out a newspaper. "Good or bad, it always 
 come? in squalls. This morning, after receiving your letter, 
 which brought me such good news, I opened this theatrical 
 journal and read this paragraph: 'The Italian opera season 
 in London, which began so badly by the lawsuit that brought 
 to light the pecuniary difficulties under which Sir Francis 
 Drake's management is struggling, seems still further embar- 
 rassed by the serious illness of la Serboni, necessitating her 
 absence from the stage for an indefinite period. Sir Francis 
 arrived yesterday at the Hotel des Princes, Rue de Richelieu, 
 having come in search of two desiderata a prima donna and 
 some funds. But the hapless impresario is moving in a 
 vicious circle ; for without money no prima donna, and with- 
 out a prima donna no money. 
 
 " 'We may hope, however, that he will escape from this 
 deadlock; for Sir Francis Drake has a character for being 
 honest and intelligent, and with such a reputation he will 
 surely not find every door closed against him.' ' : 
 
 "Men of the world are your journalists !" said the old aunt 
 with a knowing air. "Is every door to be thrown open be- 
 cause a man is honest and intelligent?" 
 
 "In the present case," said Vautrin, "the phrase is not so 
 far wrong; for the moment I had read the article I figged 
 myself out, as you see, took a private fly, and went off to the 
 address given. 
 
 "'Sir Francis Drake?' I ask. 
 
 " 'I do not know whether he can see you, sir,' says the gen- 
 tleman's gentleman, coming forward ; he was there, I strongly 
 suspect, to give the same answer to any one who might call. 
 'He is with the Baron de Nucingen.' 
 
 "I made believe to look through a pocket-book well stuffed 
 with banknotes for a card, which, of course, I had not got. 
 
 " 'Well,' said I, with a slight German accent and a sprin- 
 kling of Germanisms, "I am Count Halphertius, a Swedish 
 gentleman. Tell Sir Francis Drake I had come for to discuss 
 some business. I shall go to the Bourse, where I give some 
 orders to my broker, and I shall come back after a half -hour.'
 
 THE MEMBER FOB ARGIS 413 
 
 "Saying this in the most lordly tone, I went back to my 
 carriage. I had hardly set foot on the step when the lackey, 
 running after me, said he had made a mistake ; that Monsieur 
 de Nucingen was gone, and his master could see me at once." 
 
 "Trying their games on us !" said Jacqueline Collin, with a 
 shrug. 
 
 "Sir Francis Drake," Vautrin went on, "is a regular Eng- 
 lishman, very bald, with a red nose, and large prominent 
 yellow teeth. He received me with frigid politeness, and 
 asked me in good French what my business was. 
 
 " 'Just now/ said I, 'at the Cafe de Paris, I read this,' and 
 I handed him the paper, pointing to the place. 
 
 " 'It is inconceivable,' said he, returning me the newspaper, 
 'that a man's credit should be thus cried down publicly.' 
 
 " 'The journalist is wrong ? You have no want of money ?' 
 
 " 'You may imagine, monsieur, that I should not in any 
 case try to obtain it through the medium of a theatrical 
 journal.' 
 
 " 'Very good ! Then have we nothing to talk about ?' said I, 
 rising. 'I come to put some money in your business.' 
 
 " 'I would rather you had a prima donna to offer me !' 
 said he. 
 
 " 'I offer you both,' said I, sitting down again. 'One not 
 without the other.' 
 
 " 'A well-known talent ?' asked the impresario. 
 
 " 'Not at all known,' replied I. 'Never seen yet at any 
 theatre.' 
 
 " 'Hum risky,' said the gentleman with a cunning look. 
 'The protectors of youthful talent often make great mistakes.' 
 
 " 'But I offer you a hundred thousand crowns as an in- 
 vestment for you only for to listen to my nightingale.' 
 
 " 'That would be a large sum for so little trouble, and but 
 a small one as a help to my management if it were in such 
 difficulties as your paper says.' 
 
 " 'Well, then, hear us for nothing ; if we are what you want, 
 and you make a handsome offer, I will put down twice so 
 much.'
 
 414 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 
 
 "'You speak with a freedom that invites confidence; from 
 what country is your young prima?' 
 
 " 'Roman of Home a pure-bred Italian, and very hand- 
 some. You may believe if I am interested in her; I went 
 mad about her, only for that I had heard her a long way off 
 in a church. I did not see her till afterwards.' 
 
 " 'But it strikes me,' said the Englishman, 'that women do 
 not sing in church in Italy.' '' 
 
 "Well !" said Madame de Saint-Esteve, "are there churches 
 nowhere but in Italy ?" 
 
 "Precisely," said Vautrin. "I felt that to give some ap- 
 pearance of reality to my disguise and my proceedings, I must 
 assume some suspicion of eccentricity ; so seizing the oppor- 
 tunity of getting up a German quarrel : 
 
 " 'I beg to remark, monsieur,' said I in a very pugnacious 
 tone, 'that you have done me the honor to give me the lie.' 
 
 " 'What !' said the Englishman in amazement, "'nothing 
 could be further from my thoughts.' 
 
 " 'It is plainly so, all the same,' said I. 'I tell you, I heard 
 the signora in church ; you say, "Women do not sing in church 
 in Italy" that is so much as to say I shall not have heard 
 her.' 
 
 " 'But you may have heard her in another country.' 
 
 " 'You should have thought of that,' said I, in the same 
 quarrelsome tone, 'before you made that remark extraordi- 
 nary remark. At any rate, I see we shall not agree. The sig- 
 nora can wait till the Italian Opera opens in Paris in October. 
 Artists get much better known here. So, Monsieur Drake, 
 I wish you a good-morning.' And I really seemed about to 
 leave." 
 
 "Well played !" said his aunt. 
 
 In all the most risky affairs undertaken by them in common, 
 they had always duly considered the artistic side. 
 
 "Well, to make a long story short," said Vautrin, "having 
 thus brought my man to the sticking-point, we parted on 
 these terms I am to put down a hundred thousand crowns 
 in money, the signora gets fifty thousand francs for the re-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 415 
 
 mainder of the season, supposing her voice is satisfactory; 
 and, to judge of her quality, we are to meet to-morrow at two 
 o'clock at Pape's, where Sir Francis Drake will have brought 
 two or three friends to assist him, to whose presence I have 
 consented. We are to be supposed to have gone to choose a 
 piano. I said, just to keep up the game, that the lady might 
 be terrified at the solemnity of a formal hearing, and that we 
 are more sure in this way of knowing what she can really do." 
 
 "But I say, old boy," said Jacqueline, "a hundred thousand 
 crowns is a lot of money!" 
 
 "Just the sum that I inherited from that poor boy Lucien 
 de Rubempre," said Vautrin carelessly. "However, I have 
 gone into the matter. Sir Francis Drake, with some one to 
 back him, may have a very good season. There is my secre- 
 tary, Theodore Calvi, who is mine for life or death. He is 
 very alert on all questions of interest. I have secured him the 
 place of cashier, and he will keep an eye on the partner's 
 profits. Now, there is but one thing that I am anxious about. 
 Signora Luigia moved me deeply, but I am no connoisseur; 
 artists may not think of her as I do." 
 
 "Artists have pronounced on her, my ducky; her sculptor 
 never thought of giving her the key of the fields till she had 
 been heard by a certain Jacques Bricheteau, an organist and a 
 first-rate musician. They were at Saint-Sulpice the very even- 
 ing of your pious fit, and the organist declared that the wo- 
 man had sixty thousand francs in her voice whenever she 
 pleased those were his words." 
 
 "Jacques Bricheteau !" said Vautrin ; "why, I know the 
 man. There is a fellow of that name employed in one of the 
 police departments." 
 
 "Well, then," said his aunt, "it is your nightingale's good 
 fortune to be under the protection of the police !" 
 
 "No, I remember," said Vautrin. "This Jacques Briche- 
 teau was an inspector of nuisances, who has just been dis- 
 missed for meddling in politics. Well, now, suppose you were 
 to effect the introduction. It is late."
 
 416 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 Jacqueline Collin had hardly left the room to go for Luigia, 
 when there was a great commotion in the ante-room leading 
 to it. Immediately after, the door was thrown open, and in 
 spite of a desperate resistance on the part of the negro, who 
 had been expressly ordered to admit nobody whatever, in came 
 a personage whose advent was, to say the least, inopportune, 
 if not altogether unexpected. In spite of an insolently 
 aristocratic demeanor, the newcomer, caught in his violence 
 by a stranger, was for a moment disconcerted, and Vautrin 
 was malicious enough to intensify the situation by saying 
 with Teutonic bluntness: 
 
 "Monsieur- is an intimate friend of Madame de Saint- 
 Esteve's?" 
 
 "I have something of importance to say to her," replied 
 the intruder, "and that servant is such an ass that he cannot 
 tell you plainly whether his mistress is at home or out." 
 
 "I can bear witness that she is out," replied the supposed 
 Count Halphertius. "For more than an hour I have wait 
 for to see her, by her own appointment. She is a flighty 
 thing, and I believe she is gone to the theatre, for what her 
 nephew have sent her a ticket, the negro telled me." 
 
 "At whatever hour she may come in I must see her," said 
 the newcomer, taking an easy-chair, into which he settled 
 himself. 
 
 "For me, I wait no longer/' replied Vautrin. 
 
 And, having bowed, he prepared to leave. Then Madame 
 de Saint-Esteve appeared on the scene. Warned by the negro, 
 she had put on a bonnet and thrown a shawl over her 
 shoulders, to appear as if she had just come in. 
 
 "Gracious !" she exclaimed, with well-feigned surprise. 
 "Monsieur de Ronquerolles, here, at this hour!" 
 
 "Devil take you! what do you mean by shouting out my 
 name?" said her customer in an undertone. 
 
 Vautrin, entering into the farce, turned back, and coming 
 up with an obsequious bow: 
 
 "Monsieur le Marquis de Eonquerolles ?" said he, "Peer of 
 France, formerly her ambassador. I am glad to have spent
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 417 
 
 a minute with a statesman so well known a so perfect diplo- 
 mate !" 
 
 And with a respectful flourish he went to the door. 
 
 "What, Baron, going so soon ?" said the old woman, trying 
 to assume the tone and accent of a dowager of the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain. 
 
 "Yes. Monsieur le Marquis has much to talk to you. I 
 shall return back to-morrow at eleven and be punctual." 
 
 "Very well; to-morrow at eleven," said his aunt. "But 
 I may tell you everything is going on swimmingly; the lady 
 thinks you will be all she could wish." 
 
 Another bow, and Vautrin was gone. 
 
 "Who in the world is that strange creature ?" asked Ronque- 
 rolles. 
 
 "A Prussian Baron for whom I am finding a wife," re- 
 plied the woman "Well," she went on, "is there anything 
 new that you so pressingly want to speak to me ?" 
 
 "Yes. And something which you ought to have known I 
 The fair one left the sculptors house this morning." 
 
 "Pooh!" said Jacqueline. "Who told you that?" 
 
 "My man, who has seen the maid-of-all-work." 
 
 "Hah ! Then you keep several irons hot !" said she, glad 
 of an excuse for a quarrel. 
 
 "My good woman, you were making no way at all, and the 
 matter has been in hand a month " 
 
 "You seem to think that all you want is to be had ready- 
 made, and that an Italian is the same soft tinder as your 
 Paris sluts ! And then you are so liberal !" 
 
 "Why, you have extracted more than three banknotes for 
 a thousand francs already for your sham' expenses." 
 
 "A perfect fortune ! And what about the engagement you 
 undertook to arrange?" 
 
 "Can I open the Italian Opera expressly for that woman ? 
 If she would have sung at the French house " 
 
 "There is Italian Opera in London though not in Paris 
 for the moment, and the manager, as it happens, is over here 
 in search of a prima."
 
 418 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "So I saw in the papers, of course; but what good could I 
 do by trying to deal with a bankrupt?" 
 
 "Why, that is your best chance. You bolster up the man, 
 and then, out of gratitude " 
 
 "Oh, certainly !" said the Marquis, shrugging his shoulders. 
 "A mere trifle of five hundred thousand francs what la 
 Torpille cost Nucingen !" 
 
 "My good man, you want the woman or you don't. Esther 
 had tried the streets. This Italian is at least as handsome, 
 and virtuous green seal ! Then she has a glorious voice. 
 You have forked out three thousand-franc notes ; what is that, 
 pray, to make such a noise about ?" 
 
 "Did you or did you not undertake the business?" 
 
 "I did. And I ought to have it left entirely to me; and 
 if I had supposed that I was going to be checked off by your 
 man-servant, I would have asked you to apply elsewhere. I do 
 not care to have a partner in the game." 
 
 "But, you conceited old thing, but for that fellow, would 
 you have known what I have just told you ?" 
 
 "And did he tell you the rest of the story ?" 
 
 "The rest of the story ? What ?" said the Marquis eagerly. 
 
 "Certainly. Who got the bird out of its nest, and in what 
 cage it may be at this present speaking." 
 
 "Then you know?" cried Ronquerolles. 
 
 "If I do not know, I can make a guess." 
 
 "Then, tell me," said he, in great excitement. 
 
 "You, who know every queer specimen, old or young, in 
 the Paris menagerie, must certainly have heard of Count 
 Halphertius, a Swede enormously rich, and just arrived." 
 
 "I never heard his name till this moment." 
 
 "You had better ask your servant ; he can tell you." 
 
 "Come, come; do not try finessing. This Count Halpher- 
 tius, you say ?" 
 
 "Is music-mad and as woman-mad as Nucingen." 
 
 "And you think that la Luigia will have flown that way?" 
 
 "I know that he was hovering round her ; he even charged 
 me to make her splendid offers, and if I had not pledged 
 myself to you "
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 419 
 
 "Oh, I daresay ; you are a dame of such lofty virtue !" 
 
 "Is that the way you take it ?" said Jacqueline Collin, put- 
 ting her hand in her pocket and pulling out a purse fairly 
 well filled with notes. "You can take your money back, my 
 boy, and I only beg you to trouble me no further." 
 
 "Get along, you wrong-headed creature/' replied the Mar- 
 quis, seeing three thousand-franc notes held out to him. 
 "What I have given, you know I never take back." 
 
 "And I never keep what I have not earned. You are done, 
 Monsieur le Marquis. I am working for Count Halphertius ; 
 I brought away the lady ; she is hidden here, in my rooms, and 
 to-morrow morning she and the Swede set out for London, 
 where a splendid engagement is waiting for her !" 
 
 "No, no, I do not believe that you would cheat me," said 
 Eonquerolles, fancying that the fact thus fired at him point- 
 blank was really the sarcasm it appeared. "We are old friends, 
 you know ; pocket those banknotes, and tell me honestly what 
 you think of this rich foreigner as a rival." 
 
 "Well, I have told you. He is enormously rich; he will 
 stick at no sacrifice ; and I know that he has had several talks 
 with Madame Nourrisson." 
 
 "Then you learned all those facts from that old carrion?" 
 
 "Madame Nourrisson is my friend," said Madame de Saint- 
 Esteve, with much dignity. "We may be competing to gain 
 the same prize, but that is no reason for her being evil-spoken 
 of in my presence." 
 
 "Did she tell you at least where this Count Halphertius 
 is living?" 
 
 "No. But I know that he was to start for London yester- 
 day. That is why I ran alongside before I put the flea in 
 your ear." 
 
 "It is very evident the Italian woman is gone off to join 
 him." 
 
 "You may very likely be right." 
 
 "A pretty mess you have made of it !" said Ronquerolles as 
 he rose.
 
 4zt) THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "Indeed !" said Jacqueline insolently. "And were you 
 never checkmated in your diplomatic business ?" 
 
 "Do you suppose you will get any more exact informa- 
 tion?" 
 
 "We will see/' said she. It was her formula for promising 
 her assistance. 
 
 "But no underhand tricks," cried the Marquis. "You 
 know I do not understand a joke." 
 
 "Will the case be brought before the Chamber of Peers?" 
 said Madame de Saint-Esteve, who was not a woman to be 
 easily daunted. 
 
 Without answering this piece of insolence, Eonquerolles 
 only remarked: 
 
 "You might perhaps desire your nephew to help in your 
 inquiries." 
 
 "Yes," said Jacqueline; "I think it would not be amiss to 
 tell him something about the matter without naming you, 
 of course." 
 
 "And if at any time I can be of use to him with his chief, 
 you know, I am as staunch a friend as I am a dangerous foe." 
 
 Thereupon Madame de Saint-Esteve and her client parted, 
 and as soon as the enemy's coach-wheels were heard in the 
 distance, the virtuous matron had no occasion to go in search 
 of her nephew. He had gone round by a back passage, and 
 come to wait in the room behind the drawing-room, whence 
 he had overheard everything. 
 
 "You tricked .him neatly !" said Vautrin. "We will con- 
 trive by little scraps of information to keep his head in the 
 trough for a few days longer; but now go at once and fetch 
 our 'Helen,' for unless it is too late you ought to introduce UP." 
 
 "Be easy; I will settle that," said his aunt, who a minute 
 /ater came back with the handsome housekeeper. 
 
 "Signora Luigia Monsieur le Comte Halphertius," said 
 she, introducing them to each other. 
 
 "Signora," said Vautrin ifi the most respectful tone, "my 
 friend Madame de Saint-Esteve tells me you will permit me 
 to take some interest for your affairs
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 421 
 
 "Madame de Saint-Esteve," replied Luigia, who had 
 learned to speak French perfectly, "has spoken of you as a 
 man with a great knowledge of art." 
 
 "That is to say, I am passionately devoted to it, and my for- 
 tune allows me to do all I can to encourage it. You, madame, 
 have a splendid gift." 
 
 "That remains to be proved, if I am so fortunate as to get 
 a chance of being heard." 
 
 "You may come out when you choose. I have seen the 
 manager of the Italians theatre in London ; he shall hear you 
 to-morrow it is settled." 
 
 "I am deeply grateful for the trouble you have been so 
 good as to take ; but before accepting your kind offices, I wish 
 to come to a clear understanding." 
 
 "I love to be frank," said Vautrin. 
 
 "I am poor and alone in the world," said Luigia; "I am 
 considered good-looking, and at any rate I am young. It 
 behooves me, therefore, to be circumspect in accepting the 
 eager benevolence that is shown me. In France, I am told, 
 it is rarely disinterested." 
 
 "Disinterestedness," said Vautrin, "I shall promise. But 
 as to hindering tongues of talking I shall not promise." 
 
 "Oh ! as for talk," said his aunt, "that you may make up 
 your mind to. Monsieur le Comte's age even will not stop their 
 wagging for, in fact, a younger man is more likely to devote 
 
 himself to a woman without any idea of In Paris your 
 
 old bachelors are all reprobates!" 
 
 "I shall not have ideas," said Vautrin. "If I am so happy 
 to be of use for the signora, which I admire her talent so 
 much, she shall let me be her friend; but if I fail in my re- 
 spect to her, she shall be independent for that talent, and she 
 shall turn me out of her door like a servant that shall rob 
 her." 
 
 "And I hear, Monsieur le Comte, that you have already 
 been kind enough to inquire about an engagement for me?" 
 
 "It is almost settle," said Vautrin. "To-morrow you shall 
 sing ; and if your voice shall satisfy the manager of the Ital-
 
 422 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 ians in London, it is fifty thousand francs for the rest of the 
 season." 
 
 "It is a dream," said Luigia. "And, perhaps, when he 
 shall have heard me " 
 
 "He will be of the same opinion as that Monsieur Jacques 
 Bricheteau," replied Jacqueline. "He said you had sixty 
 thousand francs in your voice so you are still robbed of ten 
 thousand francs." 
 
 "Oh ! as to his promise to pay fifty thousand francs as soon 
 as he has heard you," said Vautrin, "I have no fear. Then 
 to pay them that is another thing. He wants money, they 
 say. But we will have the agreement made by some clever 
 man, Madame de Saint-Esteve shall find him ; and the signora 
 shall not have to think about the money that is her friends' 
 concern. She shall think only of her parts." 
 
 Vautrin, as he said, "Then to pay them that is another 
 
 thing " had managed to touch his aunt's foot with his 
 
 own. She understood. 
 
 "On the contrary," said she, "I believe he will pay very 
 punctually. He will not care to quarrel with us, my dear 
 Count. It is not every day that you come across a man who, 
 to secure an engagement, is ready to risk a sum of a hundred 
 thousand crowns." 
 
 "What, monsieur ! you are prepared to make such a sacrifice 
 for my sake ! I can never allow it " 
 
 "My good Madame de Saint-Esteve," said Vautrin, "you 
 are a tell-tale. I am risking nothing ; I have looked into the 
 matter, and at the end of the season I shall have my benefits; 
 besides, I am v-e-ery rich, I am a widower, I have not chil- 
 dren ; and if part of that money shall be lost, I shall not for 
 that hang myself." 
 
 "Nevertheless, monsieur, I will not permit such a piece of 
 folly." 
 
 "Then you do not want me for your friend, and you are 
 afraid you shall be compromised if I help you ?" 
 
 "In Italy, monsieur, such a protector is quite recognized; 
 and so long as there is nothing wrong, nobody cares for ap-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 423 
 
 pearances ; but I cannot entertain the idea of allowing you to 
 risk so large a sum on my account." 
 
 "If it were a risk, no. But the risk is so small that your 
 engagement and the hundred thousand crowns are two sepa- 
 rate things, and I shall enter into partnership with the 
 director even if you refuse." 
 
 "Come, come, pretty one," said Jacqueline, "you must 
 make up your mind to owing fhis service to my friend Hal- 
 phertius; you know that if I thought it was likely to carry 
 you further than you think quite right, I should have nothing 
 to do with it. Talk it over with your confessor, and you will 
 see what he says about it." 
 
 "I would in Italy ; but in France I should not consult him 
 about a theatrical engagement." 
 
 "Well, then, signora," said Vautrin, in the kindest way, 
 "consider your career as an artist. It lies before you, a splen- 
 did road! And when every paper in Europe is full of the 
 Diva Luigia, there will be a good many people greatly vexed 
 to think that they failed to recognize so great an artist, and to 
 keep on friendly terms with her." 
 
 Vautrin knew men's minds too well not to have calculated 
 the effect of this allusion to the secret sorrow of the Italian 
 girl's heart. The poor woman's eyes flashed, and she gasped 
 for breath. 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte," said she, "may I really trust you?" 
 
 "Undoubtedly; and all the more so, because if I spend 
 the money, I expect to get some little return." 
 
 "And that is ?" said Luigia. 
 
 "That you show me some kind feeling ; that the world shall 
 believe me to be happier than I really shall be ; and that you 
 do nothing to deprive me of that little sop to my pride, with 
 which I promise to be content." 
 
 "I do not quite understand," said the Italian, knitting her 
 brows. 
 
 "And yet nothing can be plainer," said Madame de Saint- 
 Estove. "My friend here does not wish to look a fool; and 
 if while he is visibly your protector you were to take up with
 
 424 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 your deputy again, or fall in love with somebody else, his 
 part, as you may understand, would not be a handsome 
 one." 
 
 "I shall never be anything to the Count but a grateful and 
 sincere friend/' said Luigia. "But I shall be no more for 
 any other man especially for the man of whom you speak. 
 I did not break up my life, dear madame, without due con- 
 sideration." 
 
 "But you see, my dear," said the old woman, thus show- 
 ing a profound knowledge of the human heart, "that the 
 men of whom we declare that we have washed our hands are 
 often just the most dangerous." 
 
 "You speak as a Frenchwoman, madame," said the Italian. 
 
 "Then to-morrow," said Vautrin, "I have your permission 
 to come for you and take you to meet this manager? Of 
 course, you know many of the parts in stock opera ?" 
 
 "I know all the parts taken by Malibran and Pasta," said 
 Luigia, who had been studying indefatigably for two years 
 past. 
 
 "And you will not change your mind in the course of the 
 night?" said Vautrin insinuatingly. 
 
 "Here is my hand on it," said Luigia, with artless frank- 
 ness. "I do not know whether bargains are ratified so in 
 France." 
 
 "Ah, Diva, Diva !" cried Vautrin, with the most burlesque 
 caricature of dilettante admiration; and he lightly touched 
 the fair hand he held with his lips. 
 
 When we remember the terrible secret of this man's past 
 life, it must be admitted that the Human Comedy nay, I 
 should say, Human Life has some strange doublings. 
 
 The success of the singer's trial was far beyond Vautrin's 
 expectations. The hearers were unanimously in favor of 
 Luigia's engagement. Xay, if they had listened to Sir 
 Francis Drake, it would have been signed then and there, 
 and the singer would have set out the same day for London, 
 where, owing to La Serboni's illness, Her Majesty's Theatre 
 was in great straits.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 425 
 
 But Vautrin, when once that side of the question was 
 settled, wished to make further inquiries as to the money to 
 be invested; and instead of Signora Luigia, it was he, at- 
 tended by his secretary, who accompanied the impresario to 
 England with a view to looking into matters. In the event 
 of finding the position altogether untenable, he was quite 
 prepared to withdraw his offer with cool faithlessness, as the 
 diva's engagement no longer depended on the advance of 
 capital which he had at first been prepared to risk. 
 
 As he was starting, he said to his aunt: 
 
 "To-day is the 17th of May; at seven in the evening 
 on the 21st, I shall be back in Paris with Sir Francis Drake. 
 Meanwhile, take care that our protegee is provided with a 
 suitable outfit. No absurd magnificence, as if you were dress- 
 ing up a courtesan, but handsome things in the best style, 
 not loud or too startling to the signora's good taste. In short, 
 just what you would buy for your daughter, if you had one, 
 and she were going to be married. 
 
 "For that same day, the 21st, order a dinner for fifteen 
 from Chevet. The party will consist of the leaders of the 
 press; your client Bixiou will get them together. You, of 
 course, as mistress of the house, but I entreat you, dress 
 quietly nothing to scare the guests. Then I must have a 
 clever man of business to look through the papers before we 
 sign, and a pianist to accompany the Diva, who shall sing us 
 something after dinner. You must prepare her to give a 
 taste of her best quality to all those trumpeters of fame. Sir 
 Francis Drake and I make the party up to fifteen. I need 
 not say that it is your friend Count Halphertius who gives 
 the dinner at your house, because he has none of his own in 
 Paris ; and everything is to be of the best, elegant and refined, 
 that it may be talked about everywhere." 
 
 After giving these instructions, Yautrin got into a post- 
 chaise, knowing Jacqueline Collin well enough to feel sure 
 that his orders would be carried out with intelligence and 
 punctuality.
 
 426 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 When Vautrin had mentioned Bixiou as the recruiting- 
 sergeant of his company, this was what he had meant by call- 
 ing him her "client/' 
 
 Among the various secret sources of wealth that helped to 
 swell the ever-increasing fortune which Rastignac had scented 
 under Saint-Esteve's social status, usury, of course, had not 
 been disdained. Though economists have gone so far as to 
 maintain that money is a form of merchandise of which the 
 price is wrongfully fixed by law, for consciences as broad as 
 those of Vautrin and his aunt the provisions of the penal 
 code were an obstacle only in so far as they failed to elude 
 them but who is the fool who allows himself to be caught in 
 the clutches of the code ? Unless he has never read Moliere's 
 Avare, he cannot help being aware of the Mditre Simon, who, 
 from time immemorial, has stood as a screen between the ex- 
 tortionate money-lender's transactions and the vexations of 
 the law. 
 
 Now, Master Bixiou, whose extremely free-and-easy life 
 frequently compelled him to have recourse to his credit, had, 
 through an intermediary, found himself in business relations 
 with Jacqueline Collin ; and by his monkey-skill in worming 
 out mysteries, especially such as might interest himself, in 
 spite of the queer disguises in which she involved herself, he 
 had succeeded in getting face to face with his creditor. 
 Then, one day, being quite unable to meet a bill which would 
 fall due on the morrow, he had boldly attacked the ogress, to 
 work the miracle of extracting a renewal on favorable terms. 
 The woman liked a man of spirit, and, like all wild beasts, 
 she had her intervals of ruth. It need hardly be said that 
 Bixiou had done his utmost to propitiate her; he was witty 
 under his reverses, full of dazzling paradox and theories of 
 jovial immorality, which so effectually bewildered the money- 
 lender, that not only did she renew the bill, but she had even 
 lent him a further sum; and this sum, to crown the marvel, 
 he had actually repaid her. 
 
 Hence, between the artist and the "matrimonial agent" 
 there arose a certain friendly feeling. Bixiou, not knowing
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 427 
 
 what the terrible creature was with whom he rubbed 
 shoulders, flattered himself that it was his cleverness that 
 made her laugh, and now and then, when he was at his wits' 
 end, enabled him to soften her to the extent of a few 
 napoleons; he did not know that he was the dog of the raree 
 show in the lion's den ; and that this woman, in whose past life 
 there had been incidents a la Brinvilliers, was not incapable 
 of making him pay with his life for his insolent familiarity, 
 to say nothing of the interest on her loans. 
 
 Meanwhile, and pending this fatal termination, which was 
 not very probable, Jacqueline Collin did not hesitate to employ 
 this jovial gossip in the ferreting he practised so successfully ; 
 indeed, she not unfrequently gave him, without his knowing 
 it, a part to play in the shady imbroglios that were the oc- 
 cupation of her life. 
 
 In the affair of Luigia, the caricaturist was wonderfully 
 useful ; through him she could insure publicity for the rumor 
 of Count Halphertius' appearance on the Parisian horizon, 
 his passion for the singer, and the immense sums he was pre- 
 pared to put down in her behalf. And it must be said that 
 his universal acquaintance with the writing, singing, paint- 
 ing, eating, rollicking, swarming world of Paris, made him 
 capable above other men of recruiting the full complement of 
 celebrity-makers that Vautrin required. 
 
 On the 21st, at seven o'clock precisely, all the guests, of 
 whom Desroches had given Bixiou the list, and Desroches 
 himself, were assembled in the drawing-room in the Eue de 
 Provence when the negro announced Sir Francis Drake and 
 Count Halphertius, who had insisted on not being named 
 first. The Swedish gentleman's dress was admirably correct : 
 a black suit, white waistcoat, and white tie, over which the 
 ribbon of a fancy order hung round his neck. His other 
 decorations were fastened at his button-hole by little chains, 
 but he had not dared to flaunt a star sewn to his coat. 
 
 As he glanced at the assembled circle, Vautrin was an- 
 noyed to perceive that his aunt's habits and instincts had
 
 428 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 proved stronger than his special and express injunctions, 
 and a sort of turban, green and yellow, would have put him 
 seriously out of temper, but that the skill she had shown 
 in carrying out all his other wishes won forgiveness for her 
 head-dress. As for Luigia, dressed, as usual, in black, hav- 
 ing had the wisdom to refuse the assistance of a hairdresser 
 who had vainly attempted to reduce what he called the dis- 
 order of her hair, she was supremely beautiful; and an air 
 of melancholy gravity stamped on all her person compelled 
 a feeling of respect, which surprised these men, to whom 
 Bixiou had spoken of her as awaiting their verdict. 
 
 The only person who was specially introduced to Vautrin 
 was Desroches, whom Bixiou brought up to him with this 
 jovially emphatic formula: 
 
 "Maitre Desroches, the most intelligent attorney of modern 
 times." 
 
 As to Sir Francis Drake, if he seemed a shade less scorn- 
 ful than he had intended to be of the influence of journalism 
 as affecting the supply of capital, it was because he happened 
 to be acquainted with Felicien Vernou and Lousteau, two 
 writers for the journalistic press, with whom he shook hands 
 warmly. 
 
 Before dinner was announced, Count Halphertius thought 
 it his part to make a little speech; and after a few minutes' 
 conversation with Signora Luigia, to whom he had good 
 taste enough not to speak till he had been in the room a short 
 while, he ostensibly addressed Madame do Saint-Esteve, but 
 loud enough to be heard by all who were present. 
 
 "My dear madame," said he to his aunt, "you are really 
 a wonderful woman. The first time I find myself in a Paris 
 drawing-room, and you make me to meet all that is most dis- 
 tinguished in literature, in arts, and in the world of business. 
 I, what am only a northern barbarian, though my country 
 has its famous men Linnaeus, Berzelius, the great Thorvald- 
 sen, Tegner, Franzen, Geier, and our charming novelist, 
 Frederica Bremer I am here astonished and timid, and 1
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 429 
 
 do not know how to say to you that I am so extraordinary 
 obliged." 
 
 "Well, through Bernadotte," said the lady, whose erudi- 
 tion took her so far as that, "France and Sweden clasped 
 hands." 
 
 "It is quite certain," said Vautrin^ "that our beloved 
 sovereign Charles XIV. " 
 
 He was interrupted by a butler, who threw open the doors 
 and announced dinner. 
 
 Madame de Saint-Esteve took Vautrin's arm, and 
 whispered as they went: 
 
 "Don't you think it all very well done?" 
 
 "Yes," said Jacques Collin, "it is very well got up. Noth- 
 ing is wrong but your diabolical parrot-colored turban, which 
 startled me a good deal." 
 
 "No, no," said Jacqueline, "with my Javanese phiz" (she 
 was born, in fact, in Java) "something Oriental carries it 
 off." 
 
 She placed Sir Francis Drake to her right, and next to him 
 Desroches; Vautrin, opposite to her at the other end of the 
 table, was supported by fimile Blondet of the Debats and 
 Luigia, next to whom sat Theodore Gaillard ; the twenty-five 
 thousand subscribers to the paper edited by this practised 
 craftsman well earned him this distinction. The other 
 guests seated themselves as they pleased. 
 
 The dinner was not, on the whole, particularly lively. The 
 "Human Comedy" has more than once had occasion to in- 
 clude a picture of the cheerful race who were here present 
 in force, under the brilliant light of the triclinium; but then 
 they had not been muzzled as they were at this banquet. 
 Bixiou, as a message from Madame de Saint-Esteve, had 
 particularly impressed on all the guests that they were to 
 say nothing that could distress the chaste ears of the pious 
 Italian. So these men, forced to be cautions, all men of wit 
 and feeling more or less, as a famous critic said, had lost 
 their spirit; and falling back on the dinner, which was ex- 
 cellent, they murmured in undertones, or reduced the conver-
 
 430 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 sation to commonplace remarks. In short, they ate and they 
 drank under protest, so to speak; but they did not really 
 dine. 
 
 Bixiou, to whom such a state of things was quite unen- 
 durable, was bent on making some break in this monotony. 
 The intimacy between a foreign nobleman and their hostess 
 had given him food for thought; he had also been struck 
 by a certain inefficiency in the Amphitryon; and had said to 
 himself that a genuine nobleman would at a smaller cost 
 have succeeded in putting some life into the party. So, in 
 order to feel his way, it occurred to him to test the Count 
 by speaking of Sweden, and at the beginning of the second 
 course he asked him all across the table: 
 
 "Monsieur le Comte, you are too young, I imagine, to 
 have known Gustavus III., whom Scribe and Auber have set 
 in an opera, and who in France has given his glorious name 
 to a galop." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," replied Vautrin, seizing the oppor- 
 tunity thus offered to him; "I am very nearly sixty, which 
 would make me thirteen in 1792, when our beloved sovereign 
 was killed by the assassin Anckastroem; so I can remember 
 those times." 
 
 Having said this, by the help of a volume called Caracteres 
 et Anecdotes de la cour de Suede (published by Arthus 
 Bertrand in 1808 without the author's name), which he had 
 picked up at a bookstall since his incarnation as a Swede, 
 Vautrin was in a position to defy pitfalls. He improved 
 the occasion; like a speaker who only waits to be started on 
 a familiar text to display his powers to the best advantage, 
 no sooner was the tap turned on than he flowed with such 
 erudition and pertinence on all the great men of his country, 
 gave so many circumstantial details, related so many curious 
 and secret facts, especially with regard to the famous Coup 
 d'Etat, by which Gustavus III. emancipated the Crown in 
 1772 ; in short, was so precise and so interesting, that as they 
 rose from table, Emile Blondet said to Bixiou: 
 
 "I was like you a foreign Count, introduced by this
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 431 
 
 matchmonger, at first struck me as suspicious. But not only 
 was the dinner really princely; this man knows his Swedish 
 Court in a way that is not to be got out of books. He is 
 undoubtedly a man of good family; and if only I had time, 
 I could make a very interesting pamphlet out of all he has 
 told us." 
 
 When they had had coffee, Sir Francis Drake, Vautrin, 
 and Desroehes went into an adjoining room, where they 
 talked over the deed of partnership and the engagement of 
 the prima donna. All the terms being finally settled, 
 Vautrin called in the Diva to sign. 
 
 "He is a very cunning fox," said Desroches to Bixiou as 
 they came back to the drawing-room. "He must be enor- 
 mously rich; he paid the Englishman a hundred thousand 
 crowns down in banknotes on the spot; and when I wanted 
 to insert a rather stringent clause in the agreement as to 
 the payment of the lady's salary for Sir Francis Drake has 
 not a reputation for paying on the tail, as Leon de Lora would 
 say our gentleman would allow no written expression of 
 distrust whence I conclude that the fair Italian keeps him 
 at arm's length, and that he is not sorry to have some hold 
 over her through arrears of pay." 
 
 "And your fees," said Bixiou. "Did he happen to mention 
 them? I told old Saint-Esteve that she must not expect a 
 man of your consequence to put himself out of the way for 
 soup and beef that they must be garnished with parsley." 
 
 "Here you are !" said Desroches, taking out of his pocket 
 a gold box, oval in shape, and very handsomely chased. "Just 
 now, while I was reading the indentures, I had laid my snuff- 
 box of Irish horn worth about ten francs perhaps on the 
 table by my side. Our friend interrupted me to ask me for 
 a pinch. When I had done reading and wanted it, in the 
 place of my box, which had vanished, I found this gem." 
 
 "Your 'uncle,' " said Bixiou, "would lend you three or 
 four hundred francs on it, which would mean a value of 
 about a thousand." 
 
 "As I protested against such an exchange," Desroches went
 
 432 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 on, " 'I am the gainer by it/ says he. 'I have a relic of the 
 Xapoleon of attorneys.' " 
 
 "Mighty genteel !" said Bixiou, "and please God and the 
 old woman I will cultivate his acquaintance. I say, sup- 
 posing I were to sketch him in an early number of the 
 Charivari ?" 
 
 "First we must find out whether he has enough French 
 wit in him to be pleased to see himself caricatured." 
 
 At this moment a chord on the piano announced that the 
 Signora Luigia was about to face the enemy. She sang the 
 "Willow Song" with a depth of expression which touched her 
 audience, though the trial was held by an areopagus who 
 was digesting a dinner of no sparing character. Smile 
 Blondet, a dogmatic politician rather than a man of imagina- 
 tion, was surprised into beating time in the fervor of his 
 enthusiasm. He beat out of time, it is true, but the emotion 
 was not the less evident. 
 
 The song ended, Vernou and Lousteau, going up to Sir 
 Francis Drake, said, with an assumption of indignation as 
 flattering to his skill as to his hopes as a manager: 
 
 "What a mean wretch you must.be to have secured such 
 an artist for fifty thousand francs a mere song !" 
 
 Luigia then sang an air from Nina, by Paesiello, and in 
 this light and vivacious character revealed a gift of imper- 
 sonation at least equal to her talents as a singer. 
 
 "She startled me !" said the old aunt to Vautrin. "I 
 fancied I saw Peyrade's daughter." 
 
 This was an allusion to a dreadful incident connected with 
 Baron Nucingen's story, in which this formidable foe had 
 played the chief part. She had driven an unhappy girl out 
 of her mind by getting her into a house of ill-fame, in pursu- 
 ance of an atrocious scheme of vengeance. 
 
 What crowned Luigia's success, and recommended her es- 
 pecially to her reporters, was her modesty a sort of igno- 
 rance of her wonderful gifts in the midst of the praises that 
 were showered on her. This little crowd of journalists, ac- 
 customed to the extravagant vanity and insolent assumption
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 43o 
 
 of the smallest stage queens, could not get over the humility 
 and artlessness of this Empress of Song, who seemed quite 
 surprised at the effect she had produced. 
 
 A few words skilfully whispered at parting to each of these 
 great men, and a card left at their lodgings next day by 
 Count Halphertius, secured for his protegee, at any rate for 
 the moment, a chorus of admiration which would echo across 
 the Channel, and be almost as good as a brilliant debut at 
 the Italian opera house in Paris. 
 
 The signora's departure was fixed for the morrow; she 
 was to travel, escorted by Sir Francis Drake. To avoid a 
 tete-a-tete, Madame de Saint-Esteve had taken the precaution 
 of engaging a maid, and, against her practice when she 
 meddled with servants, she took care to secure an honest 
 woman. 
 
 Count Halphertius gave proof of his disinterestedness in 
 a way that was thoroughly appreciated. He said, which was 
 perfectly true, that business detained him in Paris, reserv- 
 ing the right, if IIP should be so fortunate as to bring it to 
 a conclusion in about a month or six weeks, to run over to 
 London and enjoy the triumph, of which he no longer felt 
 a doubt, and which he was so happy as to have been able to 
 prepare. 
 
 Some days before Luigia's journey, the Boulogne boat 
 carried another person of this drama to England. 
 
 As soon as he had ascertained where he could find Salle- 
 nauve, to give him the information he thought so urgent, 
 Jacques Bricheteau abandoned the idea of writing to him. 
 He thought it simpler and safer to go to see him. 
 
 On reaching London, the traveler was somewhat surprised 
 to learn that Hanwell was one of the most famous lunatic 
 asylums in the three kingdoms. If he had but remembered 
 the apprehensions his friend had felt at the state of Marie- 
 Gaston's brain, he would have guessed the truth ; but he was 
 quite at sea when he was further informed that this asylum, 
 maintained by the rates, was open only to mad people of
 
 434 . THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 the lower classes, and not to paying patients. However, 
 Jacques Bricheteau was not so foolish as to waste time in 
 vain conjectures. We have already seen that he was prompt 
 and determined; and he now set off without delay to Han- 
 well, and as the place is only about nine miles from London, 
 he was soon there. 
 
 Hanwell is a large building of not unhandsome appearance ; 
 the front, nine hundred and ninety-six feet in length, is 
 broken by three octagonal towers, three stories high one at 
 each end, and one in the middle; the monotony is thus re- 
 lieved, though the melancholy purpose of the building ne- 
 cessitated a very moderate use of ornament. 
 
 The asylum is pleasantly situated at the foot of a hill on 
 the borders of Jersey (sic)* and Middlesex. The extensive, 
 grounds, gardens, and farms lie between the Uxbridge road, 
 the river Brent, and the Grand Junction Canal ; nine hundred 
 patients can be accommodated and treated there. As it is 
 well known that manual labor is one of the most valuable 
 elements of the cure, the house contains workshops for car- 
 pentry, smiths' work, painting, glazing, and brushmaking; 
 cotton is spun, shoes, baskets, strawberry pottles, and straw 
 hats are made, and other light work for women. The finer 
 qualities of work are sold to visitors in a bazaar, and bring 
 in a considerable profit. 
 
 Such patients as are incapable of learning a trade work 
 in the garden and farm, which supply many of the wants of 
 the establishment ; bread and beer are made on the premises ; 
 all the necessary linen is made up and washed by means of 
 a steam engine, which also heats every part of the building. 
 A chapel with a fine organ, a library, and a concert-room 
 the salutary effect of music on the patients being amply proved 
 show that, hand in hand with intelligent care given to 
 physical suffering, thfe needs of the spiritual and intellectual 
 man are not neglected. 
 
 Finally, as Lord Lewin had told Sallenauve in his letter, 
 the superintendent and director, was Dr. Ellis, a distinguished 
 
 * This curious mistake seems to have arisen from the proximity of Osterley Park, 
 Lord Jersey's residence.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 435 
 
 physician to whom we owe a valuable treatise on the develop- 
 ment and therapeutics of mental disease. In his treatment 
 of these maladies this learned man does not despise the aid 
 of phrenology. 
 
 On being shown into the doctor's room, the organist asked 
 him whether a Frenchman named Sallenauve were not stay- 
 ing for a time at Hanwell. Here, again, Bricheteau paid 
 the penalty of his neglected and shabby appearance; without 
 vouchsafing any inquiries or explanations, Dr. Ellis shortly 
 replied that he had never even heard Monsieur de Sallenauve's 
 name. This, after all, was very probable ; so Jacques Briche- 
 teau withdrew, much disappointed; and fancying that Ma- 
 dame de 1'Estorade had misread, or he himself had mistaken, 
 the name of Hanwell, he spent some days in running about 
 the county of Middlesex visiting every spot of which the name 
 ending in ell invited his attention. 
 
 All his inquiries having ended in nothing, as he rarely 
 allowed his persevering and resourceful spirit to be beaten in 
 anything he undertook, Jacques Bricheteau resolved to make 
 another attempt on Hanwell by letter, thinking, very rightly, 
 that a letter sometimes got in where a man was barred out. 
 In point of fact, on the evening of the day when he posted 
 his letter he received a reply from Sallenauve, inviting him 
 to call at the asylum, where he was promised a cordial wel- 
 come. 
 
 Dr. Ellis' conduct was accounted for when Jacques Briche- 
 teau learned the extent of the disaster that had befallen Marie- 
 Gaston. Discretion is, of course, one of the most indis- 
 pensable virtues in the Head of an asylum for the insane; 
 since every day, by his position, he becomes the depositary 
 of secrets which affect the honor of whole families. To ad- 
 mit that the nearest friend of Marie-Gaston whose deep 
 melancholy was known to all was then staying at Hanwell, 
 would have been to put the inquirer, whoever he might be, 
 in possession of the fact of his insanity, and thus the secret 
 they had agreed to keep as to his state, which they still liked 
 to believe would be- temporary and curable, would have in- 
 evitably become known.
 
 436 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 When Bricheteau arrived at the asylum, and was intro- 
 duced by Sallenauve as his friend, he was heartily welcomed. 
 Dr. Ellis made every apology; and having on various oc- 
 casions in the course of his practice found really wonderful 
 benefit derived from music, he said that he regarded the 
 organist's arrival as quite a godsend, since his great talent 
 might be of immense use as a means towards curing the 
 patient. 
 
 Since leaving Yille-d'Avra}', Marie-Gaston's state had un- 
 fortunately become seriously complicated. Until he reached 
 England be had been comparatively cheerful and docile to 
 Lord Lewin's advice; they might have been supposed to be 
 friends traveling together for pleasure. But when, instead of 
 embarking at once for South America, Lord Lewin, under the 
 pretext of business to transact in the neighborhood of Lon- 
 don, proposed to Marie-Gaston to accompany him, the mad- 
 man began to suspect some snare into which he had been 
 wheedled. He allowed himself, nevertheless, to be driven to 
 Hanwell, represented by Lord Lewiri as one of the royal resi- 
 dences; he had not even resisted when invited to cross the 
 threshold of his prison; but once in the presence of Dr. Ellis, 
 who had been forewarned by a letter from Lord Lewin, a 
 sort of instinct, of which the insane are very capable, seemed 
 to tell the unhappy man that his freedom was in danger. 
 
 "I do not like that man's face," he said aloud to Lord 
 Lewin. "Let us go." 
 
 The doctor had tried to laugh off the remark; but Marie- 
 Gaston, getting more and more excited, exclaimed: 
 
 "Hold your tongue! Your laughter is intolerable. You 
 look just like an executioner." 
 
 And it is possible that the deep attention with which mad 
 doctors must study the countenance of a patient, added to 
 the stern fixed gaze by which they are often compelled to 
 control a maniac, may at last give their features an expression 
 of inquisitorial scrutiny. This, no doubt, has a highly 
 irritating effect on the overstrung nervous sensibilities of 
 the unhappy creatures brought within their ken.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 437 
 
 "You will not deprive me, I hope," said the doctor, "of 
 the pleasure of keeping you and my friend Lord Lewin to 
 dinner ?" 
 
 "I ! Dine with you ?" cried Marie-Gaston vehemently. 
 "What that you may poison me !" 
 
 "Well, but poison is just what you want, surely?" said 
 Lord Lewin quickly. "Were you not talking the other day 
 of a dose of prussic acid?" 
 
 Lord Lewin was not, as might perhaps be supposed, merely 
 rash in making this pointed speech ; he had studied mad per- 
 sons, and he discerned that a deeply hostile aversion for the 
 doctor was seething in Marie-Gaston's mind ; so, being strong 
 and active, he intended to divert on himself the storm that 
 was about to burst. It fell out as he had expected. 
 
 "Vile scoundrel !" cried Marie-Gaston, seizing him by the 
 throat, "you are in collusion with the other, and selling my 
 secrets !" 
 
 It was with some difficulty, and the help of two warders; 
 that Lord Lewin had shaken off his desperate clutch; the 
 poor man had developed raving mania. 
 
 The paroxysm, after lasting some days, had yielded to care 
 and treatment; the patient was now gentle and quiet, and 
 showed some hopeful symptoms; but Sir William Ellis hoped 
 to induce a final crisis, and he was considering the way and 
 means to this end when Jacques Bricheteau arrived. 
 
 As soon as Sallenauve found himself alone with the organ- 
 ist, he questioned him as to the motives -that had prompted him 
 to follow him, and it was not without indignation that he 
 heard of the intrigue which Maxime and the Beauvisages 
 seemed to be plotting against him. His old. suspicions re- 
 vived : 
 
 "Are you quite certain," he asked, "that the man I but 
 just saw was in fact the Marquis de Sallenauve?" 
 
 "Mother Marie des Anges and Achille Pigoult," replied 
 Bricheteau, "who warned me of this plot, have no more doubt 
 of the Marquis' identity than I have. And in all the gossip 
 which they are trying to work up into a scandal, one thing
 
 438 THE MEMBER FOR ARCI8 
 
 alone seems to me at all serious, and that is, that by your 
 absence you leave the field free to your enemies." 
 
 "But the Chamber will not condemn me unheard,"" replied 
 the member. "I wrote to the President to ask leave of 
 absence; and in the event of its being refused, which is most 
 improbable, I have asked 1'Estorade, who knows my reasons 
 for being here, to answer for me." 
 
 "You also wrote to madame his wife?" 
 
 "I wrote only to his wife," replied Sallenauve. "I an- 
 nounced to her the misfortune that has overtaken our friend, 
 and at the same time begged her to explain to her husband 
 the good offices I requested of him." 
 
 "If that is the case," said Jacques Bricheteau, "do not de- 
 pend for anything on the 1'Estorades. A rumor of the 
 blow about to be dealt you had no doubt already reached 
 them." 
 
 And after telling him of the reception he had met with, 
 as well as the unkind speeches made by Madame de 1'Esto- 
 rade, Jacques Bricheteau drew the conclusion that in the 
 impending struggle no help could be hoped for from that 
 quarter. 
 
 "I have some right to be surprised at such a state of 
 things," said Sallenauve, "after Madame de 1'Estorade's 
 pressing assurances of unfailing goodwill ; however," he added 
 with a shrug, "nothing is impossible, and calumny has ere 
 now undermined closer friendship." 
 
 "So now, as you must understand." said the organist, "we 
 must set out for Paris without delay: all things considered, 
 your presence here is really far less necessary." 
 
 "On the contrary," replied Sallenauve, "only this morning 
 the doctor was congratulating himself on my having decided 
 on coming, saying that at the right moment my intervention 
 might be invaluable. In fact, I have not yet been allowed 
 to see Marie-Gaston, reserving my appearance as a surprise 
 at need." 
 
 "The usefulness of your presence," replied Jacques Briche- 
 teau, "is nevertheless problematical ; while, by remaining here
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 439 
 
 for an indefinite period, you are most certainly imperiling 
 your political future, your social position, everything of 
 which the most ardent friendship has no right to demand 
 the sacrifice." 
 
 "We will go and talk it over with the doctor," said Salle- 
 nauve at length, for he could not fail to see that Jacques 
 Bricheteau's importunity was justified. 
 
 On being asked whether Marie-Gaston's stay in the asylum 
 was liable to be prolonged: 
 
 "Yes, I think so, ;; said the doctor; "I have just seen our 
 patient, and the cerebral irritation, which must give way to 
 the material action of medicines before we can attempt to 
 bring any moral influence to bear, seems to me most un- 
 fortunately on the highway to a fresh outbreak." 
 
 "Still," said Sallenauve anxiously, "you have not lost all 
 hope of a cure?" 
 
 "Far from it; I believe firmly in a favorable termination. 
 But these dreadful disorders often present frequent alterna- 
 tions of aggravation and improvement; and I am beginning 
 to foresee that the case will be a longer one than I had at 
 first hoped." 
 
 "I have but just been elected a member of the Lower 
 Chamber," said Sallenauve, "and the opening of the session 
 demands my return to Paris. It is no less required by urgent 
 private matters which Monsieur Bricheteau came expressly 
 to discuss. So unless I thought that my presence here would 
 be immediately needed " 
 
 "Go>" said the doctor; "it may be a very long business. 
 If the patient's condition had not shown a relapse, I had in- 
 tended to arrange some startling scene with your help and 
 that of Monsieur Bricheteau's music, aided too by a young 
 lady, a relation of my wife's, who on various occasions has 
 seconded me very intelligently a little dramatic shock from 
 which I hoped for good results. But, in the first place, my 
 young relation is absent, and for the moment nothing can 
 be done but by medical agents. So, for the moment, go ! 
 The patient is a man in whom it is impossible not to take a
 
 440 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 great interest; you may leave him in perfect confidence to 
 me and Lord Lewin. I will even go so far as to say that I 
 shall pride myself on achieving the cure, and I know no better 
 warrant to offer you than this from a doctor's lips." 
 
 Sallenauve gratefully pressed the doctor's hand, seeing his 
 eager wish to reassure him. He then took leave of Mrs. 
 Ellis, who promised no less warmly than her husband the 
 devoted care of a mother's watchfulness. As to Lord Lewin, 
 Sallenauve's character had won his most friendly esteem, 
 and his conduct in the past was a guarantee for all that 
 might be expected of him now and in the future. So Briche- 
 teau had no difficulty about getting off without any further 
 delay. 
 
 They reached London at about five in the afternoon, and 
 would have gone on to Paris the same evening but for a sur- 
 prise which awaited them. Their eyes fell immediately on 
 enormous posters, on a scale which only English "puff" can 
 achieve, announcing at the corner of every street the appear- 
 ance that same evening of SIGXORA LUIGIA at Her Majesty's 
 Theatre. The name alone was enough to arrest the travelers' 
 attention; but the papers to which they had recourse for in- 
 formation, supplied them, in the English fashion, with so 
 many circumstantial facts as to the debutant's career, that 
 Sallenauve could not doubt the transformation of his late 
 housekeeper into one of the brightest stars that had risen for 
 a long time above the horizon of England. If he had listened 
 to Jacques Bricheteau, he would have been content to hail 
 from afar the triumph of the handsome Italian, and have 
 gone on his way. But having calculated that one evening 
 spent in London would make no serious delay in his arrival, 
 Sallenauve was bent on judging for himself, by his own eyes 
 and ears, what the enthusiasm was worth which was ex- 
 pressed on all sides for the new prima donna. 
 
 Sallenauve went off at once to the box office, which he 
 found closed, but he was enabled to perceive that the singer's 
 success was immense. Every seat had been sold by two in 
 the afternoon, and he thought himself lucky to secure two 
 stalls at a private ticket office for the sum of five pounds.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 441 
 
 The London opera-house had never perhaps held a more 
 brilliant assembly ; and it is impossible not to be struck by the 
 capricious vicissitudes of human life, when we reflect that all 
 this concourse of the English aristocracy was brought about 
 originally by the ambition of a man who had been a felon 
 on the hulks, to rise, as a member of the police, to a rather 
 better rank in its hierarchy. 
 
 By a no less singular coincidence the piece announced 
 was Paesiello's Nina, o la Pazza per Amore (mad for love), 
 from which Luigia had sung an air after the dinner given 
 by Madame de Saint-Esteve. 
 
 When the curtain rose, Sallenauve, having spent nearly 
 a week at Hanwell in the midst of mad people, could all the 
 better appreciate the prodigious gifts as an actress displayed 
 by his former housekeeper in the part of Nina; and in the 
 face of her heartrending imitation, he went through a re- 
 newal of all the distress of mind he had just gone through 
 while watching the dreadful reality of Marie-Gaston's in- 
 sanity. 
 
 Bricheteau, in spite of his annoyance at first at Salle- 
 nauve's dawdling, as he called it, finally fell under the spell of 
 the singer's power ; and at last, seeing the whole house frantic 
 with enthusiasm, and the stage strewn with bouquets, he 
 said: 
 
 "On my word, I can wish you nothing better than a success 
 in any degree like this on another stage !" and then he rashly 
 added, "But there are no such triumphs in politics! Art 
 alone is great " 
 
 "And la Luigia is its prophet!" replied Sallenauve, smil- 
 ing through the tears that admiration had brought to his 
 eyes. 
 
 On coming out of the theatre, Bricheteau looked at his 
 watch ; it was a quarter to eleven, and by making great haste 
 there was still time to get on board the packet starting at 
 eleven. But when the organist looked round to urge this 
 on Sallenauve, who was to follow him through the crowd, he 
 no longer saw his man: the Depute had vanished.
 
 442 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 A quarter of an hour later Luigia's dresser came into a 
 room where her mistress was receiving the compliments of 
 the greatest names in England, introduced to her by Sir 
 Francis Drake. She gave the signora a card. The prima 
 donna as she read it changed color, and whispered a few words 
 to the maid. And she then showed such obvious anxiety to 
 be rid of her throng of admirers, that some budding adorers 
 could not help betraying their surprise. 
 
 However, an artist who is the rage has many privileges; 
 and the fatigue of a part into which the Diva had thrown 
 her whole soul was so good an excuse for her want of 
 cordiality, that her court dispersed without too much demur. 
 Nay, her curtness, regarded as a whim, was taken as a very 
 original proceeding, and recommended her to some incipent 
 fancies. 
 
 As soon as she was alone, she hastily resumed her ordinary 
 dress; the manager's carriage had soon conveyed her to the 
 hotel where she had been living since her arrival; and on 
 entering her sitting-room, she found Sallenauve, who had 
 got there before her. 
 
 "You here, monsieur !" said she. "It is a dream !" 
 
 "Especially to me," replied Sallenauve, "since I find you 
 in London after having sought you in vain in Paris." 
 
 "You took so much trouble but why ?" 
 
 "You left us in so strange a manner, your moods are so 
 hasty, you knew so little of Paris, and so many dangers 
 might await your inexperience, that I feared everything for 
 you." 
 
 "What harm could come to me?" said she. "And I was 
 neither your wife, nor your sister, nor your mistress; I was 
 only your " 
 
 "I had believed," Sallenauve eagerly put in, "that you 
 were my friend." 
 
 "I was your debtor," said Luigia. "I saw that I was a 
 trouble to you in your new position. Could I do otherwise 
 than relieve you of my presence?" 
 
 "Pray, who had impressed you with that intolerable con-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 443 
 
 viction? Had I said or hinted anything to that effect? 
 Was it impossible to discuss a plan of life for you without 
 so far offending your susceptibilities?" 
 
 "I feel what I feel," said the Italian. "I myself was 
 conscious that you wished me anywhere rather than in your 
 house. You had afforded me the means of having no fears 
 for the future ; indeed, as you see, it promises to be anything 
 rather than alarming." 
 
 "On the contrary, it promises to be so brilliant that but 
 for the fear of seeming too presuming, I should ma>e so 
 bold to ask from whose hand, happier than mine, you have 
 obtained such prompt and efficient help." 
 
 "A great Swedish nobleman," replied Luigia without hesita- 
 tion, "who spends part of an immense fortune in the en- 
 couragement of art, procured me this engagement at Her 
 Majesty's ; the kind indulgence of the public did the rest." 
 
 "Your talent, you should say. I heard you this evening." 
 
 "And were you pleased with your humble servant?" said 
 the singer, with a coquettish courtesy. 
 
 "Your musical achievements did not surprise me; I knew 
 your gifts already, and an infallible judge had answered 
 for them; but your flights of dramatic passion, your acting, 
 at once so strong and so sure of itself that indeed amazed 
 me." 
 
 "I have suffered much," said the Italian, "and grief is a 
 great master." 
 
 "Suffered !" said Sallenauve ; "in Italy, yes. But since 
 you came to France, I like to flatter myself " 
 
 "Everywhere," said Luigia in a broken voice. "I was not 
 born under a happy star." 
 
 "That 'Everywhere' has to me a touch of reproach. It is 
 late, indeed, to be telling me of any wrong I may have done 
 you." 
 
 "You have not done me the smallest wrong. The mischief 
 was there!" said Luigia, laying her hand on her heart. "I 
 alone was in fault." 
 
 "From some fancy, I dare say, as foolish as your notion
 
 444 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 that it was a point of honor that you should quit my house ?" 
 
 "Oh, I was not dreaming then," said the Italian. "How 
 well I knew what lay at the bottom of your mind ! If it 
 were only in return for all you had done for me, I ought 
 to long for your esteem, and yet I was forbidden even to 
 aspire to it." 
 
 "But, my dear Luigia, there is no word for such ideas. 
 Did I ever fail in consideration and respect? And besides, 
 has not your conduct always been exemplary?" 
 
 "Yes. I have tried never to do anything that could 
 make you think ill of me. But I was Benedetto's widow, all 
 the same." 
 
 "What ! Do you fancy that that disaster, the outcome of 
 just revenge " 
 
 "Nay. It was not the man's death that could lower me 
 in your e} r es; quite the contrary. But I had been the wife 
 of a buffoon, of a police spy, of a wretch always ready to sell 
 me to any buyer " 
 
 "While you were in that position, I felt that you were to 
 be pitied ; but scorned ? Never !" 
 
 "Well," said the Italian, "we had lived together, alone, 
 under the same roof, for nearly two } r ears." 
 
 "Certainly; and to me it had become a delightful habit." 
 
 "Did you think me ugly?" 
 
 "You know I did not, since I took you for the model of 
 my best statue." 
 
 "A fool?" 
 
 "A woman cannot be a fool who puts so much soul into 
 a part." 
 
 "Well then; it is evident that you despised me!" 
 
 Sallenauve was utterly amazed at this prompt logic; he 
 thought himself clever to reply: 
 
 "It seems to me that if I had behaved differently, I should 
 have given greater proof of contempt." 
 
 But he had to deal with a woman who in all things in 
 her friendships and aversions, in act as well as in word went 
 straight to the mark.
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARGIS 445 
 
 She went on as if she were afraid that he had not under- 
 stood her. 
 
 "At this day, monsieur, I can say everything, for I am 
 talking of the past, and the future is no longer in my hands. 
 Since the day when you were kind to me, and when by your 
 generous protection I was rescued from an outrageous insult, 
 my heart has been wholly yours." 
 
 Sallenauve, who had never suspected the existence of this 
 feeling, and who, above all, could not conceive of its avowal, 
 made with such artless crudity, did not know what to say. 
 
 "I was well aware," the strange creature went on, "that 
 I should have much to do to raise myself from the base con- 
 dition in which you had seen me at our first meeting. If 
 even at the moment when you consented to take me with you 
 I had seen any signs of gallantry in your behavior, any hint 
 that you might take advantage of the dangerous position in 
 which I had placed myself by my own act, my heart would 
 have shrunk into itself, you would have been but an ordinary 
 man, and to rehabilitate me after Benedetto it was not 
 enough " 
 
 "And so," said Sallenauve, "to love you would have been 
 an insult, and not to love was cruelty. What a woman! 
 flow is it possible to avoid offending you?" 
 
 "I did not want you to love me when you did not know 
 me," said the singer, "when I had scarcely shaken off the mire, 
 for then it would have been only the love of the eye and of 
 the taste, which it is never wise to trust. But when, after 
 living in your house for two years, you could know by my 
 conduct that I was worthy of your esteem ; when, without ever 
 craving a single pleasure, and devoted to the care of your 
 house, with no relaxation but the study which was to raise 
 me to the dignity of an artist like yourself, I could, merely 
 for the happiness of seeing you create a masterpiece, sacrifice 
 the womanly modesty which on another occasion you had seen 
 me defend with vehemence then you were cruel not to 
 understand ; and your imagination can never; never picture 
 what I have suffered, or how many tears I have shed !"
 
 446 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "But, my dear Luigia, you were my guest ; even if I could 
 have suspected what you now reveal to me, my duty as a man 
 of honor required me to see nothing, understand nothing, 
 but on the plainest evidence." 
 
 "And was not my perpetual melancholy proof enough? 
 If my heart had been free, should I not have been less re- 
 served and more familiar? No the case is plain enough: 
 you could see nothing; your fancy was fixed elsewhere." 
 
 "Well, and if it were?" 
 
 "It ought not to have been," said the Italian stringently. 
 "That woman was not free ; she had a husband and children ; 
 and, though you chose to make a saint of her, even if I had 
 no advantage over her excepting in youth though that 
 is, of course, quite absurd it seems to me that she was not 
 to compare with me." 
 
 Sallenauve could not help smiling. However, he replied 
 quite gravely: 
 
 "You are altogether mistaken as to your rival. Madame 
 de 1'Estorade has never been anything to me but a head to 
 study, and even so, of no interest whatever but for her like- 
 ness to another woman. That woman I knew at Rome before 
 I ever saw you. She had beauty, youth, and a great talent 
 for Art. At this day she is captive in a convent; so, like 
 you, she has paid tribute to sorrow; as you see, all your 
 perfection s " 
 
 "What ! Three love stories, and all ending in air !" said 
 Luigia. "You were born under a strange star indeed! Of 
 course when I was so misunderstood, it was only because I 
 was under its maleficent influence, and in that case you must 
 be forgiven." 
 
 "Then, since you admit me to mercy, pray allow me to 
 return to my former question. The future, you tell me, is 
 no longer in your hands; the astounding frankness of your 
 avowals leads me to infer that, to give you such boldness, a 
 very solid barrier must have been raised between you and me. 
 Then what is the power by which, at one leap, you have sprung 
 go high ? Have you made a bargain with the devil ?"
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 447 
 
 "Perhaps b'o," said Luigia, laughing. 
 
 "Do not laugh/' said Sallenauve. "You chose to face the 
 hell of Paris alone; it would not at all surprise me to hear 
 that you met with some dangerous acquaintance at starting.. 
 I know the difficulties that the greatest artists have to sur- 
 mount before they can get a hearing. Do you know who 
 the foreign gentleman is who has leveled every road before 
 you?" 
 
 "I know that he has put down a fabulous sum to secure 
 my engagement; that I am to be paid fifty thousand francs; 
 and that he did not even accompany me to London." 
 
 "Then all this devotion is free, gratis?" 
 
 "Not at all. My patron has reached the age at which a 
 man no longer loves, but has a great deal of conceit. So 
 his protection is to be widely proclaimed, and I have pledged 
 myself to do nothing, say nothing, that may give the lie to 
 his fictitious happiness. To you alone did I owe the truth; 
 but I know you to be trustworthy, and I entreat you to keep 
 it absolutely secret." 
 
 "And it does not seem improbable to you that this state 
 of things should last? But how and where did you make 
 acquaintance with this man whom you think you can for ever 
 feed on air?" 
 
 "Through a Dame de Charite who came to see me while 
 you were away. She had been struck by my voice at Saint- 
 Sulpice during the services of the month of Mary, and she 
 wanted to bribe me away to sing at her parish church, Notre- 
 Dame de Lorette." 
 
 "What was the lady's name?" 
 
 "Madame de Saint-Esteve." 
 
 Though he did not know all the depths of Jacqueline 
 Collin's existence, Sallenauve had heard of Madame de 
 Saint-Esteve as a money-lender and go-between ; he had heard 
 Bixiou speak of her. 
 
 "That woman," said he, "has a notoriously bad reputation 
 in Paris. She is an agent of the lowest intrigues." 
 
 "So I suspected," said Luigia, "but what does that matter 
 tome?"
 
 448 THE MEMBER FOB ARCIS 
 
 "If the man she has introduced to you 
 
 "Were such another as herself?" interrupted the singei. 
 "But that is not likely. The hundred thousand crowns he 
 has placed in the manager's hands have floated the theatre 
 again." 
 
 "He may be rich and yet be scheming against you. The 
 two are not incompatible." 
 
 "He may have schemes against me," said Luigia, "but they 
 will not be carried out. Between them and me I stand." 
 
 "But your reputation ?" 
 
 "That I lost when I left your house. I was generally sup- 
 posed to be your mistress; you had to give your own expla- 
 nation to your constituency ; and you contradicted the report, 
 but do you imagine that you killed it?" 
 
 "And my esteem, on which you set such value?" 
 
 "I no longer need it. You did not love me when I wanted 
 it ; you will not love me when I no longer care." 
 
 "Who can tell?" said Sallenauve. 
 
 "There are two reasons against it," replied the Italian. 
 "In the first place, it is too late; and in the second, we no 
 longer tread the same road." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "I am an artist, you have ceased to be one. I am rising, 
 you are going down." 
 
 "You call it going down to rise perhaps to the highest 
 dignities of State?" 
 
 "Whether you rise or "no," cried Luigia ecstatically, "you 
 will be beneath your past self and the splendid future that 
 lay before you. Indeed, I believe I have deceived you; I 
 believe if you had still been a sculptor, I should yet for 
 some time have endured your coldness and disdain; at any 
 rate, I should have waited till after my first trials in my art, 
 hoping that the halo which lends glory to a woman on the 
 stage might at last perhaps have made you aware of my 
 existence there at your side. But from the day of your 
 apostasy, I could no longer persist in my humiliating sacri- 
 fice. There is no future in common for us."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 449 
 
 "What !" said Sallenauve, holding out his hand, which 
 Luigia did not take, "are we not even to remain friends ?" 
 
 "A friend a man friend you have already. No, it is all 
 over and done with. We shall hear of each other ; and from 
 afar as we cross in life we shall wave each other a greeting, 
 but nothing more." 
 
 "And this is how all is to end between you and me !" said 
 Sallenauve sadly. 
 
 The singer looked at him for a moment, and tears sparkled 
 in her eyes. 
 
 "Listen," said she, in a sincere and resolute tone, "this 
 much is possible. I have loved you, and after you no man 
 will find a place in the heart you scorned. You will be told 
 that I have lovers: the old man whom I am pledged to own 
 to, and others after him perhaps ; but you will not believe it, 
 remembering the woman that I am. And, who knows? By 
 and by your life may be swept clear of the other affections 
 which barred the way for mine, and the freedom, the eccen- 
 tricity of the avowal I have just made will perhaps remain 
 stamped on your memory then it is not altogether impossi- 
 ble that after such long wandering you may at last want me. 
 If that should happen if, as the result of bitter disappoint- 
 ments, you should be brought back to the belief in Art well, 
 then, if time has not made love a too ridiculous dream for us, 
 remember this night. 
 
 "Now we must part, for it is late for a tete-a-tete, and it is 
 the semblance of fidelity to my elderly protector that I am 
 pledged to preserve." 
 
 So speaking, she took up a candle and vanished into the 
 adjoining room, leaving Sallenauve in a state of mind that 
 may be imagined after the surprises of every kind that this 
 interview had brought him. 
 
 On returning to the hotel whither he had taken his things 
 on arriving from Han well, he found Bricheteau waiting for 
 him at the door. 
 
 "Where the devil have you been ?" cried the organist, frau-
 
 450 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 tic witn Impatience. "We might have got off by to-night's 
 boat." 
 
 "Well, well/' said Sallenauve carelessly, "I shall have a 
 few more hours for playing truant." 
 
 "And meanwhile the enemy is pushing forward the mine !" 
 
 "What do I care? In that cave called political life must 
 we not be prepared for whatever happens?" 
 
 "I suspected as much," said Bricheteau. "You have been 
 to see la Luigia; her success has turned your head, and the 
 statuary is breaking out through the Member." 
 
 "You yourself an hour since said Art alone is great." 
 
 "But the orator too is an artist," said Bricheteau, "and the 
 greatest of all; for other artists appeal to the intellect and 
 the feelings, he alone addresses the conscience and the will. 
 Besides, this is not the time to look back; you have a duel to 
 fight with your opponents. Are you a man of honor or a 
 rogue who has stolen a name ? That is the question which is 
 perhaps being discussed and answered in your absence in the 
 full light of the Chamber." 
 
 "I am sadly afraid that you have misled me; I had a jewel 
 in my hands, and have flung it at my feet " 
 
 "That," retorted the organist, "is happily a vapor that will 
 vanish with the night. To-morrow you will remember your 
 promises to your father and the splendid future that lies 
 before you." 
 
 The Chambers were opened ; Sallenauve had not been pres- 
 ent at the royal sitting, and his absence had not failed to 
 cause some sensation in the democratic party. At the office 
 of the National especially there had been quite a commotion. 
 It seemed only natural to expect that, as part owner of the 
 paper and often to be seen at the office before the elections, 
 having indeed contributed to its pages, he should, after being 
 returned, have appeared there to get news when Parliament 
 opened. 
 
 "Now he is elected," said some of the editors, commenting 
 on the new member's total disappearance, "does my gentle-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 451 
 
 man think he is going to play the snob ? It is rather a com- 
 mon trick with our lords and masters in Parliament to pay us 
 very obsequious court as long as they want supporters, and 
 let us severely alone, like their old coats, as soon as they have 
 climbed the tree. But we cannot allow this gentleman to 
 play that game ; there are more ways than one of turning the 
 tables on a man." 
 
 The chief editor, less easily disturbed, had tried to soothe 
 this first ebullition; but Sallenauve's non-appearance at the 
 opening of the session had, nevertheless, struck him as 
 strange. 
 
 On the following day, when the government officials were 
 to be appointed the presidents and secretaries a business 
 which is not unimportant, because it affords a means of esti- 
 mating the majority, Sallenauve's absence was of more real 
 consequence. In the office to which fate had attached him, 
 the election of the head was carried by the Ministerialists 
 by only one vote ; thus the presence of the Member for Arcis 
 would have turned the scale in favor of the Opposition. 
 Hence the expression of strong disapproval in the organs of 
 that party, explaining its defeat by this unforeseen defection, 
 of which they spoke with some acrimonious surprise. They 
 applied no epithets to the absentee's conduct, but they spoke 
 of it as "quite inexplicable." 
 
 Maxime on his part kept a sharp lookout; he was only 
 waiting till the official ranks of the Chamber should be filled 
 to lay before the House, in the name of the Romilly peasant 
 woman, a petition to prosecute. This document had been 
 drawn up by Masso), and under his practised pen, the facts 
 he had undertaken to set forth had assumed the air of proba- 
 bility which attorneys contrive to give to their statements 
 and depositions even when furthest from the truth. And 
 now, when Sallenauve's absence was so prolonged as to seem 
 scandalous, he went once more to call on Rastignac; and 
 availing himself of the ingenious plan of attack suggested 
 by Desroches, he asked the Minister if he did not think that 
 the moment had come when he, Rastignac, should abandon
 
 452 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 the attitude of passive observation which he had hitherto 
 chosen to maintain. 
 
 Eastignac was, in fact, far more explicit. Sallenauve in 
 a foreign land figured in his mind as a man conscience- 
 stricken, who had lost his balance. He therefore advised 
 Monsieur de Trailles to bring forward the preliminaries of 
 the action that very day, and no longer hesitated to promise 
 his support for the success of a scheme which now looked so 
 hopeful, and from which a very pretty scandal might reason- 
 ably be looked for. 
 
 The effects of this underground influence were obvious 
 on the very next day. The order of the day in the Lower 
 Chamber was the verification of the returns. The member 
 whose duty it was to report on the election at Arcis-sur-Aube 
 happened to be a trusty Ministerialist, and, acting on the 
 private instructions that had reached him, he took this view of 
 the case : 
 
 The constituents of Arcis had elected their member accord- 
 ing to law. Monsieur de Sallenauve had, in due course, sub- 
 mitted to the examining committee all the documents needed 
 to prove his eligibility, and there was no apparent difficulty 
 in the way of his taking his seat. But reports of a strange 
 character had arisen, even at the time of the election, as to 
 the new deputy's identification, and in further support of 
 those rumors a petition had now been presented to the house 
 to authorize a criminal prosecution. This petition set forth 
 a very serious accusation: Monsieur de Sallenauve was said 
 to have assumed the name he bore without any right, and this 
 assumption being certified on an official document, was in- 
 dictable as a forgery committed for the purpose of false per- 
 sonation. "A circumstance much to be regretted," the 
 speaker went on, "was Monsieur de Sallenauve's absence; 
 instead of appearing to contradict the extraordinary accusa- 
 tion lodged against him, he had remained absent from the 
 sittings of the House ever since the opening of the session, 
 and nobody had seen him. Under these circumstances could 
 his election be officially ratified ? The committee had thought 
 not, and proposed that a delay should be granted."
 
 THE MEMBER FOR AEGIS 453 
 
 Daniel d'Arthez, a member of the Legitimist Opposition, 
 who, as we saw at Arcis, was in favor of Sallenauve's return, 
 at once rose to address the Chamber, and begged to point out 
 how completely out of order such a decision would be. 
 
 "The legality of the election was beyond dispute. No 
 irregularity had been proved. Hence, the Chamber had no 
 alternative ; they must put the question to the vote, and recog- 
 nize the election as regular and valid, since there was noth- 
 ing to invalidate it. To confuse with that issue the question 
 as to a petition to prosecute, would be an abuse of power, 
 because, by hindering any preliminary discussion of that 
 question, and relieving the indictment of the usual formali- 
 ties before its acceptance or rejection, it would assume a sin- 
 gular and exceptional character that, namely, of a suspen- 
 sion of the mandate granted to their member by the sovereign 
 power of the electors. And who," added the orator, "can fail 
 to perceive that by giving effect to this petition for authority 
 to prosecute, in any form whatever, we prejudge its justifica- 
 tion and importance; wheieas the presumption of innocence, 
 which is the prerogative of every accused person, ought to 
 be especially extended to a man whose honesty has never 
 been open to doubt, and who has so lately been honored by the 
 suffrages of his fellov-citizens." 
 
 A prolonged discussion followed, the Ministerial speakers 
 naturally taking the opposite view; then a difficulty arose. 
 The President for the time being, in right of seniority for 
 the Chamber had not yet elected its chief was a weary old 
 man, who, in the complicated functions so suddenly conferred 
 on him by his register of birth, was not always prompt and 
 competent. Sallenauve's application for leave of absence 
 had reached him the day before; and if it had occurred to 
 him to announce it to the Chamber at the beginning of the 
 sitting as he ought to have done the discussion would 
 probably have been nipped in the bud. But there is luck 
 and ill-luck in parliamentary business; and when the House 
 learned from this letter, at last communicated, that Charles 
 de Sallenauve was abroad, and had no ground to offer for
 
 454 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 this application for unlimited leave but the vague common- 
 place of "urgent private affairs," the effect was disastrous. 
 
 "It is self-evident/' said all the Ministerialists, like Ras- 
 tignac, "he is in England, where every form of failure takes 
 refuge. He is afraid of the inquiry; he knows he will be 
 unmasked." 
 
 This opinion, apart from all the political feeling, was shared 
 by some of the sterner spirits, who could not conceive that 
 a man should not appear to defend himself against so gross 
 an accusation. In short, after a very strong and skilful 
 speech from Vinet the public prosecutor, who had found 
 courage in the absence of the accused, the confirmation of 
 the election was postponed, though by a very small majority; 
 at the same time, a week's leave of absence >as voted to the 
 accused member. 
 
 " On the day after these proceedings, Maxime wrote as fol- 
 lows to Madame Beauvisage : 
 
 "MADAME, The enemy met with a terrible reverse yester- 
 day ; and in the opinion of my friend Rastignac, a very expe- 
 rienced and intelligent judge of parliamentary feeling, Dor- 
 lange, whatever happens, cannot recover from the blow thus 
 dealt him. If we should fail to procure any positive proof in 
 support of our worthy countrywoman's charge, it is possible 
 that the scoundrel, by sheer audacity, may finally be accepted 
 by the Chamber, if, indeed, he dares show his face in France. 
 But even then, after dragging on a sordid existence utterly 
 unrecognized, he will inevitably ere long be driven to resign; 
 then M. Beauvisage will be elected beyond doubt, for the 
 constituency, ashamed of having been taken in by an adven- 
 turer, will be only too happy to reinstate themselves by a 
 choice that will do them honor, besides having been their 
 first instinctive selection. 
 
 "This result, madame, will be due to your remarkable 
 sagacity; for, but for the sort of second sight which enabled 
 you to divine the precious truth hidden under the peasant- 
 woman's story, we should have overlooked that valuable in-
 
 455 
 
 strument. I may tell you, madame, even if it should inflate 
 your pride, that neither Rastignac nor Vinet, the public pros- 
 ecutor, understood the full importance of your discovery; 
 indeed, I myself, if I had not been so happy as to know you, 
 so as to be able to appreciate the value attaching to any idea 
 of yours, might very probably have shared the indifference of 
 these two statesmen as to the useful weapon you were putting 
 into our hands. But, as the gift came from you, I at once un- 
 derstood its importance; and while pointing out to Rastignac 
 the means of utilizing it, I succeeded in making my friend the 
 Minister an eager partner in the plot, and, at the same time, 
 a sincere admirer of the skill and perspicacity of which you 
 had given proof. 
 
 "Thus, madame, if I should ever be so happy as to be con- 
 nected with you by the bond of which we have already spoken, 
 T shall not need to initiate you into political life; you have 
 found the path so well unaided. 
 
 "Nothing new can happen within the next week, the length 
 of leave granted to our man. If after that date the absentee 
 does not appear, there is, I think, no doubt that the election 
 will be pronounced null and void ; for yesterday's vote, which 
 you will have read in the papers, is a positive summons 
 to him to appear in his place. You may be very sure that 
 between this and his return if he should return I shall not 
 fail to devote myself to fomenting the antagonistic feeling 
 of the Chamber both by the press and by private communica- 
 tions. Rastignac has also issued orders to this end, and it 
 is safe to conclude that the foe will find public opinion 
 strongly prejudiced against him. 
 
 "Allow me, madame, to beg you to remember me to Made- 
 moiselle Cecile, and accept for yourself and Monsieur Beau- 
 visage the expression of my most respectful regard." 
 
 A few words of instruction to the Ministerial press had, in 
 fact, begun to surround tbe name of Sallenauve with a sort 
 of atmospbere of disrespect and ridicule; the most insulting 
 innuendoes ascribed to his absence the sense of a retreat from
 
 456 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 his foes. The effect of these repeated attacks was all the 
 more inevitable because Sallenauve was but feebly defended 
 by the politicians of his own party, 
 
 Nor was this lukewarm feeling at all surprising. Not 
 knowing how to account for his conduct, the Opposition 
 papers, while they felt it their duty to defend him, were 
 afraid of saying 'too much in favor of a man whose future 
 grew more doubtful every day; for might he not at any mo- 
 ment give the lie to the certificate of high morals which had 
 been so rashly given ? 
 
 On the day when his week's leave ended, Sallenauve, not 
 having yet returned, a second-rate Ministerial paper pub- 
 lished, under the heading of "Lost, a deputy !" an insolent 
 and witty article which made a considerable sensation. 
 
 That evening Madame de 1'Estorade called on Madame de 
 Camps, and found her alone with her husband. She was 
 greatly excited, and exclaimed as she went in : 
 
 "Have you read that infamous article?" 
 
 "No," said Madame de Camps. "But my husband has told 
 me about it ; it is really disgraceful that the Ministry should 
 order, or at least encourage, anything so atrocious." 
 
 "I am half crazed by it," said Madame de 1'Estorade, "for 
 it is all our doing/' 
 
 "That is carrying conscientious scruples too far," said Ma- 
 dame de Camps. 
 
 "Not at all," said the ironmaster. "I agree with madame. 
 All the venom of this attack would be dispersed by a single 
 step on 1'Estorade's part ; and by refusing to take it, if he is 
 not the originator, he is at least the abettor of the scandal." 
 
 "Then you have told him ?" asked the Countess re- 
 proachfully. 
 
 "Why, my dear," replied Madame Octave, "though we 
 have our little women's secrets, I could not but explain to 
 my husband what had given rise to the sort of monomania 
 that possesses Monsieur de 1'Estorade. It would have been 
 such a distrust of my second self as would have hurt him 
 deeply; and such explanations as I felt bound to give him
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 457 
 
 have not, I think, made me a faithless depositary of any 
 secret that concerns you personally.'' 
 
 "Ah, you are a happy couple !" said Madame de FEstorade, 
 with a sigh. "However, I am not sorry that Monsieur de 
 Camps should have been admitted to our confidence; the 
 point is, to find some way out of the difficult position in 
 which I am struggling, and two opinions are better than 
 one." 
 
 "Why, what has happened ?" asked Madame de Camps. 
 
 "My husband's head is quite turned," replied the Countess. 
 "He seems to me to have lost every trace of moral sense. 
 Far from perceiving that he is, as Monsieur de Camps said 
 just now, the abettor of the odious contest now going on, with- 
 out having as those who had started it the excuse of 
 ignorance, he seems to exult in it. He brought me that 
 detestable paper with an air of triumph, and I found him 
 quite ready to take offence because I did not agree with him 
 in thinking it most amusing and witty." 
 
 "That letter," said Madame Octave, "was a terrible blow 
 to him ; it hit him body and soul at once." 
 
 "That I grant," cried the ironmaster. "But deuce take 
 it ! If you are a man, you take a lunatic's words for what 
 they are worth." 
 
 "Still, it is very strange," said his wife, "that Monsieur de 
 Sallenauve does not come back; for, after all, that Jacques 
 Bricheteau to whom you gave his address must have written 
 to him." 
 
 "What is to be done !" exclaimed the Countess. "There has 
 been a fatality over the whole business. To-morrow the 
 question is to be discussed in the Chamber as to whether or 
 no Monsieur de Sallenauve's election is to be ratified ; and if 
 he should not then be in his place, the Ministry hopes to be 
 able to annul it." 
 
 "But it really is atrocious !" said Monsieur de Camps ; "and 
 though my position hardly justifies me in taking such a step, 
 a very little would make me go straight to the President of 
 the Chamber and tell him a few home truths "
 
 45$ THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 "I would have begged you to do so, I think, even at the 
 risk of my husband's detecting my intervention, but for one 
 consideration it would distress Monsieur de Sallenauve 
 so greatly that his friend's unhappy state should be made 
 public." 
 
 "Certainly," said Madame Octave. "Such a line of de- 
 fence would evidently be contrary to his intentions; and, 
 after all, he may yet arrive in time. Besides, the decision of 
 the Chamber still remains problematical, while, Monsieur 
 Marie-Gaston's madness once known, he can never get over 
 the blow." 
 
 "And then," added Madame de FEstorade, "all the odious 
 part that my husband has taken so far in this dreadful busi- 
 ness is as nothing in comparison with a really diabolical idea 
 which he communicated to me just now before dinner." 
 
 "What can that be?" asked Madame de Camps anxiously. 
 
 "His idea is that to-morrow I am to go with him to the 
 gallery reserved for the peers to hear the question discussed," 
 
 "Eeally, he is losing his wits !" said Monsieur de Camps. 
 "It is quite like Diafoirus the younger, who offers his bride 
 elect the diversion of seeing a dissection " 
 
 Madame de Camps shook her head meaningly at her hus- 
 band, as much as to say, "Do not pour oil on the flames." 
 She merely asked the Countess if she had not shown Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade how monstrous such a proceeding would 
 appear. 
 
 "At the very first word I spoke to that effect, he flew into 
 a rage," said Madame de FEstorade, "telling me that I was 
 apparently only too glad to perpetuate a belief in our inti- 
 macy with this man, since, on an opportunity when I could 
 so naturally proclaim our rupture to the public I so reso- 
 lutely declined it." 
 
 "Well, then, my dear, you must go," said Madame Octave, 
 "Domestic peace before all things. Besides, after all, your 
 presence at the sitting may equally well be regarded as a 
 proof of kindly interest." 
 
 "For fifteen years," said the ironmaster, "you have reigned
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 45 
 
 and ruled at home, and this is a revolution which seriously 
 shifts the focus of power." 
 
 "But, monsieur, I beg you to believe that I should never 
 have made such use of the sovereignty, which indeed I have 
 always tried to conceal." 
 
 "Do I not know it?" replied Monsieur de Camps warmly, 
 as he took Madame de 1'Estorade's hands in his own. "But I 
 agree with my wife this cup must be drained." 
 
 "I shall die of shame as I listen to the infamous charges 
 the Ministerial party will bring ! I shall feel as if they were 
 murdering a man under my own eyes, whom I could save 
 by merely putting my hand out and I cannot do it " 
 
 "Yes, it is so," said Monsieur de Camps. "And a man, too, 
 who has done you signal service ; but would you rather bring 
 hell into your house, and aggravate your husband's unhealthy 
 state?" 
 
 "Listen, my dear," said Madame de Camps. "Tell Mon- 
 sieur de 1'Estorade that I also wish to go to this sitting; 
 that it will give less cause for comment if you are seen there 
 with a person who is uninterested and merely curious ; and on 
 that point do not give way. Then, at any rate; I shall be there 
 to keep your head straight on your shoulders and preserve 
 you from yourself." 
 
 "I should not have dared to ask it of you," replied Madame 
 de 1'Estorade, "for one does not like to ask any one to assist 
 in evil-doing: but since you are so generous as to offer it, I 
 feel I am a degree less wretched. Now, good-night, for my 
 husband must not find me out when he comes in. He was to 
 dine with Monsieur de Rastignac, and no doubt they have 
 plotted great things for to-morrow." 
 
 "Go then; and in an hour or so I will send you a note, 
 as though I had not seen you, to ask if you have any power 
 to admit me to the Chamber to-morrow, as the meeting 
 promises to be interesting." 
 
 "Oh ! To be brought so low as to plot and contrive " 
 
 said Madame de 1'Estorade, embracing her friend. 
 
 "My dear child," replied Madame de Camps, "it is said
 
 460 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 that the life of the Christian is a warfare; but that of a 
 woman married to a certain type of man is a pitched battle. 
 Be patient and take courage." 
 And so the friends parted. 
 
 At about two o'clock on the following day Madame de 
 1'Estorade, with her husband and Madame de Camps, took her 
 seat in the peers' gallery; she looked ill, and returned the 
 bows that greeted her from various parts of the House with 
 cool indifference. Madame de Camps, who had never before 
 found herself in the parliamentary Chamber, made two ob- 
 servations: In the first place, she exclaimed at the slovenly 
 appearance of so many of the honorable members ; and then 
 she was struck by the number of bald heads which, as she 
 looked down on them from the gallery that gave her a bird's- 
 eye view of the assembly, surprised her greatly. 
 
 She then listened while Monsieur de 1'Estorade named the 
 notabilities present; first all the bigwigs, who need not be 
 mentioned here, since their names dwell in everybody's mem- 
 ory; then Canalis, the poet, who had, she thought, an Olym- 
 pian air; d'Arthez, whose modest demeanor greatly attracted 
 her; Vinet, who, as she said, was like a viper in spectacles; 
 Victorin Hulot, one of the orators of the Left Centre. It 
 was some little time before she could get accustomed to the 
 hum of conversation all round her, comparing it to the noise 
 of a swarm of bees buzzing about a hive. But what chiefly 
 amazed her was the general aspect of the assembly; the 
 strange free-and-easiness and total absence of dignity did not 
 in the least suggest that it was representative of a great 
 nation. 
 
 It was written by the finger of fate that Madame de 1'Es- 
 torade should be spared no form of annoyance. Just as the 
 sitting was about to open, the Marquise d'Espard, escorted 
 by Monsieur de Eonquerolles, came into the gallery, and took 
 a seat close to her. Though they met in society, the two 
 women could not endure each other. Madame de 1'Estorade 
 scorned the spirit of intrigue, the total want of principle, and
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 461 
 
 the spiteful, bitter temper which the Marquise concealed un- 
 der the most elegant manners; while Madame d'Espard had 
 even deeper contempt for what she called the "pot-boiling" 
 virtues of the Countess. It must be added that Madame de 
 FEstorade was two-and-thirty, and of a type of beauty that 
 time had spared; while Madame d'Espard was forty-four, 
 and in spite of the arts of the toilet, her looks were alto- 
 gether past. 
 
 "Do you often come here?" she said to the Countess, after 
 a few indispensable civilities as to the pleasure of meeting 
 her. 
 
 "Never," said Madame de FEstorade. 
 
 "I am a constant visitor," said Madame d'Espard. 
 
 Then, with the air of making a discovery : 
 
 "To be sure," she added, "you have a special interest in the 
 meeting to-day. Some one you know, I believe, is on his 
 trial." 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur de Sallenauve has visited at my house." 
 
 "It is most distressing," said the Marquise, "to see a man 
 who, as Monsieur de Ronquerolles assures me, was quite a 
 hero in his way thus called to account by the police." 
 
 "His chief crime, so far, is his absence," said the Countess 
 drily. 
 
 "And he is consumed by ambition, it would seem," Madame 
 d'Espard went on. "Before this attempt to get into Parlia- 
 ment he had matrimonial projects, as you no doubt know, 
 and had tried to marry into the Lanty family a scheme 
 which, so far as the handsome heiress was concerned, ended 
 in her retirement to a convent." 
 
 Madame de FEstorade was not astonished to find that this 
 story, which Sallenauve had believed to be a perfect secret, 
 was known to the Marquise ; she was one of the best-informed 
 women in Paris. An old Academician had called her draw- 
 ing-room, in mythological parlance, "The Temple of Fame." 
 
 "They are about to begin, I think," said the Countess, who, 
 always expecting to feel Madame d'Espard's claws, was not 
 sorry to close the conversation.
 
 462 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 The President had in fact rung his bell, the members were 
 settling into their places, the curtain was about to rise. 
 
 To give the reader a faithful account of the sitting, we 
 think it will be at once more exact and more convenient to 
 copy the report as printed in one of the papers of the day. 
 
 CHAMBEE OF DEPUTIES 
 
 MONSIEUR COINTET (Vice President) in the Chair. 
 
 May 23rd. 
 
 The President took the chair at two o'clock. 
 
 On the Ministers' bench were the Keeper of the Seals, 
 the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of Public 
 Works. 
 
 The report of the last meeting was read and passed. 
 
 The order of the day was to discuss the validity of the 
 election of the member returned by the borough of Arcis- 
 sur-Aube. 
 
 The President The representative of the Commission of 
 Inquiry will read his report. 
 
 The Reporter Gentlemen, the strange and unsatisfactory 
 position in which Monsieur de Sallenauve has thought proper 
 to place himself has not ended as we had reason to hope. 
 Monsieur de Sallenauve's leave of absence expired yesterday, 
 and he still remains away from the sittings of the Chamber ; 
 nor has any letter from him applying for further extension 
 reached the President's hands. This indifference as to the 
 functions which Monsieur de Sallenauve had sought, it 
 would seem, with unusual eagerness (murmurs from the 
 Left), would under any circumstances be a serious defection; 
 but when it is coupled with the prosecution now threatened, 
 does it not assume a character highly damaging to his repu- 
 tation? (Murmurs from the Left. Applause from the 
 Centre.) Your Commissioners, compelled to seek the solu- 
 tion of a question which may be said to be unexampled in 
 parliamentary annals, when considering the steps to be taken, 
 were divided by two opposite opinions. The minority, of
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 463 
 
 which I am the sole representative the Commissioners being 
 but three thought that a plan should be laid before you 
 which I may call radical in its character, and which aims at 
 settling the difficulty by submitting it to its natural judges. 
 Annul M. de Sallenauve's election hie et nunc, and send him 
 back to the constituency which returned him, and of which he 
 is so faithless a representative: this is the first alternative I 
 have to offer you. (Excitement on the Left.) The majority, 
 on the contrary, pronounced that the electors' vote must be 
 absolutely respected, and the shortcomings of a man honored 
 by their confidence must be overlooked to the utmost limits 
 of patience and indulgence. Consequently, the Commission 
 requires me to propose that you should officially extend M. de 
 Sallenauve's leave of absence to a fortnight from this date 
 (murmurs from the Centre. "Hear, hear," from the Left) 
 with the full understanding that if by the end of that time 
 M. de Sallenauve has given no sign of life, he is to be re- 
 garded as simply having resigned his seat without entangling 
 this House in any irritating and useless discussion of the 
 matter. (Excitement on all sides.) 
 
 M. le Colonel Franchessini, who, during the reading of 
 the report, had been engaged in earnest conversation with the 
 Minister of Public Works on the Ministers' bench, anxiously 
 begged to be heard. 
 
 The President M. de Canalis wishes to speak. 
 
 M. de Canalis Gentlemen, M. de Sallenauve is one of 
 those bold men who, like me, believe that politics are not a 
 forbidden fruit to any intelligent mind; but that the stuff 
 of which a 7 statesman is made may be found in a poet or an 
 artist quite as much as in a lawyer, an official, a doctor, or a 
 land-owner. In virtue, then, of our common origin, M. de 
 Sallenauve has my fullest sympathy, and no one will be sur- 
 prised to see me mount this tribune to support the recom- 
 mendation of the Commission. Still, I cannot agree to their 
 final decision ; for the idea of our colleague being regarded, 
 by the mere fact of his prolonged absence beyond the limit 
 of leave, as having resigned his seat, is repugnant both tc my
 
 464 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 conscience and my reason. You have heard it remarked that 
 M. de Sallenauve's carelessness as to his duties is all the less 
 excusable because he lies under a serious charge ; but, suppos- 
 ing, gentlemen, that this charge were the actuating cause of 
 his absence. (Laughter from the Centre.) Allow me I am 
 not so guileless as the laughers seem to fancy. It is my 
 good fortune, by nature, that base suggestions do not occur 
 to me; and that M. de Sallenauve, with the high position 
 he had achieved as an artist, should plot to take his seat in 
 this Chamber by means of a crime, is a theory I refuse to 
 admit. Two foul spiders are ever ready to spin their web 
 about a man with such a stain on his birth Chicanery and 
 Intrigue. But I, far from admitting' that he would have 
 fled before the charge brought against him, I say, suppose 
 that at this moment, abroad, he were collecting the evidence 
 for his defence? ("Hear, hear; well said!'' from the Left.) 
 In this belief, a very plausible one, as it seems to me far 
 from being justified in requiring a strict account of his ab- 
 sence, ought we not rather to regard it as a proof of respect 
 for this House, as feeling himself unworthy to take his place 
 in it till he was in a position to defy his accusers ? 
 
 A Voice Ten years' leave of absence, like Telemachus, 
 to look for his father. (General laughter.) 
 
 M. de Canalis I did not expect so romantic an interrup- 
 tion ! But since we are referred to the Odyssey, I may remind 
 you that Ulysses, after suffering every outrage, at last drew 
 his bow, very much to the discomfiture of the suitors. (Loud 
 murmurs from the Centre.) I vote for a fortnight's further 
 leave, and a reopening of the question at the end of that time. 
 
 M. le Colonel Franchessini I do not know whether the 
 last speaker intended to intimidate the Chamber; for my 
 part, such arguments affect me very little, and I am always 
 prepared to return them to those who utter them. ("Ordei, 
 order," from the Left.) 
 
 M. le President No personalities, Colonel. 
 
 M. le Colonel Franchessini At the same time, I am so 
 far of the same opinion as the last speaker that I do not be-
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 465 
 
 lieve that the delinquent has fled from the charge brought 
 against him. Neither that accusation, nor the effect it may 
 have on your minds or on others, nor even the annulling of his 
 election, has any interest for him at present. Do you wish 
 to know what M. de Sallenauve is doing in England ? Then 
 read the English papers. They have for some days been full 
 of the praises of a prima donna who has just come out at Her 
 Majesty's Theatre. (Groans and interruptions.) 
 
 A Voice Such gossip is unworthy of this House. 
 
 M. le Colonel Franchessini Gentlemen, I am more accus- 
 tomed to the blunt speech of camps than to the proprieties 
 of the Chamber; I am perhaps rash in thinking aloud. The 
 honorable gentleman who spoke last said that he believed that 
 M. de Sallenauve had gone in search of evidence for his de- 
 fence. I say not I believe, but I know, that a wealthy for- 
 eigner has extended his protection to a handsome Italian 
 who was formerly honored by that of our colleague Phidias. 
 (Fresh interruptions. "Order, order; this is not to be al- 
 lowed!") 
 
 A Voice Monsieur le President, will you not silence this 
 speaker ?" 
 
 Colonel Franchessini, folding his arms, waited till silence 
 should be restored. 
 
 M. le President I must request the speaker to adhere to 
 the question. 
 
 M. le Colonel Franchessini I have never deviated from it ; 
 however, as the Chamber refuses to hear me, I can but say that 
 I vote with the minority. It seems to me a very natural course 
 to send Monsieur de Sallenauve back to his constituency, 
 and to ascertain whether they meant to elect a deputy or a 
 lover. ("Order, order!" A great commotion; excitement at 
 the highest pitch.) 
 
 M. de Canalis hastily tried to mount the tribune. 
 
 M. le President The Minister of Public Works wishes to 
 speak, and as one of the King's Ministry, he has always a 
 right to be heard. 
 
 M. de Rastignac It is no fault of mine, gentlemen, that
 
 466 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 you have not been saved from this scandal in the Chamber. 
 I tried, out of regard for my old friendship with Colonel 
 Franchessini, to persuade him not to speak on so delicate a 
 matter, since his inexperience of parliamentary rule, aggra- 
 vated by his ready wit and fluency, might betray him into 
 some regrettable extravagance. It was to this effect that I 
 advised him in the course of the short conversation we held 
 at my seat before he addressed the House ; and I myself asked 
 to be heard after him expressly to correct any idea of my 
 collusion in the indiscretion he has committed in my opinion 
 by descending to the confidential details he has thought 
 proper to trouble you with. However, as against my inten- 
 tion, and so to say, against my will, I have mounted the 
 tribune, though no ministerial interest detains me here, may 
 I be allowed to make a few brief remarks ? ("Speak, speak !" 
 from the Centre.) 
 
 The Minister of Public Works proceeded to show that the 
 absent member's conduct was characterized by marked con- 
 tempt for the Chamber. He had treated it with cavalier in- 
 difference. He had indeed asked leave of absence; but how? 
 By writing from abroad. That is to say, he first took leave, 
 and then asked for it. Had he, as was customary, assigned 
 any reason for the request ? Not at all. He simply announced 
 that he was compelled to be absent on urgent private business, 
 a trumpery pretext which might at any time reduce the assem- 
 bly by half its members. But supposing that M. de Salle- 
 nauve's business were really urgent, and that it were of a 
 nature which he thought it undesirable to explain in a letter 
 to be made public, why could he not have laid it in confidence 
 before the President, or even have requested one of his friends 
 of such standing as would secure credit for his mere word, 
 to answer for the necessity for his absence without any de- 
 tailed explanation ? 
 
 At this moment the Minister was interrupted by a bustle in 
 the passage to the right ; several of the. members left their 
 places; others standing on the seats and craning their necks 
 were looking at something. The Minister, after turning to
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS '461 
 
 the President, to whom he seemed to appeal for an explana-r 
 tion, went down from the tribune and returned to his seat, 
 when he was immediately surrounded by a number of depu- 
 ties from the Centre, among whom M. Vinet was conspicuous 
 by his gesticulations. Other groups formed in the arena; in 
 fact, the sitting was practically suspended. 
 
 In a few minutes the President rang his bell. 
 
 The ushers Take your seats, gentlemen. 
 
 The members hastily returned to their places. 
 
 M. le President M. de Sallenauve will now speak. 
 
 M. de Sallenauve, who had been talking to M. d'Arthez 
 and M. de Canalis since his arrival had suspended business, 
 went up to the tribune. His manner was modest, but quite 
 free from embarrassment. Everybody was struck by his re- 
 semblance to one of the most fiery of the revolutionary ora- 
 tors. 
 
 A Voice Danton minus the smallpox. 
 
 M. de Sallenauve (deep silence) Gentlemen, I am under 
 no illusion as to my personal importance, and do not imagine 
 that I myself am the object of a form of persecution, which 
 would rather seem to be directed against the opinions I have 
 the honor to represent. However that may be, my election 
 seems to have assumed some importance in the eyes of the 
 Ministry. To contest it, a special agent and special press 
 writers were sent to Arcis ; and a humble servant of the Gov- 
 ernment, whose salary, after twenty years of honorable ser- 
 vice, had reached the figure of fifteen hundred francs a year, 
 was suddenly dismissed from his post for being guilty of 
 contributing to my success. (Loud murmurs from the Cen- 
 tre.) I can only thank the gentlemen who are interrupting 
 me, for I suppose their noisy disapprobation is meant for this 
 singular dismissal, and not to convey a doubt of the fact, 
 which is beyond all question. (Laughter from the Left.) 
 So far as I am concerned, as I could not be turned out, I 
 have been attacked with another weapon; judicial calumny 
 combined with my opportune absence 
 
 The Minister of Public Works Tt was Ilir Ministry eri- 
 dently that procured your extradition to England?
 
 468- THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 M. de Sallenauve No, Monsieur le Ministre, I do not 
 ascribe my absence either to your influence or to your sugges- 
 tions; it was an act of imperative duty, and the result of no 
 one's bidding; but as regards your share in the public accu- 
 sations brought against me, I shall proceed to lay the facts 
 before this assembly, and leave the matter to their judgment. 
 (A stir of interest.) The law which, in order to protect the 
 independence of a member of this Chamber, lays down the rule 
 that a criminal prosecution cannot be instituted against any 
 member without the preliminary authority of the Chamber, 
 has been turned against me, I must say with consummate skill. 
 The indictment, if presented to the Attorney-General in 
 Court, would have been at once dismissed, for it stands alone 
 without the support of any kind of proof; and, so far as I 
 know, the Ministry of this nation is not in the habit of prose- 
 cuting anybody on the strength of the allegation of the first 
 comer. I cannot, therefore, but admire the remarkable acu- 
 men which discerned that by appealing to this Chamber, the 
 charge would have all the advantages of a political attack, 
 though it had not the elements of the simplest criminal case. 
 (Murmurs.) And then, gentlemen, who is the skilful par- 
 liamentary campaigner to be credited with this masterly de- 
 vice ? As you know, it is a woman, a peasant, claiming only 
 the humble rank of a hand- worker ; whence we must infer that 
 the countrywomen of Champagne can boast of an intellectual 
 superiority of which hitherto you can surely have had no con- 
 ception. (Laughter.) It must, however, be added that be- 
 fore setting out for Paris to state her grievance, my accuser 
 would seem to have had an interview, which may have thrown 
 some light on her mind, with the Mayor of Arcis, my minis- 
 terial opponent for election ; and it is furthermore to be sup- 
 posed that this magistrate had some interest in the prosecu- 
 tion- to be instituted, since he thought it his duty to pay the 
 traveling expenses both of the plaintiff and of the village 
 'lawyer who accompanied her. ("Ha-ha!" from the Left.) 
 This remarkably clever woman having come to Paris, on 
 whom does she first call? Well, on that very gentleman who 
 had been sent to Arcis by the Government as a special agent
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 469 
 
 to insure the success of the ministerial candidate. And who 
 then made it his business to apply for authority to prosecute ? 
 Not indeed that same special agent, but a lawyer directed by 
 him, after a breakfast to which the peasant woman and her 
 rustic adviser were invited, to supply the necessary grounds. 
 (Much excitement and a long buzz of talk.) 
 
 The Minister of Public Works, from his bench Without 
 discussing the truth of facts of which I personally have no 
 knowledge, I may state on my honor that the Government 
 was absolutely unaware of all the intrigues described, and re- 
 pudiates and blames them in unqualified terms. 
 
 M. de Sallenauve After the express denial which I have 
 been so fortunate as to elicit, I feel, gentlemen, that it would 
 be ungracious to insist on foisting on the Government the 
 responsibility for these proceedings; but that I should have 
 made the mistake will seem to you quite natural if you re- 
 member that at the moment when I entered this hall the 
 Minister for Public Works was speaking from the tribune 
 and taking part in a very unusual way in a discussion bearing 
 on the rules of this Chamber, while trying to convince you 
 that I had treated its members with irreverent contumely. 
 
 The Minister for Public Works made some remark which 
 was not heard; there was a long burst of private discussion. 
 
 M. Victorin Hulot I would beg the President to desire 
 the Minister for Public Works not to interrupt. He will have 
 the opportunity of replying. 
 
 M. de Sallenauve According to M. de Rastignac, I failed 
 in respect to this Chamber by applying from aBroad for the 
 leave of absence which I had already taken before obtaining 
 the permission I affected to ask. But, in his anxiety to prove 
 me in the wrong, the Minister overlooks the fact that at the 
 time when I set out the session had not begun, and that by ad- 
 dressing such a request to the President of the Chamber I 
 should have appealed to a pure abstraction. ("Quite true," 
 from the Left.) As to the inadequacy of the reasons assigned 
 for my absence, I regret to say that I was unable to be more 
 explicit ; that if I should reveal the true cause of my journey, I 
 should betray a secret that is not mine. At the same time I was
 
 470 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 
 
 fully aware that by this reserve which I must even now 
 maintain I exposed my actions to monstrous misinterpreta- 
 tion, and might expect to see a mixture of the burlesque and 
 the offensive in the explanations that would be given as a 
 substitute for the facts. (Excitement.) In reality, I was so 
 anxious not to pretermit any of the formalities required by 
 my position, that I, like the Minister himself, had thought 
 of the arrangement by which I fancied I had put everything 
 in order. A man of the highest honor, and, like myself, in 
 possession of the secret that compelled me to travel, had been 
 requested by me to guarantee to the President of this Cham- 
 ber the imperative necessity to which I had yielded. But 
 calumny had, no doubt, so far done its work that this honor- 
 able gentleman feared to compromise himself by affording 
 the signal protection of his name and word to a man threat- 
 ened with a criminal action. Although at this moment dan- 
 ger seems to be receding from me, I shall not destroy the 
 incognito in which he has thought it proper and wise to shroud 
 his defection. The less I was prepared for this egotistic pru- 
 dence, the more have I the right to be surprised and pained 
 by it; but the more careful shall I be to let this breach of 
 friendship remain a secret between myself and his conscience, 
 which alone will blame him. 
 
 At this stage there was a great commotion in the gallery 
 reserved for the Peers of the Upper House, everybody crowd- 
 ing to help a lady who had a violent attack of hysterics. 
 Several members hurried to the spot, and some, doctors no 
 doubt, left {he Chamber in haste. The sitting was inter- 
 rupted for some minutes. 
 
 The President Ushers, open the ventilators. It is want 
 of air that has led to this unfortunate incident. M. de Salle- 
 nauve, be so good as to go on with your speech. 
 
 M. de Sallenauve To resume, briefly: The application 
 for authority to prosecute, of which you have heard, has now, 
 no doubt, lost much of its importance in the eyes of my col- 
 leagues, even of the more hostile. I have here a letter in 
 which the peasant-woman, my relation, withdraws her charge 
 and confirms the statements I have had the honor of laying
 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS 4^ 
 
 before you. I might read the letter, but I think it better 
 simply to place it in the President's hands. ("Quite right, 
 quite right !") As regards the illegality of my absence, I 
 returned to Paris this morning; and by being in my place at 
 the opening of this sitting, I could have been in my seat in 
 Parliament within the strict limits of the time so generously 
 granted me by this Chamber. But, as M. de Canalis sug- 
 gested to you, I was determined not to appear here till the 
 cloud that hung over my character could be cleared off. This 
 task filled up the morning. Xow, gentlemen, it is for you 
 to decide whether one of your colleagues is to be sent back to 
 his constituents, for a few hours' delay in coming to claim 
 his seat in this Chamber. After all, whether I am to be re- 
 garded as a forger, a desperate lover, or merely as a careless 
 representative, I am not uneasy as to what their verdict will 
 be ; and after the lapse of a few weeks, the probable result, as 
 I believe, will be that I shall come back again. 
 
 On all sides cries of "Divide." 
 
 On descending from the tribune, M. de Sallenauve was 
 warmly congratulated. 
 
 The President I put it to the vote: Whether or no the 
 election of M. de Sallenauve, returned as Member for Arcis, is 
 or is not valid ? 
 
 Almost every member present rose to vote in favor of the 
 admission of the new member; a few deputies of the Centre 
 abstained from voting on either side. 
 
 M. de Sallenauve was admitted and took the oaths. 
 
 M. le President The order of the day includes the first 
 reading of the Address, but the Chairman of the Committee 
 informs me that the draft will not be ready to be laid before 
 this Chamber till to-morrow. Business being done, I pro- 
 nounce the sitting closed. 
 
 The Chamber rose at half-past four. 
 
 IOTE, Balzac lett "The Memtjcr for Arris" unfinished. See introduction. 
 
 J. W. M 

 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 AND OTHER STORIES
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 IT would be difficult to find another book, composed of two 
 parts by the same author, which offers more remarkable varia- 
 tions and contrasts than the volume which contains L'Envers 
 de I'Histoire Contemporaine and Z. Marcas. And in certain 
 respects it must be said that the contrast of the longer and 
 later story with the earlier and shorter one is not such as 
 to inspire us with any great certainty that, had Balzac's com- 
 paratively short life been prolonged, we should have had many 
 more masterpieces. It is true that, considering the remark- 
 able excellence of the work (Les Parents Pauvres) which im- 
 mediately preceded L'Envers de I'Histoire, it is not possible 
 to say with confidence that the inferiority of the present 
 book is anything more than one of the usual phenomena of 
 maxima and minima of ups and downs which present 
 themselves in all human affairs. 
 
 At the same time, there is in L'Envers de I'Histoire Con- 
 temporaine an ominous atmosphere of flagging, combined 
 with a not less ominous return to a weaker handling of ideas 
 and schemes which the author had handled more strongly 
 earlier. We have seen that the secret-society craze a favor- 
 ite one with most Frenchmen, and closely connected with 
 their famous panic-terror of being "betrayed" in war and 
 politics had an especially strong hold on this most typical 
 of French novelists. He had almost begun his true career 
 with the notion of a league of Devorants, of persons banded, 
 if not exactly against society, at any rate for the gratifying
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 of their own desires and the avenging of their own wrongs, 
 wijh an utter indifference to social laws and arrangements. 
 He ended it, or nearly so, with the idea of a contrary league 
 of Consolation, which should employ money, time, pains, 
 and combination to supply the wants and heal the wounds 
 which Society either directly causes or more or less callously 
 neglects. 
 
 The later idea is, of course, a far nohler one than the 
 earlier; it shows a saner, healthier, happier state of imagina- 
 tion; it coincides rather remarkably with an increasing ten- 
 dency of the age ever since Balzac's time. Nay, more, the 
 working out of it contains none of those improbabilities and 
 childishnesses which, to any but very youthful tastes and 
 judgments, mar the Histoire des Treize. And it is also better 
 written. Balzac, with that extraordinary "long development" 
 of his, as they say of wines, constantly improved in this par- 
 ticular ; and whatever may be the doubts on the point referred 
 to above, we may say with some confidence that had he lived, 
 he would have written, in the mere sense of writing, even 
 better and better. Yet again, we catch quaint and pleasant 
 echoes of youth in these pages, and are carried back nearly 
 fifty years in nominal date, and more than twenty in dates 
 of actual invention, by such names as Montauran and Pille- 
 Miche and Marche-a-Terre. 
 
 But when all this is said, it cannot, I think, be denied that 
 a certain dulness, a heaviness, does rest on Madame de la 
 Chanterie and L'Initie. The very reference to the Medecin 
 de Campagne, which Balzac with his systematizing mania 
 brings in, calls up another unlucky contrast. There, too, the 
 benevolence and the goodness were something fanciful, not to 
 say fantastic; but there was an inspiration, a vigor, to speak
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 rulgarly, a "go," which we do not find here. Balzac's awk- 
 ward and inveterate habit of parenthetic and episodic narra- 
 tives and glances backward is not more obvious here than in 
 many other pieces; but there is not, as in some at least of 
 these other pieces, strength enough of main interest to carry 
 it off. The light is clear, it is religious and touching in its 
 dimness; but the lamp burns low. 
 
 Z. Marcas, on the other hand, written a good deal earlier 
 in the author's public career, at that quaint and tumbledown 
 residence of Les Jardies, where he did some of his very best 
 work, has all the verve and vigor which its companion or 
 companions lack. Numerous and often good as are the stories 
 by all manner of hands, eminent and other, of the strange 
 neighbors and acquaintance which the French habit of living 
 in apartments brings about, this may vie with almost the best 
 of them for individuality and force. Of course, it may be 
 said that its brevity demanded no very great effort ; and also, 
 a more worthy criticism, that Balzac has not made it so very 
 clear after all why the political ingratitude of those for whom 
 Marcas labored made it impossible for him to gain a living 
 more amply and comfortably than by copying. The former 
 carp needs no answer; the sonnet is the equal of the long 
 poem if it is a perfect sonnet. The latter, more respectable, 
 is also more damaging. But it is a fair, if not quite a full, 
 defence to say that Balzac is here once more exemplifying 
 his favorite notion of the maniaque in the French sense of 
 the man with one idea, who is incapable not only of making 
 a dishonorable surrender of that idea, but of entering into 
 even the most honorable armistice in his fight for it. Not 
 only will such a man not bow in the House of Eimmon, but 
 the fullest liberty to stay outside will not content him he
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 must force himself in and be at the idol. The external as well 
 as the internal portraiture of Z. Marcas is also as good as it 
 can be: and it cannot but add legitimate interest to the 
 sketch to remember, first, that Balzac attributes to Marcas 
 his own favorite habits and times of work ; and secondly, 
 that, like some other men of letters, he himself was an untir- 
 ing, and would fain have been an influential, politician. 
 
 "Un Episode sous la Terreur is one of the brilliant things 
 in a small way, which the author did not attempt afterwards 
 to expand at the obvious risk of weakening. It is compressed 
 into compass commensurate with its artistic limits, and, thus 
 preserved, it displays all the strength and vivacity which the 
 plot demands. When Balzac was thus content to leave a 
 'skit' of this sort, or when he condensed as only Balzac 
 could condense as in the case of La Maison du Chat-qui- 
 Pelote the result was a story the like of which could scarcely 
 be duplicated in the whole range of French literature. As 
 for the sinister side of Un Episode sous la Terreur, it is well 
 known how great was the attraction with the author for 
 things of this kind. And that he treated them vigorously and 
 well, this story will, witness." 
 
 Un Episode sous la Terreur, together with the two stories 
 just noted, forms a part of the limited Scenes de la Vie Po- 
 litique. 
 
 L'Envers de I'Histoire Contemporaine, as above stated, was, 
 in part, one of the very latest of Balzac's works, and was 
 actually finished during his residence at Vierzschovnia. 
 Mada'me de la Chanterie, however, was somewhat earlier, 
 part of it having been written in 1842. It appeared in a 
 fragmentary and rather topsy-turvy fashion, with separate 
 titles, in the Musee des Families, from September in the year
 
 INTRODUCTION xlii 
 
 just named to November 1844, and was only united together 
 in the first edition of the Comedie two years later, though 
 even after this it had a separate appearance with some others 
 of its author's works in 1847. L'Initie, or, as it was first en- 
 titled, Les Freres de la Consolation, was not written till this 
 latter year, and appeared in 1848 in the Spectateur Repub- 
 licain, but not as a book till after the author's death. In 
 both cases there was the usual alternation of chapter divisions, 
 with headings and none. 
 
 Z. Marcas, written in 1840, appeared in the Revue Paris- 
 ienne for July of that year, made its first book appearance 
 in a miscellany by different hands called Le Fruit Defendu 
 (1841), and five years later took rank in the Comedie. 
 
 The other stories included here for the sake of convenience 
 may be located readily by reference to the Balzacian scheme, 
 all being from Scenes de la Vie Parisienne. 
 
 A Prince of Bohemia, the first of the short stories which 
 Balzac originally chose as make-weights to associate with the 
 long drama of Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, is one 
 of the few things that, both in whole and in part, one would 
 much rather he had not written. Its dedication to Heine 
 only brings out its shortcomings. For Heine, though he 
 would certainly be as spiteful and unjust as Balzac here 
 shows himself, never failed to carry the laugh on his side. 
 You may wish him, in his lampoons, better morals and better 
 taste, but you can seldom wish him better literature. Had he 
 made this attack on Sainte-Beuve, we should certainly not 
 have yawned over it ; and it is rather amusing to think of the
 
 xir INTRODUCTION 
 
 sardonic smile with which the dedicatee must have read Bal- 
 zac's comfortable assurance that he, Heinrich Heine, would 
 understand the plaisanterie and the critique which Un Prince 
 de la Boheme contains. Heine "understood" most things; 
 but if understanding, as is probable, here includes sympa- 
 thetic enjoyment, we may doubt. 
 
 It was written at the same time, or very nearly so, as the 
 more serious attack on Sainte-Beuve in August 1840, and, 
 like that, appeared in Balzac's own Revue Parisienne, though 
 it was somewhat later. The thread, such as there is, of inter- 
 est is two-fold the description of the Bohemian grand sei- 
 gneur Rusticoli or La Palferine, and the would-be satire on 
 Sainte-Beuve. It is difficult to say which is least well done. 
 Both required an exceedingly light hand, and Balzac's hand 
 was at no time light. Moreover, in the sketch of La Palferine 
 he commits the error nearly as great in a book as on the 
 stage, where I am told it is absolutely fatal of delineating 
 his hero with a sort of sneaking kindness which is neither 
 dramatic impartiality nor satiric raillery. La Palferine as 
 portrayed is a "raff," with a touch of no aristocratic quality 
 except insolence. He might have been depicted with cynically 
 concealed savagery, as Swift would have done it ; with humor- 
 ous ridicule, as Gautier or Charles de Bernard would have 
 done it; but there was hardly a third way. As it is, the 
 sneaking kindness above referred to is one of the weapons in 
 the hands of those who unjustly if it be done without a great 
 deal of limitation contend that Balzac's ideal of a gentle- 
 man was low, and that he had a touch of snobbish admiration 
 for mere insolence. 
 
 Here, however, it is possible for a good-natured critic to 
 put in the apology that the artist has tried something unto
 
 INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 which he was not born, and failing therein, has apparently 
 committed faults greater than his real ones. This kindness 
 is impossible in the case of the parodies, which are no paro- 
 dies, of Sainte-Beuve. From the strictly literary point of 
 view, it is disastrous to give as a parody of a man's work, 
 with an intention of casting ridicule thereon, something 
 which is not in the least like that work, and which in conse- 
 quence only casts ridicule on its author. To the criticism 
 which takes in life as well as literature, it is a disaster to get 
 in childish rages with people because they do not think your 
 work as good as you think it yourself. And it is not known 
 that Balzac had to complain of Sainte-Beuve in any other 
 way than this, though he no doubt read into what Sainte- 
 Beuve wrote a great deal more than Sainte-Beuve did say. 
 There is a story (I think unpublished) that a certain very great 
 English poet of our times once met an excellent critic who 
 was his old friend (they are both dead now). "What do you 
 
 mean by calling vulgar?" growled the poet. "I didn't 
 
 call it vulgar," said the critic. "No ; but you meant it," re- 
 joined the bard. On this system of interpretation it is of 
 course possible to accumulate crimes with great rapidity 
 on a censor's head. But it cannot be said to be a critical or 
 rational proceeding. And it must be said that if an author 
 does reply, against the advice of Bacon and all wise people, 
 he should reply by something better than the spluttering 
 abuse of the Revue Parisienne article or the inept and irrele- 
 vant parody of this story. 
 
 Un Homme d'Affaires, relieved of this unlucky weight, is 
 better, but it also, in the eyes of some readers, does not stand 
 very high. La Palferinc reappears, and that more exalted 
 La Palferine Maxime de Trailles, "Balzac's pet scoundrel,"
 
 xvl INTRODUCTION 
 
 as some one has called him, though not present, is the hero of 
 the tale, which is artificial and slight enough. 
 
 Gaudissart II. is much better. Of course, it is very slight, 
 and the "Anglaise" is not much more like a human being 
 than most "Anglaises" in French novels till quite recently. 
 But the anecdote is amusing enough, and it is well and 
 smartly told. 
 
 "Sarrasine presents two points of divergence from other 
 Balzacian stories: It contains no feminine characters, al- 
 though the pro- and epilogue introduce two of the 'stock' 
 women personages of the Comedie. It is a story within a 
 story, which is no infrequent thing, but, unlike others, 
 the conteur is unknown. While not dealing with a theme the 
 most pleasant, Sarrasine will appeal by its clear-cut style; it 
 is one of the cleverest of the shorter tales. Considering the 
 species of singer referred to, the personnel of the Italian 
 operatic stage was well known as far back as the days of Addi- 
 son and Steele. In France also its customs were freely dis- 
 cussed. Granted, however, that such was the case, the story 
 is open to criticism on this account. It seems hardly possible 
 that a well-informed man of the time should have been en- 
 tirely ignorant of the fact that the Italians allowed no women 
 to sing in public ; and that this man, a sculptor by profession, 
 should have been deceived by the figure of a eunuch so frankly 
 displayed in the glare of the footlights. He studied every 
 line of every limb. He noted the well-formed shoulders and 
 the poise of the head. He reproduced the contour of the form 
 in marble. Yet he was deluded openly and hoaxed without 
 mercy. But, aside from this possible defect in plot, the story 
 presents a striking contrast in the figures of the passionate, 
 obstinate, hot-headed man, and the shrinking, irresolute, sex- 
 less creature."
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 Facino Cane did not originally rank in the Parisian Scenes 
 at all, but was a Conte Philosophique. It is slight and rather 
 fanciful, the chief interest lying in Balzac's unfailing fellow- 
 feeling for all those who dream of millions, as he himself did 
 all his life long, only to exemplify the moral of his own Peau 
 de Chagrin. 
 
 Un Prince de la Bolieme, in its Revue Parisienne appear- 
 ance, bore the title of Les Faniaisies de Claudine, but when, 
 four years later, it followed Honorine in book form, it took 
 the present label. The Comedie received it two years later. 
 Oaudissart II. was written for a miscellany called Le Diable 
 a Paris; but as this delayed its appearance, it was first in- 
 serted in the Presse for October 12, 1844, under a slightly 
 different title, which it kept in the Diable. Almost immedi- 
 ately, however, it joined the Comedie under its actual head- 
 ing. Un Homme d' Affaires appeared in the Siecle for Sep- 
 tember 10, 1845, and was then called Les Roueries d'un Crean- 
 cier. It entered the Comedie almost at once, but made an. 
 excursion therefrom to join, in 1847, Ou menent les mauvais 
 chemins and others as Un Drame dans les Prisons. 
 
 Facino Cane is earlier than these, having first seen the 
 light in the Chronique de Paris of March 17, 1836. Next year 
 it became an fitude Philosophique. It had another grouped 
 appearance (with La Muse du Departement and Albert 
 Savarus) in 1843, and entered the Comedie the year after. 
 
 Sarrasine was published by Werdet in October 1838, being 
 included in a volume with Les Secrets de la Princesse de 
 Cadignan, Les Employes, Facino Cane and La Maison Nu- 
 cingen, the latter of which was the title story. It was in- 
 cluded in its present place in the Comedie in 1844.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 FIRST EPISODE 
 
 MADAME DE LA CHANTEEIE 
 
 ONE fine September evening, in the year 1836, a man of 
 about thirty was leaning over the parapet of the quay at a 
 point whence the Seine may be surveyed up stream from the 
 Jardin des Plantes to Notre-Dame, and down in grand per- 
 spective to the Louvre. 
 
 There is no such view elsewhere in the Capital of Ideas 
 (Paris). You are standing, as it were, on the poop of a ves- 
 sel that has grown to vast proportions. You may dream there 
 of Paris from Roman times to the days of the Franks, from 
 the Xormans to the Burgundians, through the Middle Ages 
 to the Valois, Henri IV., Napoleon, and Louis Philippe. 
 There is some vestige or building of each period to bring it 
 to mind. The dome of Sainte-Genevieve shelters the Quartier 
 Latin. Behind you rises the magnificent east end of the 
 Cathedral. The Hotel de Ville speaks of all the revolutions, 
 the Hotel Dieu of all the miseries of Paris. After glancing 
 at the splendors of the Louvre, take a few steps, and you can 
 see the rags that hang out from the squalid crowd of houses 
 that huddle between the Quai de la Tournelle and the Hotel 
 Dieu; the authorities are, however, about to clear them away. 
 
 In 1836 this astonishing picture inculcated yet another les- 
 son. Between the gentleman who leaned over the parapet and 
 the cathedral, the deserted plot, known of old as le Terrain, 
 was still strewn with the ruins of the Archbishop's palace. As 
 we gaze there on so many suggestive objects, as the mind takes 
 in the past and the present of the city of Paris, Religion seems 
 
 CD
 
 2 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 to have established herself there that she might lay her hands 
 on the sorrows on both sides of the river, from the Faubourg 
 Saint-Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. 
 
 It is to be hoped that these sublime harmonies may be com- 
 pleted by the construction of an Episcopal palace in a Gothic 
 style to fill the place of the meaningless buildings that now 
 stand between the Island, the Rue d'Arcole, and the Quai do 
 la Cite. 
 
 This spot, the very heart of old Paris, is beyond anything 
 deserted and melancholy. The waters of the Seine break 
 against the wall with a loud noise, the Cathedral throws its 
 shadow there at sunset. It is not strange that vast thoughts 
 should brood there in a brain-sick man. Attracted perhaps 
 by an accordance between his own feelings at the moment and 
 those to which such a varied prospect must give rise, the loi- 
 terer folded his hands over the parapet, lost in the twofold con- 
 templation of Paris and of himself ! The shadows spread, 
 lights twinkled into being, and still he did not stir; carried 
 on as he was by the flow of a mood of thought, big with the 
 future, and made solemn by the past. 
 
 At this instant he heard two persons approaching, whose 
 voices had been audible on the stone bridge where they had 
 crossed from the Island of the Cite to the Quai de la Tour- 
 nelle. The two speakers no doubt believed themselves to be 
 alone, and talked somewhat louder than they Avould have 
 done in a more frequented place, or if they had noticed the 
 propinquity of a stranger. From the bridge their tones be- 
 trayed an eager discussion, bearing, as it seemed, from a few 
 words that reached the involuntary listener, on a loan of 
 money. As they came closer, one of the speakers, dressed as 
 a working man, turned from the other with a gesture of de- 
 spair. His companion looked round, called the man back, and 
 said: 
 
 "You have not a sou to pay the bridge-toll. Here !" and 
 he gave him a coin "and remember, my friend, it is God 
 Himself who speaks to us when a good thought occurs to us." 
 
 The last words startled the dreamer. The man who spoke
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY tf 
 
 had no suspicion that, to use a proverbial expression, he was 
 killing two birds with one stone; that he spoke to two un- 
 happy creatures a workman at his wits' end, and a soul with- 
 out a compass; a victim of what Panurge's sheep call Prog- 
 ress, and a victim of what France calls equality. 
 
 These words, simple enough in themselves, acquired 
 grandeur from the tone of the speaker, whose voice had a 
 sort of magical charm. Are there not such voices, calm and 
 sweet, affecting us like a view of the distant ocean ? 
 
 The speaker's costume showed him to be a priest, and hia 
 face, in the last gleam of twilight, was pale, and dignified, 
 though worn. The sight of a priest coming out of the grand 
 Cathedral of Saint Stephen at Vienna to carry extreme unc- 
 tion to a dying man, persuaded Werner, the famous tragic 
 poet, to become a Catholic. The effect was much the same 
 on our Parisian when he saw the man who, without intend- 
 ing it, had brought him consolation ; he discerned on the dark 
 line of his horizon in the future a long streak of light where 
 the blue of heaven was shining, and he followed the path of 
 light, as the shepherds of the Gospel followed the voice that 
 called to them from on high, "Christ the Lord is born !" 
 
 The man of healing speech walked on under the cathedral, 
 and by favor of Chance which is sometimes consistent 
 made his way towards the street from which the loiterer had 
 come, and whither he was returning, led there by his own 
 mistakes in life. 
 
 This young man's name was Godefroid. As this narrative 
 proceeds, the reader will understand the reasons for giving to 
 the actors in it only their Christian names. 
 
 And this is the reason why Godefroid, who lived near the 
 Chausee d'Antin, was lingering at such an hour under the 
 shadow of Notre-Dame. 
 
 He was the son of a retail dealer, who, by economy, had 
 made some little fortune, and in him centered all the ambi- 
 tions of his parents, who dreamed of seeing him a notary in 
 Paris. At the early age of seven he had been sent to a school, 
 kept by the Abbe Liautard, where he was thrown together 
 VOL. 1632
 
 4 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 with the children of certain families of distinction, who had 
 selected this establishment for the education of their sons, 
 out of attachment to religion, which, under the emperor, was 
 somewhat too much neglected in the Lycees, or public schools. 
 At that age social inequalities are not recognized between 
 school-fellows; but in 1821, when his studies were finished, 
 Godefroid, articled to a notary, was not slow to perceive the 
 distance that divided him from those with whom he had hith- 
 erto lived on terms of intimacy. 
 
 While studying the law, he found himself lost in the crowd 
 of young men of the citizen class, who, having neither a ready- 
 made fortune nor hereditary rank, had nothing to look to but 
 their personal worth or persistent industry. The hopes built 
 upon him by his father and mother, who had now retired 
 from business, stimulated his conceit without giving him 
 pride. His parents lived as simply as Dutch folks, not spend- 
 ing more than a quarter of their income of twelve thousand 
 francs; they intended to devote their savings, with half their 
 capital, to the purchase of a connection for their son. Gode- 
 froid, reduced also to live under the conditions of this do- 
 mestic thrift, regarded them as so much out of proportion to 
 his parents' dreams and his own, that he felt disheartened. 
 In weak characters such discouragement leads to envy. While 
 many other men, in whom necessity, determination, and good 
 sense were more marked than talent, went straight and stead- 
 fastly onward in the path laid down for modest ambitions, 
 Godefroid waxed rebellious, longed to shine, insisted on fac- 
 ing the brightest light, and so dazzled his eyes. He tried to 
 "get on," but all his efforts ended in demonstrating his in- 
 capacity. At last, clearly perceiving too great a discrepancy 
 between his desires and his prospects, he conceived a hatred 
 of social superiority; he became a Liberal, and tried to make 
 himself famous by a book; but he learned, to his cost, to re- 
 gard talent much as he regarded rank. Having tried by 
 turns the profession of notary, the bar, and literature, he now 
 aimed at the higher branch of the law. 
 
 At this juncture his father died. His mother, content in
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 5 
 
 her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave up almost 
 her whole fortune to his use. Possessor now, at five-and- 
 twenty, of ten thousand francs a year, he thought himself 
 rich, and he was so as compared with the past. Hitherto his 
 life had been a series of acts with no will behind them, or of 
 impotent willing; so, to keep pace with the age, to act, to be- 
 come a personage, he tried to get into some circle of society by 
 the help of his money. 
 
 At first he fell in with journalism, which has always an 
 open hand for any capital that comes in its way. Now, to 
 own a newspaper is to be a Personage; it means employing 
 talent and sharing its successes without dividing its labors. 
 Nothing is more tempting to second-rate men than thus to 
 rise by the brains of others. Paris has had a few parvenus of 
 this type, whose success is a disgrace both to the age and to 
 those who have lent a lifting shoulder. 
 
 In this class of society Godefroid was soon cut out by the 
 vulgar cunning of some and the extravagance *of others, by 
 the money of ambitious capitalists or the manoeuvring of edi- 
 tors ; then he was dragged into the dissipations that a literary 
 or political life entails, the habits of critics behind the scenes, 
 and the amusements needed by men who work their brains 
 hard. Thus he fell into bad company; but he there learned 
 that he was an insignificant-looking person, and that he had 
 one shoulder higher than the other without redeeming this 
 malformation by any distinguished ill-nature or wit. Bad 
 manners are a form of self-payment which actors snatch by 
 telling the truth. 
 
 Short, badly made, devoid of wit or of any strong bent, all 
 seemed at an end for a young man at a time when for suc- 
 cess in any career the highest gifts of mind are as nothing 
 without luck, or the tenacity which commands luck. 
 
 The revolution of 1830 poured oil on Godefroid's wounds; 
 he found the courage of hope, which is as good as that of de- 
 spair. Like many another obscure journalist, he got an ap- 
 pointment where his Liberal ideas, at loggerheads with the 
 demands of a newly-established power, made him but a re-
 
 6 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 fractory instrument. Veneered only with Liberalism, he did 
 not know, as superior men did, how to hold his own. To obey 
 the Ministry was to him to surrender his opinions. And the 
 Government itself seemed to him false to the laws that had 
 given rise to it. Godefroid declared in favor of movement 
 when what was needed was tenacity; he came back to Paris 
 almost poor, but faithful to the doctrines of the opposition. 
 
 Alarmed by the licentiousness of the press, and yet more 
 by the audacity of the republican party, he sought in retire- 
 ment the only life suited to a being of incomplete faculties, 
 devoid of such force as might defy the rough jolting of politi- 
 cal life, weary too of repeated failures, of suffering and strug- 
 gles which had won him no glory; and friendless, because 
 friendship needs conspicuous qualities or defects, while pos- 
 sessing feelings that were sentimental rather than deep. 
 Was it not, in fact, the only prospect open to a young man 
 who had already been several times cheated by pleasure, and 
 who had grown prematurely old from friction in a social cir- 
 cle that never rests nor lets others rest ? 
 
 His mother, who was quietly dying in the peaceful village 
 of Auteuil, sent to her son to come to her, as much for the 
 sake of having him with her as to start him in the road where 
 he might find the calm and simple happiness that befits such 
 souls. She had at last taken Godefroid's measure when she 
 saw that at eight-and-twenty he had reduced his whole for- 
 tune to four thousand francs a year; his desires blunted, his 
 fancied talents extinct, his energy nullified, his ambition 
 crushed, and his hatred for every one who rose by legitimate 
 effort increased by his many disappointments. 
 
 She tried to arrange a marriage for Godefroid with the only 
 daughter of a retired merchant, thinking that a wife might 
 be a guardian to his distressful mind, but the old father 
 brought the mercenary spirit that abides in those who have 
 been engaged in trade to bear on the question of settlements. 
 At the end of a year of attentions and intimacy, Godefroid's 
 suit was rejected. In the first place, in the opinion of these 
 case-hardened traders, the young man must necessarily have
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 1 
 
 retained a deep-dyed immorality from his former pursuits; 
 and then, even during this past year, he had drawn upon his 
 capital both to dazzle the parents and to attract the daugh- 
 ter. This not unpardonable vanity gave the finishing touch ; 
 the family had a horror of unthrift; and their refusal was 
 final when they heard that Godefroid had sacrificed in six 
 years a hundred and fifty thousand francs of his capital. 
 
 The blow fell all the harder on his aching heart because 
 the girl was not at all good-looking. Still, under his mother's 
 influence, Godefroid had credited the object of his addresses 
 with a sterling character and the superior advantages of a 
 sound judgment ; he was accustomed to her face, he had stud- 
 ied its expression, he liked the young lady's voice, man- 
 ners, and look. Thus, after staking the last hope of his life 
 on this attachment, he felt the bitterest despair. 
 
 His mother dying, he found himself he whose require- 
 ments had always followed the tide of fashion with five 
 thousand francs for his whole fortune, and the certainty of 
 never being able to repair any future loss, since he saw him- 
 self incapable of the energy which is imperatively demanded 
 for the grim task of making a fortune. 
 
 But a man who is weak, aggrieved, and irritable cannot 
 submit to be extinguished at a blow. While still in mourn- 
 ing, Godefroid wandered through Paris in search of some- 
 thing to "turn up" ; he dined in public rooms, he rashly intro- 
 duced himself to strangers, he mingled in society, and met 
 with nothing but opportunities for expenditure. As he wan- 
 dered about the Boulevards, he was so miserable that the sight 
 of a mother with a young daughter to marry gave him as keen 
 a pang as that of a young man going on horseback to the Bois, 
 of a parvenu in a smart carriage, or of an official with a rib- 
 bon in his buttonhole. The sense of his own inadequacy told 
 him that he could not pretend even to the more respectable of 
 second-class positions, nor to the easiest form of office-work. 
 And he had spirit enough to be constantly vexed, and sense 
 enough to bewail himself in bitter self-accusation. 
 
 Incapable of contending with life, conscious of certain su-
 
 8 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 perior gifts, but devoid of the will that brings them into play, 
 feeling himself incomplete, lacking force to undertake any 
 great work, or to resist the temptations of those tastes he 
 had acquired from education or recklessness in his past life, 
 he was a victim to three maladies, any one of them enough 
 to disgust a man with life when he has ceased to exercise his 
 religious faith. Indeed, Godefroid wore the expression so 
 common now among men, that it has become the Parisian 
 type: it bears the stamp of disappointed or smothered ambi- 
 tions, of mental distress, of hatred lulled by the apathy of a 
 life amply filled up by the superficial and daily spectacle of 
 Paris, of satiety seeking stimulants, of repining without tal- 
 ent, of the affectation of force ; the venom of past failure which 
 makes a man smile at scoffing, and scorn all that is elevating, 
 misprize the most necessary authorities, enjoy their dilemmas, 
 and disdain all social forms. 
 
 This Parisian disease is to the active and persistent coali- 
 tion of energetic malcontents what the soft wood is to the sap 
 of a tree ; it preserves it, covers it, and hides it. 
 
 Weary of himself, Godefroid one morning resolved to give 
 himself some reason for living. He had met a former school- 
 fellow, who had proved to be the tortoise of the fable while 
 he himself had been the hare. In the course of such a con- 
 versation as is natural to old companions while walking in 
 the sunshine on the Boulevard des Italiens, he was amazed 
 to find that success had attended this man, who, apparently 
 far less gifted than himself with talent and fortune, had sim- 
 ply resolved each day to do as he had resolved the day before. 
 The brain-sick man determined to imitate this simplicity of 
 purpose. 
 
 "Life in the world is like the earth," his friend had said; 
 "it yields in proportion to our labors." 
 
 Godefroid was in debt. As his first penance, his first duty, 
 he required himself to live in seclusion and pay his debts out 
 of his income. For a man who was in the habit of spending 
 six thousand francs when he had five, it was no light thing to
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 9 
 
 reduce his expenses to two thousand francs. He read the ad- 
 vertisement-sheets every morning, hoping to find a place of 
 refuge where he might live on a fixed sum, and where he might 
 enjoy the solitude necessary to a man who wanted to study 
 and examine himself, and discern a vocation. The manners 
 and customs of the boarding-houses in the Quartier Latin 
 were an offence to his taste; a private asylum, he thought, 
 would be unhealthy; and he was fast drifting back into the 
 fatal uncertainty of a will-less man, when the following adver- 
 tisement caught his eye : 
 
 "Small apartments, at seventy francs a month; might suit a clerk 
 in orders. Quiet habits expected. Board included ; and the rooms 
 will be inexpensively furnished on mutual agreement. Inquire of 
 M. Millet, grocer, Rue Chanoinesse, by Notre-Dame, for all further 
 particulars. " 
 
 Attracted by the artless style of this paragraph, and the 
 aroma of simplicity it seemed to bear, Godefroid presented 
 himself at the grocer's shop at about four in the afternoon, 
 and was told that at that hour Madame de la Chanterie was 
 dining, and could see no one at meal-times. The lady would be 
 visible in the evening after seven, or between ten and twelve 
 in the morning. While he talked, Monsieur Millet took stock 
 of Godefroid, and proceeded to put him through his first ex- 
 amination "Was monsieur single? Madame wished for a 
 lodger of regular habits. The house was locked up by eleven 
 at latest." 
 
 "Well," said he in conclusion, "you seem to me, monsieur, 
 to be of an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie's views." 
 
 "What age do you suppose I am?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "Somewhere about forty," replied the grocer. 
 
 This plain answer cast Godefroid into the depths of misan- 
 thropy and dejection. He went to dine on the Quai de la 
 Tournelle, and returned to gaze at Notre-Dame just as the 
 fires of the setting sun were rippling and breaking in wavelets 
 on the buttresses of the great nave. The quay was already 
 in shadow, while the towers still glittered in the glow, and
 
 10 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOKY 
 
 the contrast struck Godefroid as he tasted all the bitterness 
 which the grocer's brutal simplicity had stirred within him. 
 
 Thus the young man was oscillating between the whisper- 
 ings of despair and the appealing tones of religious harmony 
 aroused in his mind by the cathedral bells, when, in the dark- 
 ness, and silence, and calm moonshine, the priest's speech 
 fell on his ear. Though far from devout like most men of 
 the century his feelings were touched by these words, and 
 he went back to the Eue Chanoinesse, where he had but just 
 decided not to go. 
 
 The priest and Godefroid were equally surprised on turn- 
 ing into the Eue Massillon, opposite the north door of the 
 cathedral, at the spot where it ends by the Rue de la Colombe, 
 and is called Eue des Marmousets. When Godefroid stopped 
 under the arched doorway of the house where Madame de la 
 Chanterie lived, the priest turned round to examine him by 
 the light of a hanging oil-lamp, which will, very likely, be 
 one of the last to disappear in the heart of old Paris. 
 
 "Do you wish to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur?" 
 asked the priest. 
 
 "Yes," replied Godefroid. "The words I have just heard 
 you utter to that workman prove to me that this house, if you 
 dwell in it, must be good for the soul." 
 
 "Then you witnessed my failure," said the priest, lifting 
 the knocker, "for I did not succeed." 
 
 "It seems to me that it was the workman who failed. He 
 had begged sturdily enough for money." 
 
 "Alas!" said the priest, "one of the greatest misfortunes 
 attending revolutions in France is that each, in its turn, of- 
 fers a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower classes. 
 To rise above his status and make a fortune, which, in these 
 days, is considered the social guarantee, the workman throws 
 himself into monstrous plots, which, if they fail, must bring 
 those who dabble in them before the bar of human justice. 
 This is what good-nature sometimes ends in." 
 
 The porter now opened a heavy gate, and the priest said to 
 Godefroid :
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 1\ 
 
 "Then you have come about the rooms to let?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 The priest and Godefroid then crossed a fairly wide court 
 yard, beyond which stood the black mass of a tall house, 
 flanked by a square tower even higher than the roof, and amaz- 
 ingly old. Those who know the history of Paris are aware that 
 the old soil has risen so much round the cathedral, that there 
 is not a trace to be seen of the twelve steps which originally 
 led up to it. Hence what was the ground floor of this house 
 must now form the cellars. There is a short flight of outer 
 steps to the door of the tower, and inside it an ancient Vise 
 or stairs, winding in a spiral round a newell carved to imi- 
 tate a vine-stock. This style, resembling that of the Louis 
 XII. staircases at Blois, dates as far back as the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 Struck by these various signs of antiquity, Godefroid could 
 not help exclaiming : 
 
 "This tower was not built yesterday !" 
 
 "It is said to have withstood the attacks of the Normans 
 and to have formed part of a primeval palace of the kings 
 of Paris; but according to more probable traditions, it was 
 the residence of Fulbert, the famous Canon, and the uncle 
 of Heloise." 
 
 As he spoke the priest opened the door of the apartment, 
 which seemed to be the ground floor, and which, in fact, is 
 now but just above the ground of both the outer and the inner 
 courtyard for there is a small second court. 
 
 In the first room a servant sat knitting by the light of a 
 small lamp; she wore a cap devoid of any ornament but its 
 gauffered cambric frills. She stuck one of the needles through 
 her hair, but did not lay down her knitting as she rose to open 
 the door of a drawing-room looking out on the inner court. 
 This room was lighted up. The woman's dress suggested to 
 Godefroid that of some Gray Sister. 
 
 "Madame, I have found you a tenant," said the priest, 
 showing in Godefroid. who saw in the room three men, sitting 
 in armchairs near Madame de la Chanterie.
 
 12 - THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 The three gentlemen rose; the mistress of the house also; 
 and when the priest had pushed forward a chair for the 
 stranger, and he had sat down in obedience to a sign from 
 Madame de la Chanterie and an old-fashioned bidding to "Be 
 seated," the Parisian felt as if he were far indeed from Paris, 
 in remote Brittany, or the backwoods of Canada. 
 
 There are, perhaps, degrees of silence. Godefroid, struck 
 already by the tranquillity of the Eue Massillon and Kue 
 Chanoinesse, where a vehicle passes perhaps twice in a month, 
 struck too by the stillness of the courtyard and the tower, 
 may have felt himself at the very heart of silence, in this 
 drawing-room, hedged round by so many old streets, old court- 
 yards, and old walls. 
 
 This part of the Island, called the Cloister, preserves the 
 character common to all cloisters; it is damp, and cold, and 
 monastic; silence reigns there unbroken, even during the 
 noisiest hours of the day. It may also be remarked that this 
 part of the Cite, lying between the body of the Cathedral and 
 the river, is to the north and under the shadow of Notre- 
 Dame. The east wind loses itself there, unchecked by any 
 obstacle, and the fogs from the Seine are to some extent en- 
 trapped by the blackened walls of the ancient metropolitan 
 church. 
 
 So no one will be surprised at the feeling that came over 
 Godefroid on finding himself in this ancient abode, and in 
 the presence of four persons as silent and as solemn as every- 
 thing around them. He did not look about him ; his curiosity 
 centered in Madame de la Chanterie, whose name even had al- 
 ready puzzled him. 
 
 This lady was evidently a survival from another century, 
 not to say another world. She had a rather sweet face, with 
 a soft, coldly-colored complexion, an aquiline nose, a benign 
 brow, hazel eyes, and a double chin, the whole framed in curls 
 of silver hair. Her dress could only be described by the old 
 name of fourreau (literally, a sheath, a tightly-fitting dress), 
 so literally was she cased in it, in the fashion of the eighteenth 
 century. The material silk of carmelite gray, finely and
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 13 
 
 closely striped with green seemed to have come down from 
 the same date; the body, cut low, was hidden under a man- 
 tilla of richer silk, flounced with black lace, and fastened at 
 the bosom with a brooch containing a miniature. Her feet, 
 shod in black velvet boots, rested on a little stool. Madame de 
 la Chanterie, like her maid-servant, was knitting stockings, 
 and had a knitting pin stuck through her waving hair under 
 her lace cap. 
 
 "Have you seen Monsieur Millet?" she asked Godefroid 
 in the head voice peculiar to dowagers of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain, as if to invite him to speak, seeing that he was al- 
 most thunderstruck. 
 
 "Yes, madame." 
 
 "I am afraid the rooms will hardly suit you," she went on, 
 observing that her proposed tenant was dressed with elegance 
 in clothes that were new and smart. 
 
 Godefroid, in fact, was wearing patent leather boots, yel- 
 low gloves, handsome shirt-studs, and a neat watch chain 
 passed through the buttonhole of a black silk waistcoat 
 sprigged with blue. 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie took a small silver whistle out of 
 her pocket and blew it. The woman servant came in. 
 
 "Manon, child, show this gentleman the rooms. Will you, 
 my dear friend, accompany him?" she said to the priest. 
 "And if by any chance the rooms should suit you," she added, 
 rising, and looking at Godefroid, "we will afterwards dis- 
 cuss the terms." 
 
 Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the iron rattle 
 of a bunch of keys which Manon took out of a drawer, and 
 saw her light a candle in a large brass candlestick. 
 
 Manon led the way without speaking a word. When he 
 found himself on the stairs again, climbing to the upper floors, 
 he doubted the reality of things; he felt dreaming though 
 awake, and saw the whole world of fantastic romance such as 
 he had read of in his hours of idleness. And any Parisian 
 dropped here, as he was, out of the modern city with its lux- 
 urious houses and furniture, its glittering restaurants and
 
 14 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 theatres, and all the stirring heart of Paris, would have felt 
 as he did. The single candle carried by the servant lighted 
 the winding stair but dimly; spiders had hung it with their 
 dusty webs. 
 
 Manon's dress consisted of a skirt broadly pleated and made 
 of coarse woolen stuff; the bodice was cut square at the neck, 
 behind and before, and all her clothes seemed to move in a 
 piece. Having reached the second floor, which had been the 
 third, Manon stopped, turned the springs of an antique lock, 
 and opened a door painted in coarse imitation of knotted ma- 
 hogany. 
 
 "There!" said she, leading the way. 
 
 Who had lived in these rooms? A miser, an artist who 
 had died of want, a cynic indifferent to the world, or a pious 
 man who was alien to it? Any one of the four seemed pos- 
 sible, as the visitor smelt the very odor of poverty, saw the 
 greasy stains on wall-papers covered with a layer of smoke, 
 the blackened ceilings, the windows with their small dusty 
 panes, the brown-tiled floor, the wainscot sticky with a de- 
 posit of fog. A damp chill came down the fireplaces, faced 
 with carved stonework that had been painted, and with mir- 
 rors framed in the seventeenth century. The rooms were at 
 the angle of a square, as the house stood, enclosing the inner 
 courtyard, but this Godefroid could not see, as it was dark. 
 
 "Who used to live here?" Godefroid asked of the priest. 
 
 "A Councillor to the Parlement, Madame's grand-uncle, a 
 Monsieur de Boisfrelon. He had been quite childish ever 
 since the Revolution, and died in 1832 at the age of ninety- 
 six; Madame could not bear the idea of seeing a stranger in 
 the rooms so soon; still, she cannot endure the loss of 
 rent . . ." 
 
 "Oh, and Madame will have the place cleaned and fur- 
 nished, to be all monsieur could wish," added Manon. 
 
 "It will only depend on how you wish to arrange the rooms," 
 said the priest. "They can be made into a nice sitting-room 
 and a large bedroom and dressing-room, and the two small 
 rooms round the corner are large enough for a spacious study.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 15 
 
 That is how my rooms are arranged below this, and those on 
 the next floor." 
 
 "Yes," said Manon ; "Monsieur Alain's rooms are just like 
 these, only that they look out on the tower." 
 
 "I think I had better see the rooms again by daylight," said 
 Godefroid shyly. 
 
 "Perhaps so," said Manon. 
 
 .The priest and Godefroid went downstairs again, leaving 
 Manon to lock up, and she then followed to light them down. 
 Then, when he was in the drawing-room, Godefroid, having 
 recovered himself, could, while talking to Madame de la Chan- 
 terie, study the place, the personages, and the surroundings. 
 
 The window-curtains of this drawing-room were of old red 
 satin; there was a cornice- valance, and the curtains were 
 looped with silk cord ; the red tiles of the floor showed beyond 
 an ancient tapestry carpet that was too small to cover it en- 
 tirely. The woodwork was painted stone-color. The ceiling, 
 divided down the middle by a joist starting from the chim- 
 ney, looked like an addition lately conceded to modern lux- 
 ury ; the easy-chairs were of wood painted white, with tapestry 
 seats. A shabby clock, standing between two gilt candle- 
 sticks, adorned the chimney-shelf. An old table with stag's 
 feet stood by Madame de la Chanterie, and on it were her 
 balls of wool in a wicker basket. A clockwork lamp threw 
 light on the picture. 
 
 The three men, sitting as rigid, motionless, and speechless 
 as Bonzes, had, like Madame de la Chanterie, evidently ceased 
 speaking on hearing the stranger return. Their faces were 
 perfectly cold and reserved, as befitted the room, the house, 
 and the neighborhood. 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie agreed that Godefroid's observa- 
 tions were just, and said that she had postponed doing any- 
 thing till she was informed of the intentions of her lodger, or 
 rather of her boarder; for if the lodger could conform to the 
 ways of the household, he was to board with them but their 
 ways were so unlike those of Paris life! Here, in the Kue 
 Chanoinesse, they kept country hours; every one, as a rule,
 
 16 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 had to be in by ten at night; noise was not to be endured; 
 neither women nor children were admitted, so that their reg- 
 ular habits might not be interfered with. No one, perhaps, 
 but a priest could agree to such a rule. At any rate, Madame 
 de la Chanterie wished for some one who liked plain living 
 and had few requirements; she could only afford the most 
 necessary furniture in the rooms. Monsieur Alain was satis- 
 fied, however and she bowed to one of the gentlemen and 
 she would do the same for the new lodger as for the old. 
 
 "But," said the priest. "I do not think that monsieur is 
 quite inclined to come and join us in our convent.'' 
 
 "Indeed; why not?" said Monsieur Alain. "We are all 
 quite content, and we all get on very well." 
 
 "Madame," said Godefroid, rising, "I will have the honor 
 of calling on you again to-morrow." 
 
 Though he was but a young man, the four old gentlemen 
 and Madame de la Chanterie stood up, and the priest escorted 
 him to the outer steps. A whistle sounded, and at the signal 
 the porter appeared, lantern in hand, to conduct Godefroid 
 to the street ; then he closed the yellow gate, as heavy as that 
 of a prison, and covered with arabesque ironwork, so old that 
 it would be hard to determine its date. 
 
 When Godefroid found himself sitting in a h&ckney cab 
 and being carried to the living regions of Pans, where light 
 and warmth reigned, all he had just seen seemed like a dream ; 
 and as he walked along the Boulevard des Italiens, his im- 
 pressions already seemed as remote as a memory. He could 
 not help saying to himself: 
 
 "Shall I find those people there to-morrow, I wonder ?" 
 
 I 
 
 On the following day, when he woke in the midst of the 
 
 elegance of modern luxury and the refinements of English 
 comfort, Godefroid recalled all the details of his visit to the 
 Cloister of Notre-Dame, and came to some conclusions in his 
 mind as to the things he had seen there. The three gentle- 
 men, whose appearance, attitude, and silence had left an im- 
 pression on him, were no doubt boarders, as well as the priest
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 17 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie's gravity seemed to him to be the 
 result of the reserved dignity with which she had endured 
 some great sorrows. And yet, in spite of the explanations 
 he gave himself, Godefroid could not help feeling that there 
 was an air of mystery in these uncommunicative faces. He 
 cast a glance at his furniture to choose what he could keep, 
 what he thought indispensable; but, transporting them in 
 fancy to the horrible rooms in the Rue Chanoinesse, he could 
 not help laughing at the grotesque contrast they would make 
 there, and determined to sell everything, and pay away so 
 much as they might bring; leaving the furnishing of the 
 rooms to Madame de la Chanterie. He longed for a new life, 
 and the objects that could recall his old existence must be 
 bad for him. In his craving for transformation for his was 
 one of those natures which rush forward at once with a bound, 
 instead of approaching a situation step by step as others do 
 he was seized, as he sat at breakfast, by an idea : he would 
 realize his fortune, pay his debts, and place the surplus 
 with the banking firm his father had done business with. 
 
 This banking house was that of Mongenod and Co., estab- 
 lished in Paris since 1816 or 1817, a firm whose reputation 
 had never been blown on in the midst of the commercial de- 
 pravity which at this time had blighted, more or less, several 
 great Paris houses. Thus, in spite of their immense wealth, 
 the houses of Nucingen and du Tillet, of Keller Brothers, of 
 Palma and Co., suffer under a secret disesteem whispered, 
 as it were, between lip and ear. Hideous transactions had led 
 to such splendid results; and political successes, nay, mon- 
 archical principles, had overgrown such foul beginnings, that 
 no one in 1834 thought for a moment of the mud in which 
 the roots were set of such majestic trees the upholders of 
 the State. At the same time, there was not one of these 
 bankers that did not feel aggrieved by praises of the house 
 of Mongenod. 
 
 The Mongenods, following the example of English bankers, 
 make no display of wealth; they do everything quite quietly, 
 and carry on their business with such prudence, shrewdness,
 
 18 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 and honesty as allow them to operate with certainty from one 
 end of the world to the other. 
 
 The present head of the house, Frederic Mongenod, is 
 brother-in-law to the Vicomte de Fontaine. Thus his numer- 
 ous family is connected, through the Baron de Fontaine, with 
 Monsieur Grossetete, the Eeceiver-General (brother to the 
 Grossetete and Co. of Limoges), with the Vandenesses, and 
 with Planat de Baudry, another Eeceiver-General. This rela- 
 tionship, after being of the greatest service to the late Monge- 
 nod senior in his financial operations at the time of the Bes- 
 toration, had gained him the confidence of many of the old 
 nobility, whose capital and vast savings were intrusted to his 
 bank. Far from aiming at the peerage, like Keller, Xucin- 
 gen, and du Tillet, the Mongenods kept out of political life, 
 and knew no more of it than was needed for banking busi- 
 ness. 
 
 Mongenod's bank occupies a magnificent house in the Eue 
 de la Victoire, with a garden behind and a courtyard in front, 
 where Madame Mongenod resided with her two sons, with 
 whom she was in partnership. Madame la Yicomtesse de 
 Fontaine had taken out her share on the death of the elder 
 Mongenod in 1827. Frederic Mongenod, a handsome fellow 
 of about five-and-thirty, with a cold manner, as silent and 
 reserved as a Genevese, and as neat as an Englishman, had 
 acquired under his father all the qualifications needed in his 
 difficult business. ' He was more cultivated than most bankers, 
 for his education had given him the general knowledge which 
 forms the curriculum of the ficole Polytechnique ; and, like 
 many bankers, he had an occupation, a taste, outside his reg- 
 ular business, a love of physics and chemistry. Mongenod 
 junior, ten years younger than Frederic, filled the place, un- 
 der his elder brother, that a head-clerk holds under a lawyer 
 or a notary; Frederic was training him, as he himself had 
 been trained by his father, in the scientific side of banking, 
 for a banker is to money what a writer is to ideas they both 
 ought to know everything. 
 
 Godefroid, as he mentioned his family name, could see how
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 19 
 
 highly his father had been respected, for he was shown through 
 the offices at once to that next to Mongenod's private room. 
 This room was shut in by glass doors, so that, in spite of his 
 wish not to listen, Godefroid overheard the conversation going 
 on within. 
 
 "Madame, your account shows sixteen hundred thousand 
 francs on both sides of the balance sheet," Mongenod the 
 younger was saying. "I know not what my brother's views 
 may be; he alone can decide whether an advance of a hun- 
 dred thousand francs is possible. You lacked prudence. It 
 is not wise to put sixteen hundred thousand francs into a 
 business " 
 
 "Too loud, Louis \" said a woman's voice. "Your brother's 
 advice is never to speak but in an undertone. There may 
 be some one in the little waiting-room." 
 
 At this instant Frederic Mongenod opened the door from 
 his living rooms to his private office; he saw Godefroid, and 
 went through to the inner room, where he bowed respectfully 
 to the lady who was talking to his brother. 
 
 He showed Godefroid in first, saying as he did so, "And 
 whom have I the honor of addressing?" 
 
 As soon as Godefroid had announced himself, Frederic of- 
 fered him a chair ; and while the banker was opening his desk, 
 Louis Mongenod and the lady, who was none else than Ma- 
 dame de la Chanterie, rose and went up to Frederic. Then 
 they all three went into a window recess, where they stood 
 talking to Madame Mongenod, who was in all the secrets of 
 the business. For thirty years past this clever woman had 
 given ample proofs of her capacity, to her husband first, now 
 to her sons, and she was, in fact, an active partner in the 
 house, signing for it as they did. Godefroid saw in a pigeon- 
 hole a number of boxes labeled "La Chanterie," and num- 
 bered 1 to 7. 
 
 When the conference was ended by a word from the Senior 
 to his brother, "Well, then, go to the cashier," Madame dc la 
 Chanterie turned round, saw Godefroid, restrained a start of 
 surprise, and then asked a few whispered questions of Monge- 
 nod, who replied briefly, also in a low voice.
 
 20 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie wore thin prunella shoes and gray 
 silk stockings; she had on the same dress as before, and was 
 wrapped in the Venetian cloak that was just coming into 
 fashion again. Her drawn bonnet of green silk, a la bonne 
 femme, was lined with white, and her face was framed in flow- 
 ing lace. She stood very erect, in an attitude which bore wit- 
 ness, if not to high birth, at any rate to aristocratic habits. 
 But for her extreme affability, she would perhaps have 
 seemed proud. In short, she was very imposing. 
 
 "It is not so much good luck as a dispensation of Provi- 
 dence that has brought us together here, monsieur," said she 
 to Godefroid. "I was on the point of declining a boarder 
 whose habits, as I fancied, were ill suited to those of my 
 household; but Monsieur Mongenod has just given me some 
 information as to your family which is 
 
 "Indeed, madame monsieur " said Godefroid, address- 
 ing the lady and the banker together, "I have no longer any 
 family, and I came to ask advice of my late father's banker 
 to arrange my affairs in accordance with a new plan of life." 
 
 Godefroid told his story in a few words, and expressed his 
 desire of leading a new life. 
 
 "Formerly," said he, "a man in my position would have 
 turned monk; but there are now no religious Orders 
 
 "Go to live with Madame, if she will accept you as a 
 boarder," said Frederic Mongenod, after exchanging glances 
 with Madame de la Chanterie, "and do not sell your invest- 
 ments; leave them in my hands. Give me the schedule of 
 your debts; I will fix dates of payment with your creditors, 
 and you can draw for your own use a hundred and fifty francs 
 a month. It will take about two years to pay everything off. 
 During those two years, in the home you are going to, you will 
 have ample leisure to think of a career, especially as the peo- 
 ple you will be living with can give you good advice." 
 
 Louis Mongenod came back with a hundred thousand-franc 
 notes, which he gave to Madame de la Chanterie. Godefroid 
 offered his arm to his future landlady, and took her to her 
 hackney-coach.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 21 
 
 "Then we shall meet again presently," said she in a kind 
 tone. 
 
 "At what hour shall you be at home, madame ?" said Gode- 
 froid. 
 
 "In two hours' time." 
 
 "I have time to get rid of my furniture," said he, with a 
 bow. 
 
 During the few minutes while Madame de la Chanterie's 
 arm had lain on his as they walked side by side, Godefroid 
 could not see beyond the halo cast about this woman by the 
 words, "Your account stands at sixteen hundred thousand 
 francs," spoken by Louis Mongenod to a lady who buried her 
 life in the depths of the Cloitre de Notre-Daine. 
 
 This idea, "She must be rich !" had entirely changed his 
 view of things. "How old is she, I wonder?" 
 
 And he had a vision of a romance in his residence in the 
 Eue Chanoinesse. 
 
 "She looks like an aristocrat; does she dabble in banking 
 affairs?" he asked himself. 
 
 And in our day nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of 
 a thousand would have thought of the possibility of marry- 
 ing this woman. 
 
 A furniture-dealer, who was also a decorator, but chiefly an 
 agent for furnished flats, gave about three thousand francs 
 for all that Godefroid wished to dispose of, leaving the things 
 in his rooms for the few days needed to clean and arrange 
 the dreadful rooms in the Eue Chanoinesse. 
 
 Thither the brain-sick youth at once repaired; he called 
 in a painter, recommended by Madame de la Chanterie, who 
 undertook for a moderate sum to whitewash the ceilings, clean 
 the windows, paint the wainscoting like gray maple, and color 
 the floors, within a week. Godefroid measured the rooms to 
 carpet them all alike with green drugget of the cheapest de- 
 scription. He wished everything to be uniform and as sim- 
 ple as possible in his cell. 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie approved of this. With Manon's 
 assistance she calculated how much white dimity would be
 
 22 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 needed for the window curtains and for a simple iron bed- 
 stead; then she undertook to procure the stuff and to have 
 them made for a price so small as to amaze Godefroid. With 
 the new furniture he would send in, his apartments would not 
 cost him more than six hundred francs. 
 
 "So I can take about a thousand to Monsieur Mongenod." 
 
 "We here lead a Christian life," said Madame de la Chan- 
 terie, "which is, as you know, quite out of keeping with much 
 superfluity, and I fear you still preserve too many." 
 
 As she gave her new boarder this piece of advice, she 
 glanced at the diamond that sparkled in a ring through which 
 the ends of Godefroid's blue necktie were drawn. 
 
 "I only mention this," she added, "because I perceive that 
 you are preparing to break with the dissipated life of which 
 you spoke with regret to Monsieur Mongenod." 
 
 Godefroid gazed at Madame de la Chanterie, listening with 
 delight to the harmony of her clear voice ; he studied her face, 
 which was perfectly colorless, worthy to be that of one of 
 the grave cold Dutch women so faithfully depicted by the 
 painters of the Flemish school, faces on which a wrinkle 
 would be impossible. 
 
 "Plump and fair!" thought he, as he went away. "Still, 
 her hair is white " 
 
 Godefroid, like all weak natures, had readily accustomed 
 himself to the idea of a new life, believing it would be per- 
 fect happiness, and he was eager to settle in the Eue Chanoi- 
 nesse; nevertheless, he had a gleam of prudence or, if you 
 like, of suspicion. Two days before moving in he went again 
 to Monsieur Mongenod to ask for further information con- 
 cerning the household he was going to join. During the few 
 minutes he had spent now and then in his future home, to see 
 what alterations were being made, he had observed the going 
 and coming of several persons whose appearance and man- 
 ner, without any air of mystery, suggested that they were 
 busied in the practice of some profession, some secret occu- 
 pation with the residents in the house. At this time many 
 plots were afoot to help the elder branch of Bourbons to re-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 23 
 
 mount the throne, and Godefroid believed there was some 
 conspiracy here. 
 
 But when he found himself in the banker's private room 
 and under his searching eye, he was ashamed of himself as he 
 formulated his question and saw a sardonic smile on Frederic 
 Mongenod's lips. 
 
 "Madame la Baronne de la Chanterie," he replied, "is one 
 of the obscurest but one of the most honorable women in Paris. 
 Have you any particular reason for asking for information?" 
 
 Godefroid fell back on flat excuses : he was arranging to 
 live a long time with these strangers, and it was as well to 
 know to whom he was tying himself, and the like. But the 
 banker's smile only became more and more ironical, and 
 Godefroid more and more ashamed, till he blushed at the step 
 he had taken, and got nothing by it ; for he dared ask no more 
 questions about Madame de la Chanterie or his fellow- 
 boarders. 
 
 Two days later, after dining for the last time at the Cafe 
 Anglais, and seeing the first two pieces at the Varietes, at ten 
 o'clock on a Monday night he came to sleep in the Eue Chanoi- 
 nesse, where Manon lighted him to his room. 
 
 Solitude has a charm somewhat akin to that of the wild life 
 of savages, which no European ever gives up after having 
 once tasted it. This may seem strange in an age when every 
 one lives so completely in the sight of others that everybody 
 is inquisitive about everybody else, and that privacy will soon 
 have ceased to exist, so quickly do the eyes of the Press 
 the modern Argus increase in boldness and intrusiveness ; 
 and yet the statement is supported by the evidence of the first 
 six Christian centuries, when no recluse ever came back to 
 social life again. There are few mental wounds that solitude 
 cannot cure. Thus, in the first instance, Godefroid was struck 
 by the calm and stillness of his new abode, exactly as a tired 
 traveler finds rest in a bath. 
 
 On the day after his arrival as a boarder with Madame de 
 la Chanterie, he could not help cross-examining himself on
 
 24 
 
 finding himself thus cut off from everything, even from Paris, 
 though he was still under the shadow of its Cathedral. Here, 
 stripped of every social vanity, there would henceforth be no 
 witnesses to his deeds but his conscience and his fellow- 
 boarders. This was leaving the beaten high-road of the world 
 for an unknown track ; and whither would the track lead him ? 
 To what occupation would he find himself committed? 
 
 He had been lost in such reflections for a couple of hours, 
 when Manon, the only servant of the establishment, knocked 
 at his door and told him that the second breakfast was served ; 
 they were waiting for him. Twelve was striking. 
 
 The new boarder went downstairs at once, prompted by 
 his curiosity to see the five persons with whom he was thence- 
 forth to live. On entering the drawing-room, he found all 
 the residents in the house standing up and dressed precisely 
 as they had been on the day when he had first come to make 
 inquiries. 
 
 "Did you sleep well?" asked Madame de la Chanterie. 
 
 "I did not wake till ten o'clock," said Godefroid, bowing 
 to the four gentlemen, who returned the civility with much 
 gravity. 
 
 "We quite expected it," said the old man, known as Mon- 
 sieur Alain, and he smiled. 
 
 "Manon spoke of the second breakfast," Godefroid went on. 
 "I have, I fear, already broken one of your rules without in- 
 tending it. At what hour do you rise?" 
 
 "We do not get up quite by the rule of the monks of old," 
 replied Madame de la Chanterie graciously, "but, like work- 
 men, at six in winter and at half-past three in summer. We 
 also go to bed by the rule of the sun ; we are always asleep by 
 nine in winter, by half-past eleven in summer. We drink 
 some milk, which is brought from our own farm, after pray- 
 ers, all but Monsieur 1'Abbe de Veze, who performs early 
 Mass ?t Notre-Dame at six in summer, at seven in winter 
 and these gentlemen as well as I, your humble servant, at- 
 tend that service every, day." 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie finished this speech at table, where 
 her five Qfuests were now seated.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 25 
 
 The dining-room, painted gray throughout, and decorated 
 with carved wood of a design showing the taste of Louis XIV., 
 opened out of the sort of ante-room where Manon sat, and 
 ran parallel with Madame de la Chanterie's room, adjoining 
 the drawing-room, no doubt. There was no ornament but 
 an old clock. The furniture consisted of six chairs, their 
 oval backs upholstered with worsted- work evidently done by 
 Madame de la Chanterie, of two mahogany sideboards, and a 
 table to match, on which Manon placed the breakfast without 
 spreading a cloth. The breakfast, of monastic frugality, con- 
 sisted of a small turbot with white sauce, potatoes, a salad, 
 and four dishes of fruit: peaches, grapes, strawberries, and 
 green almonds ; then, by way of hors d'ceuvre, there was honey 
 served in the comb as in Switzerland, besides butter, radishes, 
 cucumber, and sardines. The meal was served in china 
 sprigged with small blue cornflowers and green leaves, a pat- 
 tern which was no doubt luxuriously fashionable in the time of 
 Louis XVI., but which the increasing demands of the present 
 day have made common. 
 
 "It is a fast day !" observed Monsieur Alain. "Since we 
 go to Mass every morning, you may suppose that we yield 
 blindly to all the practices of the Church, even the strictest." 
 
 "And you will begin by following our example," added 
 Madame de la Chanterie, with a side-glance at Godefroid, 
 whom she had placed by her side. 
 
 Of the four boarders, Godefroid already knew the names 
 of the Abbe de Veze and Monsieur Alain; but he yet had to 
 learn those of the other two gentlemen. They sat in silence, 
 eating with the absorbed attention that the pious seem to de- 
 vote to the smallest details of their meals. 
 
 "And does this fine fruit also come from your farm, ma- 
 dame?" Godefroid inquired. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," she replied. "We have our little model 
 farm, just as the Government has; it is our country house, 
 about three leagues from hence, on the road to Italy, near 
 Villeneuve-Saint-Georges." 
 
 "It is a little estate that belongs to us all, and will be the
 
 26 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 property of the last survivor," said the worthy Monsieur 
 Alain. 
 
 "Oh, it is quite inconsiderable," added Madame de la 
 Chanterie, who seemed afraid lest Godefroid should regard 
 this speech as a bait. . 
 
 "There are thirty acres of arable land," said one of the 
 men unknown to Godefroid, "six acres of meadow, and an 
 enclosure of about four acres of garden, in the midst of which 
 our house stands; in front of it is the farm." 
 
 "But such an estate must be worth above a hundred thou- 
 sand francs," observed Godefroid. 
 
 "Oh, we get nothing out of it but our produce," replied the 
 same speaker. 
 
 He was a tall man, thin and grave. At a first glance he 
 seemed to have served in the army; his white hair showed 
 that he was past sixty, and his face revealed great sorrows 
 and religious resignation. 
 
 The second stranger, who appeared to be a sort of com- 
 pound of a master of rhetoric and a man of business, was of 
 middle height, stout but active, and his face bore traces of a 
 joviality peculiar to the notaries and attorneys of Paris. 
 
 The dress of all four men was marked by the extreme neat- 
 ness due to personal care; .and Manon's hand was visible in 
 the smallest details of their raiment. Their coats were per- 
 haps ten years old, and preserved, as a priest's clothes are 
 preserved, by the occult powers of a housekeeper and by con- 
 stant use. These men wore,, as it were, the livery of a sys- 
 tem of life ; they were all the slaves of the same thought, their 
 looks spoke the same word, their faces wore an expression 
 of gentle resignation, of inviting tranquillity. 
 
 "Am I indiscreet, madame," said Godefroid, "to ask the 
 names of these gentlemen ? I am quite prepared to tell them 
 all about myself ; may I not know as much about them as cir- 
 cumstances allow?" 
 
 "This," said Madame de la Chanterie, introducing the tall, 
 thin man, "is Monsieur Nicolas; he is a retired Colonel of 
 the Gendarmerie, ranking as a Major-General. And this
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 27 
 
 gentleman," she went on, turning to the little stout man, "was 
 formerly Councillor to the Bench of the King's Court in 
 Paris; he retired from his functions in August 1830 ; his name 
 is Monsieur Joseph. Though you joined us but yesterday, 
 I may tell you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas bore the 
 name of Marquis de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph that 
 of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes; but to us, as to the outer 
 world, these names no longer exist. These gentlemen have 
 no heirs; they have anticipated the oblivion that must fall on 
 their families; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and Mon- 
 sieur Joseph, as you will be simply Monsieur Godefroid." 
 
 As he heard these two names one so famous in the history 
 of Royalism from the disaster which put an end to the rising 
 of the Chouans at the beginning of the Consulate, the other 
 so long respected in the records of the old Parlement Gode- 
 froid could not repress a start of surprise ; but when he looked 
 at these survivors from the wreck of the two greatest institu- 
 tions of the fallen monarchy, he could not detect the slightest 
 movement of feature or change of countenance that betrayed 
 a worldly emotion. These two men did not or would not re- 
 member what they once had been. This was Godefroid's 
 first lesson. 
 
 "Each name, gentlemen, is a chapter of history," said he 
 respectfully. 
 
 "The history of our own time," said Monsieur Joseph, "of 
 mere ruins." 
 
 "You are in good company," said Monsieur Alain, smiling. 
 
 He can be described in two words : he was a middle-class 
 Paris citizen; a worthy man with the face of a calf, dignified 
 by white hairs, but insipid with its eternal smile. 
 
 As to the priest, the Abbe de Veze, his position was all 
 sufficient. The priest who fulfils his mission is recognizable 
 at the first glance when his eyes meet yours. 
 
 What chiefly struck Godefroid from the first was the pro- 
 found respect shown by the boarders to Madame de la Chan- 
 terie; all of them, even the priest, notwithstanding the sacred 
 dignity conferred by his functions, behaved to her as to a
 
 28 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 queen. He also noted the temperance of each gr^est ; they ate 
 solely for the sake of nourishment. Madame de la Chanterie, 
 like the rest, took but a single peach and half a bunch of 
 grapes; but she begged the newcomer not to restrict himself 
 in the same way, offering him every dish in turn. 
 
 Godefroid's curiosity was excited to the highest pitch by 
 this beginning. After the meal they returned to the drawing- 
 room, where he was left to himself; Madame de la Chanterie 
 and her four friends held a little privy council in a window 
 recess. This conference, in which no animation was displayed, 
 lasted for about half an hour. They talked in undertones, 
 exchanging remarks which each seemed to have thought out 
 beforehand. Now and again Monsieur Alain and Monsieur 
 Joseph consulted their pocket-books, turning over the leaves. 
 
 "You will see to the Faubourg/' said Madame de la 
 Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas, who went away. 
 
 These were the first words Godefroid could overhear. 
 
 "And you to the Quartier Saint-Marceau," she went on, 
 addressing Monsieur Joseph. 
 
 "Will you take the Faubourg Saint-Germain and try to 
 find what we need?" she added to the Abbe de Veze, who at 
 once went off. "And you, my dear Alain," she added with a 
 smile, "look into matters. To-day's business is all settled," 
 said she, returning to Godefroid. 
 
 She sat down in her armchair, and took from a little work- 
 table some under-linen ready cut out, on which she began to 
 sew as if working against time. 
 
 Godefroid, lost in conjectures, and seeing in all this a Roy- 
 alist conspiracy, took the lady's speech as introductory, and, 
 seating himself by her side, watched her closely. He was 
 struck by her singular skill in stitching; while everything 
 about her proclaimed the great lady, she had the peculiar 
 deftness of a paid seamstress ; for every one can distinguish, 
 by certain tricks of working, the habits of a professional from 
 those of an amateur. 
 
 "You sew," said Godefroid, "as if you were used to the 
 business."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 29 
 
 "Alas!" she said, without looking up, "I have done it ere 
 now from necessity " 
 
 Two large tears rose to the old woman's eyes, and rolled 
 down her cheeks on to the work she held. 
 
 "Pray, forgive me, madame !" cried Godef roid. 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie looked at her new inmate, and 
 saw on his features such an expression of regret, that she 
 nodded to him kindly. Then, after wiping her eyes, she recov- 
 ered the composure that characterized her face, which was not 
 so much cold as chilled. 
 
 "You here find yourself, Monsieur Godefroid for, as you 
 know already, you will be called only by your Christian name 
 amid the wreckage from a great storm. We have all been 
 stricken and wounded to the heart through family interests or 
 damaged fortunes, by the forty years' hurricane that over- 
 threw royalty and religion, and scattered to the winds the 
 elements that constituted France as it was of old. Words 
 which seem but trivial bear a sting for us, and that is the rea- 
 son of the silence that reigns here. We rarely speak of our- 
 selves ; we have forgotten what we were, and have found means 
 of substituting a new life for the old life. It was because I 
 fancied, from your revelation to the Mongenods, that there 
 was some resemblance between your situation and our own, 
 that I persuaded my four friends to receive you among us; 
 in fact, we were anxious to find another recluse for our con- 
 vent. But what do you propose to do ? We do not enter on 
 solitude without some stock of moral purpose." 
 
 "Madame, as I hear you speak, I shall be too happy to ac- 
 cept you as the arbiter of my destiny." 
 
 "That is speaking like a man of the world," said she. "You 
 are trying to flatter me a woman of sixty! My dear boy," 
 she went on, "you are, you must know, among people who be- 
 lieve firmly in God, who have all felt His hand, and who have 
 given themselves up to Him almost as completely as do the 
 Trappists. Have you ever observed the assurance of a true 
 priest when he has given himself to the Lord, when he heark- 
 ens to His voice and strives to be a docile instrument under the
 
 30 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 fingers of Providence? He has shed all vanity, all self-con- 
 sciousness, all the feelings which cause constant offences to 
 the worldly ; his quiescence is as complete as that of the fatal- 
 ist, his resignation enables him to endure all things. The 
 true priest an Abbe da Veze is like a child with his mother ; 
 for the Church, my dear sir, is a good mother. Well, a man 
 may be a priest without a tonsure; not all priests are in or- 
 ders. If we devote ourselves to doing good, we imitate the 
 good priest, we obey God ! I am not preaching to you ; I do 
 not want to convert you ; I am only explaining our life." 
 
 "Instruct me, madame," said Godefroid, quite conquered. 
 "I would wish not to fail in any particular of your rules." 
 
 "You would find that too much to do ; you will learn by de- 
 grees. Above all things, never speak here of your past mis- 
 fortunes, which are mere child's play as compared with the 
 terrible catastrophes with which God has stricken those with 
 whom you are now living " 
 
 All the time she spoke, Madame de la Chanterie went on 
 pulling her thread through with distracting regularity; but 
 at this full stop, she raised her head and looked at Godefroid ; 
 she saw that he was spellbound by the thrilling sweetness of 
 her voice, which had indeed a sort of apostolic unction. The 
 young sufferer was gazing with admiration at the really extra- 
 ordinary appearance of this woman, whose face was radiant. 
 A faint flush tinged her wax-white cheeks, her eyes sparkled, 
 a youthful soul gave life to the wrinkles that had acquired 
 sweetness, and everything about her invited affection. Gode- 
 froid sat measuring the depth of the gulf that parted this 
 woman from vulgar souls ; he saw that she had attained to an 
 inaccessible height, whither religion had guided her; and he 
 was still too much of the world not to be stung to the quick, 
 not to long to go down into that gulf and climb to the sharp 
 peak where Madame de la Chanterie stood, and to stand by 
 her side. While he gave himself up to a thorough study of 
 this woman, he related to her all the mortifications of his life, 
 all he could not say at Mongenod's, where his self-betrayal had 
 been limited to a statement of his position.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 31 
 
 "Poor child !" 
 
 This motherly exclamation, dropping from the lips of Ma- 
 dame de la Chanterie, fell, from time to time, like healing 
 balm, on the young man's heart. 
 
 "What can I find to take the place of so many hopes de- 
 ceived, of so much disappointed affection?" said he at last, 
 looking at the lady, who seemed lost in reverie. "I came here," 
 he went on, "to reflect and make up my mind. I have lost 
 my mother will you take her place : " 
 
 "But," said she, "will you show me a son's obedience?" 
 
 "Yes, if you can show me the tenderness that exacts it." 
 
 "Very well; we will try," said she. 
 
 Godefroid held out his hand to take that which the lady 
 offered him, and raised it reverently to his lips. Madame de 
 la Chanterie's hands were admirably formed neither wrin- 
 kled, nor fat, nor thin ; white enough to move a young woman 
 to envy, and of a shape that a sculptor might copy. Godefroid 
 had admired these hands, thinking them in harmony with the 
 enchantment of her voice and the heavenly blue of her eye. 
 
 "Wait here," said Madame de la Chanterie, rising and go- 
 ing into her own room. 
 
 Godefroid was- deeply agitated, and could not think to what 
 he was to attribute the lady's departure : he was not left long 
 in perplexity, for she returned with a book in her hand. 
 
 "Here, my dear bo}^" said she, "are the prescriptions of a 
 great healer of souls. When the things of everyday life have 
 failed to give us the happiness we looked for, we must seek in 
 a higher life, and here is the key to that new world. Read a 
 chapter of this book morning and evening; but give it your 
 whole attention; study every word as if it were some foreign 
 tongue. By the end of a month you will be another man. For 
 twenty years now have I read a chapter every day, and my 
 three friends, Nicolas, Alain, and Joseph, would no more omit 
 it than they would miss going to bed and getting up again; 
 
 imitate them for the love of God for my sake " she said, 
 
 with divine serenity and dignified confidence. 
 
 Godefroid turned the book round and read on the back
 
 32 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 Imitation of Jesus Christ. The old lady's artlessness and 
 youthful candor, her certainty that she was doing him good, 
 confounded the ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie had ex- 
 actly the manner, the intense satisfaction, of a woman who 
 might offer a hundred thousand francs to a merchant on the 
 verge of bankruptcy. 
 
 "I have used this book," she said, "for six-and-twenty years. 
 God grant that its use may prove contagious ! Go and buy 
 me another copy, for the hour is at hand when certain persons 
 are coming here who must not be seen/' 
 
 Godefroid bowed and went up to his rooms, where he tossed 
 the book on a table, exclaiming : 
 
 "Poor, dear woman ! There " 
 
 The book, like all that are constantly used, fell open at a 
 particular place. Godefroid sat down to arrange his ideas a 
 little, for he had gone through more agitation that morning 
 than he had in the course of the most stormy two months of 
 his life; his curiosity especially had never been so strongly 
 excited. His eyes wandered mechanically, as happens with 
 men when their minds are absorbed in meditation, and fell 
 on the two pages that lay facing him. He read as follows : 
 
 "CHAPTER XII. 
 "ON THE ROYAL ROAD OF THE HOLY CROSS." 
 
 He picked up the volume, and this paragraph of that grand 
 book captivated his eyes as though by words of fire : 
 
 "He has gone before you carrying His cross, and died for 
 you, that you too might have strength to carry your cross, 
 and be willing to die upon the Cross. . . . 
 
 "Go where you will, try what you will, you will not find 
 a grander way, or a safer way, than the way of the Holy Cross. 
 Arrange and order all your life as you like or think fit, still 
 you will find that you will always have something to suffer, 
 by your own choice or by necessity; and so you will always
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 33 
 
 find a cross. For either you will have bodily pain to bear, 
 or some trouble of the spirit. 
 
 "Sometimes God will leave you to yourself, sometimes you 
 will be vexed by your neighbor, and, what is harder than all, 
 you will often be weary of yourself, and there is no remedy 
 or solace by which you can be delivered or relieved. You will 
 have to bear your trouble as long as God decrees. For He 
 wishes you to learn to suffer trial without consolation, to 
 yield humbly to His will, and to become humbler by means 
 of tribulations." 
 
 "What a book !" said Godefroid to himself, as he turned 
 over the pages. 
 
 And he came upon these words: 
 
 <r When you have come to feel all trouble sweet and pleasant 
 for the love of Christ, then indeed you may say that all is 
 well with you ; you have made for yourself a heaven on earth/' 
 
 Irritated by this simplicity, characteristic of strength, and 
 enraged at being vanquished by this book, he shut it; but 
 on the morocco cover he saw this motto, stamped in letters 
 of gold: 
 
 "Seek only that which is eternal." 
 
 "And have they found it here?" he wondered. 
 
 He went out to purchase a handsome copy of the Imitation 
 of Christ, remembering that Madame de la Chanterie would 
 want to read a chapter that evening. He went downstairs 
 and into the street. For a minute or two he remained stand- 
 ing near the gate, undecided as to which way he would go, 
 and wondering in what street, and at what bookseller's he 
 might find the book he needed ; and he then heard the heavy 
 sound of the outer gate shutting. 
 
 Two men had just come out of the Hotel de la Chanterie 
 for the reader, if he has understood the character of the old 
 house, will have recognized it as an ancient family mansion. 
 Manon, when she had called Godefroid to breakfast, had asked
 
 34 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 him how he had slept the first night at the Hotel de la Chan- 
 terie, laughing as she spoke. 
 
 Godefroid followed the two men, with no idea of spying on 
 them; and they, taking him for an indifferent passer-by, 
 talked loud enough for him to hear them in those deserted 
 streets. The men turned down the Rue Massillon, along 
 by the side of Notre-Dame, and across the Cathedral Square. 
 
 "Well, old man, you see how easy it is to get the coppers 
 out of 'em ! You must talk their lingo, that is all." 
 
 "But we owe the money." 
 
 "Who to?" 
 
 "To the lady " 
 
 "I should like to see myself sued for debt by that old 
 image ! I would 
 
 "You would what? You would pay her, I can tell you." 
 
 "You're right there, for if I paid I could get more out of 
 her afterwards than I got to-day." 
 
 "But wouldn't it be better to take their advice and set up 
 on the square?" 
 
 "Get out !" 
 
 "Since she said she could find some one to stand security ?" 
 
 "But we should have to give up life " 
 
 "I am sick of 'life' it is not life to be always working in 
 the vineyards 
 
 "No; but didn't the Abbe throw over old Marin the other 
 day. He wouldn't give him a thing." 
 
 "Ay, but old Marin wanted to play such a game as no one 
 can win at that has not thousands at his back." 
 
 At this moment the two men, who were dressed like work- 
 ing foremen, suddenly doubled, and retraced their steps to 
 cross the bridge by the Hotel-Dieu to the Place Maubert; 
 Godefroid stood aside ; but seeing that he was following them 
 closely, the men exchanged looks of suspicion, and they were 
 evidently vexed at having spoken out so plainly. 
 
 Godefroid was indeed all the more interested in the con- 
 versation because it reminded him of the scene between the 
 Abbe de Veze and the workman on the evening of his first 
 call.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE 'OF HISTORY 35 
 
 "What goes on at Madame de la Chanterie's r" he asked 
 himself once more. 
 
 As he thought over this question, he made his way to a 
 bookshop in the Eue Saint-Jacques, and returned home with 
 a very handsome copy of the best edition of The Imitation 
 that has been published in France. 
 
 As he walked slowly homewards to be punctual to the 
 dinner-hour, he went over in his mind all his experience of 
 the morning, and found his soul singularly refreshed by it. 
 He was possessed indeed by intense curiosity, but that curi- 
 osity paled before an indefinable wish; he was attracted by 
 Madame de la Chanterie, he felt a vehement longing to attach 
 himself to her, to devote himself for her, to please her and 
 deserve her praise; in short, he was aware of a Platonic pas- 
 sion; he felt that there was unfathomed greatness in that 
 soul, and that he must learn to know it thoroughly. He was 
 eager to discover the secrets of the life of these pure-minded 
 Catholics. And then, in this little congregation of the Faith- 
 ful, practical religion was so intimately allied with all that 
 is most majestic in the Frenchwoman, that he resolved to do 
 his utmost to be admitted to the fold. Such a vein of feeling 
 would have been sudden indeed in a man of busy life; but 
 Godefroid, as we have seen, was in the position of a ship- 
 wrecked wretch who clings to the most fragile bough, hoping 
 that it may bear him, and his soul was ploughed land, ready 
 to receive any seed. 
 
 He found the four gentlemen in the drawing-room, and 
 he presented the book to Madame de la Chanterie, saying: 
 
 "I would not leave you without a copy for this evening." 
 
 "God grant," said she, looking at the splendid volume, 
 "that this may be your last fit of elegance !" 
 
 And seeing that the four men had reduced the smallest 
 details of their raiment to what was strictly decent and useful, 
 noticing too that this principle was rigorously carried out 
 in every detail of the house, Godefroid understood the purpose 
 of this reproof so delicately expressed. 
 
 "Madame," said he, "the men you benefited this morning 
 VOL 16 34
 
 36 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 are monsters. Without intending it, I overheard what they 
 were saying as they went away, and it was full of the blackest 
 ingratitude." 
 
 "The two iron-workers from the Rue Mouffetard," said 
 Madame de la Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas, "that is your 
 concern " 
 
 "The fish gets off the hook more than once before it is 
 caught," said Monsieur Alain, laughing. 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie's entire indifference on hearing 
 of the immediate ingratitude of the men to whom she had 
 certainly given money amazed Godefroid, who became 
 thoughtful. 
 
 Monsieur Alain and the old lawyer made the dinner a 
 cheerful meal ; but the soldier was constantly grave, sad, and 
 cold; his countenance bore the ineradicable stamp of a bitter 
 sorrow, a perennial grief. Madame de la Chanterie was 
 equally attentive to all. Godefroid felt that he was watched 
 by these men, whose prudence was not less than their piety, 
 and vanity led him to imitate their reserve, so he measured 
 his words carefully. 
 
 This first day, indeed, was far more lively than those 
 which came after. Godefroid, finding himself shut out from 
 all serious matters, was obliged, during the early morning 
 and the evening when he was alone in his rooms, to read The 
 Imitation of Christ, and he finally studied it as we must study 
 a book when we are imprisoned with that one alone. We 
 then feel to the book as we should towards a woman with 
 whom we dwelt in solitude; we must either love or hate the 
 woman ; and in the same way we must enter into the spirit 
 of the author or not read ten lines of his work. 
 
 N"ow it is impossible not to be held captive by The Imita- 
 tion, which is to dogma what action is to thought. The 
 Catholic spirit thrills through it, moves and works in it, 
 struggles in it hand to hand with the life of man. That 
 book is a trusty friend. It speaks to every passion, to every 
 difficulty, even to the most worldly ; it answers every objection, 
 it is more eloquent than any preacher, for it speaks with your
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 37 
 
 owu voice a voice that rises from your own heart and that 
 you hear with your soul. In short, it is the Gospel interpreted 
 and adapted to all times and seasons, controlling every situa- 
 tion. It is strange indeed that the Church should not have 
 canonized Gerson, for the Holy Spirit certainly guided his 
 pen. 
 
 To Godefroid the Hotel de la Chanterie contained a woman 
 as well as a book ; every day he was more and more bewitched 
 by her. In her he found flowers buried under the snow of 
 many winters; he had glimpses of such a sacred friendship 
 as religion sanctions, as the angels smile on as bound those 
 five, in fact and against which no evil could prevail. There 
 is a sentiment superior to all others, an affection of soul for 
 soul which resembles those rare blossoms that grow on the 
 loftiest peaks of the earth. One or two examples are shown 
 us in a century; lovers are sometime^ united by it; and it 
 accounts for certain faithful attachments which would be 
 inexplicable by the ordinary laws of the world. In such an 
 attachment there are no disappointments, no differences, no 
 vanities, no rivalries, no contrasts even, so intimately fused 
 are two spiritual natures. 
 
 It was this immense and infinite feeling, the outcome of 
 Catholic charity, that Godefroid was beginning to dream of. 
 At times he could not believe in the spectacle before his eyes, 
 and he sought to find reasons for the sublime friendships 
 between these five persons, wondering to find true Catholics, 
 Christians of the most primitive type, in Paris, and in 1836. 
 
 A week after entering the house, Godefroid had seen such 
 a number of people come and go, he had overheard fragments 
 of conversation in which such serious matters were discussed, 
 that he understood that the existence of this council of five 
 was full of prodigious activity. He noticed that not one of 
 them slept more than six hours at most. Each of them had, 
 as it were, lived through a first day before they met at the 
 second breakfast. Strangers brought in or carried away sums 
 of money, sometimes rather considerable. Mongenod's cashier
 
 38 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 came very often, always early in the morning, so that his 
 work in the bank should not be interfered with by this busi- 
 ness, which was independent of the regular affairs of the 
 House. 
 
 One evening Monsieur Mongenod himself called, and Gode- 
 froid observed a touch of filial familiarity in his tone to Mon- 
 sieur Alain, mingled with the deep respect he showed to him, 
 as to Madame de la Chanterie's three other boarders. 
 
 That evening the banker only asked Godefroid the most 
 ordinary questions: Was he comfortable? Did he mean to 
 stay ? and so forth, advising him to persevere in his determina- 
 tion. 
 
 "There is but one thing wanting to make me happy," said 
 Godefroid. 
 
 "And what is that?" said the banker. 
 
 "An occupation." * 
 
 "An occupation !" cried the Abbe de Veze. "Then you 
 have changed your mind; you came to our retreat in search 
 of rest." 
 
 "But without prayer, which gives life to the cloister ; with- 
 out meditation, which peoples the desert, rest becomes a dis- 
 ease," said Monsieur Joseph sententiously. 
 
 "Learn bookkeeping," said Mongenod, smiling. "In the 
 course of a few months you may be of great use to my friends 
 here " 
 
 "Oh, with the greatest pleasure," exclaimed Godefroid. 
 
 The next day was Sunday. Madame de la Chanterie de- 
 sired her boarder to give her his arm and to escort her to 
 High Mass. 
 
 "This," she said, "is the only thing I desire to force upon 
 you. Many a time during the week I have been moved to 
 speak to you of your salvation; but I do not think the time 
 has come. You would have plenty to occupy you if you shared 
 our beliefs, for you would also share our labors." 
 
 At Mass, Godefroid observed the fervency of Messieurs 
 Nicolas, Joseph, and Alain. Having, during these few days, 
 convinced himself of the superior intellect of these three men,
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 39 
 
 their perspicacity, extensive learning, and lofty spirit, he 
 concluded that if they could thus abase themselves, the Cath- 
 olic religion must contain mysteries which had hitherto es- 
 caped his ken. 
 
 "And, after all," said he to himself, "it is the religion of 
 Bossuet, of Pascal, of Racine, of Saint-Louis, of Louis XVI., 
 of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Ximenes, of Bayard and 
 du Guesclin and how should such a poor creature as I com- 
 pare myself with these great brains, statesmen, poets, war- 
 riors ?" 
 
 Were it not that a great lesson is to be derived from these 
 tnvial details, it would be foolish in such times as these to 
 dwetl on them; but they are indispensable to the interest of 
 this iiarrative, which the readers of our day will, indeed, find 
 it hard to believe, beginning as it does by an almost ridiculous 
 incident the influence exerted by a woman of sixty over a 
 young man who had tried everything and found it wanting. 
 
 "You dkl. not pray," said Madame de la Chanterie to Gode- 
 froid as they came out of Notre-Dame. "Not for any one, not 
 even for the peace of your mother's soul !" 
 
 Godefroid reddened, but said nothing. 
 
 "Do me the pioasure," Madame de la Chanterie went on, 
 "to go to your room, and not to come down to the drawing- 
 room for an hour. And for the love of me, meditate on a chap- 
 ter of the Imitation the first of the Third Book, entitled 'ON 
 CHRIST SPEAKING WITHIN THE FAITHFUL SOUL." ; 
 
 Godefroid bowed ccolly, and went upstairs. 
 
 "The Devil take 'em all !" he exclaimed, now really in a 
 rage. "What the deuce do they want of me here ? What game 
 are they playing? Pshaw! Every woman, even the veriest 
 bigot, is full of tricks, and if Madame" (the name the board- 
 ers gave their hostess) "does not want me downstairs, it is 
 because they are plotting something against me." 
 
 With this notion in his head, he tried to look out of his 
 own window into that of the drawing-room, but the plan of 
 the building did not allow of it. Then he went down one 
 flight, but hastily ran up sprain; for it struck him that in a
 
 40 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 house where the principal inhabitants held such strict prin- 
 ciples, an act of espionage would lead to his immediate dis- 
 missal. Now, to lose the esteem of those five persons seemed 
 to him as serious a matter as public dishonor. 
 
 He waited about three-quarters of an hour, resolved to 
 take Madame de la Chanterie by surprise, and to go down a 
 little before the time she had named. He intended to ex- 
 cuse himself by a fib, saying that his watch was in fault, and 
 twenty minutes too fast. He went down cautiously, without 
 a sound, and on reaching the drawing-room door opened it 
 suddenty. 
 
 He saw a man, still young but already famous, a poet whom 
 he had often met in society, Victor de Vernisset, kneeling on 
 one knee before Madame de la Chanterie and kissing the hem 
 of her gown. The sky falling in splinters as if it were made of 
 crystal, as the ancients believed, would have amazed Gode- 
 froid less than this sight. The most shocking ideas besieged 
 his brain, and the reaction was even more terrible when, just 
 as he was about to utter the first sarcasm that rose to his lips, 
 he saw Monsieur Alain standing in a corner, counting thou- 
 sand-franc notes. 
 
 In an instant Vernisset had started to his feet. Good Mon- 
 sieur Alain stared in astonishment. Madame de la Chanterie 
 flashed a look that petrified Godefroid, for the doubtful ex- 
 pression in the new boarder's face had not escaped her. 
 
 "Monsieur is one of us," she said to the young author, in- 
 troducing Godefroid. 
 
 "You are a happy man, my dear -fellow," said Vernisset. 
 "You are saved ! But, madame," he went on, turning to 
 Madame de la Chanterie, "if all Paris could have seen me, I 
 should be delighted. Nothing can ever pay my debt to you. 
 I am your slave for ever ! I am yours, body and soul. Com- 
 mand in whatever you will, I will obey ; my gratitude knows 
 no bounds. I owe you my life it is yours." 
 
 "Come, come," said the worthy Alain, "do not be rash. 
 Only work ; and, above all, never attack religion in your writ- 
 ings. And remember you are in debt."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 41 
 
 fle handed him an envelope bulging with the banknotes 
 he had counted out. Victor de Vernisset's eyes filled with 
 tears. He respectfully kissed Madame de la" Chanterie'a 
 hand, and went away after shaking hands with Monsieur 
 Alain and with Godefroid. 
 
 "You did not obey Madame," said the good man solemnly ; 
 and his face had an expression of sadness, such as Godefroid 
 had not yet seen on it. "That is a capital crime. If it oc- 
 curs again, we must part. It would be very hard on you, 
 after having seemed worthy of our confidence " 
 
 "My dear Alain," said Madame de la Chanterie., "be so 
 good, for my sake, as to say nothing of this act of folly. We 
 must not expect too much of a newcomer who has had no 
 great sorrows, who has no religion who has nothing, in 
 fact, but great curiosity concerning every vocation, and who 
 as yet does not believe in us." 
 
 "Forgive me, madame," replied Godefroid. "From this 
 moment I will be worthy of you ; I submit to every test you 
 may think necessary before initiating me into the secret of 
 your labors; and if Monsieur the Abbe will undertake to en- 
 lighten me, I give myself up to him, soul and reason." 
 
 These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that 
 a faint flush rose to her cheeks, she clasped Godefroid's hand 
 and pressed it, saying, with strange emotion, "That is well !" 
 
 In the evening, after dinner, Godefroid saw a Vicar-Gen- 
 eral of the Diocese of Paris, who came to call, two canons, 
 two retired mayors of Paris, and a lady who devoted herself 
 to the poor. There was no gambling; the conversation was 
 general, and cheerful without being futile. 
 
 A visitor who greatly surprised Godefroid was the Com- 
 tesse de Saint-Cygne, one of the loftiest stars of the aristo- 
 cratic spheres, whose drawing-room was quite inaccessible 
 to the citizen class and to parvenus. The mere presence of 
 this great lady in Madame de la Chanterie's room was suffi- 
 ciently amazing; but the way in which the two women met 
 and treated each other was to Godefroid quite inexplicable, 
 for it bore witness to an intimacy and constant intercourse
 
 42 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 which proved the high merit of Madame de la Chanterie. 
 Madame de Saint- Cygne was gracious and friendly to her 
 friend's four friends, and very respectful to Monsieur Nico- 
 las. 
 
 As may be seen, social vanity still had a hold on Godefroid, 
 who, hitherto undecided, now determined to yield, with or 
 without conviction, to everything Madame de la Chanterie 
 and her friends might require of him, to succeed in being 7 
 affiliated by them to their Order, or initiated into their secrets, 
 promising himself that until then he would not definitely 
 commit himself. 
 
 On the following day, he went to the bookkeeper recom- 
 mended by Madame de la Chanterie, agreed with him as to 
 the hours when they were to work together, and so disposed 
 of all his time ; for the Abbe de Veze was to catechize him in 
 the morning, he spent two hours of every day learning book- 
 keeping, and between breakfast and dinner he worked at the 
 exercises and imaginary commercial correspondence set him 
 by his master. 
 
 Some few days thus passed, during which Godefroid 
 learned the charm of a Ufe of which every hour has its em- 
 ployment. The recurrence of the same duties at fixed hours, 
 and perfect regularity, sufficiently account for many happy 
 lives, and prove how deeply the founders of religious orders 
 had meditated on human nature. Godefroid, who had made 
 up his mind to learn of the Abbe de Veze, had" already begun 
 to feel qualms as to his future life, and to discover that he 
 was ignorant of the importance of religious matters. 
 
 Finally, day by day, Madame de la Chanterie, with whom 
 he always sat for about an hour after the second breakfast, 
 revealed some fresh treasures of her nature; he had never 
 conceived of goodness so complete, so all-embracing. A wo- 
 man as old as Madame de la Chanterie seemed to be has none 
 of the triviality of a young woman ; she is a friend who may 
 offer you every feminine dainty, who displays all the grace 
 and refinement with which Nature inspires woman to please 
 man, but who no longer asks for a return; she may be exe-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 43 
 
 crable or exquisite, for all her demands on life are buried 
 beneath the skin or are dead; and Madame de la Chanterie 
 was exquisite. She seemed never to have been young; her 
 looks never spoke of the past. Far from allaying his curi- 
 osity, Godefroid's increased intimacy with this beautiful char- 
 acter, and the discoveries he made day by day, increased his 
 desire to know something of the previous history of the wo- 
 man he now saw as a saint. Had she ever loved? Had she 
 been married ? Had she been a mother ? There was nothing 
 in her suggestive of the old maid ; she had all the elegance of 
 a woman of birth; and her strong health, and the extraor- 
 dinary charm of her conversation, seemed to reveal a heav- 
 enly life, a sort of ignorance of the world. Excepting the 
 worthy and cheerful Alain, all these persons had known suffer- 
 ing; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm 
 of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie; nevertheless, the 
 memory of her sorrows was so entirely suppressed by Catholic 
 resignation, and her secret occupations, that she seemed to 
 have been always happy. 
 
 "You are the life of your friends," said Godefroid to her 
 one day. "You are the bond that unites them ; you are the 
 housekeeper, so to speak, of a great work; and as we are all 
 mortal, I cannot but wonder what would become of your 
 association without you." 
 
 "Yes, that is what they fear: but Providence to whom 
 we owe our bookkeeper," said she with a smile "will doubt- 
 less provide. However, I shall think it over " 
 
 "And will your bookkeeper soon find himself at work for 
 your business?" asked Godefroid, laughing. 
 
 "That must depend on him," she said with a smile. "If 
 he is sincerely religious, truly pious, has not the smallest con- 
 ceit, does not trouble his head about the wealth of the estab- 
 lishment, and endeavors to rise superior to petty social con- 
 siderations by soaring on the wings God has bestowed on 
 us " 
 
 "Which are they?" 
 
 "Simplicity and purity," replied Madame de la Chanterie.
 
 44 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Your ignorance proves that you neglect reading your book," 
 she added, laughing at the innocent trap she had laid to dis- 
 cover whether Godefroid read the Imitation of Christ. "Soak 
 your mind in Saint Paul's chapter on Charity. It is not you 
 who will be devoted to us, but we to you," she said with a 
 lofty look, "and it will be your part to keep account of the 
 greatest riches ever possessed by any sovereign ; you will have 
 the same enjoyment of them as we have ; and let me tell you, if 
 you remember the Thousand and One lights, that the treas- 
 ures of Aladdin are as nothing in comparison with ours. In- 
 deed, for a year past, we have not known what to do; it was 
 too much for us. We needed a bookkeeper." 
 
 As she spoke she studied Godefroid's face; he knew not 
 what to think of this strange confidence; but the scene be- 
 tween Madame de la Chanterie and the elder Madame Monge- 
 nod had often recurred to him, and he hesitated between 
 doubt and belief. 
 
 "Yes, you would be very fortunate !" said she. 
 
 Godefroid was so consumed by curiosity, that from that 
 instant he resolved to undermine the reserve of the four 
 friends, and to ask them about themselves. Now, of all 
 Madame de la Chanterie's boarders, the one who most at- 
 tracted Godefroid, and who was the most fitted in all ways 
 to invite the sympathy of people of every class, was the kindly, 
 cheerful, and unaffected Monsieur Alain. By what means 
 had Providence guided this simple-minded being to this sec- 
 ular convent, where the votaries lived under rules as strictly 
 observed, in perfect freedom and in the midst of Paris, as 
 though they were under the sternest of Priors ? What drama, 
 what catastrophe, had made him turn aside from his road 
 through the world to take a path so hard to tread across the 
 troubles of a great city? 
 
 One evening Godefroid determined to call on his neighbor, 
 with the purpose of satisfying a curiosity which was more 
 excited by the incredibility of any catastrophe in such a man's
 
 Come In'
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 45 
 
 life than it could have been by the expectation of listening to 
 some terrible episode in the life of a pirate. 
 
 On hearing the reply, "Come in/' in answer to two modest 
 raps on the door, Godefroid turned the key, which was always 
 in the lock, and found Monsieur Alain seated in his chimney 
 corner, reading a chapter of the Imitation before going to 
 bed by the light of two wax candles with green shades, such as 
 whist-players use. The worthy man had on his trousers and 
 a dressing-gown of thick gray flannel ; his feet were raised to 
 the level of the fire on a hassock worked in cross-stitch as 
 his slippers were also by Madame de la Chanterie. His 
 striking old head, with its circlet of white hair, almost re- 
 sembling that of an old monk, stood out, a lighter spot against 
 the brown background of an immense armchair. 
 
 Monsieur Alain quietly laid his book, with its worn 'cor- 
 ners, on the little table with twisted legs, while with the other 
 hand he waved the young man to the second armchair, remov- 
 ing his glasses, which nipped the end of his nose. 
 
 "Are you unwell, that you have come down so late?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Dear Monsieur Alain," Godefroid frankly replied, "I am. 
 a prey to curiosity which a single word from you will prove 
 to be very innocent or very indiscreet, and that is enough to 
 show you in what spirit I shall venture to ask a question." 
 
 "Oh, ho ! and what is it ?" said he, with an almost mischiev- 
 ous sparkle in his eye. 
 
 "What was the circumstance that induced you to lead the 
 life you lead here? For to embrace such a doctrine of utter 
 renunciation, a man must be disgusted with the world, must 
 have been deeply wounded, or have wounded others." 
 
 "Why, why, my boy?" replied the old man, and his full 
 lips parted in one of those smiles which made his ruddy mouth 
 one of the most affectionate that the genius of a painter could 
 conceive of. "May he not feel touched to the deepest pity by 
 the sight of the woes to be seen within the walls of Paris? 
 Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the goad of remorse or of 
 wounded vanity to devote himself to foundling babes?"
 
 46 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOR1 
 
 "Such an answer shuts my mouth all the more effectually, 
 because if ever a soul was a match for that of the Christian 
 hero, it is yours," replied Godefroid. 
 
 In spite of the thickening given by age to his yellow and 
 wrinkled face, the old man colored crimson, for he might 
 seem to have invited the eulogium, though his well-known 
 modesty forbade the idea that he had thought of it. Gode- 
 froid knew full well that Madame de la Chanterie's guests had 
 no taste for this kind of incense. And yet good Monsieur 
 Alain's guilelessness was more distressed by this scruple than 
 a young maid would have been by some evil suggestion. 
 
 "Though I am far from resembling him in spirit," replied 
 Monsieur Alain, "I certainly am like him in appearance 
 
 Godefroid was about to speak, but was checked by a ges- 
 ture from the old man, whose nose had in fact the bulbous 
 appearance of the Saint's, and whose face, much like that of 
 some old vinedresser, was the very duplicate of the coarse, 
 common countenance of the founder of the Foundling Hos- 
 pital. "As to that, you are right," he went on ; "my vocation 
 to this work was the result of an impulse of repentance in 
 consequence of an adventure 
 
 "An adventure ! You !" said Godefroid softly, who at this 
 word forgot what he had been about to say. 
 
 "Oh, the story I have to tell will seem to you a mere trifle, 
 a foolish business; but before the tribunal of conscience it 
 looked different. If, after having heard me, you persist -in 
 yoiir wish to join in our labors, you will understand that feel- 
 ings are in inverse proportion to our strength of soul, and that 
 a matter which would not trouble a Freethinker may greatly 
 weigh on a feeble Christian." 
 
 After this prelude, the neophyte's curiosity had risen to an 
 indescribable pitch. What could be the crime of this good 
 soul whom Madame de la Chanterie had nicknamed her 
 Paschal Lamb? It was as exciting as a book entitled The 
 Crimes of a Sheep. Sheep, perhaps, are ferocious to the grass 
 and flowers. If we listen to one of the mildest republicans of 
 our day, the best creatures living are cruel to something. But
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 41 
 
 good Monsieur Alain ! He, who, like Sterne's Uncle Toby, 
 would not crush a fly when it had stung him twenty times! 
 This beautiful soul tortured by repentance ! 
 
 These reflections filled up the pause made by the old man 
 after he had said, "Listen, then !" and during which he 
 pushed forward the footstool under Godefroid's feet that they 
 might share it. 
 
 "I was a little over thirty," said he ; "it was in the year '98, 
 so far as I recollect, a time when young men of thirty had 
 the experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little before 
 my breakfast hour at nine o'clock, my old housekeeper an- 
 nounced one of the few friends left to me by the storms of 
 the Eevolution. So my first words were to ask him to break- 
 fast. My friend, whose name was Mongenod, a young fellow 
 of eight-and-twenty, accepted, but with some hesitancy. I 
 had not seen him since 1793 " 
 
 "Mongenod!" cried Godefroid, "the ?" 
 
 "If you want to know the end of the story before the be- 
 ginning," the old man put in with a smile, "how am I to tell 
 it?" 
 
 Godefroid settled himself with an air that promised perfect 
 silence. 
 
 "When Mongenod had seated himself," the good man went 
 on, "I observed that his shoes were dreadfully worn. His 
 spotted stockings had been so often washed, that it was hard 
 to recognize that they were of silk. His knee-breeches were 
 of nankeen-colored kerseymere, so faded as to tell of long 
 wear, emphasized by stains in many places, and their buckles, 
 instead of steel, seemed to me to be of common iron ; his shoe- 
 buckles were to match. His flowered white waistcoat, yellow 
 with long use, his shirt with its frayed pleated frill, revealed 
 extreme though decent poverty. Finally, his coat a houppe- 
 lande, as we called such a coat, with a single collar like a very 
 short cape was enough to assure me that my friend had 
 fallen on bad times. This coat of nut-brown cloth, extremely 
 threadbare, and bmshed with excessive care, had a rim of 
 grease or powder round the collar, and buttons off which the
 
 48 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 plating had worn to the copper. In fact, the whole outfit was 
 so wretched, that I could not bear to look at it. His crush 
 hat a semicircular structure of beaver, which it was then 
 customary to carry under one arm instead of wearing it on 
 the head must have survived many changes of government. 
 
 "However, my friend had no doubt just spent a few sous 
 to have his head dressed by a barber, for he was freshly shaved, 
 and his hair, fastened into a club with a comb, was luxuriously 
 powdered, and smelled of pomatum. I could see two chains 
 hanging parallel out of his fobs, chains of tarnished steel, 
 but no sign of the watches' within. It was winter, but Monge- 
 nod had no cloak, for some large drops of melting snow 
 fallen from the eaves under which he had walked for shelter 
 lay on the collar of his coat. When he drew off his rabbit- 
 fur gloves and I saw his right hand, I could perceive the 
 traces of some kind of hard labor. 
 
 "Now, his father, an advocate in the higher court, had left 
 him some little fortune five or six thousand francs a year. 
 I at once understood that Mongenod had come to borrow of 
 me. I had in a certain hiding-place two hundred louis in 
 gold, an enormous sum at that time, when it represented I 
 know not how many hundred thousand francs in paper as- 
 signats. 
 
 "Mongenod and I had been schoolfellows at the College des 
 Grassins, and we had been thrown together again in the same 
 lawyer's office an honest man, the worthy Bordin. When 
 two men have spent their boyhood together and shared the 
 follies of their youth, there is an almost sacred bond of sym- 
 pathy between them; the man's voice and look stir certain 
 chords in your heart, which never vibrate but to the particular 
 memories that he can rouse. Even if you have some cause to 
 complain of such a comrade, that does not wipe out every 
 claim of friendship, and between us there had not been the 
 slightest quarrel. 
 
 "In 1787, when his father died, Mongenod had been a 
 richer man than I: and though I had never borrowed from 
 him, I had owed to Mm certain pleasures which my father's
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 49 
 
 strictness would have prohibited. But for my friend's gen- 
 erosity, I should not have seen the first performance of the 
 Marriage of Figaro. 
 
 "Mongenod was at that time what was called a finished 
 gentleman, a man about town and attentive to 'the ladies.' I 
 constantly reproved him for his too great facility in making 
 friends and obliging them ; his purse was constantly open, he 
 lived largely, he would have stood surety for you after meet- 
 ing you twice. Dear me, dear me ! You have started me on 
 reminiscences of my youth !" cried Monsieur Alain, .with a 
 bright smile at Godefroid as he paused. 
 
 "You are not vexed with me?" said Godefroid. 
 
 "No, no. And you may judge by the minute details I am 
 giving you how large a place the event filled in my life. 
 Mongenod, with a good heart and plenty of courage, some- 
 thing of a Voltairean, was inclined to play the fine gentle- 
 man," Monsieur Alain went on. "His education at the Gras- 
 sins, where noblemen's sons were to be met, and his adventures 
 of gallantry, had given him the polish of men of rank, in 
 those days termed Aristocrats. So you may imagine how 
 great was my consternation at observing in Mongenod such 
 signs of poverty as degraded him in my eyes from the elegant 
 young Mongenod I had known in 1787, when my eyes wan- 
 dered from his face to examine his clothes. 
 
 "However, at that time of general public penury, some wily 
 folks assumed an appearance of wretchedness; and as others 
 no doubt had ample reasons for assuming a disguise, I hoped 
 for some explanation, and invited it. 
 
 " 'What a plight you are in, my dear Mongenod !' said I, 
 accepting a pinch of snuff, which he offered me from a box of 
 imitation gold. 
 
 " 'Sad enough !' replied he. 'I have but one friend left 
 and you are that friend. I have done everything in the world 
 to avoid coming to this point, but I have come to ask you to 
 lend me a hundred louis. It is a large sum/ said he, noticing 
 my surprise, 'but if you lend me no more than fifty, I shall 
 never be able to repay you; whereas, if I should fail in what
 
 50 
 
 I am undertaking, I shall still have fifty louis to try some 
 other road to fortune, and I do not yet know what inspira- 
 tion despair may bring me/ 
 
 " 'Then, have you nothing ?' said I. 
 
 " 'I have/ said he, hiding a tear, 'just five sous left out of 
 my last piece of silver. To call on you, I had my boots cleaned 
 and my head dressed. I have the clothes on my back. But,' 
 he went on, with a desperate shrug, 'I owe my landlady a 
 thousand crowns in assignats, and the man at the cookshop 
 yesterday refused to trust me. So I have nothing nothing/ 
 
 " 'And what do you propose to do ?' said I, insistently med- 
 dling with his private affairs. 
 
 " 'To enlist if you refuse to help me/ 
 
 " 'You, a soldier ! You Mongenod !" 
 
 " 'I will get killed, or I will be General Mongenod/ 
 
 '"Well/ said I, really moved, 'eat your breakfast in peace; 
 I have a hundred louis ' 
 
 "And here," said the good man, looking slily at Godefroid, 
 "I thought it necessary to tell a little lender's fib. 
 
 " 'But it is all I have in the world/ I said to Mongenod. 
 'I was waiting till the funds had gone down to the lowest mark 
 to invest my money, but I will place it in your hands, and you 
 may regard me as your partner; I leave it to your conscience 
 to repay me the whole in due time and place. An honest 
 man's conscience/ I added, 'is the best possible security/ 
 
 "Mongenod looked hard at me as I spoke, seeming to stamp 
 my words on his heart. He held out his right hand, T gave 
 him my left, and we clasped hands I, greatly moved, and 
 he, without restraining two tears which now trickled down 
 his thin cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my heart; 
 and I was still more unnerved when, forgetful of everything 
 in such a moment, Mongenod, to wipe them away, pulled out a 
 ragged bandana. 
 
 " 'Wait here/ said I, running off to my hidden store, my 
 heart as full as though I had heard a woman confess that she 
 loved me. I returned with two rolls of fifty louis each. 
 
 " 'Here count them/
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 51 
 
 "But he would not count them ; he looked about him for a 
 writing-table in order, as he said, to give me a receipt. I 
 positively refused to have one. 
 
 " 'If I were to die,' said I, 'my heirs would worry you. This 
 is a matter between you and me/ 
 
 "Finding me so true a friend, Mongenod presently lost 
 the haggard and anxious expression he had worn on entering, 
 and became cheerful. My housekeeper gave us oysters, white 
 wine, an omelette, kidneys a la brochette, and the remains 
 of a pate de Chartres sent me by my mother ; a little dessert, 
 coffee, and West Indian liqueur. Mongenod, who had fasted 
 for two days, was the better for it. We sat till three in the 
 afternoon talking over our life before the Revolution, the 
 best friends in the world. 
 
 "Mongenod told me how he had lost his fortune. In the 
 first instance, the reduction of the dividends on the Hotel de 
 Ville had deprived him of two-thirds of his income, for his 
 father had invested the larger part of his fortune in munici- 
 pal securities; then, after selling his house in the Rue de 
 Savoie, he had been obliged to accept payment in assignats; 
 he had then taken it into his head to run a newspaper, La 
 Sentinelle, and at the end of six months was forced to fly. At 
 the present moment all his hopes hung on the success of a 
 comic opera called Les Peruvians. This last confession made 
 me quake. Mongenod, as an author, having spent his all on 
 the Sentinelle, and living no doubt at the theatre, mixed up 
 with Feydeau's singers, with musicians, and the motley world 
 behind the curtain, did not seem to me like the same, like my 
 Mongenod. I shuddered a little. But how could I get back 
 my hundred louis? I could see the two rolls, one in each 
 fob like the barrel of a pistol. 
 
 "^fongenod went away. When I found myself alone, no 
 longer face to face with his bitter and cruel poverty, I began 
 to reflect in spite of myself : I was sober again. 'Mongonod/ 
 thought I to myself, 'has no doubt sunk as low as possible; 
 he has acted a little farce for my benefit !' His glee when he 
 saw me calmly hand over so vast a sum now struck me as that 
 VOL. 1635
 
 52 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 of a stage rascal cheating some Geronte. I ended where I 
 ought to have begun, resolved to make some inquiries about 
 my friend Mongenod, who had written his address on the 
 back of a playing-card. 
 
 "A feeling of delicacy kept me from going to see him the 
 next day ; he might have ascribed my haste to distrust of him. 
 Two days after I found my whole time absorbed by various 
 business; and it was not, in fact, till a fortnight had elapsed 
 that, seeing no more of Mongenod, I made my way from La 
 Croix-Rouge, where I then lived, to the Rue des Moineaux, 
 where he lived. 
 
 "Mongenod was lodged in a furnished house of the mean- 
 est description; but his landlady was a very decent woman, the 
 widow of a farmer-general who had died on the scaffold. She, 
 completely ruined, had started with a few louis the precarious 
 business of letting rooms. Since then she has rented seven 
 houses in the neighborhood of Saint-Roch and made a for- 
 tune. 
 
 " 'Citizen Mongenod is out/ said she. 'But there is some 
 one at home/ 
 
 "This excited my curiosity. I climbed to the fifth floor. 
 A charming young woman opened the door ! Oh ! A person 
 of exquisite beauty, who, looking at me doubtfully, stood 
 behind the partly opened door. 
 
 " 'I am Alain,' said I, 'Mongenod's friend.' 
 
 "At once the door was wide open, and I went into a hor- 
 rible garret, which the young woman had, however, kept scru- 
 pulously clean. She pushed forward a chair to the hearth 
 piled' with ashes, but with no fire, where in one corner I saw 
 a common earthenware fire-pan. The cold was icy. 
 
 " 'I am glad indeed, monsieur,' said she, taking my hands 
 and pressing them warmly, 'to be able to express my grati- 
 tude, for you are our deliverer. But for you I might never 
 have seen Mongenod again. He would have God know? 
 have thrown himself into the river. He was desperate when 
 he set out to see you.' 
 
 "As I looked at the young lady I was greatly astonished
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 53 
 
 to see that she had a handkerchief bound about her head ; and 
 below its folds at the back and on the temples there was a 
 sort of black shadow. Studying it attentively, I discovered 
 that her head was shaved. 
 
 " 'Are you ill ?' I asked, noticing this strange fact. 
 
 "She glanced at herself in a wretched dirty pier-glass, and 
 colored, while tears rose to her eyes.- 
 
 " 'Yes, monsieur,' said she hastily ; 'I had dreadful head- 
 aches; I was obliged to cut off my hair, which fell to my 
 heels 
 
 " 'Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Mongenod ?' 
 I asked. 
 
 " 'Yes, monsieur,' said she, with a really heavenly expres- 
 sion. 
 
 "I made my bow to the poor little lady, and went down- 
 stairs, intending to make the landlady give me some informa- 
 tion, but she was gone out. It struck me that the young wo- 
 man had sold her hair to buy bread. I went off at once to a 
 wood merchant, and sent in half a load of wood, begging 
 the carter and the sawyers to give the lady a receipted bill to 
 the name of Mongenod. 
 
 "And there ends the phase of my life which I long called 
 my foolish stage," said Monsieur Alain, clasping his hands 
 and uplifting them a little with a repentant gesture. 
 
 Godefroid could not help smiling; but he was, as will be 
 seen, quite wrong to smile. 
 
 "Two days later," the good man went on, "I met one of 
 those men who are neither friends nor strangers persons 
 whom we see from time to time, in short, an acquaintance, as 
 we say a Monsieur Barillaud, who, as we happened to speak 
 of Les Peruviens, proclaimed himself a friend of the author's. 
 
 " 'Thou know'st Citizen Mongenod ?' said I for at that 
 time we were still required by law to address each other with 
 the familiar tu," said he to Godefroid in a parenthesis. 
 
 "The citizen looked at me," said Monsieur Alain, resum- 
 ing the thread of his story, "and exclaimed : 
 
 " 'I only wish I had never known him, for he has borrowed
 
 54 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 money of me many a time, and is so much my friend as not 
 to return it. He is a queer fellow ! the best old boy alive, but 
 full of illusions? An imagination of fire. I will do him 
 justice ; he does not mean to be dishonest, only as he is always 
 deceiving himself about a thousand things, he is led into 
 conduct that is- not altogether straight.' 
 
 " 'How much does he owe you ?' 
 
 " 'Oh, a few hundred crowns. He is a regular sieve. No 
 one knows where his money goes, for he perhaps does not 
 know that himself.' 
 
 " 'Has he any expedients ?' 
 
 " 'Oh, dear, yes !' said Barillaud, laughing. 'At this mo- 
 ment he is talking of buying up land among the wild men in 
 the United States.' 
 
 "I went away with this drop of vitriol shed by slander on 
 my heart to turn all my best feelings sour. I went to call on 
 my old master in the law, who was always my counselor. As 
 soon as I had told him the secret of my loan to Mongenod, 
 and the way in which I had acted : 
 
 " 'What,' cried he, 'is it a clerk of mine that can behave so ? 
 You should have put him off a day and have come to me. 
 Then you would have known that I had shown Mongenod the 
 door. He has already borrowed from me in the course of a 
 year more than a hundred crowns in silver, an enormous sum ! 
 And only three days before he went to breakfast with you, 
 he met me in the street and described his misery in such des- 
 perate language that I gave him two louis.' 
 
 " 'Well, if ]* am the dupe of a clever actor, so much the 
 worse for him rather than for me !' said I. 'But what is to be 
 done ?' 
 
 " 'At any rate, you must try to get some acknowledgment 
 out of him, for a debtor however worthless may recover him- 
 self, and then you may be paid.' 
 
 "Thereupon Bordin took out of one of the drawers of his 
 table a wrapper on which was written the name of Mongenod ; 
 he showed me three acknowledgments, each for a hundred 
 livres.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 53 
 
 " 'The first time he comes,' said he, 'I shall make him add 
 on the interest and the two louis I gave him, and whatever 
 money he asks for; and then he must sign an acceptance 
 and a statement, saying that interest accrues from the first 
 day of the loan. That, at any rate, will be all in order; I 
 shall have some means of getting paid.' 
 
 " 'Well, then,' said I to Bordin, 'cannot you put me as 
 much in order as yourself? For you are an honest man, and 
 what you do will be right.' 
 
 " 'In this way I remain the master of the field/ replied the 
 lawyer. 'When a man behaves as you have done, he is at the 
 mercy of another who may simply make game of him. Now 
 I don't choose to be laughed at. A retired Public Prosecutor 
 of the Chatelet ! Bless me, what next ! Every man to whom 
 you lend money as recklessly as you lent it to Mongenod, 
 sooner or later thinks of it as his own. It is no longer your 
 money ; it is his money ; you are his creditor, a very inconven- 
 ient person. The debtor then tries to be quit of you by a 
 compromise with his conscience, and seventy-five out of every 
 hundred will try to avoid meeting you again to the end of his 
 days ' 
 
 " 'Then you look for no more than twenty-five per cent of 
 honest men ?' 
 
 " 'Did I say so ?' said he, with an ironical smile. 'That is 
 a large allowance !' 
 
 "A fortnight later I had a note from Bordin desiring me 
 to call on him to fetch my receipt. I went. 
 
 " 'I tried to snatch back fifty louis for you/ said he. I 
 had told him all about my conversation with Mongenod. 
 'But the birds are flown. You may say good-bye to your yel- 
 low-boys ! Your canary-birds have fled to warmer climes. 
 We have a very cunning rascal to deal with. Did he not as- 
 sure me that his wife and his father-in-law had set out for 
 the United States with sixty of your louis to buy land, and 
 that he intended to join them there? To make a fortune, as 
 he said, so as to return to pay his debts, of which he handed 
 me the schedule drawn out in due form ; for he begged me to
 
 56 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 keep myself informed as to what became of his creditors. 
 Here is the schedule/ added Bordin, showing me a wrapper 
 on which was noted the total. 'Seventeen thousand francs 
 in hard cash ! With such a sum as that a house might be 
 bought worth two thousand crowns a year.' 
 
 "After replacing the packet, he gave me a bill of exchange 
 for a sum equivalent to a hundred louis in gold, stated in 
 assignats, with a letter in which Mongenod acknowledged the 
 debt with interest on a hundred louis d'or. 
 
 " 'So now I am all safe ?' said I to Bordin. 
 
 " 'He will not deny the debt/ replied my old master. 'But 
 where there are no effects, the King that is to say, the Di- 
 rectoire has no rights.' 
 
 "I thereupon left him. Believing myself to have been 
 robbed by a trick that evades the law, I withdrew my esteem 
 from Mongenod, and was very philosophically resigned. 
 
 "It is not without a reason that I dwell on these common- 
 place and apparently unimportant details," the good man 
 went on, looking at Godefroid. "I am trying to show you 
 how I was led to act as most men act, blindly, and in contempt 
 of certain rules which even savages do not disregard in the 
 most trifling matters. Many men would justify themselves 
 by the authority of Bordin; but at this day I feel that I had 
 no excuse. As soon as we are led to condemn one of our fel- 
 lows, and to refuse him our esteem for life, we ought to rely 
 solely on our own judgment and even then ! Ought we to 
 set up our own feelings as a tribunal before which to arraign 
 our neighbor? Where would the law be? What should be 
 our standard of merit? Would not a weakness in me be 
 strength in my neighbor? So many men, so many different 
 circumstances would there be for each deed ; for there are no 
 two identical sets of conditions in human existence. Society 
 alone has the right of reproving its members; for I do not 
 grant it that of punishing them. A mere reprimand is suffi- 
 cient, and brings with it cruelty enough. 
 
 "So as I listened to the haphazard opinions of a Parisian, 
 admiring my former teacher's acumen, I condemned Monge-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 57 
 
 nod/' the good man went on, after drawing from his narra- 
 tive this noble' moral. 
 
 "The performance of Les Peruviens was announced. I 
 expected to have a ticket for the first night; I conceived my- 
 self in some way his superior. As a result of his indebtedness, 
 my friend seemed to me a vassal who owed me many things be- 
 sides the interest on my money. We are all alike ! 
 
 "Not only did Mongenod send me no ticket, but I saw him 
 at a distance coming along the dark passage under the The- 
 atre Feydeau, well dressed nay, almost elegant; he affected 
 not to see me; then, when he had passed me, and I thought 
 I would run after him, he had vanished down some cross pas- 
 sage. This irritated me extremely; and my annoyance, far 
 from being transient, increased as time went on. 
 
 "This was why. A few days after this incident I wrote 
 to Mongenod much in these words: 
 
 " 'MY FRIEND, You should not regard me as indifferent 
 to anything that can happen to you, whether for good or ill. 
 Does the Peruviens come up to your expectations? You for- 
 got me you had every right to do so at the first perform- 
 ance, when I should have applauded you heartily ! However, 
 I hope, all the same, that you may find Peru in the piece, for 
 I can invest my capital, and I count on you when the bill falls 
 due. Your friend, ALAIN.' 
 
 "After waiting for a fortnight and receiving no answer, I 
 called in the Kue des Moineaux. The landlady told me that 
 the little wife had, in fact, set out with her father, at the 
 date named by Mongenod to Bordin. Mongenod always left 
 his garret early in the morning, and did not come in till late 
 at night. Another fortnight passed ; I wrote another letter in 
 these terms : 
 
 " 'MY DEAR MONGENOD, I see nothing of you ; you do not 
 answer my notes; I cannot at all understand your conduct; 
 and if I were to behave so to you, what would you think of 
 me?'
 
 58 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "I did not sign myself 'Your friend.' I wrote 'With best 
 regards.' 
 
 "A month slipped by; no news of Mongenod. The Peru- 
 viens had not obtained so great a success as Mongenod had 
 counted on. I paid for a seat at the twentieth performance, 
 and I found a small house. And yet Madame Scio was very 
 fine in it. I was told in the foyer that there would be a few 
 more performances of the piece. I went seven times to call 
 on Mongenod; he was never at home, and each time I left 
 my name with the landlady. So then I wrote again : 
 
 "'Monsieur, if you do not wish to lose my respect after 
 forfeiting my friendship, you will henceforth treat me as a 
 stranger that is to say, with civility and you will tell me 
 whether you are prepared to pay me when your note of hand 
 falls due. I shall act in accordance with your reply. Yours 
 faithfully. ALAIN.' 
 
 "No reply. It was now 1799; a year had elapsed all but 
 two months. 
 
 "When the bill fell due I went to see Bordin. Bordin took 
 the note of hand, and then took legal proceedings. The re- 
 verses experienced by the French armies had had such a de- 
 pressing effect on the funds that five francs a year could be 
 purchased for seven francs. Thus, for a hundred louis in gold, 
 I might have had nearly fifteen hundred francs a year. Every 
 morning, as I read the paper over my cup of coffee, I would 
 exclaim : 
 
 "Confound that Mongenod ! But for him, I could have a 
 thousand crowns a year !' 
 
 "Mongenod had become my chronic aversion; I thundered 
 at him even when I was walking in the street. 
 
 " 'Bordin is after him !' said I to myself. 'He will catch 
 him and serve him right !' 
 
 "My rage expended itself in imprecations; I cursed the 
 man; I believed him capable of any crime. Yes! Monsieur 
 Barillaud was quite right in what he said:
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 59 
 
 "Well, one morning my debtor walked in, no more discon- 
 certed than if he had not owed me a centime; and I, when I 
 saw him, I felt all the shame that should have been his. I 
 was like a criminal caught in the act ; I was quite ill at ease. 
 The 18th of Brumaire was past, everything was going on well, 
 and Bonaparte had set out to fight the battle of Marengo. 
 
 "'It is unlucky, monsieur,' said I, 'that I should owe your 
 visit solely to the intervention of a bailiff.' 
 
 "Mongenod took a chair and sat down. 
 
 " 'I have come to tell you,' said he, with the familiar tu, 
 'that I cannot possibly pay you.' 
 
 " 'You have lost me the chance of investing my money be- 
 fore the arrival of the First Consul at that time I could 
 have made a little fortune " 
 
 " 'I know it, Alain,' said he ; 'I know it. But what will 
 you get by prosecuting me for debt and plunging me deeper 
 by loading me with costs? I have letters from my father-in- 
 law and my wife; they have bought some land and sent me 
 the bill for the necessaries of the house ; I have had to spend 
 all I had in those purchases. Now, and nobody can hinder me 
 I mean to sail by a Dutch vessel from Flushing, whither I 
 have sent all my small possessions. Bonaparte has won the 
 battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, and I can join my 
 family without fear for my dear little wife was expecting a 
 baby.' 
 
 " 'And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests ?' 
 cried I. 
 
 "'Yes,' said he; 'I thought you my friend.' 
 
 "At that moment I felt small as compared to Mongenod, 
 so sublime did that speech seem to me, so simple and grand. 
 
 " 'Did I not tell you so,' he went on ; 'was I not absolutely 
 frank with you here, on this very spot? I came to you, 
 Alain, as being the only man who would appreciate me. 
 Fifty louis would be wasted, I told you; but if you lent me a 
 hundred, I would repay them. I fixed no date, for how can I 
 tell when my long struggle with poverty will come to an end? 
 You were my last friend. All my friends, even our old maa-
 
 60 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 ter Bordin, despised me simply because I wanted to borrow 
 money of them. Oh ! Alain, you can never know the dreadful 
 feelings that grip the heart of an honest man fighting misfor- 
 tune when he goes into another man's house to ask for help ! 
 
 and all that follows ! I hope you may never know 
 
 them ; they are worse than the anguish of death ! 
 
 " 'You have written me certain letters which, from me 
 under similar circumstances, would have struck you as odious. 
 You expected things of me that were out of my power. You 
 are the only man to whom I attempt to justify myself. In 
 spite of your severity, and though you ceased to be my friend 
 and became only my creditor from the day when Bordin asked 
 me for an acknowledgment of your loan, thus discrediting the 
 handsome agreement we ourselves had come to, here, shak- 
 ing hands on it with tears in our eyes ! Well, I have for- 
 gotten everything but that morning's work. 
 
 " 'It is in memory of that hour that I have come now to 
 say, "You know not what misfortune is ; do not rail at it ! 
 I have not had an hour, not a second, to write to you in reply ! 
 Perhaps you would have liked me to come and pay you com- 
 pliments? You might as well expect a hare, harassed by 
 dogs and hunters, to rest in a clearing and crop the grass ! 
 I sent you no ticket ! No ; I had not enough to satisfy those 
 on whom my fate depended. A novice in the theatrical world, 
 I was the prey of musicians, actors, singers, the orchestra. To 
 enable me to join my family over seas, and buy what they 
 need, I sold the Peruviens to the manager with two other 
 pieces I had in my desk. I am setting out for Holland with- 
 out a sou. I shall eat dry bread on my journey till I reach 
 Flushing. I have paid my passage, and have nothing more. 
 But for my landlady's compassion, and her trust in 'me, I 
 should have had to walk to Flushing with a knapsack on my 
 back. And so, in spite of your doubting me, as, but for you, 
 I could not have sent my father-in-law and my wife to New 
 York, I am entirely grateful." No, Monsieur Alain, I will 
 not forget that the hundred louis you lent me might at this 
 time be yielding you an income of fifteen hundred francs.'
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 61 
 
 " 'I would fain believe you, Mongenod,' said I, almost con- 
 vinced by the tone in which he poured out this explanation. 
 
 " 'At any rate, you no longer address me as monsieur,' said 
 he eagerly, and looking at me with emotion. 'God knows I 
 should quit France with less regret if I could leave one man 
 behind me in whose eyes I was neither half a rogue, nor a 
 spendthrift, nor a victim to illusions. A man who can love 
 truly, Alain, is never wholly despicable.' 
 
 "At these words I held out my hand ; he took it and pressed 
 it. 
 
 " 'Heaven protect you !' said I. 
 
 '"We are still friends?' he asked. 
 
 " 'Yes,' I replied ; 'it shall never be said that my schoolfel- 
 low, the friend of my youth, set out for America under the 
 ban of my anger ! ' 
 
 "Mongenod embraced me with tears in his eyes, and rushed 
 off to the door. 
 
 "When I met Bordin a few days afterwards, I told him the 
 story of our interview, and he replied with a smile: 
 
 " 'I only hope it was not all part of the performance ! He 
 did not ask you for anything?' 
 
 " 'No/ said I. 
 
 " 'He came to me too, and I was almost as weak as you ; 
 but he asked me for something to get food on the way. How- 
 ever, he who lives will see !' 
 
 "This remark of Bordin's made me fear lest I had yielded 
 stupidly to an impulse of feeling. 
 
 " 'Still, he too, the Public Prosecutor, did the same/ said I 
 to myself. 
 
 "It is unnecessary, I think, to explain to you how I lost all 
 my fortune excepting the other hundred louis, which I in- 
 vested in Government securities when prices had risen so high 
 that I had barely five hundred francs a year to live upon by 
 the time I was four-and-thirty. By Bordin's interest I ob- 
 tained an appointment at eight hundred francs a year in a 
 branch of the Mont-de-Piete, Rue des Petits Augustins. I 
 lived in the humblest way; I lodged on the third floor of a 

 
 62 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 house in the Rue des Marais in an apartment consisting of 
 two rooms and a closet for two hundred and fifty francs. I 
 went out to dinner in a boarding-house where there was an 
 open table, and for this I paid forty francs a month. In the 
 evening I did some copying. Ugly as I am, and very poor, 
 I had to give up all ideas of marriage 
 
 As he heard this verdict pronounced on himself by poor 
 Alain in a tone of angelic resignation, Godefroid gave a little 
 start, which proved better than any speech could have done 
 the similarity of their fate; and the good man, in reply to 
 this eloquent gesture, seemed to pause for his hearer to speak. 
 
 "And no one ever loved you?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "No one," he replied, "excepting Madame, who returns 
 to all of us alike our love for her a love I might almost call 
 divine. You must have seen it: we live in her life, as she 
 lives in ours; we have but one soul among us; and though 
 our enjoyments are not physical, they are none the less very 
 intense, for we live only through the heart. How can we help 
 it, my dear boy? By the time women are capable of appre- 
 ciating moral qualities they have done with externals, and 
 are growing old. I have suffered much, I can tell you !" 
 
 "Ah ! that is the stage I am at " said Godefroid. 
 
 "Under the Empire," the old man went on, bowing his head, 
 "dividends were not very punctually paid; we had to be pre- 
 pared for deferred payment. From 1802 to 1814 not a week 
 passed that I did not ascribe my difficulties to Mongenod: 
 'But for Mongenod,' I used to think, 'I might have been mar- 
 ried. But for him I should not be obliged to live in priva- 
 tion.' But sometimes, too, I would say to myself, 'Perhaps 
 the poor man is pursued by ill-luck out there !' 
 
 "In 1806, one day when I found my life a heavy burden 
 to bear, I wrote him a long letter that I despatched via Hol- 
 land. I had no answer ; and for three years I waited, found- 
 ing hopes on that reply which were constantly deceived. At 
 last I resigned myself to my fate. To my five hundred francs 
 of dividends, and twelve hundred francs of salary from the 
 Mont-de-Piete, for it was raised, I added five hundred for
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 63 
 
 my work as bookkeeper to a perfumer, Monsieur Birotteau. 
 Thus I not only made both ends meet, but I saved eight hun- 
 dred francs a year. By the beginning of 1814, 1 was able to in- 
 vest nine thousand francs of savings in the funds, buying at 
 forty; thus I had secured sixteen hundred francs a year for 
 my old age. So then, with fifteen hundred francs a year from 
 the Mont-de-Piete, six hundred as a bookkeeper, and sixteen 
 hundred in dividends, I had an income of three thousand 
 seven hundred francs. I took rooms in the Rue de Seine, 
 and I lived in rather more comfort. 
 
 "My position brought me into contact with many of the very 
 poor. For twelve years I have known, better than any one, 
 what the misery of the world is; once or twice I have helped 
 some poor creatures ; and I felt the keenest pleasure when, out 
 of ten that I had assisted, one or two families were rescued 
 from their difficulties. 
 
 "It struck me that true beneficence did not consist in throw- 
 ing money to the sufferers. Being charitable, in the com- 
 mon phrase, often appeared to me to be a sort of premium on 
 crime. I set to work to study this question. I was by this 
 time fifty years old ; and my life was drawing to a close. 
 
 " 'What good am I in the world ?' I asked myself. 'To 
 whom can I leave my money? When I shall have furnished 
 my rooms handsomely, have secured a good cook, have made 
 my life suitably comfortable, what am I to do with my time ?' 
 
 "For eleven years of revolutions and fifteen years of poverty 
 had wasted the happiest part of my life, had consumed it in 
 labors that were fruitless, or devoted solely to the preservation 
 of my person ! At such an age no one can make an obscure 
 and penurious youth the starting-point to reach a brilliant 
 position ; but every one may make himself useful. I under- 
 stood, in short, that a certain supervision and much good ad- 
 vice would increase tenfold the value of money given, for the 
 poor always need guidance; to enable them to profit by the 
 work they do for others, it is not the intelligence of the specu- 
 lator that is wanting. 
 
 "A few happy results that I achieved made me extremely
 
 64 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 proud. I discerned both an aim and an occupation, to say 
 nothing of the exquisite pleasure to be derived from playing 
 the part of Providence, even on the smallest scale." 
 
 "And you now play it on a large scale?" said Godefroid 
 eagerly. 
 
 "Oh, you want to know too much !" said the old man. "Nay, 
 nay. Would you believe it," he went on after a pause, "the 
 smallness of the means at my command constantly brought 
 my thoughts back to Mongenod? 
 
 " 'But for Mongenod I could have done so much more,' I 
 used to reflect. 'If a dishonest man had not robbed me of 
 fifteen hundred francs a year/ I often thought, 'I could have 
 helped this or that family.' 
 
 "Thus excusing my inability by such an accusation, those 
 to whom I gave nothing but words to comfort them joined 
 me in cursing Mongenod. These maledictions were balm to 
 my heart. 
 
 "One morning, in January 1816, my housekeeper an- 
 nounced whom do you think? Mongenod. Monsieur 
 Mongenod. And who should walk in but the pretty wife, now 
 six-and-thirty, accompanied by three children ; then came 
 Mongenod, younger than when he left, for wealth and happi- 
 ness shed a glory on those they favor. He had gene away lean, 
 pale, yellow, and haggard ; he had come back fat and well-lik- 
 ing, as flourishing as a prebendary, and well dressed. He 
 threw himself into my arms, and finding himself coldly wel- 
 comed, his first words were : 
 
 " 'Could I come any sooner, my friend ? The seas have 
 only been open since 1815, and it took me eighteen months to 
 realize my property, close my accounts, and call in my assets. 
 I have succeeded, my friend ! When I received your letter in 
 1806, I set out in a Dutch vessel to bring you home a little 
 fortune ; but the union of Holland to the French Empire led 
 to our being taken by the English, who transported me to the 
 coast of Jamaica, whence by good luck I escaped. 
 
 " 'On my return to New York I was a victim to bankruptcy ; 
 for Charlotte, during my absence, had not known how to be
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 65 
 
 on her guard against swindlers. So I was compelled to begin 
 again to accumulate a fortune. 
 
 " 'However, here we are at last. From the way the chil- 
 dren look at you, you may suppose that they have often heard 
 of the benefactor of the family.' 
 
 " 'Yes, indeed/ said pretty Madame Mongenod, 'we never 
 passed a day without speaking of you. Your share has been 
 allowed for in every transaction. We have longed for the 
 happiness we enjoy at this moment of offering you your for- 
 tune, though we have never for a moment imagined that this 
 "rector's tithe" can pay our debt of gratitude.' 
 
 "And as she spoke, Madame Mongenod offered me the beau- 
 tiful casket you see there, which contained a hundred and 
 fifty thousand-franc notes. 
 
 " 'You have suffered much, my dear Alain, I know ; but we 
 could imagine all your sufferings, and we craked our brains 
 to find means of sending you money; but without success,' 
 Mongenod went on. 'You tell me you could not mar'ry ; but 
 here is our eldest daughter. She has been brought up in the 
 idea that she should be your wife, and she has five hundred 
 thousand francs ' 
 
 " 'God forbid that I should wreck her happiness !' cried I, 
 as I beheld a girl as lovely as her mother had been at her age ; 
 and I drew her to me, and kissed her forehead. 
 
 "'Do not be afraid, my pretty child,' said I. 'A man of 
 fifty and a girl of seventeen and so ugly an old fellow as I ! 
 Never !' 
 
 " 'Monsieur,' said she, 'my father's benefactor can never 
 seem ugly in my eyes.' 
 
 "This speech, made with spontaneous candor, showed me 
 that all Mongenod had told me was true. I offered him my 
 hand, and we fell into each other's arms once more. 
 
 " 'My friend,' said I, 'I have often abused you, cursed 
 you ' 
 
 " 'You had every right, Alain,' replied he, reddening. 'You 
 
 were in poverty through my fault ' 
 
 5
 
 66 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "I took Mongenod's papers out of a box and restored them 
 to him, after cancelling his note of hand. 
 
 " 'Now you will all breakfast with me/ said I to the family 
 party. 
 
 " 'On condition of your dining with my wife as soon as we 
 are settled/ said Mongenod, 'for we arrived only yesterday. 
 We are going to buy a house, and I am about to open a bank 
 in Paris for North American business to leave to that young- 
 ster/ he said, pointing to his eldest son, a lad of fifteen. 
 
 "We spent the afternoon together, and in the evening we 
 all went to the theatre, for Mongenod and his party were dying 
 to see a play. Next day I invested in the funds, and had then 
 an income of about fifteen thousand francs in all. ' This re- 
 leased me from bookkeeping in the evening, and allowed me to 
 give up my appointment, to the great satisfaction of all my 
 subordinates. 
 
 "My friend died in 1827, after founding the banking house 
 of Mongenod and Co., which made immense profits on the first 
 loans issued at the time of the Eestoration. His daughter, 
 to whom he subsequently gave about a million of francs, mar- 
 ried the Vicomte de Fontaine. The son whom you know is 
 not yet married; he lives with his mother and his younger 
 brother. We find them ready with all the money we may need. 
 
 "Frederic for his father, in America, had named him after 
 me Frederic Mongenod, at seven-and-thirty, is one of the 
 most skilful and respected bankers in Paris. 
 
 "Not very long since Madame Mongenod confessed to me 
 that she had sold her hair for two crowns of six livres 
 to be able to buy some bread. She gives twenty-four loads of 
 wood every year, which I distribute among the poor, in return 
 for the half -load I once sent her." 
 
 "Then this accounts for your connection with the house of 
 Mongenod," said Godefroid. "And your fortune 
 
 The old man still looked at Godefroid with the same expres- 
 sion of mild irony. 
 
 "Pray go on," said Godefroid, seeing by Monsieur Alain's 
 manner that he had more to say.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 67 
 
 "This conclusion, my dear Godefroid, made the deepest im- 
 pression on me. Though the man who had suffered so much, 
 though my friend had forgiven me my injustice, I could not 
 forgive myself." 
 
 "Oh !" said Godefroid. 
 
 "I determined to devote all my surplus income, about ten 
 thousand francs a year, to acts of rational beneficence," 
 Monsieur Alain calmly went on. "At about that time I met 
 an Examining Judge of the department of the Seine named 
 Popinot, whose death we mourned three years ago, 
 and who for fifteen years practised the most enlightened 
 charity in the Saint-Marcel quarter. He, in con- 
 cert with the venerable vicar of Notre-Dame and with Ma- 
 dame, planned the work in which we are all engaged, and 
 which, since 1823, has secretly effected some good results. 
 
 "This work has found a soul in Madame de la Chanterie; 
 she 'is really the very spirit of the undertaking. The vicar has 
 succeeded in making us more religious than we were at first, 
 demonstrating the necessity for being virtuous ourselves if 
 we desire to inspire virtue for preaching, in fact, by ex- 
 ample. And the further we progress in that path, the hap- 
 pier we are among ourselves. Thus it was my repentance 
 for having misprized the heart of my boyhood's friend which 
 led me to the idea of devoting to the poor, through myself, 
 the fortune he brought home to me, which I accepted without 
 demurring to the vast sum repaid to me for so small a loan; 
 the application of it made it right." 
 
 This narrative, devoid of all emphasis, and told with touch- 
 ing simplicity of tone, gesture, and expression, would have 
 been enough to make Godefroid resolve on joining in this 
 noble and saintly work, if he had not already intended it. 
 
 "You know little of the world," said Godefroid, "if you had 
 such scruples over a thing which would never have weighed on 
 any other conscience." 
 
 "I know only the wretched," replied the good man. "I have 
 no wish to know a world where men misjudge each other with 
 so little compunction. Now, it is nearly midnight, and I have 
 to meditate on my chapter of the Imitation. Good-night."
 
 68 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 Godefroid took the kind old man's hand and pressed it with 
 an impulse of genuine admiration. 
 
 "Can you tell me Madame de la Chanterie's history ?" asked 
 Godefroid. 
 
 "It would be impossible without her permission, for it is 
 connected with one of the most terrible incidents of imperial 
 politics. I first knew Madame through my friend Bordin ; he 
 knew all the secrets of that beautiful life; and it was he who 
 led me, so to speak, to this house." 
 
 "At any rate, then," said Godefroid, "I thank you for hav- 
 ing told me your life ; it contains a lesson for me." 
 
 "Do you discern its moral ?" 
 
 "Nay, tell it me," said Godefroid ; "for I might see it differ- 
 ently to you " 
 
 "Well, then," said the good man, "pleasure is but an acci- 
 dent in the life of the Christian ; it is not his aim and end 
 and we learn this too late." 
 
 "What then happens when we are converted ?" asked Gode- 
 froid. 
 
 "Look there !" said Alain, and he pointed to an inscription 
 in letters of gold on a black ground, which the newcomer 
 had not seen before, as this was the first time he had ever been 
 into his companion's rooms. He turned round and read the 
 words, "TRANSIRE BENEFACIENDO." 
 
 "That, my son, is the meaning we then find in life. That 
 is our motto. If you become one of us, that constitutes your 
 brevet. We read that text and take it as our counsel at every 
 hour of the day, when we rise, when we go to bed, while we 
 dress. Oh ! if you could but know what infinite happiness is to 
 be found in carrying out that device !" 
 
 "In what way?" said Godefroid, hoping for some explana- 
 tions. 
 
 "In the first place, we are as rich as Baron de Nucingen. 
 But the Imitation prohibits our calling anything our own: 
 we are but stewards ; and if we feel a single impulse of pride, 
 we are not worthy to be stewards. That would not be transire 
 benefaciendo; it would be enjoyment in thought. If you say
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 69 
 
 to yourself, with a certain dilation of the nostrils, 'I am play- 
 ing the part of Providence' as you might have thought this 
 morning, if you had been in my place, giving new life to a 
 whole family, you are a Sardanapalus at once and wicked ! 
 Not one of our members ever thinks of himself when doing 
 good. You must cast off all vanity, all pride, all self-con- 
 sciousness; and it is difficult, I can tell you." 
 
 Godefroid bid Monsieur Alain good-night, and went to his 
 own rooms, much moved by this story; but his curiosity was 
 excited rather than satisfied, for the chief figure in the picture 
 of this domestic scene was Madame de la Chanterie. This 
 woman's history was to him so supremely interesting that he 
 made the knowledge of it the first aim of his stay in the house. 
 He understood that the purpose for which these five persons 
 were associated was some great charitable endeavor; but he 
 thought much less of that than of his heroine. 
 
 The neophyte spent some days in studying these choice 
 spirits, amid whom he found himself, with greater attention 
 than he had hitherto devoted to them ; and he became the sub- 
 ject of a moral phenomenon which modern philanthropists 
 have overlooked, from ignorance perhaps. The sphere in which 
 he lived had a direct influence on Godefroid. The law which 
 governs physical nature in respect to the influence of atmos- 
 pheric conditions on the lives of the beings subject to them, 
 also governs moral nature; whence it is to be inferred that 
 the collecting in masses of the criminal class is one of the 
 greatest social crimes, while absolute isolation is an experi- 
 ment of which the success is very doubtful. Condemned felons 
 ought, therefore, to be placed in religious institutions and sur- 
 rounded with prodigies of goodness instead of being left 
 among marvels of evil. The Church may be looked to for per- 
 fect devotion to this cause; for if She is ready to WMK! mis- 
 sionaries to barbarous or savage nations, how gladly would 
 She charge her religious Orders with the mission of rescuing 
 and instructing the savages of civilized life ! Every criminal 
 is an atheist often without knowing it.
 
 70 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 Godefroid found his five companions endowed with the 
 qualities they demanded of him ; they were all free from pride 
 or vanity, all truly humble and pious, devoid of the preten- 
 tiousness which constitutes devoutness in the invidious sense 
 of the word. These virtues were contagious ; he was filled with 
 the desire to imitate these obscure heroes, and he ended by 
 studying with ardor the book he had at first scorned. Within 
 a fortnight he had reduced life to its simplest expression, to 
 what it really is when regarded from the lofty point of view to 
 which the religious spirit leads us. Finally, his curiosity, at 
 first purely worldly and roused by many vulgar motives, be- 
 came rarefied. He did not cease to be curious ; it would have 
 been difficult to lose all interest in the life of Madame de la 
 Chanterie; but, without intending it, he showed a reserve 
 which was fully appreciated by these men, in whom the Holy 
 Spirit had developed wonderful depths of mind, as happens, 
 indeed, with all who devote themselves to a religious life. The 
 concentration of the moral powers, by whatever means or sys- 
 tem, increases their scope tenfold. 
 
 "Our young friend is not yet a convert," said the good Abbe 
 de Veze; "but he wishes to be." 
 
 An unforeseen circumstance led to the revelation of Madame 
 de la Chanterie's history, so that his intense interest in it 
 was soon satisfied. 
 
 Paris was just then engrossed by the investigation of the 
 case of the Barriere Saint-Jacques, one of those hideous trials 
 which mark the history of our assizes. The trial derived its 
 interest from the criminals themselves, whose daring and gen- 
 eral superiority to ordinary culprits, with -their cynical con- 
 tempt for justice, really appalled the public. It was a note- 
 worthy fact that no newspaper ever entered the Hotel de la 
 Chanterie, and Godefroid only heard of the rejection of the 
 appeal to the Supreme Court from his master in bookkeep- 
 ing ; the trial had taken place long before he came to Madame 
 de la Chanterie. 
 
 "Do you ever meet with such men as these atrocious scoun- 
 drels?" he asked his new friends. "Or, when you do, how 
 do you deal with them ?"
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 71 
 
 "In the first place," said Monsieur Nicolas, "there is no such 
 thing as an atrocious scoundrel; there are mad creatures fit 
 only for the asylum at Charenton; but with the exception of 
 those rare pathological exceptions, what we find are simply 
 men without religion, or who argue falsely, and the task of 
 the charitable is to set souls upright and bring the erring into 
 the right way." 
 
 "And to the apostle all things are possible," said the Abbe 
 de Veze ; "he has God on his side." 
 
 "If you were sent to these two condemned men," said Gode- 
 froid, "you could do nothing with them." 
 
 "There would not be time," observed Monsieur Alain. 
 
 "As a rule," said Monsieur Nicolas, "the souls handed over 
 to be dealt with by the Church are in utter impenitence, and 
 the time is too short for miracles to be wrought. The men 
 of whom you are speaking, if they had fallen into our hands, 
 would have been men of mark ; their energy is immense ; but 
 when once they have committed murder, it is impossible to 
 do anything for them ; human justice has taken possession of 
 them " 
 
 "Then you are averse to capital punishment?" said Gode- 
 froid. 
 
 Monsieur Nicolas hastily rose and left the room. 
 
 "Never speak of capital punishment in the presence of Mon- 
 sieur Nicolas. He once recognized in a criminal, whose exe- 
 cution it was his duty to superintend, a natural child of his 
 own " 
 
 "And who was innocent !" added Monsieur Joseph. 
 
 At this moment Madame de la Chanterie, who had not been 
 in the room, came in. 
 
 "Still, you must allow," Godefroid went on, addressing 
 Monsieur Joseph, "that society cannot exist without capital 
 punishment, and that these men, whose heads ' 
 
 Godefroid felt his mouth suddenly closed by a strong hand, 
 and the Abbe de Veze led away Madame de la Chanterie, pale 
 and half dead. 
 
 "What have you done ?" cried Monsieur Joseph. "Take him
 
 72 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 away, Alain/' he said, removing the hand with which he had 
 gagged Godefroid; and he followed the Abbe de Yeze into 
 Madame's room. 
 
 "Come with me," said Alain to Godefroid. "You have com- 
 pelled ITS to tell you the secrets of Madame's life." 
 
 In a few minutes the two friends were together in Monsieur 
 Alain's room, as they had been when the old man had told 
 Godefroid his own history. 
 
 "Well," said Godefroid, whose face sufficiently showed his 
 despair at having been the cause of what might be called a 
 catastrophe in this pious household. 
 
 "I am waiting till Manon shall have come to say how she is 
 going on," replied the good man, as he heard the woman's step 
 on the stairs. 
 
 "Monsieur, Madame is better. Monsieur 1'Abbe managed 
 to deceive her as to what had been said," and Manon shot 
 a wrathful glance at Godefroid. 
 
 "Good Heavens !" exclaimed the unhappy young man, his 
 eyes filling with tears. 
 
 "Come, sit down," said Monsieur Alain, seating himself. 
 Then he paused to collect his thoughts. 
 
 "I do not know," said the kind old man, "that I have the 
 talent necessary to give a worthy narrative of a life so 
 cruelly tried. You must forgive me if you find the words of 
 so poor a speaker inadequate to the magnitude of the events 
 and catastrophes. You must remember that it is a very long 
 time since I was at school, and that I date from a time when 
 thoughts were held of more importance than effect from a 
 prosaic age, when we knew not how to speak of things except 
 by their names." 
 
 Godefroid bowed with an expression of assent, in which his 
 worthy old friend could discern his sincere admiration, and 
 which plainly said, "I am listening." 
 
 "As you have just perceived, my young friend, it would 
 be impossible for you to remain one of us without learning 
 some of the particulars of that saintly woman's life. There 
 are certain ideas, allusions, words, which are absolutely pro-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 73 
 
 hibited in this house, since they inevitably reopen wounds, 
 of which the anguish might kill Madame if it were once or 
 twice revived " 
 
 "Good Heavens!" exclaimed Godefroid, "what have I 
 done?" 
 
 "But for Monsieur Joseph, who happily interrupted you 
 just as you were about to speak of the awful instrument of 
 death, you would have annihilated the poor lady. It is time 
 that you should be told all; for you will be one of us, of that 
 we are all convinced." 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie," he went on after a short pa-use, 
 "is descended from one of the first families of Lower Nor- 
 mandy. Her maiden name was Mademoiselle Barbe-Philiberte 
 de Champignelles of a younger branch of that house; and 
 she was intended to take the veil unless a marriage could 
 be arranged for her with the usual renunciations of property 
 that were commonly required in poor families of high rank. 
 A certain Sieur de la Chanterie, whose family had sunk into 
 utter obscurity, though dating from the time of Philippe- 
 Auguste's crusade, was anxious to recover the rank to which 
 so ancient a name gave him a claim in the province of Nor- 
 mandy. But he had fallen quite from his high estate, for he 
 had made money some three hundred thousand francs by 
 supplying the commissariat for the army at the time of the 
 war with Hanover. His son, trusting too much to this wealth, 
 which provincial rumor magnified, was living in Paris in a 
 way calculated to cause the father of a family some uneasi- 
 ness. 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Champignelles' great merits became 
 famous throughout the district of le Bessin ; and the old man, 
 whose little feof of la Chanterie lay between Caen and Saint- 
 L6, heard some expressions of regret that so accomplished a 
 young lady, and one so capable of making a husband happy, 
 should end her days in a convent. On his uttering a wish to 
 seek her out, some hope was given him that he might obtain 
 the hand of Mademoiselle Philiberte for his son if ho wen- 
 content to renounce any marriage portion. He went to
 
 74 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 Bayeux, contrived to have two or three meetings with the 
 Champignelles family, and was fascinated by the young lady's 
 noble qualities. 
 
 "At the age of sixteen, Mademoiselle de Champignelles 
 gave promise of what she would become. She evinced well- 
 founded piety, sound good sense, inflexible rectitude one 
 of those natures which will never veer in its affections even 
 if they are the outcome of duty. The old nobleman, en- 
 riched by his somewhat illicit gains, discerned in this charm- 
 ing girl a wife who might keep his son in order by the au- 
 thority of virtue and the ascendency of a character that was 
 firm but not rigid; for, as you have seen, no one can be gen- 
 tler than Madame de la Chanterie. Then, no one could be 
 more confiding; even in the decline of life she has the candor 
 of innocence ; in her youth she would not believe in evil ; such 
 distrust as you may have seen in her she owes to her mis- 
 fortunes. The old man pledged himself to the Champignelles 
 to give them a discharge in full for the portion legitimately 
 due to Mademoiselle Philiberte on the signing of the mar- 
 riage-contract; in return, the Champignelles, who were con- 
 nected with the greatest families, promised to have the feof 
 of la Chanterie created a barony, and they kept their word. 
 The bridegroom's aunt, Madame de Boisfrelon, the wife of 
 the councillor to the Parlement who died in your rooms, prom- 
 ised to leave her fortune to her nephew. 
 
 "When all these arrangements were completed between 
 the two families, the father sent for his son. This young 
 man, at the time of his marriage, was five-and-twenty, and 
 already a Master of Appeals; he had indulged in numerous 
 follies with the young gentlemen of the time, living in their 
 style; and the old army contractor had several times paid 
 his debts to a considerable amount. The poor father, fore- 
 seeing further dissipation on the son's part, was only too glad 
 to settle a part of his fortune on his daughter-in-law; but 
 he was so cautious as to entail the estate of la Chanterie 
 on the heirs male of the marriage "
 
 75 
 
 "A precaution," added Monsieur Alain in a parenthesis, 
 "which the Revolution made useless." 
 
 "As handsome as an angel, and wonderfully skilled in all 
 athletic exercises, the young Master of Appeals had immense 
 powers of charming," he went on. "So Mademoiselle de 
 Champignelles, as you may easily imagine, fell very much in 
 love with her husband. The old man, made very happy by this 
 promising beginning, and hoping that his son was a reformed 
 character, sent the young couple to Paris. This was early 
 in 1788. For nearly a year they were perfectly happy. Ma- 
 dame de la Chanterie was the object of all the little cares, 
 the most delicate attentions that a devoted lover can lavish 
 on the one and only woman he loves. Brief as it was, the 
 honeymoon beamed brightly on the heart of the noble and 
 unfortunate lady. 
 
 "As you know, in those days mothers all nursed their in- 
 fants themselves. Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter. 
 This time, when a wife ought to be the object of double de- 
 votion on her husband's part, was, on the contrary, the be- 
 ginning of dreadful woes. The Master of Appeals was obliged 
 to sell everything he could part with to pay old debts which 
 he had not confessed, and more recent gambling debts. Then, 
 suddenly, the National Assembly dissolved the Supreme 
 Council and the Parlement, and abolished all the great law 
 appointments that had been so dearly purchased. Thus the 
 young couple, with the addition of their child, had no income 
 to rely on but the revenues from the entailed estate, and from 
 the portion settled on Madame de la Chanterie. Twenty 
 months after their marriage this charming woman, at the age 
 of seventeen and a half, found herself reduced to maintaining 
 herself and the child at her breast by the work of her hands, 
 in an obscure street where she hid herself. She then found 
 herself absolutely deserted by her husband, who fell step by 
 step into the society of the very lowest kind. Never did she 
 blame her husband, never did she put him in the least in 
 the wrong. She has told us that all through the worst time 
 she prayed to God for her dear Henri.
 
 76 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 "The rascal's name was Henri/' remarked Monsieur Alain. 
 "It is a name that must never be spoken here, any more than 
 that of Henriette. To proceed : 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie, who never quitted her little 
 room in the Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple unless to huy food 
 or fetch her work, kept her head above water, thanks partly 
 to an allowance of a hundred francs a month from her father- 
 in-law, who was touched by so much virtue. However, the 
 poor young wife, foreseeing that this support might fail her, 
 had taken up the laborious work of a staymaker, and worked 
 for a famous dressmaker. In fact, ere long the old contractor 
 died, and his estate was consumed by his son under favor of 
 the overthrow of the Monarchy. 
 
 "The erewhile Master of Appeals, now one of the most 
 savage of all the presidents of the revolutionary tribunal, had 
 become a terror in Normandy, and could indulge all his pas- 
 sions. Then, imprisoned in his turn on the fall of Robes- 
 pierre, the hatred of the department condemned him to in- 
 evitable death. Madame de la Chanterie received a farewell 
 letter announcing her husband's fate. She immediately 
 placed her little girl in the care of a neighbor, and went off 
 to the town where the wretch was in confinement, taking with 
 her a few louis, which constituted her whole fortune. This 
 money enabled her to get into the prison. She succeeded in 
 helping her husband to escape, dressing him in clothes of her 
 own, under circumstances very similar to those which not long 
 after favored Madame de la Valette. She was condemned to 
 death, but the authorities were ashamed to carry out this act 
 of revenge, and she was secretly released with the connivance 
 of the Court over which her husband had formerly presided. 
 She got back to Paris on foot without any money, sleeping at 
 farmhouses, and often fed by charity." 
 
 "Good Heavens !" exclaimed Godefroid. 
 
 "Wait," said the old man, "that was nothing. In the 
 course of eight years the poor woman saw her husband three 
 times. The first time the gentleman spent twenty-four hours 
 in his wife's humble lodgings, and went away with all her
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 77 
 
 money, after heaping on her every mark of affection, and 
 leading her to believe in his complete reformation. Tor I 
 could not resist,' said she, 'a man for whom I prayed every 
 day, and who filled my thoughts exclusively." The second 
 time Monsieur de la Chanterie came in a dying state, and from 
 some horrible disease! She nursed him, and saved his life; 
 then she tried to reclaim him to decent feeling and a seemly 
 life. After promising everything this angel begged of him, 
 the revolutionary relapsed into hideous debaucheries, and in 
 fact only escaped prosecution by the authorities by taking 
 refug^ in his wife's rooms, where he died unmolested. 
 
 "F-till, all this was nothing !" said Alain, seeing dismay 
 in Godefroid's face. 
 
 "iMo one in the world he had mixed with had known that 
 the man was married. Two years after the miserable crea- 
 ture's death, she heard that there was a second Madame de 
 la Chanterie, widowed and ruined like herself. The bigamous 
 villain had found two such angels incapable of betraying 
 him. Towards 1803," the old man went on after a pause, 
 "Monsieur de Boisfrelon, Madame de la Chanterie's uncle, 
 having his name removed from the list of proscribed per- 
 sons, came back to Paris and paid over to her two hundred 
 thousand francs that the old Commissariat contractor had 
 placed in his keeping, with instructions to hold it in trust for 
 his niece. He persuaded the widow to return to Normandy, 
 where she completed her daughter's education, and, by the 
 advice of the old lawyer, purchased back one of the family 
 estates under very favorable conditions." 
 
 "Ah !" sighed Godef roid. 
 
 "Oh ! all this was nothing !" said Monsieur Alain. "We 
 have not yet come to the hurricane. To proceed. In 1807, 
 after four years of peace, Madame de la Chanterie saw her 
 only daughter married to a gentleman whose piety, whose an- 
 tecedents, and fortune seemed a guarantee from every point 
 of view; a man who was reported to be the 'pet lamb' of the 
 best society in the country-town where Madame and her 
 daughter spent every winter. Remark: this society consisted
 
 78 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 of seven or eight families belonging to the highest French 
 nobility the d'Esgrignons, the Troisvilles, the Casterans, the 
 Nouatres, and the like. 
 
 "At the end of eighteen months this man deserted his wife 
 and vanished in Paris, having changed his name. Madame 
 de la Chanterie could never discover the cause of this separa- 
 tion till the lightning flash showed it in the midst of the 
 storm. Her daughter, whom she had brought up with the 
 greatest care and the purest religious feelings, preserved ab- 
 solute silence on the subject. 
 
 "This lack of confidence was a great shock to Madame de 
 la Chanterie. Many times already she had detected in her 
 daughter certain indications of the father's adventurous 
 spirit, strengthened by an almost manly determination of 
 character. The husband had departed without let or hin- 
 drance, leaving his affairs in the utmost disorder. To this 
 day Madame de la Chanterie is amazed at this catastrophe, 
 which no human power could remedy. All the persons she 
 privately consulted had assured her before the marriage that 
 the young man's fortune was clear and unembarrassed, in 
 land unencumbered by mortgages, when, at that very time, 
 the estate had, for ten years, been loaded with debt far be- 
 yond its value. So everything was sold, and the poor young 
 wife, reduced to her own little income, came back to live with 
 her mother. 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie subsequently learned that this 
 man had been kept going by the most respectable persons in 
 the district for their own benefit, for the wretched man owed 
 them all more or less considerable sums of money. Indeed, 
 ever since her arrival in the province, Madame de la Chan- 
 terie had been regarded as a prey. 
 
 "However, there were other reasons for this climax of dis- 
 aster, which you will understand from a confidential com- 
 munication addressed to the Emperor. 
 
 "This man had long since succeeded in winning the good 
 graces of the leading Royalists of the Department by his de- 
 votion to the cause during the stormiest days of the Revolu-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 79 
 
 tion. As one of Louis XVIII.'s most active emissaries, he 
 had, since 1793, been mixed up in every conspiracy, always 
 withdrawing at the right moment, and with so much dexterity 
 as to give rise at last to suspicions of his honor. The King 
 dismissed him from service, and he was excluded from all 
 further scheming, so he retired to his estate, already deeply 
 involved. All these antecedents, at that time scarcely known 
 for those who were initiated into the secrets of the Cabinet 
 did not say much about so dangerous a colleague made him 
 an object almost of worship in a town devoted to the Bour- 
 bons, where the cruelest devices of the Chouans were regarded 
 as honest warfare. The Esgrignons, the Casterans, the Che- 
 valier de Valois, in short, the Aristocracy and the Church, 
 received the Eoyalist with open arms, and took him to their 
 bosom. This favor was supported by his creditors' earnest 
 desire to be paid. 
 
 "This wretch, a match for the deceased la Chanterie, was 
 able to keep up his part for three years ; he affected the great- 
 est piety, and subjugated his vices. During the first few 
 months of his married life he had some little influence over 
 his wife; he did his utmost to corrupt her by his doctrines, 
 if atheism may be called a doctrine, and by the flippant tone 
 'in which he spoke of the most sacred things. 
 
 "This backstairs diplomate had, on his return to the country, 
 formed an intimacy with a young man, over head and ears 
 in debt, like himself, but attractive, in so far that he had as 
 much courage and honesty as the other had shown hypocrisy 
 and cowardice. This guest at his house whose charm and 
 character could not fail to impress a young woman, to say 
 nothing of his adventurous career was a tool in the hus- 
 band's hands which he used to support his infamous prin- 
 ciples. The daughter never confessed to her mother the gulf 
 into which circumstances had thrown her for human pru- 
 dence is no word for the caution exercised by Madame de la 
 Chanterie when seeking a husband for her only child. And 
 this last blow, in a life so devoted, so guileless, so religious 
 as hers, tested as she had been by every kind of misfortune,
 
 80 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 filled Madame de la Chanterie with a distrust of herself which 
 isolated her from her daughter; all the more so because her 
 daughter, in compensation for her ill-fortune, insisted on 
 perfect liberty, overruled her mother, and was sometimes very 
 rough with her. 
 
 "Thus wounded in every feeling, cheated alike in her devo- 
 tion and her love for her husband to whom she had sacrificed 
 her happiness, her fortune, and her life, without a murmur; 
 cheated in the exclusively religious training she had given hei! 
 daughter; cheated by the world, even in the matter of that 
 daughter's marriage, and meeting with no justice from the 
 heart in which she had implanted none but right feelings, she 
 turned more resolutely to God, clinging to Him whose hand 
 lay so heavy on her. She was almost a nun ; she went to mass 
 every morning, carried out monastic discipline, and saved in 
 everything to be able to help the poor. 
 
 "Has any woman ever known a more saintly or more se- 
 verely tried life than this noble creature, so mild to the un- 
 fortunate, so brave in danger, and always so perfect a Chris- 
 tian?" said the worthy man, appealing to Godefroid. "You 
 know Madame, you know whether she is deficient in sense, 
 judgment, and reflection. She has all these qualities in the 
 highest degree. Well, and still all these misfortunes, which 
 surely were enough to qualify any life as surpassing all others 
 in adversity, were a trifle compared with what God had yet in 
 store for this woman. We will speak only of Madame de la 
 Chanterie's daughter," said Monsieur Alain, going on with his 
 narrative. 
 
 "At the age of eighteen, when she married, Mademoiselle 
 de la Chanterie had an extremely delicate complexion, rather 
 dark, with a brilliant color, a slender form, and charming 
 features. An elegantly formed brow was crowned by the most 
 beautiful black hair, that matched well with bright and lively 
 hazel eyes. A peculiar prettiness and a childlike countenance 
 belied her real nature and masculine decisiveness. She had 
 small hands and feet; in all her person there was something 
 tiny and frail, which excluded any idea of strength and wil-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 81 
 
 fulness. Never having lived away from her mother, her mind 
 was absolutely innocent, and her piety remarkable. 
 
 "This young lady, like Madame de la Chanterie, was 
 fanatically devoted to the Bourbons, and hated the Revolu- 
 tion; she regarded Napoleon's empire as a plague inflicted 
 on France by Providence, as a punishment for the crimes of 
 1793. Such a conformity of opinion between the lady and her 
 son-in-law was, as it always must be in such cases, a con- 
 clusive reason in favor of the marriage, in which all the aris- 
 tocracy of the province took the greatest interest. 
 
 "This wretched man's friend had at the time of the re- 
 bellion in 1799 been the leader of a troop of Chouans. It 
 would seem that the Baron for Madame de la Chanterie's 
 son-in-law was a Baron had no object in throwing his wife 
 and his friend together but that of extracting money from 
 them. Though deeply in debt, and without any means of 
 living, the young adventurer lived in very good style, and was 
 able, no doubt, to help the promoter of royalist conspiracies. 
 
 "Here you will need a few words of explanation as to an 
 association which made a great noise in its day," said Mon- 
 sieur Alain, interrupting his narrative. ."I mean that of the 
 raiders known as the Chauffeurs. These brigands pervaded 
 all the western provinces more or less; but their object was 
 not so much pillage as a revival of the Eoyalist opposition. 
 Advantage was taken of the very general resistance of the peo- 
 ple to the law of conscription, which, as you know, was enforced 
 with many abuses. Between Mortagne and Rennes, and even 
 beyond, as far as the Loire, nocturnal raids were frequent, com- 
 monly to the injury of those who held national lands. These 
 bands of destroyers were the terrors of the country. I am not 
 exaggerating when I tell you that in some Departments the arm 
 of Justice was practically paralyzed. Those last thunders of 
 civil war did not echo so far as you might suppose, accus- 
 tomed as we now are to the startling publicity given by the 
 press to the most trivial acts of political and private life. 
 The Censor allowed nothing to appear in print that bore on 
 politics, unless it were accomplished fact, and even that was
 
 82 
 
 distorted. If you will take the trouble to look through old 
 files of the Moniteur and other newspapers, even those issued 
 in the western provinces, you will find not a word concerning 
 the four or five great trials which brought sixty or eighty of 
 these rebels to the scaffold. Brigands, this was the name given 
 under the Eevolution to the Vendeans, the Chouans, and all 
 who took up arms for the house of Bourbon ; and it was still 
 given in legal phraseology under the Empire to the Eoyalists 
 who were victims to sporadic conspiracies. For to some vehe- 
 ment souls the Emperor and his government were 'the 
 Enemy/ and everything seemed good that was adverse to him. 
 I am explaining the position, not justifying the opinions, 
 and 1 will now go on with my story. 
 
 "So now," he said, after a pause, such as must occur in a 
 long story, "you must understand that these Royalists were 
 ruined by the war of 1793, though consumed by frantic pas- 
 sions; and if you can conceive of some exceptional natures 
 consumed also by such necessities as those of Madame de la 
 Chanterie's son-in-law and his friend the Chouan leader, you 
 will see how it was that they determined to commit, for their 
 private advantage, a^cts of robbery which their political opin- 
 ions would justify, against the Imperial government for the 
 advantage of the Cause. 
 
 "The young leader set to work to fan the ashes of the 
 Chouau faction, to be ready to act at an opportune moment. 
 There was, soon after, a terrible crisis in the Emperor's af- 
 fairs when he was shut up in the island of Lobau, and it 
 seemed that he must inevitably succumb to a simultaneous 
 attack by England and by Austria. The victory of Wagram 
 made the internal rebellion all but abortive. This attempt 
 to revive the fires of civil war in Brittany, la Vendee, and part 
 of Xormandy, was unfortunately coincident with the Baron's 
 money difficulties; he had flattered himself that he could 
 contrive a separate expedition, of which the profits could be 
 applied solely to redeem his property. But his .wife and 
 friend, with nobler feeling, refused to divert to private uses 
 any sums that might be snatched at the sword's point from
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 83 
 
 the State coffers ; these were to be distributed to the rebel con- 
 scripts and Chouans, and to purchase weapons and ammuni- 
 tion to arm a general rising. 
 
 "At last, when after heated discussions the young Chouan, 
 supported by the Baroness, positively refused to retain a hun- 
 dred thousand francs in silver crowns which was to be seized 
 from one of the Government Receivers' offices in the west to 
 provide for the Royalist forces, the husband disappeared, to 
 escape the execution on his person of several writs that were 
 out against him. The creditors tried to extract payment from 
 his wife, but the wretched man had dried up the spring of af- 
 fection which prompts a woman to sacrifice herself for her 
 husband. 
 
 "All this was kept from poor Madame de la Chanterie, but 
 it was a trifle in comparison with the plot that lay behind this 
 merely preliminary explanation. 
 
 "It is too late this evening," said the good man, looking at 
 the clock, "and there is too much still to tell, to allow of my 
 going on with the rest of the story. My old friend Bordin, 
 who was made famous as a Royalist by his share in the great 
 Simeuse trial, and who pleaded in the case of the Chauffeurs 
 of Mortagne, gave me when I came to live here two docu- 
 ments which, as he died not long after, I still have in my pos- 
 session. You will there find the facts set forth much more 
 concisely than I could give them. The details are so com- 
 plicated that I should lose myself in trying to state them, 
 and it would take me more than two hours, while in these 
 papers you will find them summarized. To-morrow morning 
 I will tell you what remains to be told concerning Madame 
 de la Chanterie, for when you have read these documents you 
 will be sufficiently informed for me to conclude my tale in a 
 few words." 
 
 He placed some papers, yellow with years, in Godefroid's 
 hands; after bidding his neighbor good-night, the young man 
 retired to his room, jind before he went to sleep read the two 
 documents here reproduced: 
 VOL. 1637
 
 84 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "BILL OF INDICTMENT. 
 
 "Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department 
 of the Orne. 
 
 "The Public Prosecutor to the Imperial Court of Justice 
 at Caen, appointed to carry out his functions to the Special 
 Criminal Court sitting by the Imperial decree of September 
 1809, in the town of Alengon, sets forth to the Court the fol- 
 lowing facts, as proved by the preliminary proceedings, to- 
 wit: 
 
 "That a conspiracy of brigands, hatched for a long time 
 with extraordinary secrecy, and connected with a scheme for 
 a general rising in the western departments, has vented 
 itself in several attempts on the lives and property of citizens, 
 and more especially in the attack with robbery, under arms, 
 on a vehicle conveying, on the of May, 18 , the Govern- 
 ment moneys collected at. Caen. This attack, recalling in its 
 details the memories of the civil war now so happily at an end, 
 showed deep-laid designs of a degree of villainy which cannot 
 be excused by the vehemence of passion. 
 
 "From its inception to the end, the plot is extremely com- 
 plicated, and the details numerous. The preliminary ex- 
 aminations lasted for more than a year, but the evidence 
 forthcoming at every stage of the crime throws full light on 
 the preparations made, on its execution, and results. 
 
 "The first idea of the plot was conceived by one Charles- 
 Amedee-Louis-Joseph Eifoel, calling himself the Chevalier 
 du Yissard, born at le Vissard, a hamlet of Saint-Mexme by 
 Ernee, and formerly a leader of the rebels. 
 
 "This man, who was pardoned by His Majesty the Em- 
 peror at the time of the general peace and amnesty, and whose 
 ingratitude to his sovereign has shown itself in fresh crimes, 
 has already suffered the extreme penalty of the law as the 
 punishment for his misdeeds; but it is necessary here to 
 refer to some of his actions, as he had great influence over 
 some of the accused now awaiting the verdict of justice, and 
 he is concerned in every circumstance of the case.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 85 
 
 "This dangerous agitator, who bore an alias, as is common 
 with these rebels, and was known as Pierrot, used to wander 
 about the western provinces enlisting partisans for a fresh 
 rebellion; but his safest lurking-place was the chateau of 
 Saint-Savin, the home of a woman named Lechantre and her 
 daughter named Bryond, a house in the hamlet of Saint-Savin 
 and in the district of Mortagne. This spot is famous in the 
 most horrible annals of the rebellion of 1799. It was there 
 that a courier was murdered, and his chaise plundered by a 
 band of brigands under the command of a woman, helped by 
 the notorious Marche-a-Terre. Hence brigandage may be said 
 to be endemic in this neighborhood. 
 
 "An intimacy for which we seek no name had existed for 
 more than a year between the woman Bryond and the above-' 
 named Rifoel. 
 
 "It was close to this spot that, in the month of April 1808, 
 an interview took place between Rifoel and one Boislaurier, 
 a superior leader, known in the more serious risings in the west 
 by the name of Auguste, and he it was who was the moving 
 spirit of the rising now under the consideration of the Court. 
 
 "This obscure point, namely, the connection of these two 
 leaders, is plainly proved by the evidence of numerous wit- 
 nesses, and also stands as a demonstrated fact by the sentence 
 of death carried out on Rifoel. From the time of that meet- 
 ing, Boislaurier and Rifoel agreed to act in concert. 
 
 "They communicated to each other, and at first to no one 
 else, their atrocious purpose, founded on his Royal and Im- 
 perial Majesty's absence, in command, at the time, of his 
 forces in Spain; and then, or soon after, they must have 
 plotted to capture the State moneys in transit, as the base for 
 further operations. 
 
 "Some time later, one Dubut of Caen despatched a mes- 
 senger to the chateau of Saint-Savin, namely, one Hiley, 
 known as le Laboureur, long known as a robber of the dili- 
 gences; he was charged with information as to trustworthy 
 accomplices. And it was thus, by Hiley's intervention, that 
 the plot secured the co-operation from the first of one Her-
 
 86 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 bomez, called Greneral-Hardi, a pardoned rebel of the same 
 stamp as Rifoel, and, like him, a traitor to the amnesty. 
 
 "Herbomez and Ililey recruited in the neighboring villages 
 seven banditti, whose names must at once be set forth as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest 
 brigands of a troop got together by Montauran in the year 
 VII., and one of the actors in the robbery and murder of the 
 Mortagne courier. 
 
 "2. Frangois Lisieux, known as Grand-Fils, a rebel-con- 
 script of the department of the Mayenne. 
 
 "3. Charles Grenier, or Fleur-de-Genet, a deserter from the 
 69th half-brigade. 
 
 "4. Gabriel Bruce, known as Gros-Jean, one of the fiercest 
 Chouans of Fontaine's division. 
 
 "5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant of that 
 brigade, one of Tinteniac's* adherents, and well known by the 
 share he took in the Quiberon expedition. 
 
 "6. Marie-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, formerly hunts- 
 man to the Sieur Carol of Alengon. 
 
 "7. Louis Minard, a rebel conscript. 
 
 "These, when enrolled, were quartered in three different 
 hamlets in the houses of Binet, Melin, and Laraviniere, inn 
 or tavern-keepers, all devoted to Rifoel. 
 
 "The necessary weapons were at once provided by one Jean- 
 Frangois Leveille, a notary, and the incorrigible abettor of 
 the brigands, serving as a go-between for them with several 
 leaders in hiding; and, in this town, by one Felix Courcenil, 
 called the Confesseur, formerly surgeon to the rebel army of 
 la Vendee; both these men are natives of Alengon. Eleven 
 muskets were concealed in a house belonging to Bryond in a 
 suburb of Alengon; but this was done without his knowledge, 
 for he was at that time living in the country on his estate 
 between Alengon and Mortagne. 
 
 "When Bryond left his wife to go her own way in the fatal , 
 road she had set out on, these muskets, cautiously removed 
 from the house, were carried by the woman Bryond in her own 
 carriage to the chateau of Saint-Savin.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 87 
 
 "It was then that the Department of the Orne and adjacent 
 districts were dismayed by acts of highway robbery that 
 startled the authorities as much as the inhabitants of those 
 districts which had so long enjoyed quiet; and these raids 
 prove that the atrocious foes of the Government and the Em- 
 pire had been kept informed of the secret coalition of 1809 
 by means of communications from abroad. 
 
 "Levielle the notary, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen, 
 Herbomez of Mayenne, Boislaurier of le Mans, and Rifoel 
 were the ringleaders of the association, which was also joined 
 by those criminals who have been already executed under the 
 sentence passed on them with Eifoel, by those accused under 
 this trial, and by several others who have escaped public 
 vengeance by flight, or by the silence of their accomplices. 
 
 "It was Dubut who, as a resident near Caen, gave notice to 
 Leveille of the despatch of the money. Dubut made several 
 journeys between Caen and Mortagne, and Leveille also was 
 often on the roads. It may here be noted that, at the time 
 when the arms were moved, Leveille, who came to visit Bruce, 
 Grenier, and Cibot at Melin's house, found them arranging 
 the muskets in an inside shed, and helped them himself in 
 doing so. 
 
 "A general meeting was arranged to take place at Mortagne 
 at the $cu de France inn. All the accused were present in 
 various disguises. It was on this occasion that Levielle, the 
 woman Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, Boislaurier, and Hiley, 
 the cleverest of the subordinate conspirators, of whom Cibot 
 is the most daring, secured the co-operation of one Vauthier, 
 called Vieux-Chene, formerly a servant to the notorious 
 Longuy, and now a stableman at the inn. Vauthier agreed to 
 give the woman Bryond due notice of the passing of the 
 chaise conveying the Government moneys, as it commonly 
 stopped to bait at the inn. 
 
 "The opportunity ore long offered for assembling the 
 brigand recruits who had boon scattered about in various lodg- 
 ings with great precaution, sometimes in one village, and 
 sometimes in another, under the care of Courcouil and of
 
 88 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 Leveille. The assembly was managed by the woman Bryond, 
 who afforded the brigands a new hiding-place in the unin- 
 habited parts of the chateau of Saint-Savin, at a few miles 
 from Mortagne, where she had lived with her mother since her 
 husband's departure. The brigands established themselves 
 there with Hiley at their head, and spent several days there. 
 The woman Bryond, with her waiting-maid Godard, took care 
 to prepare with her own hands everything needed for lodging 
 and feeding these guests. To this end she had trusses of hay 
 brought in, and went to see the brigands in the shelter she 
 had arranged for them, going to and fro with Leveille. Pro- 
 visions and victuals were procured under the orders and care 
 of Courceuil, who took his orders from Rifoel and Boislaurier. 
 
 "The principal feat was decided on and the men fully 
 armed ; the brigands stole out of Saint-Savin every night ; 
 pending the transit of the Government chest, they carried out 
 raids in the neighborhood, and the whole country was in terror 
 under their repeated incursions. There can be no doubt that 
 the robberies committed at La Sartiniere, at Vonay, and at the 
 chateau of Saint-Seny were the work of this band; their dar- 
 ing equaled their villainy, and they contrived to terrify their 
 victims so effectually that 'no tales were told, so that justice 
 could obtain no evidence. 
 
 "While levying contributions on all who held possession 
 of the nationalized land, the brigands carefully reconnoitred 
 the v/oods of Le Chesnay, which they had chosen to be the 
 scene of their crime. 
 
 "Not far away is the village of Louvigny, where there is an 
 inn kept by the brothers Chaussard, formerly gamekeepers 
 on the property of Troisville, and this was to be the brigands' 
 final rendezvous. The two brothers knew beforehand the part 
 they were to play; Courceuil and Boislaurier had long before 
 sounded them, and revived their hatred of the government 
 of our august Emperor; and had told them that among the 
 visitors who would drop in on them would be some men of 
 their acquaintance the formidable Hiley and the not less 
 formidable Cibot.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 89 
 
 "In fact, on the 6th the seven highwaymen, under the 
 leadership of Hiley, arrived at the brother Chaussards' inn 
 and spent two days there. On the 8th the chief led out his men, 
 saying they were going three leagues away, and he desired the 
 innkeepers to provide food, which was taken to a place where 
 the roads met, a little way from the village. Hiley came home 
 alone at night. 
 
 "Two riders who were probably the woman Bryond and 
 Kifoel, for it is said that she accompanied him in his expedi- 
 tions, on horseback, and dressed as a man arrived that' 
 evening and conversed with Hiley. On the following day 
 Hiley wrote to Leveille the notary, and one of the Chaussard 
 brothers carried the letter and brought back the answer. Two 
 hours later Bryond and Rifoel came on horseback to speak 
 with Hiley. 
 
 "The upshot of all these interviews and coming and going 
 was that a hatchet was indispensable to break open the cases. 
 The notary went back with the woman Bryond to Saint-Savin, 
 where they sought in vain for a hatchet. 
 
 "Thereupon he returned to the inn and met Hiley half-way, 
 to whom he was to explain that no hatchet was to be found. 
 Hiley made his way back and ordered supper at the inn for 
 ten persons ; he then brought in the seven brigands all armed. 
 Hiley made them pile arms like soldiers. They all sat down 
 and supped in haste, Hiley ordering a quantity of food to be 
 packed for them to take away with them. Then he led the 
 elder Chaussard aside and asked for a hatchet. The innkeeper, 
 much astonished, by his own account, refused to give him one. 
 Courceuil and Boislaurier presently came in, and the three 
 men spent the whole night pacing up and down the room 
 and discussing their plan. Courceuil, nicknamed the Con- 
 fessor, the most cunning of the band, took possession of a 
 hatchet, and at about two in the morning they all went out 
 by different doors. 
 
 "Every minute was now precious; the execution of the 
 crime was fixed for that day. Hiley, Courceuil, and Bois- 
 laurier placed their men. Hiley, with Minard, Cabot, and
 
 90 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 Bruce, formed an ambush to the right of the wood of Le 
 Chesnay. Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horcau occupied the 
 centre. Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux stood by the ra- 
 vine under the fringe of the wood. All these positions are 
 indicated on the subjoined plan to scale, drawn by the sur- 
 veyor to the Government. 
 
 "The chaise, meanwhile, had started from Mortagne at 
 about one in the morning, driven by one Eousseau, who was 
 so far inculpated by circumstantial evidence as to make it 
 seem desirable to arrest him. The vehicle, driving slowly, 
 would reach the wood of Le Chesnay by about three. It was 
 guarded by a single gendarme; the men were to breakfast at 
 Donnery. There were three travelers, as it happened, besides 
 the gendarme. 
 
 "The driver, who had been walking with them very slowly, 
 on reaching the bridge of Le Chesnay, whipped the horses 
 to a speed and energy that the others remarked upon, and 
 turned into a cross-road known as the Senzey road. The 
 chaise was soon lost to sight ; the way it had gone was known 
 to the gendarme and his companions only by the sound of the 
 horses' bells; the men had to run to come up with it. Then 
 they heard a shout : 'Stand, you rascals !' and four shots were 
 fired. 
 
 "The gendarme, who was not hit, drew his sword and ran 
 on in the direction he supposed the driver to have taken. He 
 was stopped by four men, who all fired; his eagerness saved 
 him, for he rushed past to desire one of the young travelers 
 to run on and have the alarm bell tolled at Le Chesnay, but 
 two of the brigands took steady aim, advancing towards him; 
 he was forced to draw back a few steps; and just as he was 
 about to turn the wood, he received a ball in the left armpit, 
 which broke his arm; he fell, and found himself completely 
 disabled. 
 
 "The shouting and shots had been heard at Donnery. The 
 officer in command at this station hurried up with one of his 
 gendarmes; a running fire led them away to the side of 
 the wood furthest from the scene of the robbery. The single
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 91 
 
 gendarme tried to intimidate the brigands by a hue and cry, 
 and to delude them into the belief that a force was at hand. 
 
 " 'Forward !' he cried. 'First platoon to the right ! now we 
 have them ! Second platoon to the left !' 
 
 "The brigands on their side shouted, 'Draw ! This way, 
 comrades ! Send up the men as fast as you can !' 
 
 "The noise of firing hindered the officer from hearing the 
 cries of the wounded gendarme, and helping in the manoeuvre 
 by which the other was keeping the robbers in check; but 
 he could hear a clatter close at hand, arising from splitting 
 the cases open. He advanced towards that side ; four armed 
 men took aim at him, and he called out, 'Surrender, villains V 
 
 "They only replied, 'Stand, or you are a dead man !' 
 
 "He rushed forward; two muskets were fired, and he was 
 hit, one ball going through his left leg into his horse's flank. 
 The brave man, bleeding profusely, was forced to retire from 
 the unequal struggle, shouting, but in vain, 'Help come on 
 the brigands are at Le Chesnay.' 
 
 "The robbers, left masters of the field by superiority of 
 numbers, pillaged the chaise which had been intentionally 
 driven into a ravine. They blindfolded the driver, but this 
 was only a feint. The chests were forced open, and bags of 
 money strewed the ground. The horses were unharnessed 
 and loaded with the coin. Three thousand francs' worth of 
 copper money was scornfully left behind ; three hundred thou- 
 sand francs were carried off on four horses. They made for 
 the village of Menneville adjacent to the town of Saint- 
 Savin. 
 
 "The horde and their booty stopped at a solitary house be- 
 longing to the Chaussard brothers, inhabited by their uncle, 
 one Bourget, who had been in their confidence from the first. 
 This old man, helped by his wife, received the brigands, 
 warned them to be silent, unloaded the beasts, and tben 
 fetched up some wine. The wife remained on sentry by the 
 chateau. The old man led the horses back to the wood and 
 returned them to the driver ; then be released the two young 
 men who had been gagged as well as the accommodating
 
 92 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 driver. After refreshing themselves in great haste, the 
 brigands went on their way. Courceuil, Hiley, and Bois- 
 laurier reviewed thteir party, and after bestowing on each a 
 trifling recompense, sent off the men, each in a different direc- 
 tion. 
 
 "On reaching a spot called le Champ-Landry, these male- 
 factors, obeying the prompting which so often leads such 
 wretches into blunders and miscalculations, threw their mus- 
 kets away into a field of standing corn. The fact that all three 
 did so at the same time is a crowning proof of their collusion. 
 Then, terrified by the boldness and success of their crime, 
 they separated. 
 
 "The robbery having been committed, with the additional 
 features of violence and attempt to murder, the chain of sub- 
 sidiary events was already in preparation, and other actors 
 were implicated in receiving and disposing of the stolen prop- 
 erty. Rifoel, hidden in Paris, whence he pulled all the wires 
 of the plot, sent an order to Leveille to forward to him im- 
 mediately fifty thousand francs. Courceuil, apt at the man- 
 agement of such felonies, had sent off Hiley to inform Leveille 
 of their success and of his arrival at Mortagne, where the 
 notary at once joined them. 
 
 "Vauthier, to whose fidelity they believed they might trust, 
 undertook to find the Chaussards' uncle ; he went to the house, 
 but was told by the old man that he must apply to the nephews, 
 who had given over large sums to the woman Bryond. How- 
 ever, he bid Vauthier wait for him on the road, and he there 
 gave him a bag containing twelve hundred francs, which Vau- 
 thier took to the woman Lechantre for her daughter. 
 
 "By Leveille's advice Courceuil then went to Bourget, who 
 sent him direct to his nephews. The elder Chaussard led 
 'Vauthier to the wood and showed him a tree beneath which a 
 bag of a thousand francs was found buried. In short, Leveille, 
 Hiley, and Vauthier went to and fro several times, and each 
 time obtained a small sum, trifling in comparison with the 
 whole amount stolen. 
 
 "These moneys were handed over to the woman Lechantre
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 93 
 
 at Mortagne; and, in obedience to a letter from her daugh- 
 ter, she carried them to Saint-Savin, whither the said Bryond 
 had returned. 
 
 "It is not immediately necessary to inquire whether this 
 woman Lechantre had any previous knowledge of the plot. 
 For the present it need only be noted that she had left Mor- 
 tagne to go to Saint-Savin the day before the crime was com- 
 mitted in order to fetch away her daughter; that the two wo- 
 men met half-way, and returned to Mortagne; that, on the fol- 
 lowing day, the notary, being informed of this by Hiley, went 
 from Alengon to Mortagne, and straight to their house, where 
 he persuaded them to transport the money, obtained with so 
 much difficulty from the Chaussards and from Bourget, to a 
 certain house in Alengon, presently to be mentioned as be- 
 longing to one Pannier, a merchant there. The woman Le- 
 chantre wrote to the man in charge at Saint-Savin to come to 
 Mortagne and escort her and her daughter by cross-roads to 
 Alengon. The money, amounting to twenty thousand francs 
 in all, was packed into a vehicle at night, the girl Godard 
 helping to dispose of it. 
 
 "The notary had planned the way they were to travel. They 
 reached an inn kept by one of their allies, a man named Louis 
 Chargegrain, in the hamlet of Littray. But in spite of the 
 notary's precautions he riding ahead of the chaise some 
 strangers were present and saw the portmanteaus and bags 
 taken out which contained the coin.. 
 
 "But just as Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, were 
 consulting, in the market place at Alengon, with the afore- 
 named Pannier who since 1794 had been the rebels' 
 treasurer, and who was devoted to Kifoel as to the best means 
 of transmitting the required sum to Piifoel, the terror occa- 
 sioned by the arrests and inquiries already made was so great 
 that the woman Lechantre, in her alarm, set off at night from 
 the inn where they were, and fled with her daughter by coun- 
 try byways, leaving Leveille behind, and took refuge in the 
 hiding-places known to them in the chateau Saint-Savin. The 
 same alarm came over the other criminals. Courceuil, Bois-
 
 94 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 laurier, and his relation Dubut exchanged two thousand 
 francs in silver for gold at a dealer's, and fled across Brittany 
 to England. 
 
 "On arriving at Saint-Savin, the mother and daughter 
 heard that Bourget was arrested with the driver and the run- 
 away conscripts. 
 
 "The magistrates, the police, and the authorities acted 
 with so much decision, that it was deemed necessary to pro- 
 tect the woman Bryond from their investigations, for all these 
 felons were devotedly attached to her, and she had won them 
 all. So she was removed from Saint-Savin, and hid at first 
 at Alengon, where her adherents held council and succeeded 
 in concealing her in Pannier's cellars. 
 
 "Hereupon fresh incidents occurred. After the arrest of 
 Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refused to give up any 
 more money, saying they had been betrayed. This unex- 
 pected defection fell out at the very moment when all the con- 
 spirators were in the greatest need of supplies, if only as a 
 means of escape. Kifoe'l was thirsting for money. Hiley, 
 Cibot, and Leveille now began to doubt the honesty of the 
 two Chaussards. This led to a fresh complication which seems 
 to demand the intervention of the law. 
 
 "Two gendarmes, commissioned to discover the woman 
 Bryond, succeeded in getting into Pannier's house, where they 
 were present at a council held by the criminals ; but these men, 
 false to the confidence placed in them, instead of arresting 
 Bryond, were enslaved by her charms. These rascally soldiers 
 named Ratel and Mallet showed the woman every form of 
 interest and devotion, and offered to escort her to the Chaus- 
 sards' inn and compel them to make restitiition. The woman 
 went off on horseback, dressed as a man, and accompanied by 
 Ratel, Mallet, and the maid-servant Godard. She set out at 
 night, and on reaching the inn she and one of the Chaussard 
 brothers had a private but animated interview. She had a 
 pistol, and was resolved to blow her accomplice's brains out 
 in case of his refusal: in fact, he led her to the wood, and 
 she brought back a heavy sack. In it she found copper coin
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 95 
 
 and twelve-sou pieces to the value of fifteen hundred francs. 
 
 "It was then suggested that as many of the conspirators as 
 could be got together should take the Chaussards by surprise, 
 seize them, and put them to torture. Pannier, on hearing of 
 this disappointment, flew into a rage and broke out in threats ; 
 and though the woman Bryond threatened him in return with 
 RifoeTs vengeance, she was compelled to fly. 
 
 "All these facts were confessed by Ratel. 
 
 "Mallet, touched by her position, offered the woman 
 Bryond a place of shelter; they all set off together and spent 
 the night in the wood of Troisville. Then Mallet and Ratel, 
 with Hiley and Cibot, went by night to the Chaussards' inn, 
 but they found that the brothers had left the place, and that 
 the remainder of the money had certainly been removed. 
 
 "This was the last attempt on the part of the conspirators 
 to recover the stolen money. 
 
 "It is now important to define more accurately the part 
 played by each of the criminals implicated in this affair. 
 
 "Dubut, Boislaurier, Gentil, Herbomez, Courceuil, and 
 Hiley are all leaders, some in council, and some in action. 
 Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three contumacious de- 
 serters, are habitual rebels, stirring up troubles, the implaca- 
 ble foes of Napoleon the Great, of his successes, his dynasty, 
 and his government, of our new code of laws and of the 
 Imperial constitution. Herbomez and Hiley, as their right- 
 hand men, boldly carried out what the three others planned. 
 The guilt of the seven instruments of the crime is beyond 
 ijiicstion Cibot, Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and 
 Minard. It is proved by the depositions of those who are 
 now in the hands of justice : Lisieux died during the prelimi- 
 nary inquiry, and Bruce has evaded capture. 
 
 "The conduct of the chaise-driver Rousseau marks him &a 
 an accomplice. The slow progress on the highroad, the pace 
 to which he flogged the horses on reaching the wood, his per- 
 sistent statement that his head was muffled, whereas, by the 
 evidence of the young fellow-travelers, the leader of the
 
 96 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 brigands had the handkerchief removed and ordered him to 
 recognize the men, all contribute to afford presumptive evi- 
 dence of his collusion. 
 
 "As to the woman Bryond and Leveille the notary, their 
 complicity was constant and continuous from the first. They 
 supplied funds and means for the crime ; they knew of it and 
 abetted it. Leveille was constantly traveling to and fro. The 
 woman Bryond invented plot upon plot; she risked every- 
 thing even her life to secure the money. She lent her 
 house, her carriage, and was concerned in the plot from the 
 beginning, nor did she attempt to persuade the chief leader 
 to desist from it when she might have exerted her evil in- 
 fluence to hinder it. She led the maid-servant Godard 
 into its toils. Leveille was so entirely mixed up in it, 
 that it was he who tried to procure the hatchet needed by the 
 robbers. 
 
 "The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier, 
 the woman Lechantre, Mallet, and Eatel were all incrimi- 
 nated in various degrees, as also the innkeepers Melin, Binet, 
 Laraviniere, and Chargegrain. 
 
 "Bourget died during the preliminary inquiry, after mak- 
 ing a confession which leaves no doubt as to the part taken 
 by Vauthier and the woman Bryond ; and though he tried to 
 mitigate the charge against his wife and his nephews the 
 Chaussards, the reasons for his reticence are self-evident. 
 
 "But the Chaussards certainly knew that they were supply- 
 ing provisions to highway robbers ; they saw that the men were 
 armed and were informed of all their scheme; they allowed 
 them to take the hatchet needed for breaking open the chests, 
 knowing the purpose for which it was required. Finally, they 
 received wittingly the money obtained by the robbery, they hid 
 it, and in fact made away with the greater part of it. 
 
 "Pannier, formerly treasurer to the rebel party, concealed 
 the woman Bryond; be is one of the most dangerous partici- 
 pators in the plot of which he was informed from its origin. 
 With regard to him we are in the dark as to some circum- 
 stances as yet unknown, but of which justice will take cog-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 9? 
 
 nizance. He is RifoeTs immediate ally and in all the secrets 
 of the ante-revolutionary party in the West; he greatly re- 
 gretted the fact that Rifoel should have admitted the women 
 into the plot or have trusted them at all. He forwarded money 
 to Rifoel and received the stolen coin. 
 
 "As to the two gendarmes, Ratel and Mallet, their conduct 
 deserves the utmost rigor of the law. They were traitors to 
 their duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, committed 
 suicide after making some important revelations. The other, 
 Mallet, denied nothing, and his confession removes all doubt. 
 
 "The woman Lechantre, in spite of her persistent denials, 
 was informed of everything. The hypocrisy of this woman, 
 who attempts to shelter her professed innocence under the 
 practice of assumed devotion, is known by her antecedents to 
 be prompt and intrepid in extremities. She asserts that she 
 was deceived by her daughter, and believed that the money in 
 question belonged to the man Bryond. The trick is too trans- 
 parent. If Bryond had had any money, he would not have fled 
 from the neighborhood to avoid witnessing his own ruin. Le- 
 chantre considered that there was no harm in the robbery 
 when it was approved of by her ally Boislaurier. But how, 
 then, does she account for Rifoel's presence at Saint-Savin, 
 her daughter's expeditions and connection with the man, and 
 the visit of the brigands who were waited on by the women 
 Godard and Bryond? She says she sleeps heavily, and is in 
 the habit of going to bed at seven o'clock, and did not know 
 what answer to make when the examining Judge observed that 
 then she must rise at daybreak, and could not have failed to 
 discern traces of the plot and of the presence of so many men, 
 or to be uneasy about her daughter's nocturnal expeditions. 
 To this she could only say that she was at her prayers. 
 
 "The woman is a model hypocrite. In fact, her absence 
 on the day when the crime was committed, the care she took 
 to remove her daughter to Mortagne, her journey with the 
 money, and her precipitate flight when everything was dis- 
 covered, the care with which she hid herself, and the circum- 
 stances of her arrest, all prove her complicity from an early
 
 08 THE SEA Ml" SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 stage of the affair. Her conduct was not that of a mother 
 anxious to explain the danger to her daughter and to save her 
 from it, but that of a terrified accomplice; and she was an 
 accessory, not out of foolish affection, but from party spirit 
 inspired by hatred, as is well known, for his Imperial 
 Majesty's government. Maternal weakness indeed could not 
 excuse her, and it must not be forgotten that consent, long 
 premeditated, is an evident sign of her complicity. 
 
 "Not the crime alone, but its moving spirits, are now known. 
 We see in it the monstrous combination of the delirium of 
 faction with a thirst for repine; murder prompted by party 
 spirit, under which men take shelter, and justify themselves 
 for the most disgraceful excesses. The orders of the leaders 
 gave the signal for the robbery of State moneys to pay for 
 subsequent violence; base and ferocious hirelings were found 
 to do it for wretched pay, and fully prepared to murder ; while 
 the agitators to rebellion, not less guilty, helped in dividing 
 and concealing the booty. What society can allow such at- 
 tempts to go unpunished ? The law has no adequate punish- 
 ment. 
 
 "The Bench of this Criminal and Special Court, then, will 
 be called upon to decide whether the afore-named Her- 
 bomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Melin, 
 Binet, Laraviniere, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Leveille, 
 the woman Bourget, Vauthier, the elder Chaussard, Pannier, 
 the widow Lechantre, and Mallet, all hereinbefore described 
 and in presence of the Court, and the afore-named Bois- 
 laurier, Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, Chaussard the younger, 
 Chargegrain, and the girl Godard, being absent or having 
 fled, are or are not guilty of the acts described in this bill of 
 indictment. 
 
 "Given in to the Court at Caen the 1st of December, 
 180 
 
 "(Signed) BARON BOURLAC." 
 
 This legal document, much shorter and more peremptory 
 than such bills of indictment are in these days, so full of de- 

 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 99 
 
 tail and so complete on every point, especially as to the pre- 
 vious career of the accused, excited Godefroid to the utmost. 
 The bare, dry style of an official pen, setting forth, in red ink, 
 as it were, the principal facts of the case, was enough to set 
 his imagination working. Concise, reserved narrative is to 
 some minds a problem in which they lose themselves in ex- 
 ploring the mysterious depths. 
 
 In the dead of night, stimulated by the silence, by the dark- 
 ness, by the dreadful connection hinted at by Monsieur Alain 
 of this document with Madame de la Chanterie, Godefroid 
 concentrated all his intelligence on the consideration of this 
 terrible affair. 
 
 The name of Lechantre was evidently the first name of the 
 la Chanterie family, whose aristocratic titular name had of 
 course been curtailed under the Republic and the Empire. 
 
 His fancy painted the scenery where the drama was played 
 out, and the figures of the accomplices rose before him. 
 Imagination showed him, not indeed "the afore-named 
 Rifoel," but the Chevalier du Vissard, a youth resembling 
 Walter Scott's Fergus in short, a French edition of the 
 Jacobite. He worked out a romance on the passion of a young 
 girl grossly betrayed by her husband's infamy a tragedy 
 then very fashionable and in love with a young leader re- 
 belling against the Emperor; rushing headlong, like Diana 
 Vernon, into the toils of a conspiracy, fired with enthusiasm, 
 and then, having started on the perilous descent, unable to 
 check her wild career. Had she ended it on the scaffold? 
 
 The whole world seemed to rise before Godefroid. He was 
 wandering through the groves of Xormandy ; he could see the 
 Breton gentleman and Madame Bryond in the copse; he 
 dwelt in the old chateau of Saint-Savin ; he pictured the win- 
 ning over of so many conspirators the 'notary, the merchant, 
 and the bold Chouan leaders. He could understand the almost 
 unanimous adhesion of a district where the memory was still 
 fresh of the famous M;irehe-a-Terre, of the Comtes de Ban- 
 van and de Longny. of the massacre at la Vivetiere, and of the 
 death of the Maniuis do Montauran, of whose exploits he had 
 
 heard from Madame de la Chanterie. 
 YOL. 16 38
 
 100 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 This vision, as it were, of men and things and places, was 
 but brief. As he realized the fact that this story was that of 
 the noble and pious old lady whose virtues affected him to the 
 point of a complete metamorphosis, Godefroid, with a thrill 
 of awe, took up the second document given to him by Mon- 
 sieur Alain, which bore the title : 
 
 "AN APPEAL ON BEHALF OF MADAME HENRIETTE BRYOND 
 DES Toims-MiNrERESjWee LECHANTRE DE LA CHANTERIE." 
 
 "That settles it," thought Godefroid. 
 The paper ran as follows: 
 
 "We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the Sovereign 
 had cause to exercise his prerogative of mercy, would it not 
 be under the circumstances herein set forth? 
 
 "The culprit is a young woman, who says she is a mother, 
 and is condemned to death. 
 
 "On the threshold of the prison, and in view of the scaffold, 
 this woman will tell the truth. That statement will be in her 
 favor, and to that she looks for pardon. 
 
 "The case, tried in the Criminal Court of Alengon, presents 
 some obscure features, as do all cases where several accused 
 persons have combined in a plot inspired by party feeling. 
 
 "His Imperial and Kingly Majesty's Privy Council are now 
 fully informed as to the identity of a mysterious personage, 
 known as le Marchand, whose presence in the department of 
 the Orne was not disputed by the public authorities in the 
 course of the trial, though the pleader for the Crown did not 
 think it advisable to produce him in Court, and the defendants 
 had no right to call him, nor, indeed^ power to produce him. 
 
 "This man, as is well known to the Bench, to the local au- 
 thorities, to the Paris police, and to the Imperial and Eoyal 
 Council, is Bernard-Polydor Bryond de la Tour-Minieres, 
 who, since 1794, has been in correspondence with the Comte 
 de Lille ; he is known abroad as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, 
 and in the records of the Paris police as Contenson.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 101 
 
 "He is a very exceptional man, whose youth and rank were 
 stained by unremitting vice, ^ich utter immorality and such 
 criminal excesses, that so infamous a life would inevitably 
 have ended on the scaffold but for the skill with which he 
 played a double part under shelter of his two names. Still, 
 as he is more and more the slave of his passions and in- 
 satiable necessities, he will at last fall below infamy, and find 
 himself in the lowest depths in spite of indisputable gifts and 
 an extraordinary mind. 
 
 "When the Comte de Lille's better judgment led to his for- 
 bidding Bryond to draw money from abroad, the man tried to 
 get out of the blood-stained field on to which his necessities 
 had led him. Was it that this career no longer paid him well 
 enough? Or was it remorse or shame that led the man back 
 to the district where his estates, loaded with debt when he 
 went away, could have but little to yield even to his skill? 
 This it is impossible to believe. It seems more probable that 
 he had some mission to fulfil in those departments where some 
 sparks were still lingering of the civil broils. 
 
 "When wandering through the provinces, where his per- 
 fidious adhesion to the schemes of the English and of the 
 Comte de Lille gained him the confidence of certain families 
 still attached to the party that the genius of our immortal 
 Emperor has reduced to silence, he met one of the former 
 leaders of the Eebellion a man with whom he had had deal- 
 ings as an envoy from abroad at the time of the Quiberon 
 expedition, during the last rising in the year VII. He en- 
 couraged the hopes of this agitator,, who has since paid the 
 penalty of his treasonable plots on the scaffold. At that time, 
 then, Bryond was able to learn all the secrets of the incor- 
 rigible faction who misprize the glory of His Majesty the Em- 
 peror Napoleon I., and the true interests of the country aa 
 represented by his sacred person. 
 
 "At the age of five-and-thirty, this man, who affected the 
 deepest piety, who professed unbounded devotion to the in- 
 terests of the Comte de Lille, and perfect adoration for 
 the rebels of the West who perished in the struggle, who skil-
 
 102 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 fully disguised the ravages of a youth of debauchery, and 
 whose personal appearance was in his favor, came, under the 
 protection of his creditors, who told no tales, and of the most 
 extraordinary good-nature on the part of all the ci-devants of 
 the district, to be introduced with all these claims on her re- 
 gard to the woman Lechantre, who was supposed to have a 
 very fine fortune. The scheme in view was to secure a mar- 
 riage between Madame Lechantre's only daughter, Henriette, 
 and this protege of the Royalist party. 
 
 "Priests, ex-nobles, and creditors, all from different motives, 
 conspired to promote the marriage between Bernard Bryond 
 and Henriette Lechantre. 
 
 "The good judgment of the notary who took charge of Ma- 
 dame Lechantre's affairs, and his shrewd suspicions, led per- 
 haps to the poor girl's undoing. For Monsieur Chesnel, a no- 
 tary at Alengon, settled the lands of Saint-Savin, the bride's 
 sole estate, on her and her children, reserving a small charge 
 on it and the right of residence to the mother for life. 
 
 "Bryond's creditors, who, judging from her methodical and 
 economical style of living, had supposed that Madame Le- 
 chantre must have saved large sums, were disappointed in 
 their hopes, and believing that she must be avaricious, they 
 sued Bryond, and this led to a revelation of his impecuniosity 
 and difficulties. 
 
 "Then the husband and wife quarreled violently, and the 
 young woman came to full knowledge of the dissipated habits, 
 the atheistical opinions both in religion and in politics, nay, 
 I may say, the utter infamy, of the man to whom fate had 
 irrevocably bound her. Then Bryond, being obliged to let his 
 wife into the secret of the atrocious plots against the Imperial 
 Government, offered an asylum under his roof to Rifoel du 
 Vissard. 
 
 "RifoeTs character, adventurous, brave, and lavish, had 
 an extraordinary charm for all who came under his influence ; 
 of this there is abundant proof in the cases tried in no less 
 than three special criminal courts. 
 
 "The irresistible influence, in fact the absolute power, he 
 acquired over a young woman who found herself at the bot-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY . 103 
 
 torn of a gulf, is only too evident in the catastrophe of which 
 the horror brings her as a suppliant to the foot of the throne. 
 And His Imperial and Kingly Majesty's Council will have no 
 difficulty in verifying the infamous collusion of Bryond, who, 
 far from doing his duty as the guide and adviser of the girl 
 intrusted to his care by the mother he had deceived, condoned 
 and encouraged the intimacy between his wife Henriette and 
 the rebel leader. 
 
 "This was the plan imagined by this detestable man, who 
 makes it his glory that he respects nothing, and that he never 
 considers any end but the gratification of his passions, while 
 he regards every sentiment based on social or religious mo- 
 rality as a mere vulgar prejudice. And it may here be re- 
 marked that such scheming is habitual to a man who has been 
 playing a double part ever since 1794, who for eight years has 
 deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, probably de- 
 ceiving at the same time the superior police of the Empire 
 for such men are always ready to serve the highest bidder. 
 
 "Bryond, then, was urging Rifoel to commit a crime ; he it 
 was who insisted on an armed attack and highway robbery 
 of the State treasure in transit, and on heavy contributions 
 to be extorted from the purchasers of the national land, by 
 means of atrocious tortures which he invented, and which 
 carried terror into five Departments. He demanded no less 
 than three hundred thousand francs to pay off the mortgages 
 on his property. 
 
 "In the event of any objection on the part of Rifoel or 
 Madame Bryond, he intended to revenge himself for the con- 
 tempt he had inspired in his wife's upright mind, by handing 
 them both over to be dealt with by the law as soon as they 
 should commit some capital crime. 
 
 "As soon as he perceived that party spirit was a stronger 
 motive than self-interest in these two whom he had thus 
 thrown together, he disappeared ; he came to Paris, armed with 
 ample information as to the state of affairs in the western 
 departments. 
 
 "The Chaussard brothers and Vauthier were, it is well 
 known, in constant correspondence with Bryond.
 
 104 . THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "As soon as the robbery on the chests from Caen was ac- 
 complished, Bryond, assuming the name of le Marchand, 
 opened secret communications with the prefet and the magis- 
 trates. What was the consequence? No conspiracy of equal 
 extent, and in which so many persons in such different grades 
 of the social scale were involved, has ever been so immediately 
 divulged to justice as this, of which the first attempt was the 
 robbery of the treasure from Caen. Within six days of the 
 crime, all the guilty parties had been watched and followed 
 with a certainty that betrays perfect knowledge of the persons 
 in question, and of their plans. The arrest, trial, and execu- 
 tion of Eifoel and his companions are a sufficient proof, and 
 mentioned here only to demonstrate our knowledge of this 
 fact, of which the Supreme Council knows every particular. 
 
 "If ever a condemned criminal might hope for the clem- 
 ency of the Sovereign, may not Henriette Lechantre? 
 
 "Carried away by a passion and by rebellious principles im- 
 bibed with her mother's milk, she is, no doubt, unpardonable 
 in the eye of the law ; but in the sight of our most magnani- 
 mous Emperor, may not the most shameless betrayal on one 
 hand, and the most vehement enthusiasm on the other, plead 
 her cause? 
 
 "The greatest of Generals, the immortal genius who par- 
 doned the Prince of Hatzfeld, and who, like God Himself, can 
 divine the arguments suggested by a blind passion, may, per- 
 haps, vouchsafe to consider the temptations invincible in the 
 young, which may palliate her crime, great as it is. 
 
 "Twenty-two heads have already fallen under the sword of 
 justice and the sentence of the three courts. One alone re- 
 mains that of a young woman of twenty, not yet of age. 
 Will not the Emperor Xapoleon the Great grant her time for 
 repentance ? Is not that a tribute to the grace of God ? 
 
 "For Henriette Lechantre, wife of Bryond des Tour-Mi- 
 nieres, 
 
 "BORDIN, 
 
 " Retained for the defence, Advocate iu the Lower 
 Court of the Department of the Seine."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 105 
 
 This terrible tragedy haunted the little sleep Godefroid was 
 able to get. He dreamed of decapitation, as the physician 
 Guillotin perfected it with philanthropic intentions. Through 
 the hot vapors of a nightmare he discerned a beautiful young 
 woman, full of enthusiasm, undergoing the last preparations, 
 drawn in a cart, and mounting the scaffold with a cry of "Vive 
 le Roi !" 
 
 Godefroid was goaded by curiosity. He rose at daybreak, 
 dressed, and paced his room, till at length he posted himself 
 at the window, and mechanically stared at the sky, recon- 
 structing the drama, as a modern romancer might, in several 
 volumes. And always against the murky background of 
 Chouans, of country folks, of provincial gentlemen, of rebel 
 leaders, police agents, lawyers and spies, he saw the radiant 
 figures of the mother and daughter ; of the daughter deceiving 
 her mother, the victim of a wretch, and of her mad passion for 
 one of those daring adventurers who were afterwards regarded 
 as heroes a man who, to Godefroid's imagination, had points 
 of resemblance to Georges Cadoudal and Charette, and the 
 giants of the struggle between the Republic and the Mon- 
 archy. 
 
 As soon as Godefroid heard old Alain stirring, he went to 
 his room; but on looking in through the half-opened door, he 
 shut it again, and withdrew. The old man, kneeling on his 
 prie-Dieu, was saying his morning prayers. The sight of that 
 white head bent in an attitude of humble piety recalled Gode- 
 froid to a sense of duty, and he prayed too, with fervency. 
 
 "I was expecting you," said the good man when, at the end 
 of a quarter of an hour, Godefroid entered his room. "I an- 
 ticipated your impatience, and rose earlier than usual." 
 
 "Madame Henriette? " Godefroid began, with evident 
 
 agitation. 
 
 "Was Madame's daughter," replied Alain, interrupting 
 him. "Madame's name is Lechantre de La Chanterie. Under 
 the Empire old titles were not recognized, nor the names 
 added to the patronymic or first surname. Thus the Baronnc 
 des Tours-Minieres was 'the woman Bryond'; the Marquis
 
 106 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 d'Esgrignon was called Carol Citizen Carol, and afterwards 
 the Sieur Carol; the Troisvilles were the Sieurs Guibelin." 
 
 "But what was the end? Did the Emperor pardon her?" 
 
 "No, alas !" said Alain. "The unhappy little woman per- 
 ished on the scaffold at the age of twenty-one. After reading 
 Bordin's petition, the Emperor spoke to the Supreme Judge 
 much to this effect: 
 
 " 'Why make an example of a spy ? A secret agent ceases 
 to be a man, and ought to have none of a man's feelings; he is 
 but a wheel in the machine. Bryond did his duty. If our in- 
 struments of that kind were not what they are steel bars, 
 intelligent only in behalf of the Government they serve gov- 
 ernment would be impossible. The sentences of Special Crim- 
 inal Courts must be carried out, or my magistrates would 
 lose all confidence in themselves and in me. And besides, 
 the men who fought for these people are executed, and they 
 were less guilty than their leaders. The women of the western 
 provinces must be taught not to meddle in conspiracies. It is 
 because the victim of the sentence is a woman that the law 
 must take its course. No excuse is available as against the in- 
 terests of authority.' 
 
 "This was the substance of what the Supreme Judge was so 
 obliging as to repeat to Bordin after his interview with the 
 Emperor. To re-establish tranquillity in the west, which was 
 full of refractory conscripts, Napoleon thought it needful 
 to produce a real 'terror/ The Supreme Judge, in fact, ad- 
 vised the lawyer to trouble himself no further about his 
 clients/' 
 
 "And the lady?" said Godefroid. 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie was condemned to twenty-two 
 years' imprisonment," replied Alain. "She had already been 
 transferred to Bicetre, near Eouen, to undergo her sentence, 
 and nothing could be thought of till her Henriette was safe ; 
 for after these dreadful scenes, she was so wrapped up in her 
 daughter that, but for Bordin's promise to petition for the 
 mitigation of the sentence of death, it was thought that Ma- 
 dame would not have survived her condemnation. So they
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 107 
 
 deceived the poor mother. She saw her daughter after the 
 execution of the men who had been sentenced to death, but 
 did not know that the respite was granted in consequence of a 
 false declaration that her daughter was expecting her confine- 
 ment." 
 
 "Ah, now I understand everything !" cried Godef roid. 
 
 "No, my dear boy. There are some things which cannot be 
 guessed. For a long time after that, Madame believed that 
 her daughter was alive." 
 
 "How was that?" 
 
 "When Madame des Tours-Minieres heard through Bordin 
 that her appeal was rejected, the brave little woman had 
 enough strength of mind to write a score of letters dated for 
 several months after her execution to make her mother believe 
 that she was still alive, but gradually suffering more and more 
 from an imaginary malady, till it ended in death. These 
 letters were spread over a period of two years. Thus Madame 
 de la Chanterie was prepared for her daughter's death, but 
 for a natural death; she did not hear of her execution till 
 1814. 
 
 "For two years she was kept in the common prison with the 
 most infamous creatures of her sex, wearing the prison dress ; 
 then, thanks to the efforts of the Champignelles and the Beau- 
 seants, after the second year she was placed in a private cell, 
 where she lived like a cloistered nun." 
 
 "And the others?" 
 
 "The notary Leveille, Herbomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, 
 Hureau, Cabot, Minard, and Mallet were condemned to death, 
 and executed the same day; Pannier, with Chaussard and 
 Vauthier, was sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude ; they 
 were branded and sent to the hulks; but the Emperor par- 
 doned Chaussard and Vauthier. Melin, Laraviniere, and 
 Binet had five years' imprisonment. The woman Bourget was 
 imprisoned for twenty-two years. Chargegrain and Rousseau 
 were acquitted. Those who had got away wore all sentenced 
 to death, with the exception of the m;i id-servant (Jodard, who, 
 as you have guessed, is none other than our good Manon."
 
 108 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Manon !" exclaimed Godefroid in amazement. 
 
 "Oh, you do not yet know Manon," replied the worthy man. 
 "That devoted soul, condemned to twenty-two years' imprison- 
 ment, had given herself up to justice that she might be with 
 Madame de la Chanterie in prison. Our beloved vicar is the 
 priest from Mortagne who gave the last sacrament to Madame 
 des Tours-Minieres, who had the fortitude to escort her to the 
 scaffold, and to whom she gave her last farewell kiss. The 
 same brave and exalted priest had attended the Chevalier du 
 Vissard. So our dear Abbe de Veze learned all the secrets 
 of the conspirators." 
 
 "I see now when his hair turned white," said Godefroid. 
 
 "Alas !" said Alain. "He received from Amedee du Vissard 
 a miniature of Madame des Tours-Minieres, the only like- 
 ness of her that exists ; and the Abbe has been a sacred person- 
 age to Madame de la Chanterie ever since the day when she 
 was restored triumphant to social life." 
 
 "How was that?" asked Godefroid in surprise. 
 
 "Well, on the restoration of Louis XVIII. in 1814, Bois- 
 laurier, who was the younger brother of Monsieur de Boisfre- 
 lon, was still under the King's orders to organize a rising in 
 the West first in 1809, and afterwards in 1812. Their name 
 is Dubut ; the Dubut of Caen was related to them. There were 
 three brothers: Dubut de Boisfranc, President of the Court 
 of Subsidies; Dubut de Boisfrelon, Councillor at Law; and 
 Dubut-Boislaurier, a Captain of Dragoons. Their father had 
 given each the name of one of his three several estates to give 
 them a title and status (savonnette a la vilain, as itwascalled), 
 for their grandfather was a linen merchant. Dubut of Caen, 
 who succeeded in escaping, was one of the branch who had 
 stuck to trade ; but he hoped, by devoting himself to the Royal 
 cause, to be allowed to succeed to Monsieur de Boisfranc's 
 title. And in fact Louis XVIII. gratified the wish of his 
 faithful adherent, who, in 1815, was made Grand Provost, and 
 subsequently became a Public Prosecutor under the name of 
 Boisfranc ; he was President of one of the Higher Courts when 
 he died. The Marquis du Vissard, the unhappy Chevalier's
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 109 
 
 elder brother, created peer of France, and loaded with honors 
 by the King, was made Lieutenant of the Maison Rouge, and 
 when that was abolished became Prefect. Monsieur d'Her- 
 bomez had a brother who was made a Count and Receiver- 
 General. The unfortunate banker Pannier died on the hulks 
 of a broken heart. Boislaurier died childless, a Lieutenant- 
 General and Governor of one of the Royal residences. 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie was presented to His Majesty by 
 Monsieur de Champignelles, Monsieur de Beauseant, the Due 
 de Verrieuil, and the Keeper of the Seals. 'You have suffered 
 much for me, Madame la Baronne,' said the King ; 'you have 
 every claim on my favor and gratitude.' 
 
 " 'Sir,' she replied, 'your Majesty has so much to do in 
 comforting the sufferers, that I will not add the burden of an 
 inconsolable sorrow. To live forgotten, to mourn for my 
 daughter, and do some good that is all I have to live for. If 
 anything could mitigate my grief, it would be the graciousness 
 of my Sovereign, and the happiness of seeing that Providence 
 did not suffer so much devoted service to be wasted.' " 
 
 "And what did the King do?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "He restored to Madame de la Chanterie two hundred thou- 
 sand francs in money," said the good man, "for the estate of 
 Saint-Savin had been sold to make good the loss to the treas- 
 ury. The letters of pardon granted to Madame la Baronne 
 and her woman express the Sovereign's regret for all they had 
 endured in his service, while acknowledging that the zeal of 
 his adherents had carried them too far in action; but the 
 thing that will seem to you most horrible of all is, that 
 throughout his reign Bryond was still the agent of his secret 
 police." 
 
 "Oh, what things kings can do !" cried Godefroid. "And is 
 the wretch still living?" 
 
 "No. The scoundrel, who at any rate concealed his name, 
 calling himself Contenson, died at the end of 1829, or early 
 in 1830. He fell from a roof into the street when in pursuit 
 of a criminal. Louis XYITI. was of the same mind as Na- 
 poleon as regards police agents.
 
 110 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie, a perfect saint, prays for this 
 monster's soul, and has two masses said for him every year. 
 
 "Though her defence was undertaken by one of the famous 
 pleaders of the day, the father of one of our great orators, 
 Madame de la Chanterie, who knew nothing of her daugh- 
 ter's risks till the moment when the money was brought in 
 and even then only because Boislaurier, who was related to 
 her, told her the facts could never establish her innocence. 
 The President du Ronceret, and Blondet, Vice-President of 
 the Court at Alengon, vainly tried to clear the poor lady ; the 
 influence of the notorious Mergi, the Councillor to the Su- 
 preme Court under the Empire, who presided over these trials 
 a man fanatically devoted to the Church and Throne, who 
 afterwards, as Public Prosecutor, brought many a Bonapartist 
 head under the axe was so great at this time over his two col- 
 leagues that he secured the condemnation of the unhappy 
 Baronne de la Chanterie. Bourlac and Mergi argued the case 
 with incredible virulence. The President always spoke of 
 the Baronne des Tours-Minieres as the woman Bryond, and 
 of Madame as the woman Lechantre. The names of all the 
 accused were reduced to the barest Republican forms, and cur- 
 tailed of all titles. 
 
 "There were some extraordinary features of the trial, and 
 I cannot recall them all; but I remember one stroke of au- 
 dacity, which may show you what manner of men these 
 Chouans were. The crowd that pressed to hear the trials was 
 beyond anything your fancy can conceive of ; it filled the cor- 
 ridors, and the square outside was thronged as if on market 
 days. One morning at the opening of the Court, before the 
 arrival of the judges, Pille-Miche, the famous Chouan, sprang 
 over the balustrade into the middle of the mob, made play with 
 his elbows, mixed with the crowd, and fled among the terrified 
 spectators, 'butting like a wild boar/ as Bordin told me. The 
 gendarmes and the people rushed to stop him, and he was 
 caught on the steps just as he had reached the market-place. 
 After this daring attempt, they doubled the guard, and a de- 
 tachment of men-at-arms was posted on the square, for it was
 
 Ill 
 
 feared that there might be among the crowd some Chouans 
 ready to aid and abet the accused. Three persons were crushed 
 to death in the crowd in consequence of this attempt. 
 
 "It was subsequently discovered that Contenson for, like 
 my old friend Bordin, I cannot bring myself to call him Baron 
 des Tours-Minieres, or Bryond, which is a respectable old 
 name that wretch, it was discovered, had made away with 
 sixty thousand francs of the stolen treasure. He gave ten 
 thousand to the younger Chaussard, whom he enticed into the 
 police and inoculated with all his low tastes and vices; but 
 all his accomplices were unlucky. The Chaussard who escaped 
 was pitched into the sea by Monsieur de Boislaurier, who un- 
 derstood from something said by Pannier that Chaussard had 
 turned traitor. Contenson indeed had advised him to join the 
 fugitives in order to spy upon them. Vauthier was killed in 
 Paris, no doubt by one of the Chevalier du Vissard's obscure 
 but devoted followers. The younger Chaussard too was finally 
 murdered in one of the nocturnal raids conducted by the po- 
 lice ; it seems probable that Contenson took this means of rid- 
 ding himself of his demands or of his remorse by sending him 
 to sermon, as the saying goes. 
 
 "Madame de la Chanterie invested her money in -the funds, 
 and purchased this house by the particular desire of her uncle, 
 the old Councillor de Boisfrelon, who in fact gave her the 
 money to buy it. This quiet neighborhood lies close to the 
 Archbishop's residence, where our beloved Abbe has an ap- 
 pointment under the Cardinal. And this was Madame's chief 
 reason for acceding to the old lawyer's wish when his income, 
 after twenty-five years of revolutions, was reduced to six thou- 
 sand francs a year. Besides, Madame wished to close a life 
 of such terrible misfortunes as had overwhelmed her for six- 
 and-twenty years in almost cloistered seclusion. 
 
 "You may now understand the dignity, the majesty, of this 
 long-suffering woman august indeed, ;is I may say " 
 
 "Yes," said Godefroid, "the stamp of all she has endured 
 has given her an indefinable air of grandeur and majesty." 
 
 "Each blow, each fresh pang, has but increased her patience
 
 112 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 and resignation," Alain went on. "And if you could know her 
 as we do, if you knew how keen her feelings are, and how ac- 
 tive is the spring of tenderness that wells up in her heart, you 
 would be afraid to take count of the tears she must shed, and 
 her fervent prayers that ascend to God. Only those who, like 
 her, have known but a brief season of happiness can resist such 
 shocks. Hers is a tender heart, a gentle soul clothed in a 
 frame of steel, tempered by privation, toil, and austerity." 
 
 "Such a life as hers explains the life of hermits," said Gode- 
 froid. 
 
 "There are days when I wonder what can be the meaning 
 of such an existence. Is it that God reserves these utmost, bit- 
 terest trials for those of His creatures who shall sit on His 
 right hand on the day after their death?" said the good old 
 man, quite unaware that he was artlessly expressing Sweden- 
 berg's doctrine concerning the angels. 
 
 "What !" exclaimed Godef roid, "Madame de la Chanterie 
 was mixed up with ?" 
 
 "Madame was sublime in prison," Alain said. "In the 
 course of three years the story of the Vicar of Wakefield came 
 true, for she reclaimed several women of profligate lives. And 
 in the course of her imprisonment, as she took note of the con- 
 duct of those confined with her, she learned to feel that great 
 pity for the misery of the people which weighs on her soul, and 
 has made her the queen of Parisian charity. It was in the 
 horrible Bicetre at Rouen that she conceived of the plan which 
 we devote ourselves to carry out. It was, as she declared, a 
 dream of rapture, an angelic inspiration in the midst of hell ; 
 she had no thought of ever seeing it realized. 
 
 "But here, in 1819, when peace seemed to be descending 
 on Paris, she came back to her dream. Madame la Duchesse 
 d'Angouleme, the Dauphiness, the Duchesse de Berri, the 
 Archbishop, and then the Chancellor and some pious persons 
 contributed very liberally to the first necessary expenses. The 
 fund was increased by what we could spare from our income, 
 for each of us spends no more than is absolutely necessary." 
 
 Tears rose to Godefroid's eyes.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 113 
 
 **We are the faithful priesthood of a- Christian idea, and 
 belong body and soul to this work, of which Madame de la 
 Chanterie is the founder and the soul that lady whom you 
 hear us respectfully designate as Madame." 
 
 "Ah, and I too am wholly yours !" cried Godefroid, holding 
 out his hands to the worthy man. 
 
 "Now, do you understand that there are subjects of con- 
 versation absolutely prohibited here, never even to be alluded 
 to?" Alain went on. "Do you appreciate the obligation of 
 reticence under which we all feel ourselves to a lady whom we 
 reverence as a saint? Do you understand the charm exerted 
 by a woman made sacred by her misfortunes, having learned 
 so many things, knowing the inmost secret of every form of 
 suffering a woman who has derived a lesson from every grief, 
 whose every virtue has the twofold sanction of the hardest 
 tests and of constant practice, whose soul is spotless and above 
 reproach ; who has known motherhood only through its sor- 
 rows, and conjugal affection only through its bitterness; on 
 whom life never smiled but for a few months for whom 
 Heaven no doubt keeps a palm in store as the reward of such 
 resignation and gentleness amid sorrows ? Is she not superior 
 to Job in that she has never murmured ? 
 
 "So you need never again be surprised to find her speech so 
 impressive, her old age so fresh, her spirit so full of com- 
 munion, her looks so persuasive; she has had powers extra- 
 ordinary bestowed on her as a confidante of the sorrowing, for 
 she has known every sorrow. In her presence smaller griefs 
 are mute." 
 
 "She is the living embodiment of charity," cried Godefroid 
 with enthusiasm. "May I become one of you?" 
 
 "You must pass the tests, and above all else, Believe!" said 
 the old man with gentle excitement. "So long as you have 
 not hold on faith, so long as you have not assimilated in your 
 heart and brain the divine meaning of Saint Paul's epistle on 
 Charity, you can take no part in our work." 
 
 PARIS, 1843-1845.
 
 SECOND EPISODE 
 
 INITIATED 
 
 WHAT is nobly good is contagious, as evil is. And by the 
 time Madame de la Chanterie's boarder had dwelt for some 
 months in this silent old house, after the story told him by 
 Monsieur Alain, which filled him with the deepest respect for 
 the half-monastic life he saw around him, he became conscious 
 of the ease of mind that comes of a regular life, of quiet habits 
 and harmonious tempers in those we live with. In four 
 months Godefroid, never hearing an angry tone or the least 
 dispute, owned to himself that since he had come to years of 
 discretion he did not remember ever being so completely at 
 peace for he could not say happy. He looked on the world 
 from afar, and judged it sanely. At last the desire he had 
 cherished these three months past to take his part in the deeds 
 of this mysterious association had become a passion ; and with- 
 out being a very profound philosopher, the reader may imagine 
 what strength such a passion may assume in seclusion. 
 
 So one day a day marked as solemn by the ascendency of 
 the Spirit Godefroid, after sounding his heart and measur- 
 ing his powers, went up to his good friend Alain whom 
 Madame de la Chanterie always called her lamb for of all 
 the dwellers under that roof he had always seemed to Gode- 
 froid the most accessible and the least formidable. To him, 
 then, he would apply, to obtain from the worthy man some 
 information as to the sort of priesthood which these Brethren 
 in God exercised in Paris. Many allusions to a period of pro- 
 bation suggested to him that he would be put to initiatory tests 
 of some kind. His curiosity had not been fully satisfied by 
 what the venerable old man had told him of the reasons why 
 he had joined Madame de la Chanterie's association; he 
 wanted to know more about this. 
 
 (114)
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 115 
 
 'At half-past ten o'clock that evening Godefroid found him- 
 self for the third time in Monsieur Alain's rooms, just as the 
 old man was preparing to read his chapter of The Imitation. 
 This time the mild old man could not help smiling, and he said 
 to the young man, before allowing him to speak : 
 
 "Why do you apply to me, my dear boy, instead of address- 
 ing yourself to Madame? I am the most ignorant, the least 
 spiritual, the most imperfect member of the household. For 
 the last three days Madame and my friends have seen into 
 your heart," he added, with a little knowing air. 
 
 "And what have they seen ?" asked Godefroid. 
 "Oh," said the good man, with perfect simplicity, "they 
 have seen a guileless desire to belong to our community. But 
 the feeling is not yet a very ardent vocation. Nay," he replied 
 to an impulsive gesture of Godefroid's, "you have more curi- 
 osity than fervor. In fact, you have not so completely freed 
 yourself from your old ideas but that you imagine something 
 adventurous, something romantic, as the phrase goes, in the 
 incidents of our life " 
 
 Godefroid could not help turning red. 
 
 "You fancy that there is some resemblance between our 
 occupations and those of the Khalifs in the Arabian Nights, 
 and you anticipate a kind of satisfaction in playing the part 
 of the good genius in the idyllic beneficences of which you 
 dream ! Ah, ha ! my son, your smile of confusion shows me 
 that we were not mistaken. How could you expect to con- 
 ceal your thoughts from us, who make it our business to detect 
 the hidden impulses of the soul, the cunning of poverty, the 
 calculations of the needy ; who are honest spies, the police of a 
 merciful Providence, old judges whose code of law knows only 
 absolution, and physicians of every malady whose only pre- 
 scription is a wise use of money? Still, my dear boy, we do 
 not quarrel with the motives that bring us a neophyte if only 
 he stays with us and becomes a brother of our Order. We 
 shall judge you by your works. There Rre two kinds of curi- 
 osity one for good, and one for evil. At this moment your 
 curiosity is for good. If you are ^p become a laborer in our
 
 116 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 vineyard, the juice of the grapes will give you perpetual thirst 
 for the divine fruit. The initiation looks easy, but is difficult, 
 as in every natural science. In well-doing, as in poetry, 
 nothing can be easier than to clutch at its semblance ; but here, 
 as on Parnassus, we are satisfied with nothing short of perfec- 
 tion. To become one of us, you must attain to great knowledge 
 of life and of such life. Good God! Of that Paris life 
 which defies the scrutiny of the Chief of the Police and his 
 men. It is our task to unmask the permanent conspiracy of 
 evil, and detect it under forms so endlessly changing that they 
 might be thought infinite. In Paris, Charity must be as om- 
 niscient as Sin, just as the police agent must be as cunning as 
 a thief. We have to be at once frank and suspicious; our 
 judgment must be as certain and as swift as our eye. 
 
 "As you see, dear boy, we are all old and worn out ; but then 
 we are so well satisfied with the results we have achieved, that 
 we wish not to die without leaving successors, and we hold 
 you all the more dear because you may, if you will, be our first 
 disciple. For us there is no risk, we owe you to God ! Yours 
 is a sweet nature turned sour, and since you came to live here 
 the evil leaven is weaker. Madame's heavenly nature has had 
 its effect on you. 
 
 "We held council yesterday ; and as you have given me your 
 confidence, my good brothers decided on making me your in- 
 structor and guide. Are you satisfied?" 
 
 "Oh, my kind Monsieur Alain, your eloquence has 
 aroused '' 
 
 "It is not I that speak well, my dear boy, it is that great 
 deeds are eloquent. We are always sure of soaring high if we 
 obey God and imitate Jesus Christ so far as lies in man aided 
 by faith." 
 
 "This moment has decided my fate ; I feel the ardor of the 
 neophyte !" cried Godefroid. "I too would fain spend my life 
 in well-doing " 
 
 "That is -the secret of dwelling in God," replied the goon 
 man. "Have you meditated on our motto, Transire ~bpn<>- 
 faciendo? Transire means to pass beyond this life, leaving 
 a long train of good actions behind you/'
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 11Y 
 
 "I have understood it so, and I have written up the motto 
 of the order in front of my bed." 
 
 "That is well. And that action, so trivial in itself, is of 
 great value in my eyes. Well, my son, I have your first task 
 ready for you, I will see you with your foot in the stirrup. We 
 must part. Yes, for I have to leave our retreat and take my 
 place in the heart of a volcano. I am going as foreman in a 
 large factory where all the workmen are infected with com- 
 munistic doctrines and dream of social destruction, of mur- 
 dering the masters, never seeing that this would be to mur- 
 der industry, manufacture, and commerce. 
 
 "I shall remain there who knows a year, perhaps, as 
 cashier, keeping the books, and making my way into a hundred 
 or more humble homes, among men who were misled by pov- 
 erty, no doubt, before they were deluded by bad books. How- 
 ever, we shall see each other here every Sunday and holiday; 
 as I shall live in the same quarter of the town we may meet at 
 the Church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas ; I shall attend mass 
 there every morning at half-past seven. If you should happen 
 to meet me elsewhere, you must never recognize me, unless I 
 rub my hands with an air of satisfaction. That is one of our 
 signals. Like the deaf-mutes, we have a language by signs, 
 of which the necessity will soon be more than abundantly evi- 
 dent to you." 
 
 Godefroid's expression was intelligible to Monsieur Alain, 
 for he smiled and went on : 
 
 "Now for your business. We do not practise either bene- 
 ficence or philanthropy as they are known to you, under a 
 variety of branches which are preyed upon by swindlers, just 
 like any other form of trade. We exercise charity as it is de- 
 fined by our great and sublime master Saint Paul; for it is 
 our belief, my son, that such charity alone can heal the woes 
 of Paris. Thus, in our eyes, sorrow, poverty, suffering, trou- 
 ble, evil from whatever cause they may proceed and in what- 
 ever class of society we find them have equal claims upon us. 
 Whatever their creed or their opinions, the unfortunate are, 
 first and foremost, unfortunate; we do not try to persuade
 
 118 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 them to look to our Holy Mother the Church till we have res- 
 cued them from despair and starvation. And even then we 
 try to convert them by example and kindness, for thus we be- 
 lieve that we have the help of God. All coercion is wrong. 
 
 "Of all the wretchedness in Paris, the most difficult to dis- 
 cover and the bitterest to endure is that of the respectable 
 middle-class, the better class of citizens, when they fall into 
 poverty, for they make it a point of honor to conceal it. Such 
 disasters as these, my dear Godefroid, are the object of our 
 particular care. Such persons, when we help them, show in- 
 telligence and good feeling ; they return us with interest what 
 we may lend to them; and in the course of time their repay- 
 ments cover the losses we meet with through the disabled, or by 
 swindlers, or those whom misfortune has stultified. Some- 
 times we get useful information from those we have helped; 
 but the work has grown to such vast dimensions, and its de- 
 tails are so numerous, that it is beyond our powers. Now, for 
 the last seven or eight months, we have a physician in our 
 employment in each district of the city of Paris. Each of us 
 has four arrondissements (or wards) under his eye; and we 
 are prepared to pay to each three thousand francs a year to 
 take charge of our poor. He is required to give up his time 
 and care to them by preference, but we do not prevent his tak- 
 ing other patients. Would you believe that we have not in 
 eight months been able to find twelve such men, twelve good 
 men, in spite of the pecuniary aid offered by our friends and 
 acquaintance? You see, we needed men of absolute secrecy, 
 of pure life, of recognized abilities, and with a love of doing 
 good. Well, in Paris there are perhaps ten thousand men fit 
 for the work, and yet in a year's search the twelve elect have 
 not been found." 
 
 "Our Lord found it hard to collect His apostles," said 
 Godefroid, "and there were a traitor and a disbeliever among 
 them after all !" 
 
 "At last, within the past fortnight, each arrondissement has 
 been provided with a visitor," said the old man, smiling "for 
 so we call our physicians and, indeed, within that fortnight
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 119 
 
 there has been a vast increase of business. However, we have 
 worked all the harder. I tell you this secret of our infant 
 fraternity because you must make acquaintance with the phy- 
 sician of your district, all the more so because we depend on 
 him for information. This gentleman's name is Berton* 
 Doctor Berton and he lives in the Rue de 1'Enfer. 
 
 "Now for the facts. Doctor Berton is attending a lady 
 whose disease seems in some way to defy science. That indeed 
 does not concern us, but only the Faculty; our business is to 
 find out the poverty of the sick woman's family, which the 
 doctor believes to be frightful, and concealed with a determi- 
 nation and pride that baffle all our inquiries. Hitherto, my 
 dear boy, this would have been my task; but now the work 
 to which I am devoting myself makes an assistant necessary 
 in my four districts, and you must be that assistant. The 
 family lives in the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, in a house 
 looking out over the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. You will 
 easily find a room to let there, and while lodging there for a 
 time you must try to discover the truth. Be sordid as regards 
 your own expenses, but do not trouble your head about the 
 money you give. I will send you such sums as we consider 
 necessary, taking all the circumstances of the case into con- 
 sideration. But study the moral character of these unfor- 
 tunate people. A good heart and noble feelings are the secur- 
 ity for our loans. Stingy to ourselves and generous to suffer- 
 ing, we must still be careful and never rash, for we dip into 
 the treasury of the poor. Go to-morrow, and remember how 
 much power lies in your hands. The Brethren will be on your 
 side." 
 
 "Ah !" cried Godefroid, "you have given me so much pleas- 
 ure in trusting me to do good and be worthy of some day being 
 one of you, that I shall not sleep for joy." 
 
 "Stay, my boy, one last piece of advice. The prohibition to 
 recognize me unless I make the sign concerns the other gentle- 
 men and Madame, and even the servants of the house. Abso- 
 lute incognito is indispensable to all our undertakings, and 
 we are so constantly obliged to preserve it that we have made it 
 a law without exceptions. We must be unknown, lost in Paris.
 
 120 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Remember, too, my dear Godefroid, the very spirit of our 
 Order, which requires us never to appear as benefactors, but to 
 play the obscure part of intermediaries. We always represent 
 ourselves as the agents of some saintly and beneficent person- 
 age are we not toiling for God? so that no gratitude may 
 be considered due to ourselves, and that we may not be sup- 
 posed to be rich. True, sincere humility, not the false hu- 
 mility of those who keep in the shade that others may throw 
 a light on them, must inspire and govern all your thoughts. 
 You may rejoice when you succeed ; but so long as you feel the 
 least impulse of vanity, you will be unworthy to join the 
 Brotherhood. We have known two perfect men. One, who 
 was one of our founders, Judge Popinot; the other, who was 
 known by his works, was a country doctor who has left his 
 name written in a remote parish. He, my dear Godefroid, 
 was one of the greatest men of our day ; he raised a whole dis- 
 trict from a savage state to one of prosperity, from irreligion 
 to the Catholic faith, from barbarism to civilization. The 
 names of those two men are graven on our hearts, and we re- 
 gard them as our examples. We should be happy indeed if we 
 might one day have in Paris such influence as that country 
 doctor had in his own district. 
 
 "But here the plague-spot is immeasurable, and, so far, 
 quite beyond our powers. May God long preserve Madame, 
 and send us many such helpers as you, and then perhaps we 
 may found an Institution that will lead men to bless His holy 
 religion. 
 
 "Well, farewell. Your initiation now begins. 
 
 "Bless me ! I chatter like a Professor, and was forgetting 
 the most important matter. Here is the address of the family 
 I spoke of," he went on, handing a scrap of paper to Gode- 
 froid. "And I have added the number of Monsieur Berton's 
 house in the Rue de 1'Enfer. Now, go and pray God to help 
 you." 
 
 Godefroid took the good old man's hands and pressed them 
 affectionately, bidding him good-night, and promising to for- 
 get none of his injunctions.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 121 
 
 "All you have said/' he added, "is stamped on my memory 
 for life." 
 
 Alain smiled with no expression of doubt, and rose to go 
 and kneel on his prie-Dieu. Godefroid went back to his own 
 room, happy in being at last allowed to know the mysteries 
 of this household, and to have an occupation which, in his 
 present frame of mind, was really a pleasure. 
 
 At breakfast next morning there was no Monsieur Alain, 
 but Godefroid made no remark on his absence. Nor was he 
 questioned as to the mission given him by the old man; thus 
 lie received his first lesson in secrecy. After breakfast, how- 
 ever, he took Madame de la Chanterie aside, and told her that 
 he should be absent for a few days. 
 
 "Very well, my child," replied Madame de la Chanterie. 
 "And try to do your sponsor credit, for Monsieur Alain has 
 answered for you to his brethren." 
 
 Godefroid took leave of the other three men, who embraced 
 him affectionately, seeming thus to give him their blessing 
 on his outset in his laborious career. 
 
 Association one of the greatest social forces which was 
 the making of Europe in the Middle Ages is based on feel- 
 ings which have ceased, since 1792, to exist in France, where 
 the individual is now supreme over the State. Association 
 requires, in the first place, a kind of devotedness which is not 
 understood in this country ; a simplicity of faith which is con- 
 trary to the national spirit; and finally, a discipline against 
 which everything rebels, and which nothing but the Catholic 
 faith can exact. As soon as an Association is formed in 
 France, each member of it, on returning home from a meet- 
 ing where the finest sentiments have been expressed, makes 
 a bed for himself of the collective devotion of this combina- 
 tion of forces, and tries to milk for his own benefit the cow 
 belonging to all, till the poor thing, inadequate to meet so 
 many individual demands, dies of attenuation. 
 
 None can tell how many generous emotions have been 
 nipped, how many fervid germs have perished, how much re-
 
 122 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 source has been crushed and lost to the country by the shame- 
 ful frauds of the French secret Societies, of the patriotic fund 
 for the Champs d'Asile (emigration to America), and other 
 political swindles, which ought to have produced great and 
 noble dramas, and turned out mere farces of the lower police 
 courts. 
 
 It was the same with industrial as with political associa- 
 tions. Self-interest took the place of public spirit. The 
 Corporations and Hanseatic Guilds of the Middle Ages, to 
 which we shall some day return, are as yet out of the question ; 
 the only Societies that still exist are religious institutions, 
 and at this moment they are being very roughly attacked, 
 for the natural tendency of the sick is to rebel against the 
 remedies and often to rend the physician. France knows not 
 what self-denial means. Hence no Association can hold to- 
 gether but by the aid of religious sentiment, the only power 
 that can quell the rebellion of the intellect, the calculations 
 of ambition, and greed of every kind. Those who are in search 
 of worlds fail to understand that Association has worlds in its 
 gift. 
 
 Godefroid, as he made his way through the streets, felt 
 himself a different man. Any one who could have read his 
 mind would have wondered at the curious phenomenon of the 
 communication of the spirit of union. He was no longer 
 one man, but a being multiplied tenfold, feeling himself the 
 representative of five persons whose united powers were at 
 the back of all he did, and who walked with him on his way. 
 With this strength in his heart, he was conscious of a fulness 
 of life, a lofty power that uplifted him. It was, as he after- 
 wards owned, one of the happiest moments of his life, for 
 he rejoiced in a new sense that of an omnipotence more 
 absolute than that of despots. Moral force, like thought, 
 knows no limits. 
 
 "This is living for others/' said he to himself, "acting with 
 others as if we were but one man, and acting alone as if we 
 were all together! This is having Charity for a leader, the 
 fairest and most living of all the ideals that have been created
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 123 
 
 of the Catholic virtues. Yes, this is living! Come, I must 
 subdue this childish exultation which Father Alain would 
 laugh to scorn. Still, is it not strange that it is by dint of 
 trying to annul my Self that I have found the power so long 
 wished for? The world o*f misfortune is to be my in- 
 heritance." 
 
 He crossed the precincts of Notre-Dame to the Avenue 
 de 1'Observatoire in such high spirits that he did not heed 
 the length of the walk. 
 
 Having reached the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, at the 
 end of the Eue de 1'Ouest, he was surprised to find such pools 
 of mud in so handsome a quarter of the town, for neither of 
 those streets was as yet paved. The foot-passenger had to 
 walk on planks laid close to the walls of the marshy gardens, 
 or creep by the houses on narrow side-paths, which were soon 
 swamped by the stagnant waters that turned them into 
 gutters. 
 
 After much seeking, he discovered the house described to 
 him, and got to it, not without some difficulty. It was evi- 
 dently an old manufactory which had been abandoned. The 
 building was narrow, and the front was a long wall pierced 
 with windows quite devoid of any ornament; but there were 
 none of these square openings on the ground floor only a 
 wretched back-door. 
 
 Godefroid supposed that the owner had contrived a number 
 of rooms in this structure to his own profit, for over the 
 door there was a board scrawled by hand to this effect : Sev- 
 eral rooms to let. Godefroid rang, but no one came ; and as he 
 stood waiting, a passer-by pointed out to him that there was 
 another entrance to the house from the boulevard, where he 
 would find somebody to speak to. 
 
 Godefroid acted on the information, and from the boule- 
 vard he saw the front of the house screened by the trees of a 
 small garden-plot. This garden, very ill-kept, sloped to the 
 house, for there is such a difference of level between the 
 boulevard and the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs as to make 
 the garden a sort of ditch. Godefroid went down the path,
 
 124 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 and at the bottom of it saw an old woman whose dilapidated 
 garb was in perfect harmony with the dwelling. 
 
 "Was it you who rang in the Rue Notre-Dame ?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes, madame. Is it your business to show the rooms?''* 
 
 On a reply in the affirmative from this portress, whose 
 age it was difficult to determine, Godefroid inquired whether 
 the house was tenanted by quiet folk ; his occupations required 
 peace and silence; he was a bachelor, and wished to arrange 
 with the doorkeeper to cook and clean for him. 
 
 On this hint the woman became gracious, and said : 
 
 "Monsieur could not have done better than to hit on this 
 house; for excepting the days when there are doings at the 
 Chaumiere, the boulevard is as deserted as the Pontine 
 Marshes " 
 
 "Do you know the Pontine Marshes?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "No, sir; but there is an old gentleman upstairs whose 
 daughter is always in a dying state, and he says so. I only 
 repeat it. That poor old man will be truly glad to think that 
 you want peace and quiet, for a lodger who stormed around 
 would be the death of his daughter. And we have two writers 
 of some kind on the second floor, but they come in for the day 
 at midnight, and then at night they go out at eight in the 
 morning. Authors, they say they are, but I do not know where 
 or when they work." 
 
 As she spoke, the portress led Godefroid up one of those 
 horrible stairs built of wood and brick, in such an unholy 
 alliance that it is impossible to say whether the wood is 
 parting from the bricks or the bricks are disgusted at being 
 set in the wood; while both materials seem to fortify their 
 disunion by masses of dust in summer and of mud in winter. 
 The walls, of cracked plaster, bore more inscriptions than the 
 Academy of Belles-lettres ever invented. 
 
 The woman stopped on the first floor. 
 
 "Xow, here, sir, are two very good rooms, opening into 
 each other, and on to Monsieur Bernard's landing. He is the 
 old gentleman I mentioned and quite the gentleman. He 
 has the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, but he has had great
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 125 
 
 troubles, it would seem, for he never wears it. When first 
 they came they had a servant to wait on them, a man from the 
 country, and they sent him away close on three years ago. 
 The lady's young gentleman her son does everything now; 
 he manages it all " 
 
 Godefroid looked shocked. 
 
 "Oh !" said the woman, "don't be uneasy, they will say 
 nothing to you; they never speak to anybody. The gentle- 
 man has been here ever since the revolution of July ; he came 
 in 1831. They are some high provincial family, I believe, 
 ruined by the change of government ; and proud ! and as mute 
 as fishes. For four years, sir, they have never let me do the 
 least thing for them, for fear of having to pay. A five-franc 
 piece on Xew Year's day, that's every sou I get out of them. 
 Give me your authors ! I get ten francs a month, only to tell 
 everybody who comes to ask for them that they left at the 
 end of last quarter." 
 
 All this babble led Godefroid to hope for an ally in this 
 woman, who explained to him, as she praised the airiness of 
 the two rooms and adjoining dressing-closets, that she was 
 not the portress, but the landlord's deputy and housekeeper, 
 managing everything for him to a great extent. 
 
 "And you may trust me, monsieur, I promise you ! Ma- 
 dame Vauthier that's me would rather have nothing at 
 all than take a sou of anybody else's." 
 
 Madame Vauthier soon came to terms with Godefroid, who 
 wished to take the rooms by the month and ready furnished. 
 These wretched lodgings, rented by students or authors 
 "down on their luck," were let furnished or unfurnished, as 
 might be required. The spacious lofts over the whole house 
 were full of furniture. But Monsieur Bernard himself had 
 furnished the rooms he was in. 
 
 In getting Madame Vauthier to talk, Godefroid discovered 
 that her ambition was set up in a pension bourgeoise; but 
 in the course of five years she had failed to meet with a single 
 boarder among her lodgers. She inhabited the ground floor, 
 on the side towards the boulevard; thus she was herself the
 
 126 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 doorkeeper, with the help of a big dog, a sturdy girl, and a 
 boy who cleaned the boots, ran errands, and did the rooms, 
 two creatures as poor as herself, in harmony with the squalor 
 of the house and its inhabitants, and the desolate, neglected 
 appearance of the garden in front. 
 
 They were both foundlings, to whom the widow Vauthier 
 gave no wages but their food and such food ! The boy, of 
 whom Godefroid caught a glimpse, wore a ragged blouse, list 
 slippers instead of shoes, and sabots to go out in. With a 
 shock of hair, as touzled as a sparrow taking a bath, and 
 blackened hands, as soon as he had done the work of the 
 house, he went off to measure wood logs in a woodyard hard 
 by, and when his day was over at half-past four for wood- 
 sawyers he returned for his occupations. He fetched water 
 for the household from the fountain by the Observatory, and 
 the widow supplied it to the lodgers, as well as the faggots 
 which he chopped and tied. 
 
 Nepomucene this was the name of the widow Vauthier's 
 slave handed over his earnings to his mistress. In summer- 
 time the unhappy waif served as waiter in the wineshops by 
 the barriere on Sundays and Mondays. Then the woman 
 gave him decent clothes. 
 
 As for the girl, she cooked under the widow's orders, and 
 helped her in her trade work at other times, for the woman 
 plied a trade ; she made list slippers for peddlers to sell. 
 
 All these details were known to Godefroid within an hour, 
 for Madame Vauthier took him all over the house, showing 
 him how it had been altered. A silkworm establishment had 
 been carried on there till 1828, not so much for the produc- 
 tion of silk as that of the eggs the seed, as it is called. 
 Eleven acres of mulberry-trees at Mont-Rouge, and three 
 acres in the Rue de 1'Ouest, since built over, had supplied 
 food for this nursery for silkworms' eggs. 
 
 Madame Vauthier was telling Godefroid that Monsieur 
 Barbet, who had lent the capital to an Italian named Fres- 
 coni to carry on this business, had been obliged to sell those 
 three acres to recover the money secured by a mortgage on
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 127 
 
 the land and buildings, and was pointing out the plot of 
 ground, lying on the other side of the Rue Notre-Dame des 
 Champs, when a tall and meagre old man, with perfectly 
 white hair, came in sight at the end of the street where it 
 crosses the Rue de 1'Ouest. 
 
 "In the very nick of time!" cried Madame Vauthier. 
 "Look, that is your neighbor, Monsieur Bernard. Monsieur 
 Bernard," cried she, as soon as the old man was within hear- 
 ing, "you will not be alone now ; this gentleman here has just 
 taken the rooms opposite yours " 
 
 Monsieur Bernard looked up at Godefroid with an appre- 
 hensive eye that was easy to read; it was as though he had 
 said, "Then the misfortune I have so long feared has come 
 upon me !" 
 
 "What, monsieur," said he, "you propose to reside here?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," said Godefroid civilly. "This is no home 
 for those who are lucky in the world, and it is the cheapest 
 lodging I have seen in this part of the town. Madame Vau- 
 thier does not expect to harbor millionaires. Good-day, then, 
 Madame Vauthier; arrange things so that I may come in at 
 six o'clock this evening. I shall return punctually." 
 
 And Godefroid went off towards the Rue de 1'Ouest, walk- 
 ing slowly, for the anxiety he had read in the old man's face 
 led him to suppose that he wanted to dispute the matter with 
 him. And, in fact, after some little hesitation, Monsieur 
 Bernard turned on his heel and walked quickly enough to 
 come up with Godefroid. 
 
 "That old wretch ! he wants to hinder him from coming 
 back," said Madame Vauthier to herself. "Twice already he 
 has played me that trick. Patience ! His rent is due in 
 five days, and if he does not pay it down on the nail, out he 
 goes ! Monsieur Barbet is a tiger of a sort that does not need 
 much lashing, and I should like to know what he is saying 
 to him Felicite! Felicite! you lazy hussy, will you make 
 haste?" cried the widow in a formidable croak, for she had 
 assumed an affable piping tone in speaking to Godefroid. 
 
 The girl, a sturdy, red-haired slut, came running out.
 
 128 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Just keep a sharp eye on everything for a few seconds, 
 do you hear ? I shall be back in five minutes." 
 
 And the widow Vauthier, formerly cook to the bookseller's 
 shop kept by Barbet, one of the hardest money-lenders on 
 short terms in the neighborhood, stole out at the heels of her 
 two lodgers, so as to watch them from a distance and rejoin 
 Godefroid as soon as he and Monsieur Bernard should part 
 company. 
 
 Monsieur Bernard was walking slowly, like a man in two 
 minds, or a debtor seeking for excuses to give to a creditor 
 who has left him to take proceedings. 
 
 Godefroid, in front of this unknown neighbor, turned round 
 to look at him under pretence of looking about him. And it 
 was not till they had reached the broad walk in the Luxem- 
 bourg Gardens that Monsieur Bernard came up with Gode- 
 froid and addressed him. 
 
 "I beg your pardon a thousand times, monsieur," said he, 
 bowing to Godefroid, who returned the bow, "for stopping 
 you, when I have not the honor of knowing you; but is it 
 your firm intention to live in the horrible house where I am 
 lodging ?" 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur " 
 
 "I know," said the old man, interrupting Godefroid with a 
 commanding air, "that you have a right to ask me what con- 
 cern of mine it is to meddle in your affairs, to question you. 
 Listen, monsieur; you are young, and I am very old; I 
 am older than my years, and they are sixty-six I might be 
 taken for eighty ! Age and misfortune justify many things, 
 since the law exempts septuagenarians from various public 
 duties; still, I do not dwell on the privileges bestowed by 
 white hairs; it is you whom I am concerned for. Do you 
 know that the part of the town in which you think of living 
 is a desert by eight in the evening, and full of dangers, of 
 which being robbed is the least? Have you noticed the wide 
 plots where there are no houses, the waste ground and
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 129 
 
 market gardens ? You will, perhaps, retort that I live there ; 
 but I, monsieur, am never out of doors after six in the even- 
 ing. Or you will say that two young men are lodgers on thtv 
 second floor, above the rooms you propose to take ; but, mon- 
 sieur, those two unhappy writers are the victims of writs out 
 against them; they are pursued by their creditors; they are 
 in hiding, and go out all day to come in at midnight; and as 
 they always keep together and carry arms, they have no fear 
 of being robbed. I myself obtained permission from the chief 
 of the police for them each to carry a weapon." 
 
 "Indeed, monsieur," said Godefroid, "I have no fear of 
 robbers, for the same reasons as leave these gentlemen in- 
 vulnerable, and so great a contempt for life, that if I should 
 be murdered by mistake, I should bless the assassin." 
 
 "And yet you do not look so very wretched," said the old 
 man, who was studying Godefroid. 
 
 "I have barely enough to live on, to give me bread, and I 
 chose that part of town for the sake of the quiet that 
 reigns there. But may I ask, monsieur, what object you can 
 have in keeping me out of the house ?" 
 
 The old man hesitated; he saw Madame Vauthier in pur- 
 suit. Godefroid, who was examining him attentively, was 
 surprised at the excessive emaciation to which grief, and per- 
 haps hunger, or perhaps hard work, had reduced him; there 
 were traces of all these causes of weakness on the face where 
 the withered skin looked dried on to the bones, as if it had 
 been exposed to the African sun. The forehead, which was 
 high and threatening, rose in a dome above a pair of steel- 
 blue eyes, cold, hard, shrewd, and piercing as those of a sav- 
 age, and set in deep, dark, and very wrinkled circles, like a 
 bruise round each. A large, long, thin nose, and the upward 
 curve of the chin, gave the old man a marked likeness to the 
 familiar features of Don Quixote; but this was a sinister 
 Don Quixote, a man of no delusions, a terrible Don Quixote. 
 
 The old man, in spite of his look of severity, betrayed 
 nevertheless the timidity and weakness that poverty gives to 
 the unfortunate. And these two feelings seemed to have
 
 130 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 graven lines of ruin on a face so strongly framed that the 
 destroying pickaxe of misery had rough hewn it. The mouih 
 was expressive and grave. Don Quixote was crossed with the 
 President de Montesquieu. 
 
 The man's dress was of black cloth throughout, but utterly 
 threadbare; the coat, old-fashioned in cut, and the trousers 
 showed many badly-executed patches. The buttons had been 
 recently renewed. The coat was fastened to the chin, show- 
 ing no linen, and a rusty-black stock covered the absence of 
 a collar. These black clothes, worn for many years, reeked of 
 poverty. But the mysterious old man's air of dignity, his 
 gait, the mind that dwelt behind that brow and lighted up 
 those eyes, seemed irreconcilable with poverty. An observer 
 would have found it hard to class this Parisian. 
 
 Monsieur Bernard was so absent-minded that he might 
 have been taken for a professor of the college-quarter, a 
 learned man lost in jealous and overbearing meditation; and 
 Godefroid was filled with excessive interest and a degree of 
 curiosity to which his beneficent mission added a spur. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the old man presently, "if I were assured 
 that all you seek is silence and privacy, I would say, 'Come 
 and live near me.' Take the rooms," he went on in a louder 
 voice, so that the widow might hear him, as she passed them, 
 listening to what they were saying. "I am a father, mon- 
 sieur, I have no one belonging to me in the world but my 
 daughter and her son to help me to endure the miseries of life ; 
 but my daughter needs silence and perfect quiet. Every one 
 who has hitherto come to take the rooms you wish to lodge 
 in has yielded to the reasoning and the entreaties of a heart- 
 broken father; they did not care in which street they settled 
 of so desolate a part of the town, where cheap lodgings are 
 plenty and boarding-houses at very low rates. But you, I see, 
 are very much bent on it, and I can only beg you, monsieur, 
 not to deceive me; for if you should, I can but leave and 
 settle beyond the barrier. And, in the first place, a removal 
 might cost my daughter her life," he said in a broken voice, 
 "and then, who knows whether the doctors who come to at-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 131 
 
 tend her for the love of God would come outside the 
 gates? " 
 
 If the man could have shed tears, they would have run down 
 his cheeks as he spoke these last words; but there were tears 
 in his voice, to us,e a phrase that has become commonplace, 
 and he covered his brow with a hand that was mere bone and 
 sinew. 
 
 "What, then, is the matter with madame, your daughter ?" 
 asked Godefroid in a voice of ingratiating sympathy. 
 
 "A terrible disease to which the doctors give a variety of 
 names or rather, which has no name. All my fortune 
 went " 
 
 But he checked himself, and said, with one of those move- 
 ments peculiar to the unfortunate: 
 
 , "The little money I had for in 1830, dismissed from a 
 high position, I found myself without an income in short, 
 everything I had was soon eaten up by my daughter, who 
 had already ruined her mother and her husband's family. At 
 the present time the pension I draw hardly suffices to pay 
 for necessities in the state in which my poor saintly daughter 
 now is. She has exhausted all my power to weep. 
 
 "I have endured every torment, monsieur; I must be of 
 granite still to live or rather, God preserves the father that 
 his child may still have a nurse or a providence, for her 
 mother died of exhaustion. 
 
 "Ay, .young man, you have come at a moment when this 
 old tree that has never bent is feeling the axe of suffering, 
 sharpened by poverty, cutting at its heart. And I, who have 
 never complained to anybody, will tell you about this long ill- 
 ness to keep you from coming to the house or, if you insist, 
 to show you how necessary it is that our quiet should not be 
 disturbed. 
 
 "At this moment, monsieur, day and night, my daughter 
 barks like a dog !" 
 
 "She is mad, then?" said Godefroid. 
 
 "She is in her right mind, and a perfect saint," replied 
 Monsieur Bernard. "You will think I am mad when I have
 
 132 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 told you all. My only daughter is the child of a mother who 
 enjoyed excellent health. I never in my life loved but one 
 woman she was my wife. I chose her myself, and married 
 for love the daughter of one of the bravest colonels in the 
 Imperial guard, a Pole formerly on the Emperor's staff, the 
 gallant General Tarlovski. In the place I held strict morality 
 was indispensable; but my heart is not adapted to accommo- 
 date my fancies I loved my wife faithfully, and she de- 
 served it. And I am as constant as a father as I was as a hus- 
 band ; I can say no more. 
 
 "My daughter never left her mother's care ; no girl ever led 
 a chaster or more Christian life than my dear child. She was 
 more than pretty lovely ; and her husband, a young man of 
 whose character I was certain, for he was the son of an old 
 friend, a President of the Supreme Court, I am sure was in 
 no way contributory to his wife's malady." 
 
 Monsieur Bernard and Godefroid involuntarily stood still 
 a moment looking at each other. 
 
 "Marriage, as you know, often changes a woman's constitu- 
 tion/' the old man went on. "My daughter's first child was 
 safely brought into the world, a son my grandson, who lives 
 with us, and who is the only descendant of either of the 
 united families. The second time my daughter was expectir^ 
 an infant, she had such singular symptoms that the physicians, 
 all puzzled, could only ascribe them to the singular condi- 
 tions which sometimes occur in such cases, and which are 
 recorded in the memoirs of medical science. The infant was 
 born dead, literally strangled by internal convulsions. Thus 
 began the illness temporary conditions had nothing to do 
 with it. Perhaps you are a medical student ?" Godefroid re- 
 plied with a nod, which might be either negative or affirma- 
 tive. 
 
 "After this disastrous child-bearing," Monsieur Bernard 
 went on "a scene that made so terrible an impression on my 
 son-in-law that it laid the foundations of the decline of which 
 he died my daughter, at the end of two or three months, 
 complained of general debility, more particularly affecting her
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 133 
 
 feet, which felt, as she described it, as if they were made of 
 cotton. This weakness became paralysis, but what a strange 
 form of paralysis ! You may bend my daughter's feet under 
 her, twist them round, and she feels nothing. The limbs 
 are there, but they seem to have no blood, no flesh, no bones. 
 This condition, which is unlike any recognized disease, has 
 attacked her arms and hands ; it was supposed to be connected 
 with her spine. Doctors and remedies have only made her 
 worse; my poor child cannot move without dislocating her 
 hips, shoulders, or wrists. We have had for a long time an 
 excellent surgeon, almost in the house, who makes it his care, 
 with the help of a doctor or doctors, for several have seen 
 her out of curiosity to replace the joints would you 
 believe me, monsieur ? as often as three or four times a day. 
 
 "Ah ! I was forgetting to tell you for this illness has so 
 many forms that during the early weak stage, before paraly- 
 sis supervened, my daughter was liable to the most extraor- 
 dinary attacks of catalepsy. You know what catalepsy is. 
 She would lie with her eyes open and staring, sometimes in 
 the attitude in which the fit seized her. She has had the most 
 incredible forms of this affection, even attacks of tetanus. 
 
 "This phase of the disease suggested to me the application 
 of mesmerism as a cure when I saw her so strangely paralyzed. 
 Then, monsieur, my daughter became miraculously clairvoy- 
 ante, her mind was subject to every marvel of somnambulism, 
 as her body is to every form of disease." 
 
 Godefroid was indeed wondering whether the old man were 
 quite sane. 
 
 "For my part," he went on, heedless of the expression of 
 Godefroid's eyes, "I, brought up on Voltaire, Diderot, and 
 Helvetius, am a son of the eighteenth century, of the Revolu- 
 tion ; and I laughed to scorn all the records handed down from 
 antiquity and middle ages of persons possessed yes, and yet 
 possession is the only explanation of the state my child is in. 
 Even in her mesmeric sleep she has never been able to reveal 
 the cause of her sufferings; she could not see it; and the 
 methods of treatment suggested by her under those conditions,
 
 134 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 though carefully followed, have had no good result. For in- 
 stance, she said she must be wrapped in a freshly-killed pig; 
 then she was to have points of highly magnetized red-hot 
 iron applied to her legs; to have metal sealing-wax on her 
 spine. And what a wreck she became ; her teeth fell out ; she 
 became deaf, and then dumb ; and suddenly, after six months 
 of perfect deafness and silence, she recovered hearing and 
 speech. She occasionally recovers the use of her hands as 
 unexpectedly as she loses it, but for seven years she has never 
 known the use of her feet. 
 
 "She has sometimes had well-defined and characteristic at- 
 tacks of hydrophobia. Not only may the sight or sound of 
 water, of a glass or a cup, rouse her to frenzy, but she barks 
 like a dog, a melancholy bark, or howls, as dogs do at the 
 sound of an organ. 
 
 "She has several times seemed to be dying, and has re- 
 ceived the last sacraments, and then come back to life again 
 to suffer with full understanding and clearness of mind, for 
 her faculties of heart and brain remain unimpaired. Though 
 she is alive, she has caused the death of her husband and her 
 mother, who could not stand such repeated trials. Alas ! 
 Nor is this all. Every function of nature is perverted; only 
 a medical man could give you a complete account of the 
 strange condition of every organ. 
 
 "In this state did I bring her to Paris from the country in 
 1829; for the famous physicians to whom I described the 
 case Desplein, Bianchon, and Haudry believed I was try- 
 ing to impose upon them. At that time magnetism was stoutly 
 denied by the schools. Without throwing any doubt on the 
 provincial doctors' good faith or mine, they thought there was 
 some inaccurac} r , or, if you like, some exaggeration, such as 
 is common enough in families or in the sufferers themselves. 
 But they have been obliged to change their views; to these 
 phenomena, indeed, it is due that nervous diseases have of late 
 years been made the subject of investigation, for this strange 
 case is now classed as nervous. The last consultation held 
 by these gentlemen led them to give up all medicine; they
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 135 
 
 decided that nature must be studied, but left to itself; and 
 since then I have had but one doctor the doctor who attends 
 the poor of this district. In fact, all that can be done is done 
 to alleviate her sufferings, since their causes remain un- 
 known." 
 
 The old man paused, as if this terrible confession were too 
 much for him. 
 
 "For five years now my daughter has lived through alterna- 
 tions of amendment and relapse; but no new symptoms have 
 appeared. She suffers more or less from the various forms 
 of nervous attack which I have briefly described to you; but 
 the paralysis of the legs and organic disturbances are con- 
 stant. Our narrow means increasingly narrow compelled 
 us to move from the rooms I took in 1829 in the Kue du 
 Eoule; and as my daughter cannot bear being moved, and I 
 nearly lost her twice, first in coming to Paris, and then in 
 moving her from the Beaujon side, I took the lodging in 
 which we now are, foreseeing the disasters which ere long 
 overtook us; for, after thirty years' service, I was kept wait- 
 ing for my pension till 1833. I have drawn it only for six 
 months, and the new government has crowned its severities 
 by granting me only the minimum." 
 
 Godefroid expressed such surprise as seemed to demand 
 entire confidence, and so the old man understood it, for he 
 went on at once, not without a reproachful glance towards 
 heaven. 
 
 "I am one of the thousand victims to political reaction. I 
 carefully hide a name that is obnoxious to revenge ; and if the 
 lessons of experience ever avail from one generation to the 
 next, remember,- young man, never to lend yourself to the se- 
 verity of any side in politics. Not that I repent of having 
 done my duty, my conscience is at peace; but the powers of 
 to-day have ceased to have that sense of common responsi- 
 bility which binds governments together, however dissimilar: 
 when zeal meets with a reward, it is the result of transient 
 fear. The instrument, having served its purpose, is, sooner 
 or later, completely forgotten. In me you see one of the
 
 136 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 staunchest supporters of the throne under the elder branch 
 of the Bourbons, as I was, too, of the Imperial rule, and I 
 am a beggar ! As I am too proud to ask charity, no one will 
 ever guess that I am suffering intolerable ills. 
 
 "Five days since, monsieur, the district medical officer who 
 attends my daughter, or who watches the case, told me that 
 he had no hope of curing a disease of which the symptoms 
 vary every fortnight. His view is that neurotic patients are 
 the despair of the Faculty because the causes lie in a system 
 that defies investigation. He advises me to call in a certain 
 Jewish doctor, who is spoken of as a quack; but at the same 
 time he remarked that he was a foreigner, a Polish refugee, 
 and that physicians are extremely jealous of certain extra- 
 ordinary cures that have been much talked of; some people 
 regard him as very learned and skilful. 
 
 "But he is exacting and suspicious ; he selects his patients, 
 and will not waste time ; and then he is a communist. His 
 name is Halpersohn. My grandson has called on him twice, 
 but in vain ; for he has not yet been to the house, and I un- 
 derstand why." 
 
 "Why?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "Oh, my grandson, who is sixteen, is worse clothed even 
 than I am ; and, will you believe me, monsieur, I dare not show 
 myself to this doctor; my dress is too ill-suited to what is 
 expected in a man of my age, and of some dignity too. If he 
 should see the grandfather so destitute as I am when the 
 grandson has shown himself in the same sorry plight, would 
 he devote due care to my daughter? He would treat her as 
 paupers are always treated. And you must remember, mon- 
 sieur, that I love my daughter for the grief she has caused me, 
 as of old I loved her for the care she lavished upon me. She 
 has become a perfect angel. Alas! She is now no more 
 than a soul a soul that beams on her son and on me; her 
 body is no more, for she has triumphed over pain. 
 
 "Imagine what a spectacle for a father! My daughter's 
 world is her bedroom. She must have flowers which she loves ; 
 she reads a great deal ; and when she has the use of her hands,
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 137 
 
 she works like a fairy. She knows nothing of the misery in 
 which we live. Our life is such a strange one, that we can ad- 
 mit no one to our rooms. Do you understand me, monsieur ? 
 Do you see that a neighbor is intolerable? I should have to 
 ask so much of him that I should be under the greatest obliga- 
 tions and I could never discharge them. In the first place, 
 I have no time for anything: I am educating my grandson, 
 and I work so hard, monsieur so hard, that I never sleep for 
 more than three or four hours at night." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Godefroid, interrupting the old man, to 
 whom he had listened attentively while watching him with 
 grieved attention, "I will be your neighbor, and I will help 
 you " 
 
 The old gentleman drew himself up with pride, indeed, 
 with impatience, for he did not believe in any good thing in 
 man. 
 
 "I will help you," repeated Godefroid, taking the old man's 
 hands and pressing them warmly, "in such ways as I can. 
 Listen to me. What do you intend to make of your grand- 
 son ?" 
 
 "He is soon to begin studying the law; I mean him to be 
 an advocate." 
 
 "Then your grandson will cost you six hundred francs a 
 year, and you " . 
 
 The old man said nothing. 
 
 "I have nothing," said Godefroid after a pause, "but I have 
 influence ; I will get at the Jewish doctor ; and if your daugh- 
 ter is curable, she shall be cured. We will find means to repay 
 this Halpersohn." 
 
 "Oh, if my daughter were cured, I would make the sacri- 
 fice that can be made but once; I would give up what I am 
 saving for a rainy day." 
 
 "You may keep that too." 
 
 "Ah ! what a thing it is to be young !" said the old man, 
 shaking his head. "Good-bye, monsieur, or rather au revoir. 
 The library is open, and as I have sold all my books, I have to 
 go there every day for my work.
 
 138 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "I am grateful for the kind feeling you have shown; but 
 we must see whether you can show me such consideration as 
 I am obliged to require of a neighbor. That is all I ask of 
 you " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, pray accept me as your neighbor; for 
 Barbet, as you know, is not the man to put up long with empty 
 rooms, and you might meet with a worse companion in misery 
 than I. I do not ask you to believe in me, only to allow me 
 to be of use to you/' 
 
 "And what interest can you have in serving me?" cried 
 the old man, as he was about to go down the steps of the 
 Cloister of the Carthusians, through which there was at that 
 time a passage from the broad walk of the Luxembourg to the 
 Eue d'Enfer. 
 
 "Have you never, in the course of your career, obliged 
 anybody ?" 
 
 The old man looked at Godefroid with knit brows, his eyes 
 vague with reminiscence, like a man searching through the 
 record of his life for an action for which he might deserve 
 such rare gratitude ; then he coldly turned away, after bowing 
 with evident suspicion. 
 
 "Come ! for a first meeting he was not particularly distant," 
 said the disciple to himself. 
 
 Godefroid went at once to the Eue d'Enfer, the address 
 given him by Monsieur Alain, and found Doctor Berton at 
 home a stern, cold man, who surprised him greatly by assur- 
 ing him that the details given by Monsieur Bernard of his 
 daughter's illness were absolutely correct; he then went in 
 search of Doctor Halpersohn. 
 
 The Polish physician, since so famous, at that time lived at 
 Chaillot in a little house in the Eue Marbeuf, of which he oc- 
 cupied the first floor. General Eoman Zarnovicki lived on 
 the ground floor, and the servants of the two refugees occupied 
 the attics of the little hotel, only one story high. Godefroid 
 did not see the doctor; he had been pent for to some distance 
 in the country by a rich patient. But Godefroid was almost
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 139 
 
 glad not to have met him, for in his haste he had neglected 
 to provide himself with money, and was obliged to return to 
 the Hotel de la Chanterie to fetch some from his room. 
 
 These walks,, and the time it took to dine in a restaurant 
 in the Rue de 1'Odeon, kept him busy till the hour when he 
 was to take possession of his lodgings on the Boulevard Mont- 
 Parnasse. 
 
 Nothing could be more wretched than the furniture pro- 
 vided by Madame Vauthier for the two rooms. It seemed as 
 though the woman was in the habit of letting rooms not to be 
 inhabited. The bed, the chairs, the tables, the drawers, the 
 desk, the curtains, had all evidently been purchased at sales 
 under compulsion of the law, where the money-lender had 
 kept them on account, no cash value being obtainable a not 
 infrequent case. 
 
 Madame Vauthier, her arms akimbo, expected thanks, and 
 she took Godefroid's smile for one of surprise. 
 
 "Oh yes, I have given you the best of everything, my dear 
 Monsieur Godefroid," said she with an air of triumph. "Look 
 what handsome silk curtains, and a mahogany bedstead that 
 is not at all worm-eaten. It belonged to the Prince de Wissem- 
 bourg, and was bought out of his mansion. When he left 
 the Rue Louis-le-Grand, in 1809, I was scullery-maid in his 
 kitchen, and from there I went to live with my landlord " 
 
 Godefroid checked this confidential flow by paying his 
 month's lodging in advance, and at the same time gave Ma- 
 dame Vauthier six francs, also in advance, for doing his 
 rooms. At this moment he heard a bark; and if he had not 
 been forewarned, he might have thought that his neighbor 
 kept a dog in his lodgings. 
 
 "Does that dog bark at night?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, be easy, sir, and have patience ; there will not be above 
 a week of it. Monsieur Bernard will not be able to pay his 
 rent, and he will be turned out. Still, they are queer folks, 
 I must say ! I never saw their dog. For months that dog 
 for months, did I say? for six months at a time you will 
 never hear that dog, and you might think they didn't keep one.
 
 140 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 The creature never comes out of madame's room. There is a 
 lady who is very bad ; she has never been out of her bed since 
 they carried her in. Old Monsieur Bernard works very hard, 
 and his son too, who is a day pupil at the College Louis-le- 
 Grand, where he is in the top class for philosophy, and he is 
 but sixteen. A bright chap that ! but that little beggar works 
 like a good 'un. . 
 
 "You will hear them presently moving the flower pots in 
 the lady's room for they eat nothing but dry bread, the old 
 man and his grandson, but they buy flowers and nice things 
 for her. She must be very bad, poor thing, never to have 
 stirred out since she came; and if you take Monsieur Ber- 
 ton's word he is the doctor who comes to see her she never 
 will go out but feet foremost." 
 
 "And what is this Monsieur Bernard ?" 
 
 "A very learned man, so they say; for he writes and goes 
 to work in the public libraries, and the master lends him 
 money on account of what he writes." 
 
 "The master who ?" 
 
 "The landlord, Monsieur Barbet, the old bookseller; he has 
 been in business this sixteen years. He is a man from Nor- 
 mand\ - , who once sold salad in the streets, and who started 
 as a dealer in old books on the quay, in 1818; then he set up 
 a little shop, and now he is very rich. He is a sort of old 
 Jew who runs six-and-thirty businesses at once, for he was a 
 kind of partner with the Italian who built this great barn to 
 keep silkworms in " 
 
 "And so the house is a place of refuge for authors in 
 trouble?" said Godefroid. 
 
 "Are you so unluck} r as to be one ?" asked the widow Vau- 
 thier. 
 
 "I am only a beginner," said Godefroid. 
 
 "Oh, my good gentleman, for all the ill I wish you, never 
 get any further ! A newspaper man, now I won't say " 
 
 Godefroid could not help laughing, and he bid the woman 
 good-night a cook unconsciously representing the whole 
 middle class.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 141 
 
 As he went to bed in the wretched room, floored with bricks 
 that had not even been colored, and hung with paper at seven 
 sous the piece, Godefroid not only regretted his little lodg- 
 ing in the Rue Chanoinesse, but more especially the society 
 of Madame de la Chanterie. There was a great void in his 
 soul. He had already acquired certain habits of mind, and he 
 could not remember ever having felt such keen regrets for 
 anything in his previous life. This comparison, brief as it 
 was, made a great impression on his mind ; he understood that 
 no life he could lead could compare with that he was about 
 to embrace, and his determination to follow in the steps of 
 good Father Alain was thenceforth unchangeable. If he had 
 not the vocation, he had the will. 
 
 Next morning, Godefroid, whose new way of life accus- 
 tomed him to rising very early, saw, out of his window, a 
 youth of about seventeen, wearing a blouse, and coming in 
 evidently from a public fountain, carrying in each hand a 
 pitcher full of water. The lad's face, not knowing that any 
 one could see him, betrayed his thoughts ; and never had Gode- 
 froid seen one more guileless and more sad. The charm of 
 youth was depressed by misery, study, and great physical 
 fatigue. Monsieur Bernard's grandson was remarkable for an 
 excessively white skin, in strong contrast to very dark-brown 
 hair. He made three expeditions; and the third time he saw 
 a load of wood being delivered which Godefroid had ordered 
 the night before; for the winter, though late, of 1838 was be- 
 ginning to be felt, and there had been a light fall of snow in 
 the night. 
 
 Nepomucene, who had just begun his day's work by fetching 
 this wood, on which Madame Vauthier had already levied 
 heavy toll, stood talking to the youth while waiting till the 
 sawyer had cut up the logs for him to take indoors. It was 
 very evident that the sight of this wood, and of the ominous 
 gray sky, had reminded the lad of the desirability of laying in 
 some fuel. And then suddenly, as if reproaching himself for 
 waste of time, he took up the pitchers and hurried into the
 
 142 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 house. It was indeed half-past seven; and as he heard the 
 quarters strike by the clock at the Convent of the Visitation, 
 he reflected that he had to be at the College Louis-le-Grand 
 by half -past eight. 
 
 At the moment when the young man went in, Godefroid 
 opened his door to Madame Yauthier, who was bringing up 
 some live charcoal to her new lodger; so it happened that he 
 witnessed a scene that took place on the landing. A gardener 
 living in the neighborhood, after ringing several times at Mon- 
 sieur Bernard's door without arousing anybody, for the bell 
 was muffled in paper, had a rough dispute with the youth, 
 insisting on the money due for the hire of plants which 
 he had supplied. As the creditor raised his voice, Monsieur 
 Bernard came out. 
 
 "Auguste," said he to his grandson, "get dressed. It is 
 time to be off/' 
 
 He himself took the pitchers and carried them into the 
 ante-room of his apartment, where Godefroid could see stands 
 filled with flowers; then he closed the door and came outside 
 to talk to the nurseryman. Godefroid's door was ajar, for 
 Nepomucene was passing in and out and piling up the logs in 
 the second room. The gardener had become silent when Mon- 
 sieur Bernard appeared, wrapped in a purple silk dressing- 
 gown, buttoned to the chin, and looking really imposing. 
 
 "You might ask for the money we owe you without shout- 
 ing," said the gentleman. 
 
 "Be just, my dear sir," replied the gardener. "You were 
 to pay me week by week, and now, for three months ten 
 weeks I have had no money, and you owe me a hundred and 
 twenty francs. We are accustomed to hire out our plants to 
 rich people, who give us our money as soon as we ask for it, 
 and I have called here five times. We have our rent to pay 
 and our workmen, and I am no richer than you are. My wife, 
 who used to supply you with milk and eggs, will not call this 
 morning neither; you owe her thirty francs, and she would 
 rather not come at all than come to nag, for she has a good 
 heart, has my wife ! If I listened to her, trade would never
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 143 
 
 pay. And that is why I came, you understand, for that is not 
 my way of looking at things, you see " 
 
 Just then out came Auguste, dressed in a miserable green 
 cloth coat, and trousers of the same, a black cravat, and shabby 
 boots. These clothes, though brushed with care, revealed the 
 very last extremity of povert} r , for they were too short and 
 too tight, so that they looked as if the least movement on the 
 lad's part would split them. The whitened seams, the dog's- 
 eared corners, the worn-out button-holes, in spite of mending, 
 betrayed to the least practised eye the stigmata of poverty. 
 This garb contrasted painfully with the youthfulness of the 
 wearer, who went off eating a piece of stale bread, in which 
 his fine strong teeth left their mark. This was his breakfast, 
 eaten as he made his way from the Boulevard du Mont-Par- 
 nasse to the Eue Saint-Jacques, with his books and papers un- 
 der his arm, and on his head a cap far too small for his power- 
 ful head and his mass of fine dark hair. 
 
 As he passed his grandfather, they exchanged rapid glances 
 of deep dejection ; for he saw that the old man was in almost 
 irremediable difficulties, of which the consequences might be 
 terrible. To make way for the student of philosophy, the gar- 
 dener retreated as far as Godefroid's door; and at the moment 
 when he reached the door, Xepomucene, with a load of wood, 
 came up to the landing, driving the creditor quite to the win- 
 dow. 
 
 "Monsieur Bernard," exclaimed the widow, "uo you sup- 
 pose that Monsieur Godefroid took these rooms for you to hold 
 meetings in?" 
 
 "I beg pardon, madame," replied the nurseryman, "the 
 landing was crowded " 
 
 "I did not mean it for you, Monsieur Cartier," said the 
 woman. 
 
 "Stay here!" cried Godefroid, addressing the nurseryman. 
 "And you, my dear sir," he added, turning to Monsieur 
 Bernard, whom this insolent remark left unmoved, "if it 
 fuits you to settle matters with your gardener in my room, 
 pray come in."
 
 144 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 The old gentleman, stupefied with trouble, gave Godefroid 
 a stony look, which conveyed a thousand thanks. 
 
 "As for you, my dear Madame Vauthier, do not be so rough 
 to monsieur, who, in the first place, is an old man, and to 
 whom you also owe your thanks for having me as your lodger." 
 
 "Indeed!" exclaimed the woman. 
 
 "Besides, if poor folks do not help each other, who is to 
 help them ? Leave us, Madame Vauthier ; I can blow up my 
 own fire. See to having my wood stowed in your cellar; I 
 have no doubt you will take good care of it." 
 
 Madame Vauthier vanished ; for Godefroid, by placing his 
 fuel in her charge, had afforded pasture to her greed. 
 
 "Come in," said Godefroid, signing to the gardener, and 
 setting two chairs for the debtor and creditor. The old man 
 talked standing; the tradesman took a seat. 
 
 "Come, my good man," Godefroid went on, "the rich do 
 not always pay so punctually as you say they do, and you 
 should not dun a worthy gentleman for a few louis. Monsieur 
 draws his pension every six months, and he cannot give you a 
 draft in anticipation for so small a sum; but I will advance 
 the money if you insist on it." 
 
 "Monsieur Bernard drew his pension about three weeks 
 since, and he did not pay me. I should be very sorry to annoy 
 him " 
 
 "What, and you have been supplying him with flowers 
 for " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, for six years, and he has always paid until 
 now." 
 
 Monsieur Bernard, who was listening to all that might be 
 going on in his own lodgings, and paying no heed to this dis- 
 cussion, heard screams through the partition, and hurried 
 away in alarm, without saying a word. 
 
 "Come, come, my good man, bring some fine flowers, your 
 best flowers, this very morning, to Monsieur Bernard, and 
 let your wife send in some fresh eggs and milk ; I will pay you 
 myself this evening." 
 
 Cartier looked somewhat askance at Godefroid.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 145 
 
 ''Well, I suppose you know more about it than Madame 
 Vauthier ; she sent me word that I had better look sharp if I 
 meant to be paid/' said he. "Neither she nor I, sir, can ac- 
 count for it when people who live on bread, who pick up odds 
 and ends of vegetables, and bits of carrot and potatoes, and 
 turnip outside the eating-house doors yes, sir, I have seen 
 the boy filling a little basket, well, when those people spend 
 near on a hundred francs a month on flowers. The old man, 
 they say, has but three thousand francs a year for his pen- 
 sion " 
 
 "At any rate," said Godefroid, "if they ruin themselves in 
 flowers, it is not for you to complain." 
 
 "Certainly not, sir, so long as I am paid." 
 
 "Bring me your bill." 
 
 "Very good, sir," said the gardener, with rather more re- 
 spect. "You hope to see the lady they hide so carefully, no 
 doubt ?" 
 
 "Come, come, my good fellow, you forget yourself," said 
 Godefroid stiffly. "Go home and pick out your best flowers to 
 replace those you are taking away. If you can supply me with 
 rich milk and new-laid eggs, you may have my custom. I will 
 go this morning and look' at your place." 
 
 "It is one of the best in Paris, and I exhibit at the Luxem-. 
 bourg shows. I have three acres of garden on the boulevard, 
 just behind that of the Grande-Chaumiere." 
 
 "Very good, Monsieur Cartier. You are richer than I am, I 
 can see. So have some consideration for us; for who knows 
 but that one day we may need each other." 
 
 The nurseryman departed, much puzzled as to what Gode- 
 froid could be. 
 
 "And time was when I was just like that !" said Godefroid 
 to himself, as he blew the fire. "What a perfect specimen of 
 the commonplace citizen ; a gossip, full of curiosity, possessed 
 by the idea of equality, but jealous of other dealers; furious 
 at not knowing why a poor invalid stays in her room and is 
 never seen : secretive as to his profits, but vain enough to let 
 out the secret if he could crow over his neighbor. Such a man
 
 146 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 ought to be lieutenant at least of his crew. How easily and 
 how often in every age does the scene of Monsieur Dimanche 
 recur! Another minute, and Cartier would have been my 
 sworn ally !" 
 
 The old man's return interrupted this soliloquy, which 
 shows how greatly Godefroid's ideas had changed during the 
 past four months. 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said Monsieur Bernard, in a husky 
 voice, "I see you have sent off the nurseryman quite satisfied, 
 for he bowed politely. In fact, my young friend. Providence 
 seems to have sent you here for our express benefit at the very 
 moment when all seemed at an end ! Alas ! The man's chatter 
 must have told you many things. It is quite true that I drew 
 my half-year's pension a fortnight since; but I had other and 
 more pressing debts, and I was obliged to keep back the money 
 for the rent or be turned out of doors. You, to whom I have 
 confided the secret of my daughter's state who have heard 
 her " 
 
 He looked anxiously at Godefroid, who nodded affirmation. 
 
 "Well, you can judge if that would not be her death-blow. 
 For I should have to place her in a hospital. My grandson 
 and I have been dreading this day, not that Cartier was our 
 chief fear ; it is the cold " 
 
 "My dear Monsieur Bernard, I have plenty of wood ; take 
 some !" cried Godefroid. 
 
 "But how can I ever repay such kindness?" said the old 
 man. 
 
 "By accepting it without ceremony," answered Godefroid 
 cordially, "and by giving me your entire confidence." 
 
 "But what claims have I on such generosity?" asked Mon- 
 sieur Bernard with revived suspicions. "My pride and my 
 grandson's is broken !" he exclaimed. "For we have already 
 fallen so far as to argue with mir two or three creditors. The 
 very poor can have no creditors. Only those can owe money 
 v. r lio keep up a certain external display which we have utterly 
 lost. But I have not yet lost my common sense, my reason," 
 he added, as if speaking to himself.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 147 
 
 "Monsieur," said Godefroid gravely, "the story you told me 
 yesterday would draw tears from an usurer " 
 
 "No, no ! for Barbet the publisher, our landlord, speculates 
 on my poverty, and sets his old servant, the woman Vauthier, 
 to spy it out." 
 
 "How can he speculate on it ?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "I will tell you at another time," replied the old man. "My 
 daughter may be feeling cold, and since you are so kind, and 
 since I am in a situation to accept charity, even if it were from 
 my worst enemy " 
 
 "I will carry the wood," said Godefroid, who went across 
 the landing with half a score of logs, which he laid down in 
 his neighbor's outer room. 
 
 Monsieur Bernard had taken an equal number, and when 
 he beheld this little stock of fuel, he could not conceal the 
 simple, almost idiotic, smile by which men rescued from mor- 
 tal and apparently inevitable danger express their joy, for 
 there still is fear even in their belief. 
 
 "Accept all I can give you, my dear Monsieur Bernard, with- 
 out hesitation, and when we have saved your daughter, and 
 you are happy once more, I will explain everything. Till then 
 leave everything to me. I went to call on the Jewish doctor, 
 but unfortunately Halpersohn is absent; he will not be back 
 for two days." 
 
 Just then a voice which sounded to Godefroid, and which 
 really was, sweet and youthful, called out, "Papa, papa !" in 
 an expressive tone. 
 
 While talking to the old man, Godefroid had already re- 
 marked, through the crack of the door opposite to that on the 
 landing, lines of neat white paint, showing that the sick wo- 
 man's room must be very different from the others that com- 
 posed the lodging. His curiosity was now raised to the high- 
 est pitch; the errand of mercy was to him no more than a 
 means; its end was to see the invalid. He would not believe 
 that any one who spoke in such a voice could be horrible to 
 behold. 
 
 "You are taking too mucn trouble, papa," said the voice. 
 
 "Why do not you have more servants at your age Dear me !" 
 VOL 16 41
 
 148 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HIS1ORY 
 
 "But you know, dear Vanda, that I will not allow any one 
 to wait on you but myself or your boy." 
 
 These two sentences, which Godefroid overheard, though 
 with some difficulty, for a curtain dulled the sound, made him 
 understand the case. The sick woman, surrounded by every 
 luxury, knew nothing of the real state in which her father 
 and son lived. Monsieur Bernard's silk wrapper, the flowers, 
 and his conversation with Cartier had already roused Gode- 
 froid's suspicions, and he stood riveted, almost confounded, 
 by this marvel of paternal devotion. The contrast between the 
 invalid's room as he imagined it and what he saw was in fact 
 amazing. The reader may judge: 
 
 Through the door of a third room which stood open, Gode- 
 froid saw two narrow beds of painted wood like those of the 
 vilest lodging-houses, with a straw mattress and a thin upper 
 mattress; on each there was but one blanket. A small iron 
 stove such as porters use to cook on, with a few lumps of dried 
 fuel by the side of it, was enough to show the destitution of 
 the owner, without other details in keeping with this wretched 
 stove. 
 
 Godefroid by one step forward could see the pots and pans 
 of the wretched household glazed earthenware jars, in which 
 a few potatoes were soaking in dirty water. Two tables of 
 blackened wood, covered with papers and books, stood in front 
 of a window looking out on the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, 
 and showed how the father and son occupied themselves in 
 the evening. On each table there was a candlestick of wrought 
 iron of the poorest description, and in them candles of the 
 cheapest kind, eight to the pound. On a third table, which 
 served as a dresser, there were two shining sets of silver-gilt 
 forks and spoons, some plates, a basin and cup in Sevres china, 
 and a knife with a gilt handle lying in a case, all evidently 
 for the invalid's use. 
 
 The stove was alight ; the water in the kettle was steaming 
 gently. A wardrobe of painted deal contained no doubt the 
 lady's linen and possessions, for he saw on her father's bed the 
 clothes he had worn the day before, spread by way of a cover- 
 ing.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 149 
 
 Some other rags laid in the same way on his grandson's bed 
 led him to conclude that this was all their wardrobe ; and 
 under the bed he saw their shoes. 
 
 The floor, swept but seldom no doubt, was like that of a 
 schoolroom. A large loaf that had been cut was visible on a 
 shelf over the table. In short, it was poverty in the last stage 
 of squalor, poverty reduced to a system, with the decent order 
 of a determination to endure it ; driven poverty that has to do 
 everything at home, that insists on doing it, but that finds it 
 impossible, and so puts every poor possession to a wrong use. 
 A strong and sickening smell pervaded the room, which evi- 
 dently was but rarely cleaned. 
 
 The ante-room where Godefroid stood was at any rate de- 
 cent, and he guessed that it commonly served to hide the hor- 
 rors of the room inhabited by the old man and the youth. This 
 room, hung with a Scotch plaid paper, had four walnut-wood 
 chairs and a small table, and was graced with portraits a 
 colored print of Horace Vernet's picture of the Emperor ; 
 those of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.; and one of Prince 
 Poniatowski, a friend no doubt of Monsieur Bernard's father- 
 in-law. There were cotton window-curtains bound with red 
 and finished with fringe. 
 
 Godefroid, keeping an eye on Nepomucene, and hearing 
 him come up with a load of wood, signed to him to stack it 
 noiselessly in Monsieur Bernard's ante-room ; and, with a deli- 
 cate feeling that showed he was making good progress, he shut 
 the bedroom door that Madame Vauthier's boy might not see 
 the old man's squalor. 
 
 The ante-room was partly filled up by three flower-stands 
 full of splendid plants, two oval and one round, all three of 
 rosewood, and elegantly finished; and Nepomucene, as he 
 placed the logs on the floor, could not help saying: 
 
 "Isn't that lovely ? It must cost a pretty penny !" 
 
 "Jean, do not make too much noise " Monsieur Bernard 
 called out. 
 
 "There, you hear him?" said Nepomucene to Godefroid, 
 "the poor old boy is certainly cracked 1" 

 
 150 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "And what will you be at his age ?" 
 
 "Oh, I know sure enough!" said Nepomucene; "I shall be 
 in a sugar-basin." 
 
 "In a sugar-basin ?" 
 
 "Yes, my bones will have been made into charcoal. I have 
 seen the sugar-boilers' carts often enough at Mont Souris 
 come to fetch bone-black for their works, and they told me 
 they used it in making sugar." And with this philosophical 
 reply, he went off for another basketful of wood. 
 
 Godefroid quietly closed Monsieur Bernard's door, leaving 
 him alone with his daughter. 
 
 Madame Vauthier had meanwhile prepared her new lodger's 
 breakfast, and came with Felicite to serve it. Godefroid, lost 
 in meditation, was staring at the fire on the hearth. He was 
 absorbed in reflecting on this poverty that included so many 
 different forms of misery, though he perceived that it had its 
 pleasures too ; the ineffable joys and triumphs of fatherly and 
 of filial devotion. They were like pearls sewn en sackcloth. 
 
 "What romance even the most famous can compare with 
 such reality ?" thought he. "How noble is the life that mingles 
 with such lives as these, enabling the soul to discern their 
 cause and effect; to assuage suffering and encourage what is 
 good; to become one with misfortune and learn the secrets of 
 such a home as this ; to be an actor in ever-new dramas such as 
 delight us in the works of the most famous authors ! I had 
 no idea that goodness could be more interesting than vice." 
 
 "Is everything to your mind, sir?" asked Madame Vauthier, 
 who, helped by Felicite, had placed the table close to Gode- 
 froid. He then saw an excellent cup of coffee with milk, a 
 smoking hot omelette, fresh butter, and little red radishes. 
 
 "Where did you find those radishes?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "Monsieur Cartier gave them to me," said she. "I thought 
 you might like them, sir. 
 
 "And what do you expect me to pay for a breakfast like this 
 every day ?" said Godefroid. 
 
 "Well, monsieur, to be quite fair it would be hard to sup- 
 ply it under thirty sous."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 151 
 
 "Say thirty sous," said Godef roid. "But how is it that close 
 by this, at Madame Machillot's, they only ask me forty-five 
 francs a month for dinner, which is just thirty sous a day?" 
 
 "Oh, but what a difference, sir, between getting a dinner 
 for fifteen people and going to buy everything that is needed 
 for one breakfast : a roll, you see, eggs, butter, lighting the 
 fire and then sugar, milk, coffee. Why, they will ask you 
 sixteen sous for nothing but a cup of coffee with milk in the 
 Place de 1'Odeon, and you have to give a sou or two to the 
 waiter ! Here you have no trouble at all ; you breakfast at 
 home, in your slippers. 
 
 "Well, then it is settled," said Godefroid. 
 
 "And even then, but for Madame Cartier, from whom I 
 get the milk and eggs and parsley, I could not do it at all. 
 You must go and see their place, sir. Oh, it is really a fine 
 sight. They employ five gardeners' apprentices, and Neppmu- 
 cene goes to help with the watering all the summer; they 
 pay me to let him go. And you make a lot of money out of 
 strawberries and melons. You are very much interested in 
 Monsieur Bernard, it would seem?" asked the widow in her 
 sweetest tones. "For really to answer for their debts in that 
 way ! But perhaps, you don't know how much they owe. 
 There is the lady that keeps the circulating library on the 
 Place Saint-Michel; she calls every three or four days for 
 thirty francs, and she wants it badly too. Heaven above ! that 
 poor woman in bed does read and read. And at two sous a 
 volume, thirty francs in two months " 
 
 "Is a hundred volumes a month," said Godefroid. 
 
 "There goes the old fellow to fetch madame's cream and 
 roll," the woman went on. "It is for her tea ; for she lives 
 on nothing but tea, that lady ; she has it twice a day, and then 
 twice a week she wants sweets. She is dainty, I can tell you ! 
 The old boy buys her cakes and tarts at the pastry-cook's in 
 the Rue de Buci. Oh, when it is for her, he sticks at nothing. 
 He says she is his daughter ! Where's the man who would do 
 all he does, and at his age, for his daughter? He is killing 
 himself himself and his Auguste and all for her. If you
 
 152 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 are like me, sir I would give twenty francs to see her. Mon- 
 sieur Berton says she is shocking, an object to make a show 
 of. They did well to come to this part of the town where 
 nobody ever comes. And you think of dining at Madame Ma- 
 chillot's, sir?" 
 
 "Yes, I thought of making an arrangement with her." 
 
 "Well, sir, it is not to interfere with any plan of yours ; but, 
 take 'em as you find 'em, you will find a better eating-place in 
 the Rue de Tournon ; you need not bind yourself for a month, 
 and you will have a better table 
 
 "Where in the Rue de Tournon?" 
 
 "At the successors of old Madame Girard. That is where 
 the gentlemen upstairs dine, and they are satisfied they 
 could not be better pleased." 
 
 "Very well, Madame Vauthier, I will take your advice and 
 dine there." 
 
 "And, my dear sir/' the woman went on, emboldened by the 
 easy-going air which Godefroid had intentionally assumed, 
 "do you mean to say, seriously, that you are such a flat as to 
 think of paying Monsieur Bernard's debts ? I should be really 
 very sorry ; for you must remember, my good Monsieur Gode- 
 froid, that he is very near on seventy, and after him where 
 are you ? There's an end to his pension. What will there be 
 to repay you ? Young men are so rash. Do you know that he 
 owes above a thousand crowns?" 
 
 "But to whom ?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "Oh, that is no concern of mine," said Madame Vauthier 
 mysteriously. "He owes the money, and that's enough; and 
 between you and me, he is having a hard time of it; he can- 
 not get credit for a sou in all the neighborhood for that very 
 reason." 
 
 "A thousand crowns !" said Godefroid. "Be sure of one 
 thing; if I had a thousand crowns, I should be no lodger of 
 yours. _ But I, you see, cannot bear to see others suffering; 
 and for a few hundred francs that it may cost me, I will make 
 sure that my neighbor, a man with white hair, has bread and 
 firing. Why, a man often loses as much at cards. But three 
 thousand f rancs^ why, what do you think ? Good Heavens !"
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 153 
 
 Madame Vauthier, quite taken in by Godefroid's affected 
 candor, allowed a gleam of satisfaction to light up her face, 
 and this confirmed her lodgers suspicions. Godefroid was 
 convinced that the old woman was implicated in some plot 
 against the hapless Monsieur Bernard. 
 
 "It is a strange thing, monsieur, what fancies come into 
 one's head. You will say that I am very inquisitive ; but yes- 
 terday, when I saw you talking to Monsieur Bernard, it struck 
 me that you must be a publisher's clerk for this is their part 
 of the town. I had a lodger, a foreman printer, whose works 
 are in the Rue de Vaugirard, and he was named the same name 
 as you " 
 
 "And what concern is it of yours what my business is ?" said 
 Godefroid. 
 
 "Lor' ! whether you tell me or whether you don't, I shall 
 know just the same," said the widow. "Look at 'Monsieur 
 Bernard, for instance ; well, for eighteen months I could never 
 find out what he was; but in the nineteenth month I discov- 
 ered that he had been a judge or a magistrate, or something of 
 the kind, in the law, and that now he is writing a book about 
 it. What does he get by it ? That's what I say. And if he had 
 told me, I should have held my tongue; so there!" 
 
 "I am not at present a publisher's agent, but I may be, per- 
 haps, before long." 
 
 "There, I knew it!" exclaimed the woman eagerly, and 
 turning from the bed she was making as an excuse to stay 
 chattering to her lodger. "You have come to cut the ground 
 from under Well, well, 'a nod's as good as a wink' " 
 
 "Hold hard !" cried Godefroid, standing between Madame 
 Vauthier and the door. "Now, tell me, what are you paid 
 to meddle in this?" 
 
 "Heyday !" cried the old woman, with a keen look at Gode- 
 froid. "You are pretty sharp after all !" 
 
 She shut and locked the outer door; then she came back 
 and sat down by the fire. 
 
 "On my word and honor, as sure as my name is Vauthier, I 
 took you for a student till I saw you giving your logs to old
 
 154 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 Father Bernard. My word, but you're a sharp one ! By the 
 Piper ! you can play a part well ! I thought you were a perfect 
 flat. Now, will you promise me a thousand francs? For as 
 sure as the day above us, old Barbet and Monsieur Metivier 
 have promised me five hundred if I keep my eyes open." 
 
 "What ? Not they ! Two hundred at the very outside, my 
 good woman, and only promised at that and you cannot sum- 
 mons them for payment ! Look here ; if you will put me in a 
 position to get the job they are trying to manage with Mon- 
 sieur Bernard, I will give you four hundred ! Come, now, 
 what are they up to?" 
 
 "Well, they have paid him fifteen hundred francs on ac- 
 count for his work, and made him sign a bill for a thousand 
 crowns. They doled it out to him a hundred francs at a time, 
 contriving to keep him as poor as poor. They set the duns 
 upon him ; they sent Cartier, you may wager." 
 
 At this, Godefroid, by a look of cynical perspicacity that he 
 shot at the woman, made it clear to her that he quite under- 
 stood the game she was playing for her landlord's benefit. Her 
 speech threw a light on two sides of the question, for it also 
 explained the rather strange scene between the gardener and 
 himself. 
 
 "Oh yes!" she went on, "they have him fast; for where is 
 he ever to find a thousand crowns ! They intend to offer him 
 five hundred francs when the work is in their hand? complete, 
 and five hundred francs per volume as they are brought out for 
 sale. The business is all in the name of a bookseller these 
 gentlemen have set up in business on the Quai des Augus- 
 tins " 
 
 "Oh yes that little what's-his-name- ?" 
 
 "Yes, that's your man. Morand, formerly Monsieur Bar- 
 bet's agent. There is a heap of money to be got out of it, it 
 would seem." 
 
 "There will be a heap of money to put into it," said Gode- 
 froid, with an expressive grimace. 
 
 There was a gentle knock at the door, and Godefroid, very 
 glad of the interruption, rose to open it.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 155 
 
 "All this is between you and me, Mother Vauthier," said 
 Godefroid, seeing Monsieur Bernard. 
 
 "Monsieur Bernard," cried she, "I have a letter for you." 
 
 The old man went down a few steps. 
 
 "No, no, I have no letter for you, Monsieur Bernard; I 
 only wished to warn you against that young fellow there. He 
 is a publisher." 
 
 "Oh, that accounts for everything," said the old man to 
 himself. And he came back to his neighbor's room with a 
 quite altered countenance. 
 
 The calmly cold expression on Monsieur Bernard's face 
 when he reappeared was in such marked contrast to the frank 
 and friendly manner his gratitude had lent him, that Gode- 
 froid was struck by so sudden a change. 
 
 "Monsieur, forgive me for disturbing your solitude, but you 
 have since yesterday loaded me with favors, and a benefactor 
 confers rights on those whom he obliges." 
 
 Godefroid bowed. 
 
 "I, who for five years have suffered once a fortnight the 
 torments of the Eedeemer; I, who for six-and-thirty years 
 \viis the representative of Society and the Government, who 
 AV;-S then the arm of public vengeance, and who, as you may 
 suppose, have no illusions left nothing, nothing but suffer- 
 ings, well, monsieur, your careful attention in closing the 
 door of the dog-kennel in which my grandson and I sleep 
 that trifling act was to me the cup of water of which Bossuet 
 speaks. I found in my heart, my wornout heart, which is as 
 dry of tears as my withered body is of sweat, the last drop of 
 that elixir which in youth leads us to see the best side of every 
 human action, and I came to offer you my hand, which I never 
 give to any one but my daughter; I came to bring you the 
 heavenly rose of belief, even now, in goodness." 
 
 "Monsieur Bernard," said Godefroid, remembering good old 
 Alain's injunctions, "I did nothing with a view to winning 
 your gratitude. You are under a mistake." 
 
 "That is frank and above board," said the old lawyer. "Well, 
 that is what I like. I was about to reproach you. Forgive
 
 156 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 me; I esteem you. So you are a publisher, and you want to 
 get my book in preference to Messieurs Barbet, Metivier, and 
 Morand ? That explains all. You are prepared to deal with 
 me as they were; only you do it with a good grace." 
 
 "Old Vauthier has just told you, I suppose, that I am a 
 publisher's agent?" 
 
 "Yes," said he. 
 
 "Well, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say what we are 
 prepared to pay more than those gentlemen offer, I must un- 
 derstand on what terms you stand with them." 
 
 "Very true," said the old man, who seemed delighted to find 
 himself the object of a competition by which he could not 
 fail to benefit. "Do you know what the work is?" 
 
 "No ; I only know that there is something to be made by it." 
 
 "It is only half-past nine; my daughter has had her break- 
 fast, my grandson Auguste will not come in till a quarter to 
 eleven. Cartier will not be here with the flowers for an hour 
 we have time to talk, monsieur monsieur who?" 
 
 "Godefroid." 
 
 "Monsieur Godefroid. The book in question was planned 
 by me in 1825, at a time when the Ministry, struck by the con- 
 stant reduction of personal estate, drafted the Law of Entail 
 and Seniority which was thrown out. I had observed many 
 defects in our codes and in the fundamental principle of 
 French law. The codes have been the subject of many im- 
 portant works ; but all those treatises are essentially on juris- 
 prudence; no one has been so bold as to study the results of 
 the Revolution or of Napoleon's rule, if you prefer it as a 
 whole, analyzing the spirit of these laws and the working of 
 their application. That is, in general terms, the purpose of 
 my book. I have called it the Spirit of the Modern Laws. It 
 covers organic law as well as the codes all the codes, for we 
 have five ! My book, too, is in five volumes, and a sixth volume 
 of authorities, quotations, and references. I have still three 
 months' work before me. 
 
 "The owner of this house, a retired publisher, scented a 
 speculation. I, in the first instance, thought only of benefit-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 157 
 
 ing my country. This Barbet has got the better of me. You 
 will wonder how a publisher could entrap an old lawyer; but 
 you, monsieur, know my history, and this man is a money- 
 lender. He has the sharp eye and the knowledge of the world 
 that such men must have. His advances have just kept pace 
 with my necessity; he has always come in at the very mo- 
 ment when despair has made me a defenceless prey." 
 
 "Not at all, my dear sir," said Godefroid. "He has simply 
 kept Madame Vauthier as a spy. But the terms, tell me 
 honestly." 
 
 "They advanced me fifteen hundred francs, represented at 
 the present rates by three bills for a thousand francs each, 
 and these three thousand francs are secured to them by a 
 lien on the property of my book, which I cannot dispose of 
 elsewhere till I have paid off the bills; the bills have been 
 protested; judgment has been pronounced. Here, monsieur, 
 you see the complications of poverty. 
 
 "At the most moderate estimate, the first edition of this 
 vast work, the result of ten years' labor and thirty-six years' 
 experience, will be well worth ten thousand francs. Well, 
 just five days since, Morand offered me a thousand crowns 
 and my note of hand paid off for all rights. As I could never 
 find three thousand two hundred and forty francs, unless you 
 intervene between us. I must yield. 
 
 "They would not take my word of honor; for further se- 
 curity they insisted on bills of exchange which have been pro- 
 tested, and I shall be imprisoned for debt. If I pay up, these 
 money-lenders will have doubled their loan; if I deal with 
 them, they will make a fortune, for one of them was a paper- 
 maker, and God only knows how low they can keep the price 
 of materials. And then, with my name on it, they know that 
 they are certain of a sale of ten thousand copies." 
 
 "Why, monsieur you, a retired Judge !" 
 
 "What can I say ? I have not a friend, no one remembers 
 me ! And yet I saved many heads even if I sentenced many 
 to fall ! And then there is my daughter, my daughter whose 
 nurse and companion I am, for I work only at night. Ah!
 
 158 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 young man, none but the wretched should be set to judge the 
 wretched. I see now that of yore I was too severe." 
 
 "I do not ask you your name, monsieur. I have not a 
 thousand crowns at my disposal, especially if I pay Halper- 
 sohn and your little bills ; but I can save you if you will pledge 
 your word not to dispose of your book without due notice to 
 me; it is impossible to embark in so important a matter with- 
 out consulting professional experts. The persons I work for 
 are powerful, and I can promise you success if you can 
 promise me perfect secrecy, even from your children and 
 keep your word." 
 
 "The only success I care for is my poor Vanda's recovery; 
 for, I assure you, the sight of such sufferings extinguishes 
 every other feeling in a father's heart; the loss of fame is 
 nothing to the man who sees a grave yawning at his feet -" 
 
 "I will call on you this evening. Halpersohn may come 
 home at any moment, and I go every day to see if he has 
 returned. I will spend to-day in your service." 
 
 "Oh, if you could bring about my daughter's recovery, mon- 
 sieur , monsieur, I would make you a present of my 
 
 book !" 
 
 "But," said Godefroid, "I am not a publisher." 
 
 The old man started with surprise. 
 
 "I could not help letting old Vauthicr think so for the 
 sake of ascertaining what snares had been laid for you." 
 
 "But who are you, then?" 
 
 "Godefroid," was the reply; "and as you have allowed me 
 to supply you with the means of living better," added the 
 young man, smiling, "you may call me Godcfroid de Bouil- 
 lon." 
 
 The old lawyer was too much touched to laugh at the jest. 
 He held out his hand to Godefroid and grasped the young 
 man's warmly. 
 
 "You wish to remain unknown?" said Monsieur Bernard, 
 looking at Godefroid with melancholy, mixed with some un- 
 easiness. 
 
 "If you will allow me."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 159 
 
 "Well, do as you think proper. And come in this even- 
 ing; you will see my daughter, if her state allows." 
 
 This was evidently the greatest concession the poor father 
 could make; and seeing Godefroid's grateful look, the old 
 man had the pleasure of feeling that he was understood. 
 
 An hour later Cartier came back with some beautiful 
 flowers, replanted the stands with his own hands in fresh 
 moss, and Godefroid paid the bill, as he did the subscription 
 to the lending library, for which the account was sent in 
 soon after. Books and flowers were the staff of life to this 
 poor sick or rather, tormented woman, who could live on so 
 little food. 
 
 As he thought of this family in the toils of disaster, like 
 that of Laocoon a sublime allegory of many lives ! Gode- 
 froid, making his way leisurely on foot to the Kue Marbeuf, 
 felt in his heart that he was curious rather than benevolent. 
 The idea of the sick woman, surrounded with luxuries in 
 the midst of abject squalor, made him forget the horrible 
 details of the strange nervous malady, which is happily an 
 extraordinary exception, though abundantly proved by various 
 historians. One of our gossiping chronicle writers, Talle- 
 mant des Reaux, mentions an instance. We like to think of 
 women as elegant even in their worst sufferings, and Gode- 
 froid promised himself some pleasure in penetrating into the 
 room which only the physician, the father, and the son had 
 entered for six years past. However, he ended by reproaching 
 himself for his curiosity. The neophyte even understood 
 that his feeling, however natural, would die out by degrees 
 as he carried out his merciful errands, by dint of seeing 
 new homes and new sorrows. Such messengers, in fact, at- 
 tain to a heavenly benignity which nothing can shock or 
 amaze, just as in love we attain to a sublime quiescence of 
 feeling in the conviction of its strength and duration, by a 
 constant habit of submission and sweetness. 
 
 Godefroid was told that Halpersohn had come home during 
 the night, but had been obliged to go out in his carriage the
 
 100 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 first thing in the morning to see the patients who were wait- 
 ing for him. The woman at the gate told Godefroid to come 
 back next morning before nine. 
 
 Remembering Monsieur Alain's advice as to parsimony 
 in his personal expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous 
 in the Rue de Tournon, and was rewarded for his self-denial 
 by finding himself among compositors and proof-readers. He 
 heard a discussion about the cost of production, and, join- 
 ing in, picked up the information that an octavo volume of 
 forty sheets, of which a thousand copies were printed, would 
 not cost more than thirty sous per copy under favorable cir- 
 cumstances. He determined on going to inquire the price 
 commonly asked for such volumes on sale at the law pub- 
 lishers, so as to be in a position to dispute the point with the 
 publishers who had got a hold on Monsieur Bernard, if he 
 should happen to meet them. 
 
 At about seven in the evening he came back to the Boule- 
 vard Mont-Parnasse along the Rue de Yaugirard, the Rue 
 Madame, and the Rue de 1'Ouest, and he saw how deserted 
 that part of the town is, for he met nobody. It is true that 
 the cold was severe, snow fell in large flakes, and the carts 
 made no noise on the stones. 
 
 "Ah, here you are, monsieur !" said Madame Vauthier when 
 she saw him. "If I had known you would come in so earh r , 
 I would have lighted your fire." 
 
 "It is unnecessary," replied Godefroid, as the woman fol' 
 lowed him ; "I am going to spend the evening with Monsieur 
 Bernard." 
 
 "Ah ! very good. You are cousins, I suppose, that you are 
 hand and glove with him by the second day. I thought per- 
 haps you would have liked to finish what we were saying " 
 
 "Oh, about the four hundred francs?" said Godefroid in an 
 undertone. "Look here. Mother Vautier, you would have 
 had them this evening if you had said nothing to Monsieur 
 Bernard. You want to hunt with the hounds and run with 
 the hare, and you will get neither; for, so far as I am con- 
 cerned, you have spoiled my game my chances are alto- 
 gether ruined "
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 161 
 
 "Don't you believe that, my good sir. To-morrow, when 
 you are at breakfast " 
 
 "Oh, to-morrow I must be off at daybreak like your au- 
 thors." 
 
 Godefroid's past experience and life as a dandy and jour- 
 nalist had been so far of use to him as to lead him to guess 
 that if he did not take this line, Barbet's spy would warn 
 the publisher that there was something in the wind, and he 
 would then take such steps as would ere long endanger Mon- 
 sieur Bernard's liberty; whereas, by leaving the three 
 usurious negotiators to believe that their schemes were not in 
 peril, they would keep quiet. 
 
 But Godefroid was not yet a match for Parisian humanity 
 when it assumes the guise of a Madame Vauthier. This wo- 
 man meant to have Godefroid's money and her landlord's too. 
 She flew off to Monsieur Barbet, while Godefroid changed his 
 dress to call on Monsieur Bernard's daughter. 
 
 Eight o'clock was striking at the Convent of the Visita- 
 tion, whose clock regulated the life of the whole neighbor- 
 hood, when Godefroid, full of curiosity, knocked at his friend's 
 door. Auguste opened it; as it was Saturday, the lad spent 
 his evening at home; Godefroid saw that he wore a jacket 
 of black velvet, black trousers that were quite decent, and 
 a blue silk tie; but his surprise at seeing the youth so unlike 
 his usual self ceased when he entered the invalid's room. He 
 at once understood the necessity for the father and the boy to 
 be presentably dressed. 
 
 The walls of the room, hung with yellow silk, paneled with 
 bright green cord, made the room look extremely cheerful ; the 
 cold tiled floor was covered by a flowered carpet on a white 
 ground. The two windows, with their handsome curtains 
 lined with white silk, were like bowers, the flower-stands 
 were so full of beauty, and blinds hindered them from being 
 seen from outside in a quarter where such lavishness was rare. 
 The woodwork, painted white, and varnished, was touched 
 up with gold lines. A heavy curtain, embroidered in tent 
 stitch, with grotesque foliage on a yellow ground, hung over
 
 162 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 the door and deadened every sound from outside. This splen- 
 did curtain had been worked by the invalid, who embroidered 
 like a fairy when she had the use of her hands. 
 
 Opposite the door, at the further end of the room, the 
 chimney-shelf, covered with green velvet, had a set of very 
 costly ornaments, the only relic of the wealth of the two fami- 
 lies. There was a very curious clock ; an elephant supporting 
 a porcelain tower filled with beautiful flowers ; two candelabra 
 in the same style, and some valuable Oriental pieces. The 
 fender, the dogs, and fire-irons were all of the finest work- 
 manship. 
 
 The largest of the three flower stands stood in the middle 
 of the room, and above it hung a porcelain chandelier of floral 
 design. 
 
 The bed on which the judge's daughter lay was one of those 
 fine examples of carved wood, painted white and gold, that 
 were made in the time of Louis XV. By the invalid's pillow 
 was a pretty inlaid table, on which were the various objects 
 necessary for a life spent in bed ; a bracket light -for two 
 candles was fixed to the wall, and could be turned backwards 
 and forwards by a touch. In front of her was a bed-table, 
 wonderfully contrived for her convenience. The bed was 
 covered with a magnificent counterpane, and draped with cur- 
 tains looped back in festoons; it was loaded with books and a 
 work-basket, and among these various objects Godefroid 
 would hardly have discovered the sick woman but for the 
 tapers in the two candle-branches. 
 
 There seemed to be nothing of her but a very white face, 
 darkly marked round the eyes by much suffering; her eyes 
 shone like fire; and her principal ornament was her splendid 
 black hair, of which the heavy curls, set out in bunches of 
 numerous ringlets, showed that the care and arrangement of 
 her hair occupied part of the invalid's day ; a movable mirror 
 at the foot of the bed confirmed the idea. 
 
 No kind of modern elegance was lacking, and a few trifling 
 toys for poor Van da's amusement showed that her father's 
 affection verged on mania.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 163 
 
 The old man rose from a very handsome easy-chair of 
 Louis XV. style, white and gold, and covered with needlework, 
 and went forward a few steps to welcome Godefroid, who cer- 
 tainly would not have recognized him; for his cold, stern 
 face had assumed the gay expression peculiar to old men 
 who have preserved their dignity of manner and the super- 
 ficial frivolity of courtiers. His purple wadded dressing- 
 gown was in harmony with the luxury about him, and he took 
 snuff out of a gold box set with diamonds. 
 
 "Here, my dear," said Monsieur Bernard to his daugh- 
 ter, "is our neighbor of whom I spoke to you." And he 
 signed to his grandson to bring forward one of two armchairs, 
 in the same style as his own, which were standing on each 
 side of the fire. 
 
 "Monsieur's name is Godefroid, and he is most kind in 
 standing on no ceremony " 
 
 Vanda moved her head in acknowledgment of Godefroid's 
 low bow; and by the movement of her throat as it bent and 
 unbent, he discovered that all this woman's vitality was 
 seated in her head. Her emaciated arms and lifeless hands 
 lay on the fine white sheet like objects quite apart from the 
 body, and that seemed to fill no space in the bed. The things 
 needed for her use were on a set of shelves behind the bed, 
 and screened by a silk curtain. 
 
 "You, my dear sir, are the first person, excepting only the 
 doctors who have ceased to be men to me whom I have set 
 eyes on for six years; so you can have no idea of the interest 
 I have felt in you ever since my father told me you were com- 
 ing to call on us. It was passionate, unconquerable curiosity, 
 like that of our mother Eve. My father, who is so good to 
 me ; my son, of whom I am so fond, are undoubtedly enough 
 to fill up the vacuum of a soul now almost bereft of body; 
 but that soul is still a woman's after all ! I recognized that 
 in the childish joy I felt in the idea of your visit. You will 
 do us the pleasure of taking a cup of tea with us, I hope ?" 
 
 "Yes, Monsieur Godefroid has promised us the pleasure 
 of his company for the evening," said the old man, with the 
 
 air of a millionaire doing the honors of his house. 
 TOL. 1642
 
 164 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 Auguste, seated in a low, worsted-work chair by a small 
 table of inlaid wood, finished with brass mouldings, was read- 
 ing by the light of the wax-candles on the chimney-shelf. 
 
 "Auguste, my dear, tell Jean to bring tea in an hour's 
 time." 
 
 She spoke with some pointed meaning, and Auguste re- 
 plied by a nod. 
 
 "Will you believe, monsieur, that for the past six years no 
 one has waited on me but my father and my boy, and I could 
 not endure anybody else. If I were to lose them, I should 
 die of it. My father will not even allow Jean, a poor old 
 Normandy peasant who has lived with us for thirty years 
 will not even let him come into the room." 
 
 "I should think not, indeed !" said the old man readily. 
 "Monsieur Godefroid has seen him ; he saws and brings in 
 the wood, he cooks and runs errands, and wears a dirty apron ; 
 he would have made hay of all these pretty things, which are 
 BO necessary to my poor child, to whom this elegance is sec- 
 ond nature." 
 
 "Indeed, madame, your father is quite right ' 
 
 "But why?" she urged. "If Jean had damaged my room, 
 my father would have renewed it." 
 
 "Of course, my child ; but what would have prevented me is 
 the fact that you cannot leave it; and you have no idea what 
 Paris workmen are. It would take them more than three 
 months to restore your room ! Only think of the dust that 
 would come out of your carpet if it were taken up. Let 
 Jean do your room ! Do not think of such a thing. 
 By taking the extreme care which only your father and your 
 boy can take, we have spared you sweeping and dust ; if Jean 
 came in to help, everything would be done for in a month." 
 
 "It is not so much out of economy as for the sake of your 
 health," said Godefroid. "Monsieur your father is quite 
 right." 
 
 "Oh, I am not complaining," said Vanda in a saucy tone. 
 
 Her voice had the quality of a concert; soul, action, and 
 life were all concentrated in her eyes and her voice; for
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 165 
 
 Yanda, by careful practice, for which time had certainly 
 not been lacking, had succeeded in overcoming the difficulties 
 arising from her loss of teeth. 
 
 "I am still happy, monsieur, in spite of the dreadful malady 
 that tortures me ; for wealth is certainly a great help in endur- 
 ing my sufferings. If we had been in poverty, I should have 
 died eighteen years ago, and I am still alive. I have many 
 enjoyments, and they are all the keener because I live on, 
 triumphing over death. You will think me a great chatter- 
 box," she added, with a smile. 
 
 "Madame," said Godefroid, "I could beg you to talk for 
 ever, for I never heard a voice to compare with yours 
 it is music ! Eubini is not more delightful " 
 
 "Do not mention Rubini or the opera," said the old man 
 sadly. "However rich we may be, it is impossible to give my 
 daughter, who was a great musician, a pleasure to which she 
 was devoted." 
 
 "I apologize," said Godefroid. 
 
 "You will fall into our ways," said the old man. 
 
 "This is your training," said the invalid, smiling. "When 
 we have warned you several times by crying, 'Look out !' you 
 will know all the blind man's buff of our conversation !" 
 
 Godefroid exchanged a swift glance with Monsieur Ber- 
 nard, who, seeing tears in his new friend's eyes, put his finger 
 to his lip as a warning not to betray the heroic devotion he 
 and the boy had shown for the past seven years. 
 
 This devoted and unflagging imposture, proved by the 
 invalid's entire deception, produced on Godefroid at this mo- 
 ment the effect of looking at a precipitous rock whence two 
 chamois-hunters were on the point of falling. 
 
 The splendid gold and diamond snuff-box with which the 
 old man trifled, leaning over the foot of his daughter's bed, 
 was like the touch of genius which in a great actor wrings 
 from us a cry of admiration. Godefroid looked at the snuff- 
 box, wondering why it had not been sold or pawned, but he 
 postponed the idea till he could discuss it with the old man. 
 
 "This evening, Monsieur Godefroid, my daughter was so
 
 166 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 greatly excited by the promise of your visit, that the various 
 strange symptoms of her malady which, for nearly a fortnight 
 past, have driven us to despair, suddenly disappeared. You 
 may imagine my gratitude I" 
 
 "And mine !" cried Vanda, in an insinuating voice, with 
 a graceful inclination of her head. "You are a deputation 
 from the outer world. Since I was twenty I have not known 
 what a drawing-room is like, or a party, or a ball ; and I love 
 dancing, I am crazy about the play, and above all about 
 music. Well, I imagine everything in my mind. I read 
 a great deal, and my father tells me all about the gay 
 world As he listened, Godefroid felt prompted to kneel 
 at the feet of this poor old man. 
 
 "When he goes to the opera and he often goes he de- 
 scribes the dresses to me, and all the singers. Oh ! I should 
 like to be well again ; in the first place, for my father's sake, 
 for he lives for me alone, as I live for him and through him, 
 and then for my son's I should like him to know another 
 mother. Oh! monsieur, what perfect men are my dear old 
 father and my admirable son ! Then I could wish for health 
 also, that I might hear Lablache, Rubini, Tamburini, Grisi, 
 the Puritani too ! But " 
 
 "Come, my dear, compose yourself. If we talk about music, 
 it is fatal !" said the old father, with a smile. 
 
 And that smile, which made him look younger, evidently 
 constantly deceived the sick woman. 
 
 "Well, I will be good," said Vanda, with a saucy pout. "But 
 let me have a harmonium." 
 
 This instrument had lately been invented; it could, by a 
 little contrivance, be placed by the invalid's bed, and would 
 only need the pressure of the foot to give out an organ-like 
 tone. This instrument, in its most improved form, was as 
 effective as a piano; but at that time it cost three hundred 
 francs. Vanda, who read newspapers and reviews, had heard 
 of such an instrument, and had been longing for one for two 
 months past. 
 
 "Yes, madame, and I can procure you one," replied Gode-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 167 
 
 froid at an appealing glance from the old man. "A friend of 
 mine who is setting out for Algiers has a very fine one, which 
 I will borrow of him; for before buying one, you had better 
 try it. It is quite possible that the sound, which is strongly 
 vibrating, may be too much for you." 
 
 "Can I have it to-morrow?'' she asked, with the eagerness 
 of a Creole. 
 
 "To-morrow !" objected Monsieur Bernard. "That is very 
 soon ; besides, to-morrow will be Sunday." 
 
 "To be sure," said she, looking at Godefroid, who felt as 
 though he saw a soul fluttering, as he admired the ubiquity 
 of Vanda's eyes. 
 
 Until now he had never understood what the power of the 
 voice and eyes might be when the entire vitality was concen- 
 trated in them. Her glance was more than a glance; it was 
 a flame, or rather a blaze of divine light, a communicative 
 ray of life and intelligence, thought made visible. The voice, 
 with its endless intonations, supplied the place of movement, 
 gesture, and turns of the head. And her changing color, vary- 
 ing like that of the fabled chameleon, made the illusion or, 
 if you will, the delusion complete. That weary head, buried 
 in a cambric pillow frilled with lace, was a complete woman. 
 
 Never in his life had Godefroid seen so noble a spectacle, 
 and he could hardly endure his emotions. Another grand 
 feature, where everything was strange in a situation so full 
 of romance and of horror, was that the soul alone seemed to 
 be living in the spectators. This atmosphere, where all was 
 sentiment, had a celestial influence. They were as uncon- 
 scious of their bodies as the woman in bed; everything was 
 pure spirit. By dint of gazing at these frail remains of a 
 pretty woman, Godefroid forgot the elegant luxury of the 
 room, and felt himself in heaven. It was not till half-an-hour 
 after that he noticed a what-not covered with curiosities, over 
 which hung a noble portrait that Vanda desired him to look 
 at, as it was by Gericault. 
 
 "Gericault," said she, "was a native of Rouen, and his 
 family being under some obligations to my father, who was
 
 168 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 President of the Supreme Court there, he showed his grati- 
 tude by painting that masterpiece, in which you see me at the 
 age of sixteen." 
 
 "You have there a very fine picture," said Godefroid, "and 
 one that is quite unknown to those who have studied the rare 
 works of that great genius." 
 
 "To me it is no longer an object of anything but affec- 
 tionate regard," said she, "since I live only by my feelings; 
 and I have a beautiful life," she went on, looking at her father 
 with her whole soul in her eyes. "Oh, monsieur, if you could 
 but know what my father is ! Who would believe that the au- 
 stere and dignified Judge to whom the Emperor owed so much 
 that he gave him that snuff-box, and whom Charles X. re- 
 warded by the gift of that Sevres tray" and she looked at 
 a side-table "that the staunch upholder of law and authority, 
 the learned political writer, has in a heart of rock all the ten- 
 derness of a mother ? Oh, papa, papa ! Come, kiss me I 
 insist on it if you love me." 
 
 The old man rose, leaned over the bed, and set a kiss on 
 his daughter's high poetic brow, for her sickly fancies were 
 not invariably furies of affection. Then he walked up and 
 down the room, but without a sound, for he wore slippers 
 the work of his daughter's hands. 
 
 "And what is your occupation ?" she asked Godefroid after 
 a pause. 
 
 "Madame, I am employed by certain pious persons to take 
 help to the unfortunate." 
 
 "A beautiful mission !" said she. "Do you know that the 
 idea of devoting myself to such work has often occurred to 
 me? But what ideas have not occurred to me?" said she, 
 with a little shake of her head. "Pain is a torch that throws 
 light on life, and if I ever recover my health " 
 
 "You shall enjoy yourself, my child," the old man put in. 
 
 "Certainly I long to enjoy life," said she, ( but should I be 
 able for it? My son, I hope, will be a lawyer, worthy of his 
 two grandfathers, and he must leave me. What is to be done ? 
 If God restores me to life, I will dedicate it to Him. Oh,
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 169 
 
 not till I have given you both as much of it as you desire !" 
 she exclaimed, looking at her father and her boy. "There 
 are times, my dear father, when Monsieur de Maistre's ideas 
 work in my brain, and I fancy I am expatiating some sin." 
 
 "That is what comes of reading so much!" cried the old 
 man, visibly grieved. 
 
 "There was that brave Polish General, my great-grand- 
 father; he meddled very innocently in the concerns of Po- 
 land " 
 
 "Now we have come back to Poland !" exclaimed Bernard. 
 
 "How can I help it, papa? My sufferings are intolerable, 
 they make me hate life, and disgust me with myself. Well, 
 what have I done to deserve them? Such an illness is not 
 mere disordered health; it is a complete wreck of the whole 
 constitution, and " 
 
 "Sing the national air your poor mother used to sing; it 
 will please Monsieur Godefroid, I have spoken to him of your 
 voice," said her father, evidently anxious to divert his daugh- 
 ter's mind from the ideas she was following out. 
 
 Vanda began to sing in a low, soft voice a hymn in the 
 Polish tongue, which left Godefroid bewildered with admira- 
 tion and sadness. This melody, a good deal like the long- 
 drawn melancholy tunes of Brittany, is one of those poetic 
 airs that linger in the mind long after being heard. As he 
 listened to Vanda, Godefroid at first looked at her; but he 
 could not bear the ecstatic eyes of this remnant of a woman 
 now half-crazed, and he gazed at some tassels that hung on 
 each side of the top of the bed. 
 
 "Ah, ha!" said Vanda, laughing at Godefroid's evident 
 curiosity, "you are wondering what those are for?" 
 
 "Vanda, Vanda, be calm, my child ! See, here comes the 
 tea. This, monsieur, is a very expensive contrivance," he 
 said to Godefroid. "My daughter cannot raise herself, nor 
 can she remain in bed without its being made and the sheets 
 changed. Those cords work over pulleys, and by slipping a 
 sheet of leather under her and attaching it to rings at the 
 corners to those ropes, we can lift her without fatiguing her 
 or ourselves."
 
 170 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 "Yes, I am carried up up !" said Vanda deliriously. 
 
 Auguste happily came in with a teapot, which he set on a 
 little table, where he also placed the Sevres tray, covered with 
 sandwiches and cakes. Then he brought in the cream and but- 
 ter. This diverted the sick woman's mind; she had been on 
 the verge of an attack. 
 
 "Here, Vanda, is Nathan's last novel. If you should lie 
 awake to-night, you will have something to read." 
 
 "La Perle de Doll That will be a love-story no doubt. 
 Auguste, what do you think ? I am to have a harmonium !" 
 
 Auguste raised his head quickly, and looked strangely at 
 his grandfather. 
 
 "You see how fond he is of his mother !" Vanda went on. 
 "Come and kiss me, dear rogue. No, it is not your grand- 
 father that you must thank, but Monsieur Godefroid; our 
 kind neighbor promises to borrow one for me to-morrow morn- 
 ing. What is it like, monsieur?" 
 
 Godefroid, at a nod from the old man, gave a long descrip- 
 tion of the harmonium while enjoying the tea Auguste had 
 made, which was of superior quality and delicious flavor. 
 
 At about half-past ten the visitor withdrew, quite over- 
 powered by the frantic struggle maintained by the father and 
 son, while admiring their heroism and the patience that 
 enabled them, day after day, to play two equally exhausting 
 parts. 
 
 "Now," said Monsieur Bernard, accompanying him to his 
 own door, "now you know the life I lead ! At every hour I 
 have to endure the alarms of a robber, on the alert for every- 
 thing. One word, one look might kill my daughter. One 
 toy removed from those she is accustomed to see about her 
 would reveal everything to her, for mind sees through walls." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Godefroid, "on Monday Halpersohn will 
 pronounce his opinion on your daughter, for he is at home 
 again. I doubt whether science can restore her frame." 
 
 "Oh, I do not count upon it," said the old man with a sigh. 
 "If they will only make her life endurable. I trusted to your 
 tact, monsieur, and I want to thank you, for you understood.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 171 
 
 Ah ! the attack has come on !" cried he, hearing a scream. 
 
 "She has done too much " 
 
 He pressed Godefroid's hand and hurried away. 
 
 At eight next morning Godefroid knocked at the fa- 
 mous doctor's door. He was shown up by the servant to a 
 room on the first floor of the house, which he had had time 
 to examine while the porter found the man-servant. 
 
 Happily, Godefroid's punctuality had saved him the vexa- 
 tion of waiting, as he had hoped it might. He was evidently 
 the first-comer. He was led through a very plain ante-room 
 into a large study, where he found an old man in a dressing- 
 gown, smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of black 
 moreen, was shiny with wear, and dated from the time of 
 the Polish dispersion. 
 
 "What can I do -to serve you?" said the Jew, "for you are 
 not ill." 
 
 And he fixed Godefroid with a look that had all the sharp 
 inquisitiveness of the Polish Jew, eyes which seem to have 
 ears. 
 
 To Godefroid's great surprise, Halpersohn was a man of 
 fifty-six, with short bow-legs and a broad, powerful frame. 
 There was an Oriental stamp about the man, and his face must 
 in youth have been singularly handsome; the remains showed 
 a marked Jewish nose, as long and as curved as a Damas- 
 cus scimitar. His forehead was truly Polish, broad and lofty, 
 wrinkled all over like crumpled paper, and recalling that of 
 a Saint-Joseph by some old Italian master. His eyes were 
 sea-green, set like a parrot's in puckered gray lids, and ex- 
 pressive of cunning and avarice in the highest degree. His 
 mouth, thin and straight, like a cut in his face, lent this sin- 
 ister countenance a crowning touch of suspiciousness. 
 
 The pale, lean features for Halpersohn was extraor- 
 dinarily thin were crowned by ill-kept gray hair, and graced 
 by a very thick, long beard, black streaked with white, that 
 hid half his face, so that only the forehead and eyes, the 
 cheek-bones, nose, and lips were visible.
 
 r THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 This man, a friend of the agitator Lelcwel. wore a black 
 velvet cap that came down in a point on his forehead and 
 showed off its mellow hue, worthy of Kembrandt's brush. 
 
 The doctor, who subsequently became equally famous for 
 his talents and his avarice, startled Godefroid by his ques- 
 tion, and the young man asked himself, "Can he take me for 
 a thief?" 
 
 The reply to the question was evident on the doctor's table 
 and chimney-piece. Godefroid had fancied himself the first- 
 comer he was the last. His patients had laid very handsome 
 sums on the table and shelf, for Godefroid saw piles of 
 twenty and forty-franc pieces and two thousand-franc notes. 
 Was all this the fruit of a single morning? He greatly 
 doubted it, and he suspected an ingenious trick. The infallible 
 but money-loving doctor perhaps tried thus to encourage his 
 patients' liberality, and to make his rich 'clients believe that 
 he was given banknotes as if they were curl-papers. 
 
 Moise Halpersohn was no doubt largely paid, for he cured 
 his patients, and cured them of those very complaints which 
 the profession gave up in despair. It is very 'little known in 
 Western Europe that the Slav nations possess a store of med- 
 ical secrets. They have a number of sovereign remedies de- 
 rived from their intercourse with the Chinese, the Persians, 
 the Cossacks, the Turks, and the Tartars. Some peasant wo- 
 men, regarded as witches, have been known to cure hydro- 
 phobia completely in Poland with the juice of certain plants. 
 There is among those nations a great mass of uncodified in- 
 formation as to the effects of certain plants and the powdered 
 bark of trees, which is handed down from family to family, 
 and miraculous cures are effected there. 
 
 Halpersohn, who for five or six years was regarded as a 
 charlatan, with his powders and mixtures, had the innate in- 
 stinct of a great healer. Not only was he learned, he had ob- 
 served with great care, and had traveled all over Germany, 
 Russia, Persia, and Turkey, where he had picked up much 
 traditional lore; and as he was learned in chemistry, he be- 
 came a living encyclopedia of the secrets preserved by "the
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 173 
 
 good women," as they were called, the midwives and "wise 
 women" of every country whither he had followed his father, 
 a wandering trader. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the scene in Richard in Pales- 
 tine, in which Saladin cures the King of England, is pure fic- 
 tion. Halpersohn has a little silk bag, which he soaks in water 
 till it is faintly colored, and certain fevers yield to this infu- 
 sion taken by the patient. The virtues residing in plants are 
 infinitely various, according to him, and the most terrible 
 maladies admit of cure. He, however, like his brother physi- 
 cians, pauses sometimes before the incomprehensible. Halper- 
 sohn admires the invention of homoeopathy, less for its med- 
 ical system than for its therapeutics; he was at that time in 
 correspondence with Hedenius of Dresden, Chelius of Heidel- 
 berg, and the other famous Germans, but keeping his own 
 hand dark though it was full of discoveries. He would have 
 no pupils. 
 
 The setting of this figure, which might have stepped out of 
 a picture by Rembrandt, was quite in harmony with it. The 
 study, hung with green flock paper, was poorly furnished 
 with a green divan. The carpet, also of moss green, showed 
 the thread. A large armchair covered with black leather, 
 for the patients, stood near the window, which was hung with 
 green curtains. The doctor's seat was a stud}^-chair with 
 arms, in the Roman style, of mahogany with a green leather 
 seat. Besides the chimney-piece and the long table at which 
 he wrote, there was in the middle of the wall opposite the 
 fireplace a oommon iron chest supporting a clock of Vienna 
 granite, on which stood a bronze group of Love sporting with 
 Death, the gift of a famous German sculptor whom Halper- 
 sohn had, no doubt, cured. A tazza between two candlesticks 
 was all the ornament of the chimney-shelf. Two bracket 
 shelves, one at each end of the divan, served to place trays on, 
 and Godefroid noted that there were silver bowls on them, 
 water-bottles, and table-napkins. 
 
 Tti's simplicity, verging on bareness, struck Godefroid, who 
 took everything in at a glance, and he recovered his presence 
 of mind.
 
 174 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "I am perfectly well, monsieur. I have not come to consult 
 you myself, but on behalf of a lady whom you ought long since 
 to have seen a lady living on the Boulevard du Mont-Par- 
 nasse." 
 
 "Oh yes, that lady has sent her son to me several times. 
 Well, monsieur, tell her to come to see me?" 
 
 "Tell her to come!" cried Godefroid indignantly. "Why, 
 monsieur, she cannot be lifted from her bed to a sofa; she 
 has to be raised by straps." 
 
 "You are not a doctor?" asked the Jew, with a singular 
 grimace which made his face look even more wicked. 
 
 "If Baron de Nucingen sent to tell you that he was ill and 
 to ask you to visit him, would you reply, 'Tell him to come to 
 me' ?" ' 
 
 "I should go to him," said the Jew drily, as he spat into a 
 Dutch spittoon made of mahogany and filled with sand. 
 
 "You would go to him," Godefroid said mildly, "because 
 the Baron has two millions a year, and 
 
 "Nothing else has to do with the matter. I should go." 
 
 "Very well, monsieur, you may come and see the lady on 
 the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse for the same reason. Though 
 I have not such a fortune as the Baron de Xucingen, T am here 
 to tell you that you can name your own price for the cure, 
 or, if you fail, for your care of her. I am prepared to pay 
 you in advance. But how is it, monsieur, that you, a Polish 
 exile, a communist, I believe, will make no sacrifice for the 
 sake of Poland ! For this lady is the granddaughter of Gen- 
 eral Tarlovski, Prince Poniatowski's friend 
 
 "Monsieur, you came to ask me to prescribe for this lady, 
 and not to give me your advice. In Poland I am a Pole; in 
 Paris a Parisian. Every one does good in his own way, and 
 you may believe me when I tell you that the greed attributed 
 to me has its good reasons. The money I accumulate has 
 its uses ; it is sacred. I sell health ; rich persons can pay for 
 it, and I make them buy it. The poor have their physicians. 
 If I had no aim in view, I snould not practise medicine. 
 I live soberly, and I spend my time in rushing from one to an-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 175 
 
 other . I am by nature lazy, and I used to be a gambler. You 
 may draw your own conclusions, young man! You are not 
 old enough to judge the aged !" 
 
 Godefroid kept silence. 
 
 : 'You live with the granddaughter of the foolhardy soldier 
 who had no courage but for fighting, and who betrayed his 
 country to Catherine II.?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Then be at home on Monday at three o'clock," said he, 
 laying down'his pipe and taking up his notebook, in which he 
 wrote a few words. "When I call, you will please to pay me 
 two hundred francs ; then, if I undertake to cure her, you will 
 give me a thousand crowns. I have been told," he went on, 
 "that the lady is shrunken as if she had fallen in the fire." 
 
 "It is a case, monsieur, if you will believe the first physi- 
 cians of Paris, of nervous disease, with symptoms so strange 
 that no one can imagine them who has not seen them." 
 
 "Ah. yes, now I remember the details given me by that 
 little fellow. Till to-morrow, monsieur." 
 
 Godefroid left with a bow to this singular and extraordinary 
 man. There was nothing about him to show or suggest a 
 medical man, not even in that bare consulting-room, where 
 the only article of furniture that was at all remarkable was 
 the ponderous chest, made by Huret or Fichet. 
 
 Godefroid 'reached the Passage Vivienne in time to pur- 
 chase a splendid harmonium before the shop was shut, and 
 he despatched it forthwith to Monsieur Bernard, whose ad- 
 dress he gave. 
 
 Then he went to the Rue Chanoinesse, passing along the 
 Quai des Augustins, where he hoped still to find a bookseller's 
 shop open ; he was, in fact, so fortunate, and had a long con- 
 versation on the cost of law-books, with the clerk in chiu-ge. 
 
 He found Madame de la Chanterie and her friend just 
 come in from high mass, and he answered her first inquiring 
 glance with a significant shake. 
 
 "And our dear Father Alain is not with you ?" said he. 
 
 "He will not be here this Sunday,'' replied Madame de la
 
 176 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 Chanterie. "You will not find him here till this day week, 
 unless you go to the place where you know you can meet him." 
 
 "Madame," said Godefroid, in an undertone, "you know I 
 am less afraid of him than of these gentlemen, and I intended 
 to confess to him." 
 
 "And I?" 
 
 "Oh, 3 r ou I will tell you everything, for I have many 
 things to say to you. As a beginning, I have come upon the 
 most extraordinary case of destitution, the strangest union of 
 poverty and luxury, and figures of a sublimity which outdoes 
 the inventions of our most admired romancers." 
 
 "Nature, and especially moral nature, is always as far abovt 
 art as God is above His creatures. But come," said Madame 
 de la Chanterie, "and tell me all about your expedition into 
 the unknown lands where you made your first venture." 
 
 Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph for the Abbe de 
 Veze had remained for a few minutes at Notre-Dame left 
 Madame de la Chanterie alone with Godefroid ; and he, fresh 
 from the emotions he had gone through the day before, re- 
 lated every detail with the intensity, the gesticulation, and the 
 eagerness that come of the first impression produced by such 
 a scene and its accessories of men and things. He had a suc- 
 cess too ; for Madame de la Chanterie, calm and gentle as she 
 was, and accustomed to look into gulfs of suffering, shed tears. 
 
 "You did right," said she, "to send the harmonium." 
 
 "I wish I could have done much more," replied Godefroid, 
 "since this is the first family through whom I have known the 
 pleasures of charity; I want to secure to the noble old man 
 the chief part of the profits on his great work. I do not know 
 whether you have enough confidence in me to enable me to un- 
 dertake such a business. From the information I have 
 gained, it would cost about nine thousand francs to bring out 
 an edition of fifteen hundred copies, and their lowest selling 
 value would be twenty-four thousand francs. As we must, 
 in the first instance, pay off the three thousand and odd francs 
 that have been advanced on the manuscript, we should have 
 to risk twelve thousand francs.
 
 177 
 
 "Oh, madame ! if you conld but imagine how bitterly, as I 
 made my way hither from the Quai des Augustins, I rued 
 having so foolishly wasted my little fortune. The Genius of 
 Charity appeared to me, as it were, and filled me with the 
 ardor of a neophyte; I desire to renounce the world, to live 
 the life of these gentlemen, and to be worthy of you. Many 
 a time during the past two days have I blessed the chance that 
 brought me to your house. I will obey you in every particular 
 till you judge me worthy to join the brotherhood." 
 
 "Well," said Madame do la Chanterie very seriously, after 
 a few minutes of reflection, "listen to me, I have important 
 things to say to you. You have been fascinated, my dear 
 boy, by the poetry of misfortune. Yes, misfortune often has 
 a poetry of its own; for, to me, poetry is a certain exaltation 
 of feeling, and suffering is feeling. We live so much through 
 suffering !" 
 
 "Yes, madame, I was captured by the demon of curiosity. 
 How could I help it ! I have not yet acquired the habit of 
 seeing into the heart of these unfortunate lives, and I cannot 
 set out with the calm resolution of your three pious soldiers 
 of the Lord. But I may tell you, it was not till I had quelled 
 this incitement that I devoted myself to your work." 
 
 "Listen, my very dear son," said Madame de la Chanterie, 
 saying the words with a saintly sweetness which deeply 
 touched Godefroid, "we have forbidden ourselves absolutely 
 and this is no exaggeration, for we do not allow ourselves 
 even to think of what is forbidden we have forbidden our- 
 selves ever to embark in a speculation. To print a book for 
 sale, and looking for a return, is business, and any transac- 
 tion of that kind would involve us in the difficulties of trade. 
 To be sure, it looks in this case very feasible, and even neces- 
 sary. Do you suppose that it is the first instance of the kind 
 that has come before us? Twenty limes, a hundred times, 
 we have seen how a family, a concern, could be saved. But, 
 then, what should we have become in undertaking matters 
 of this kind? We should be simply a trading firm. To be a 
 sleeping partner with the unfortunate is not work; it is only
 
 178 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 helping misfortune to work. In 'a few days you may meet 
 with even harder cases than this; will you do the same thing? 
 You would be overwhelmed. 
 
 "Remember, for one thing, that the house of Mongenod, for 
 a year past, has ceased to keep our accounts. Quite half of 
 your time will be taken up by keeping our books. There are, 
 at this time, nearly two thousand persons in our debt in Paris ; 
 and of those who may repay us, at any rate, it is necessary 
 that we should check the amounts they owe us. We never sue 
 we wait. We calculate that half of the money given out is 
 lost. The other half sometimes returns doubled. 
 
 "Now, suppose- this lawyer were to die, the twelve thousand 
 francs would be badly invested! But if his daughter re- 
 covers, if his grandson does well, if he one day gets another 
 appointment then, if he has any sense of honor, he will re- 
 member the debt, and return the funds of the poor with in- 
 terest. Do you know that more than one family, raised from 
 poverty and started by us on the road to fortune by con- 
 siderable loans without interest, has saved for the poor and re- 
 turned us sums of double and sometimes treble the amount ? 
 
 "This is our only form of speculation. 
 
 "In the first place, as to this case which interests you, and 
 ought to interest you, consider that the sale of the lawyer's 
 book depends on its merits ; have you read it ? Then, even if 
 the work is excellent, how many excellent books have re- 
 mained two or three years without achieving the success they 
 deserved. How many a wreath is laid on a tomb ! And, as 
 T know, publishers have ways of driving bargains and taking 
 their charges, which make the business one of the most risky 
 and the most difficult to disentangle of all in Paris. Monsieur 
 Nicolas can tell you about these difficulties, inherent in the 
 nature of book-making. So, you see, we are prudent ; we have 
 ample experience of every kind of misery, as of every branch 
 of trade, for we have long been studying Paris. The Monge- 
 nods give us much help; they are a light to our path, and 
 through them we know that the Bank of France is always 
 suspicious of the book-trade ; though it is a noble trade but 
 it is badly conducted.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 179 
 
 "As to the four thousand francs needed to save this noble 
 family from the horrors of indigence, I will give you the 
 money; for the poor boy and his grandfather must be fed 
 and decently dressed. There are sorrows, miseries, wounds, 
 which we bind up at once without inquiring who it is that 
 we are helping; religion, honor, character, are not inquired 
 into ; but as soon as it is a case of lending the money belong- 
 ing to the poor to assist the unfortunate under the more active 
 form of industry or trade, then we require some guarantee, 
 and are as rigid as the money-lenders. So, for all beyond 
 this immediate relief, be satisfied with finding the most honest 
 publisher for the old man's book. This is a matter for Mon- 
 sieur Nicolas. He is acquainted with lawyers and professors 
 and authors of works in jurisprudence; next Saturday he will, 
 no doubt, be prepared with some good advice for you. 
 
 "Be easy ; the difficulty will be got over if possible. At the 
 same time, it might be well if Monsieur Nicolas could read 
 the magistrate's book ; if you can persuade him to lend it." 
 
 Godefroid was amazed at this woman's sound sense, for 
 he had believed her to be animated solely by the spirit of 
 charity. He knelt on one knee and kissed one of her beauti- 
 ful hands, saying: 
 
 "Then you are Reason too \" 
 
 "In our work we have to be everything," said she, with the 
 peculiar cheerfulness of a true saint. 
 
 There was a brief silence, broken by Godefroid, who 'ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 "Two thousand debtors, did you say, madame? Two thou- 
 sand accounts ! It is tremendous !" 
 
 "Two thousand accounts, which may lead, as I have told 
 you, to our being repaid from the delicate honor of the bor- 
 rowers. But there are three thousand more families who will 
 never make us any return but in thanks. Thus, as I have 
 told you, we feel that it is necessary to keep books; and if! 
 your secrecy is above suspicion, you will be our financial 
 oracle. We ought to keep a day-book, a ledger, a book of cur- 
 rent expenses, and a cash-book. Of course, we have receipts, 
 VOL. 1643
 
 180 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 notes of hand, but it takes a great deal of time to look for 
 them Here come the gentlemen." 
 
 Godefroid, at first serious and thoughtful, took little part 
 in the conversation; he was bewildered by the revelation Ma- 
 dame de la Chanterie had just imparted to him in a way which 
 showed that she meant it to be the reward of his zeal. 
 
 "Two thousand families indebted to us!" said he to him- 
 self. "Why, if they all cost as much as Monsieur Bernard will 
 cost ITS, we must have millions sown broadcast in Paris !" 
 
 This reflection was one of the last promptings of the 
 worldly spirit which was fast dying out in Godefroid. As 
 he thought the matter over, he understood that the united for- 
 tunes of Madame de la Chanterie, of Messieurs Alain, Nico- 
 las, Joseph, and Judge Popinot, with the gifts collected by the 
 Abbe de Yeze, and the loans from the Mongenods, must have 
 produced a considerable capital; also, that in twelve or fif- 
 teen years this capital, with the interest paid on it by those 
 who had shown their gratitude, must have increased like a 
 snowball, since the charitable holders took nothing from it. 
 By degrees he began to see clearly how the immense affair was 
 managed, and his wish to co-operate was increased. 
 
 At nine o'clock he was about to return on foot to the 
 Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse ; but Madame de la Chanterie, 
 distrustful of so lonely a neighborhood, insisted on his taking 
 a cab. As he got out of the vehicle, though the shutters were 
 so closely fastened that not a gleam of light was visible, Gode- 
 froid heard the sounds of the instrument ; and Auguste, who, 
 no doubt, was watching for Godefroid's return, half opened 
 the door on the landing, and said : 
 
 "Mamma would very much like to see you, and my grand- 
 father begs you will take a cup of tea." 
 
 Godefroid went in and found the invalid transfigured by 
 the pleasure of the music; her face beamed and her eyes 
 sparkled like diamonds. 
 
 "I ought to have waited for you, to let you hear the first 
 chords; but I flew at this little organ as a hungry man rushes
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 181 
 
 on a banquet. But you have a soul to understand me, and I 
 know I am forgiven." 
 
 Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself where 
 he could press the pedal that supplied the interior of the in- 
 strument with wind; and, with her eyes raised to heaven like 
 Saint Cecilia, the invalid, whose hands had for a time re- 
 covered their strength and agility, performed some variations 
 on the prayer in Mose which her sou had bought for her. She 
 had composed them in a few hours. Godefroid discerned in 
 her a talent identical with that of Chopin. It was a soul 
 manifesting itself by divine sounds in which sweet melan- 
 choly predominated. 
 
 Monsieur Bernard greeted Godefroid with a look express- 
 ing a sentiment long since in abeyance. If the tears had not 
 been for ever dried up in the old man scorched by so many 
 fierce sorrows, his eyes would at this moment have been wet. 
 
 The old lawyer was fingering his snuff-box and gazing at 
 his daughter with unutterable rapture. 
 
 "To-morrow, madame," said Godefroid, when the music 
 had ceased, "your fate will be sealed, for I have good news 
 for you. The famous Halpersohn will come at three o'clock. 
 And he has promised," he added in Monsieur Bernard's ear, 
 "to tell me the truth." 
 
 The old man rose, and taking Godefroid by the hand, led 
 him into a corner of the room near the fireplace. He was 
 trembling. 
 
 "What a night lies before me ! It is the final sentence !" 
 said he in a whisper. "My daughter will be cured or con- 
 demned !" 
 
 "Take courage," said Godefroid, "and after tea come to my 
 rooms." 
 
 "Cease playing, my child," said Monsieur Bernard; "you 
 will bring on an attack. Such an expenditure of strength 
 will be followed by a reaction." 
 
 He made Auguste remove the instrument, and brought his 
 daughter her cup of tea with the coaxing ways of a nurse who 
 wants to anticipate the impatience of a baby.
 
 182 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "And what is this doctor like ?" asked she, already diverted 
 by the prospect of seeing a stranger. 
 
 Vanda, like all prisoners, was consumed by curiosity. When 
 the physical symptoms of her complaint gave her some respite. 
 they seemed to develop in her mind, and then she had the 
 strangest whims and violent caprices. She wanted to see Eos- 
 sini, and cried because her father, who could, she imagined, 
 do everything, assured her he could not bring him. 
 
 Godefroid gave her a minute description of the Jewish 
 physician and his consulting-room, for she knew nothing of 
 the steps taken by her father. Monsieur Bernard had en- 
 joined silence on his grandson as to his visits to Halpersohn ; 
 he had so much feared to excite hopes which might not be 
 realized. Vanda seemed to hang on the words that fell from 
 Godefroid's lips; she was spellbound and almost crazy, so 
 ardent did her desire become to see the strange Pole. 
 
 "Poland has produced many singular and mysterious 
 figures," said the old lawyer. "Just now, for instance, besides 
 this doctor there is Hoene Yronski the mathematician and 
 seer, Mickievicz the poet, the inspired Tovianski, and Chopin 
 with his superhuman talent. Great national agitations al- 
 ways produce these crippled giants." 
 
 "Oh, my dear papa, what a man you are ! If you were to 
 write down all that we hear you say simply to entertain me, 
 you would make a fortune ! For, would you believe me, mon- 
 sieur, my kind old father invents tales for me when I 
 have no more novels to read, and so sends me to sleep. His 
 voice lulls me, and he often soothes my pain with his clever- 
 ness. Who will ever repay him ? Auguste, my dear boy, you 
 ought to kiss your grandfather's footprints for me." 
 
 The youth looked at his mother with his fine eyes full of 
 tears; and that look, overflowing with long repressed com- 
 passion, was a poem in itself. Godefroid rose, took Auguste's 
 hand, and pressed it warmly. 
 
 "God has given you two angels for your companions, ma- 
 dame !" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Indeed I know it. And I blame myself for so often pro-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OK HISTORY 183 
 
 yoking them. Come, dear Auguste, and kiss your mother. 
 He is a son, monsieur, of whom any mother would be proud. 
 He is as good as gold, candid a soul without sin; but a 
 rather too impassioned creature, like his mamma. God has 
 nailed me to my bed to preserve me perhaps from the follies 
 women commit when they have too much heart !" she ended 
 with a smile. 
 
 Godefroid smiled in reply and bowed good-night. 
 
 "Good-night, monsieur; and be sure to thank your friend, 
 for he has made a poor cripple very happy." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Godefroid when he was in his rooms, alone 
 with Monsieur Bernard, who had followed him, "I think I 
 may promise you that you shall not be robbed by those three 
 sharpers. I can get the required sum, but you must place the 
 papers proving the loan in my hands. If I am to do anything 
 more, you should allow me to have your book not to read 
 myself, for I am not learned enough to judge of it, but to 
 be read by an old lawyer I know, a man of unimpeachable in- 
 tegrity, who will undertake, according to the character of the 
 work, to find a respectable firm with whom you may deal on 
 equitable terms. On this, however, I do not insist. 
 
 "Meanwhile, here are five hundred francs," he went on, 
 offering a note to the astonished lawyer, "to supply your more 
 pressing wants. I ask for no receipt; you will be indebted 
 on no evidence but that of your conscience, and your con- 
 science may lie silent till you have to some extent recovered 
 yourself. I will settle with Halpersohn." 
 
 "But who are you?" asked the old man, sinking on to a 
 chair. 
 
 "I/ 7 replied Godefroid, "am nobody; but I serve certain 
 powerful persons to whom your necessities are now made 
 known, and who take an interest in you. Ask no more." 
 
 "And what motive can these persons have ?" 
 
 "Eeligion, monsieur," replied Godefroid. 
 
 "Is it possible ? Eeligion !" 
 
 "Yes, the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion." 
 
 "Then you are of the Order of Jesus?" 
 
 "No, monsieur," said Godefroid. "Be perfectly easy. No
 
 184 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 one has any design on you beyond that of helping you and 
 restoring your family to comfort." 
 
 "Can philanthropy then wear any guise but that of 
 vanity ?" 
 
 "Nay, monsieur, do not insult holy Catholic Charity, the 
 virtue described by Saint Paul !" cried Godefroid eagerly. 
 
 At this reply Monsieur Bernard began to stride up and 
 down the room. 
 
 "I accept !" he suddenly said. "And I have but one way of 
 showing my gratitude that is, by intrusting you with my 
 work. The notes and quotations are unnecessary to a lawyer; 
 and I have, as I told you, two months' work before me yet in 
 copying them out. To-morrow then," and he shook hands 
 with Godefroid. 
 
 "Can I have effected a conversion?" thought Godefroid, 
 struck by the new expression he saw on the old man's face as 
 he had last spoken. 
 
 Next day, at three o'clock, a hackney coach stopped at the 
 door, and out stepped Halpersohn, buried in a vast bearskin 
 coat. The cold had increased in the course of the night, and 
 the thermometer stood at ten degrees below freezing. 
 
 The Jewish doctor narrowly though furtively examined the 
 room in which his visitor of yesterday received him, and Gode- 
 froid detected a gleam of suspicion sparkling in his eye like 
 the point of a dagger. This swift flash of doubt gave Gode- 
 froid an internal chill; he began to think that this man would 
 be merciless in his money dealings; and it is so natural to 
 think of genius as allied to goodness, that this gave him an 
 impulse of disgust. 
 
 "Monsieur," said he, "I perceive that the plainness of my 
 lodgings arouses your uneasiness; so you will not be surprised 
 at my manner of proceeding. Here are your two hundred 
 francs, and here, you see, are three notes for a thousand francs 
 each" and he drew out the notes which Madame de la Chan- 
 terie had given him to redeem Monsieur Bernard's manu- 
 script. "If you have any further doubts as to my solvency, 
 I may refer you, as a guarantee for the carrying out of my
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 185 
 
 pledge, to Messrs. Mongenod the bankers, Rue de la Victoire." 
 
 "I know them," said Halpersohn, slipping the ten gold 
 pieces into his pocket. 
 
 "And he will go there !" thought Godef roid. 
 
 "And where does the sick lady live ?" asked the doctor, ris- 
 ing, as a man who knows the value of time. 
 
 "Come this way, monsieur," said Godefroid, going first to 
 show him the way. 
 
 The Jew cast a shrewd and scrutinizing glance on the 
 rooms he went through, for he had the eye of a spy; and he 
 was able to see the misery of poverty through the door into 
 Monsieur Bernard's bedroom, for, unluckily, Monsieur Ber- 
 nard had just been putting on the dress in which he always 
 showed himself to his daughter, and in his haste to admit his 
 visitors he left the door of his kennel ajar. 
 
 He bowed with dignity to Halpersohn, and softly opened 
 his daughter's bedroom door. 
 
 "Vanda, my dear, here is the doctor," he said. 
 
 He stood aside to let Halpersohn pass, still wrapped in his 
 furs. 
 
 The Jew was surprised at the splendor of this room, which 
 in this part of the town seemed anomalous; but his aston- 
 ishment was of no long duration, for he had often seen in the 
 houses of German and Polish Jews a similar discrepancy be- 
 tween the display of extreme penury and concealed wealth. 
 While walking from the door to the bed he never took his eyes 
 off the sufferer ; and when he stood by her side, he said to her 
 in Polish : 
 
 "Are you a Pole ?" 
 
 "1 am not; my mother was/' 
 
 "Whom did your grandfather, General Tarlovski, marry?" 
 
 "A Pole." 
 
 "Of what province ?" 
 
 "A Sobolevska of Pinsk." 
 
 "Good. And this gentleman is your father?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur."
 
 186 THE SEAfiiY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Monsieur," said Halpersohn, "is your wife " 
 
 "She is dead/' replied Monsieur Bernard. 
 
 "Was she excessively fair ?" said Halpersohn, with some im- 
 patience at the interruption. 
 
 "Here is a portrait of her," replied Monsieur Bernard, tak- 
 ing down a handsome frame containing several good minia- 
 tures. 
 
 Halpersohn was feeling the invalid's head and hair, while he 
 looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlovska nee Comtesse Sobo- 
 levska. 
 
 "Tell me the symptoms of the patient's illness." And he 
 seated himself in the armchair, gazing steadily at Vanda dur- 
 ing twenty minutes, while the father and daughter spoke by 
 turns. 
 
 "And how old is the lady ?" 
 
 "Eight-and-thirty." 
 
 "Very good !" he said as he rose. "Well, I undertake to 
 cure her. I cannot promise to give her the use of her legs, 
 but she can be cured. Only, she must be placed in a private 
 hospital in my part of the town." 
 
 "But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved 
 
 "I will answer for her life," said Halpersohn sententiously. 
 "But I answer for her only on those conditions. Do you 
 know she will exchange her present symptoms for another 
 horrible form of disease, which will last for a year perhaps, 
 or six months at the very least ? You can come to see her, as 
 you are her father." 
 
 "And it is certain?" asked Monsieur Bernard. 
 
 "Certain," repeated the Jew. "Your daughter has a vicious 
 humor, a national disorder, in her blood, and it must be 
 brought out. When you bring her, carry her to the Kue 
 Basse-Saint-Pierre at Chaillot Dr. Halpersohn's private hos- 
 pital." 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 "On a stretcher, as the sick people are always carried to 
 a hospital." 
 
 "But it will kill her to be moved."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 187 
 
 "No." 
 
 And Halpersohn, as he spoke this curt No, was at the 
 door, where Godefroid met him on the landing. 
 
 The Jew, who was suffocating with heat, said in his ear: 
 
 "The charge will be fifteen francs a day, besides the thou- 
 sand crowns; three months paid in advance." 
 
 "Very good, monsieur. And," asked Godefroid, standing 
 on the step of the cab into which the doctor had hurried, "you 
 answer for the cure?" 
 
 "Positively," said the Pole. "Are vou in love with the 
 lady?" 
 
 "No," said Godefroid. 
 
 "You must not repeat what I am about to tell you, for I 
 am saying it only to prove to you that I am sure of the cure ; 
 but if you say anything about it, you will be the death of the 
 woman " 
 
 Godefroid replied only by a gesture. 
 
 "For seventeen years she has been suffering from the disease 
 known as Plica Polonica, which can produce all these tor- 
 ments; I have seen the most dreadful cases. Now I am the 
 only man living who knows how to bring out the Plica in such 
 a form as to be curable, for not every one gets over it. You 
 see, monsieur, that I am really very liberal. If this were some 
 great lady a Baronne de Nucingen or any other wife or 
 daughter of some modern Croesus I should get a hundred 
 two hundred thousand francs for this cure whatever I might 
 like to ask ! However, that is a minor misfortune." 
 
 "And moving her?" 
 
 "Oh, she will seem to be dying, but she will not die of it ! 
 She may live a hundred years when once she is cured. Now, 
 Jacques, quick Kue Monsieur, and make haste !" said he to 
 the driver. 
 
 He left Godefroid standing in the street, where he gazed in 
 bewilderment after the retreating cab. 
 
 "Who on earth is that queer-looking man dressed in bear- 
 skin ?" asked Madame Vauthier, whom nothing could escape. 
 "Is it true, as the hackney coachman said, that he is the most 
 famous doctor in Paris?"
 
 188 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 "And what can that matter to you, Mother Vauthier?" 
 
 "Oh, not at all," said she with a sour face. 
 
 "You made a great mistake in not siding with me," said 
 Godefroid, as he slowly went into the house. "You would 
 have done better than by sticking to Monsieur Barbet and 
 Monsieur Metivier; you will get nothing out of them." 
 
 "And am I on their side ?" retorted she with a shrug. "Mon- 
 sieur Barbet is my landlord, that is all." 
 
 It took two days to persuade Monsieur Bernard to part from 
 his daughter and carry her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the 
 old lawyer walked all the way, one on each side of the 
 stretcher, screened in with striped blue-and-white tickings, on 
 which the precious patient lay, almost tied down to the mat- 
 tress, so greatly did her father fear the convulsions of a ner- 
 vous attack. However, having set out at three o'clock, the pro- 
 cession reached the private hospital at five, when it was dusk. 
 Godefroid paid the four hundred and fifty francs demanded 
 for the three months' board, and took a receipt for it; then, 
 when he went down to pay the two porters, Monsieur Bernard 
 joined him and took from under the mattress a very volu- 
 minous sealed packet, which he handed to Godefroid. 
 
 "One of these men will fetch you a cab," said he, "for you 
 cannot x;arry those four volumes very far. This is my book ; 
 place it in my censor's hands ; I will leave it with him for a 
 week. I shall remain at least a week in this neighborhood, 
 for I cannot abandon my daughter to her fate. I know my 
 grandson; he can mind the house, especially with you to help 
 him; and I commend him to JOMT care. If I were myself 
 what once I was, I would ask you my critic's name; for if 
 he was once a magistrate, there were few whom I did not 
 know " 
 
 "It is no mystery," said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur 
 Bernard. "Since you show such entire confidence in me, I 
 may tell you that the reader is the President Lecamus de 
 Tresnes."" 
 
 "Oh, of the Supreme Court in Paris. Take it by all 
 means. He is one of the noblest men of our time. He and
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 189 
 
 the late Judge Popinot, the judge of the Lower Court, were 
 lawyers worthy of the best days of the old Parlements. All 
 my fears, if I had any, must vanish. And where does he 
 live? I should like to go and thank him when he has taken 
 so much trouble." 
 
 "You will find him in the Rue Chanoinesse, under the name 
 of Monsieur Nicolas. I am just going there. But your agree- 
 ment with those rascals?" 
 
 "Auguste will give it you," said the old man, going back 
 into the hospital. 
 
 A cab was found on the Quai de Billy and brought by one 
 of the men; Godefroid got in and stimulated the driver by 
 the promise of drink money if he drove quickly to the Rue 
 Chanoinesse, where he intended to dine. 
 
 Half an hour after Vanda's removal, three men, dressed 
 in black, were let in by Madame Vauthier at the dqor in the 
 Rue N"otre-Dame des Champs, where they had been waiting, 
 no doubt, till the coast should be clear. They went upstairs 
 under the guidance of the Judas in petticoats, and gently 
 knocked at Monsieur Bernard's door. As it happened to be a 
 Thursday, the young collegian was at home. He opened the 
 door, and three men slipped like shadows into the outer room. 
 
 "What do you want, gentlemen?" asked the youth. 
 
 "This is Monsieur Bernard's that is to say, Monsieur le 
 Baron ?" 
 
 "But what do you want here?" 
 
 "Oh, you know that pretty well, young man, for your grand- 
 father has just gone off with a closed litter, I am told. Well, 
 that does not surprise us ; he shows his wisdom. I am a bailiff, 
 and I have come to seize everything here. On Monday last 
 you were summoned to pay three thousand francs and the 
 expenses to Monsieur Metivier, under penalty of imprison- 
 ment; and as a man who has grown onions knows the smell 
 of chives, the debtor has taken the key of the fields rather than 
 wait for that of the lock-up. However, if we cannot secure 
 him, we can get a wing or a leg of his gorgeous furniture
 
 190 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 for we know all about it, young man, and we are going to make 
 an official report." 
 
 "Here are some stamped papers that your grandpapa would 
 never take," said the widow Vauthier, shoving three writs 
 into Auguste's hand. 
 
 "Stay here, ma'am; we will put you in possession. The 
 law gives you forty sous a day ; it is not to be sneezed at." 
 
 "Ah, ha ! Then I shall see what there is in the grand bed- 
 room !" cried Madame Vauthier. 
 
 "You shall not go into my mother's room !" cried the lad 
 in a fury, as he flung himself between the door and the three 
 men in black. 
 
 On a sign from their leader, the two men and a lawyer's 
 clerk who came in seized Auguste. 
 
 "No resistance, young man; you arc not master here. We 
 shall draw up a charge, and you will spend the night in the 
 lock-up." . 
 
 At this dreadful threat, Auguste melted into tears. 
 
 "Oh, what a mercy," cried he, "that mamma is gone ! This 
 would have killed her !" 
 
 The men and the bailiff now held a sort of council with 
 the widow Vauthier. Auguste understood, though they talked 
 in a low voice, that what they chiefly wanted was to seize his 
 grandfather's manuscripts, so he opened the bedroom door. 
 
 "Walk in then, gentlemen," said he, "but spoil nothing. 
 You will be paid to-morrow morning." Then, still in tears, he 
 went into his own squalid room, snatched up all his grand- 
 father's notes, and stuffed them into the stove, where he knew 
 that there was not a spark of fire. 
 
 The thing was done so promptly, that the bailiff, though 
 he was keen and cunning, and worthy of his employers Barbet 
 and Metivier, found the boy in tears on a chair when he rushed 
 into the room, having concluded that the manuscripts would 
 not be in the ante-room. Though books and manuscripts may 
 not legally be seized for debt, the lien signed by the old lawyer 
 in this case justified the proceeding. Still, it would have been 
 easy to find means of delaying the distraint, as Monsieur
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 191 
 
 Bernard would certainly have known. Hence the necessity 
 for acting- with cunning. 
 
 The widow Vauthier had been an invaluable ally to her 
 landlord by failing to serve his notices on her lodger ; her plan 
 was to throw them on him when entering at the heels of the 
 officers of justice; or, if necessary, to declare to Monsieur 
 Bernard that she had supposed them to be intended for the 
 two writers who had been absent for two days. 
 
 The inventory of the goods took above an hour to make 
 out/ for the bailiff would omit nothing, and regarded the value 
 as sufficient to pay off the debts. 
 
 As soon as the officers were gone, the poor youth took the 
 writs and hurried away to find his grandfather at Halper- 
 sohn's hospital; for, as the bailiff assured him that Madame 
 Vauthier was responsible for everything under heavy penal- 
 ties, he could leave the place without fear. 
 
 The idea of his grandfather's being taken to prison for 
 debt drove the poor boy absolutely mad mad in the way in 
 which the young are mad ; that is to say, a victim to the dan- 
 gerous and fatal excitement in which every energy of youth is 
 in a ferment and may lead to the worst as to the most heroic 
 actions. 
 
 When poor Auguste reached the Rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, 
 the doorkeeper told him that he did not know what had be- 
 come of the father of the patient brought in at five o'clock, 
 but that by Monsieur Halpersohn's orders no one not even 
 her father was to be allowed to see the lady for a week, or it 
 might endanger her life. 
 
 This reply put a climax to Auguste's desperation. He went 
 back again to the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, revolving the 
 most extravagant schemes as he went. He got home by about 
 half-past eight, almost starving, so exhausted by hunger and 
 grief, that he accepted when Madame Vauthier invited him 
 to share her supper, consisting of a stew of mutton and pota- 
 toes. The poor boy dropped half dead into a chair in the 
 dreadful woman's room. 
 
 Encouraged by the old woman's coaxing and insinuating
 
 192 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 words, he answered a few cunningly arranged questions about 
 Godefroid, and gave her to understand that it was he who 
 would pay off his grandfather's debts on the morrow, and 
 that to him they owed the improvement that had taken place 
 in their prospects during the past week. The widow listened 
 to all this with an affectation of doubt, plying Auguste with a 
 few glasses of wine. 
 
 At ten o'clock the wheels of a cab were heard to stop in 
 front of the house, and the woman exclaimed : 
 
 "Oh, there is Monsieur Godefroid !" 
 
 Auguste took the key of his rooms and went upstairs to 
 see the kind friend of the family; but he found Godefroid 
 so entirely unlike himself, that he hesitated to speak till the 
 thought of his grandfather's danger spurred the generous 
 youth. 
 
 This is what had happened in the Hue Chanoinesse, and 
 had caused Godefroid's stern expression of countenance. 
 
 The neophyte, arriving in good time, had found Madame 
 de la Chanterie and her adherents in the drawing-room, and 
 he had taken Monsieur Nicolas aside to deliver to him the 
 Spirit of the Modern Laws. Monsieur Nicolas at once carried 
 the sealed parcel to his room, and came down to dinner. Then, 
 after chatting during the first part of the evening, he went up 
 again, intending to begin reading the work. 
 
 Godefroid was greatly surprised when, a few minutes after, 
 Manon came from the old judge to beg him to go up to speak 
 with him. Following Manon, he was led to Monsieur Nicolas' 
 room ; but he could pay no attention to its details, so greatly 
 was he startled by the evident distress of a man usually so 
 placid and firm. 
 
 "Did you know," said Monsieur Nicolas, quite the Judge 
 again, "the name of the author of this work?" 
 
 "Monsieur Bernard," said Godefroid. "I know him only 
 by that name. I did not open the parcel 
 
 "True," said Monsieur Nicolas. "I broke the seals myself. 
 And you made no inquiry as to his previous history?"
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 193 
 
 "No. I know that he married for love the daughter of 
 General Tarlovski, that his daughter is named Vanda after 
 her mother, and his grandson Auguste. And the portrait I 
 saw of Monsieur Bernard is, I believe, in the dress of a Pre- 
 siding Judge a red gown/' 
 
 "Look here I" said Monsieur Nicolas, and held out the title 
 of the work in Auguste's handwriting, and in the following 
 form: 
 
 THE SPIEIT 
 
 OF THE MODEEN LAWS 
 
 BY 
 M. BERNARD-JEAN-BAPTISTE MACLODD 
 
 BARON BOURLAC 
 
 Formerly Attorney-General to the High Court of Justice at Rouen 
 Commander of the Legion of Honor. 
 
 "Oh! The man who condemned Madame, her daughter, 
 and the Chevalier du Vissard!" said Godefroid in a choked 
 voice. 
 
 His knees gave way, and the neophyte dropped on to a 
 chair. 
 
 "What a beginning!" he murmured. 
 
 "This, my dear Godefroid, is a business that comes home 
 to us all. You have done your part; we must deal with it 
 now ! I beg you to do nothing further of any kind ; go and 
 fetch whatever you left in your rooms ; and not a word ! In 
 fact, absolute silence. Tell Baron Bourlac to apply to me. 
 Between this and then, we shall have decided how it will be 
 best to act in such circumstances." 
 
 Godefroid went downstairs, called a hackney cab, and hur- 
 ried back to the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with hor- 
 ror as he thought of the examination and trials at Caen, of 
 the hideous drama that ended on the scaffold, and of Madame 
 de la Chanterie's sojourn in Bicetre. He understood the neg- 
 13
 
 194 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 lect into which this lawyer, almost a second Fouquier-Tin- 
 ville, had fallen in his old age, and the reasons why he so care- 
 fully concealed his name. 
 
 "I hope Monsieur Nicolas will take some terrible revenge 
 for poor Madame de la Chanterie!" 
 
 He had just thought out this not very Christian wish, when 
 he saw Auguste. 
 
 "What do you want of me?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "My dear sir, a misfortune has befallen us which is turning 
 my brain ! Some scoundrels have been here to take possession 
 of everything belonging to my mother, and they are hunting 
 for my grandfather to put him into prison. But it is not 
 by reason of these disasters that I turn to you for help," said 
 the lad with Roman pride ; "it is to beg you to do me such a 
 service as you would do to a condemned criminal " 
 
 "Speak," said Godefroid. 
 
 "They wanted to get hold of my grandfather's manuscripts ; 
 and as I believe he placed the work in your hands, I want to 
 beg you to take the notes, for the woman will not allow me to 
 remove a thing. Put them with the volumes, and then 
 
 "Very well," said Godefroid, "make haste and fetch them." 
 
 While the lad went off, to return immediately, Godefroid 
 reflected that the poor boy was guilty of no crime, that he 
 must not break his heart by telling him about his grandfather, 
 or the desertion which was the punishment in his sad old age 
 of the passions of his political career ; he took the packet not 
 unkindly. 
 
 "What is your mother's name?" he asked. 
 
 "My mother, monsieur, is the Baronne de Mergi. My 
 father was the son of the Presiding Judge of the Supreme 
 Court at Rouen." 
 
 "Ah !" said Godefroid, "so your grandfather married his 
 daughter to the son of the famous Judge Mergi ?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Leave me, my little friend," said Godefroid. 
 
 He went out on to the landing with the young Baron de 
 Mergi, and called Madame Vauthier.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 195 
 
 "Mother Vauthier," said he, "you can relet my rooms; I 
 am never coming back again." 
 
 And he went down to the cab. 
 
 "Have you intrusted anything to that gentleman?" asked 
 the widow of Auguste. 
 
 "Yes," said the lad. 
 
 "You're a pretty fool. He is one of your enemies' agents. 
 He has been at the bottom of it all, you may be sure. It is 
 proof enough that the trick has turned out all right that he 
 never means to come back. He told me I could let his rooms." 
 
 Auguste flew out, and down the boulevard, running after 
 the cab, and at last succeeded in stopping it by his shouts and 
 cries. 
 
 "What is it?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "My grandfather's manuscripts?" 
 
 "Tell him to apply for them to Monsieur Nicolas." 
 
 The lad took this reply as the cruel jest of a thief who has 
 no shame left ; he sat down in the snow as he saw the cab set 
 off again at a brisk trot. 
 
 He rose in a fever of fierce energy and went home to bed, 
 worn out with rushing about Paris, and quite heart-broken. 
 
 Next morning, Auguste de Mergi awoke to find himself 
 alone in the rooms where yesterday his mother and his grand- 
 father had been with him, and he went through all the mis- 
 eries of his position, of which he fully understood the extent. 
 The utter desertion of the place, hitherto so amply filled, 
 where every minute had brought with it a duty and an occu- 
 pation, was so painful to him, that he went down to ask the 
 widow Vauthier whether his grandfather had come in during 
 the night or early morning ; for he himself had slept very 
 late, and he supposed that if the Baron Bourlac had come 
 home the woman would have warned him against his pur- 
 suers. She replied, with a sneer, that he must know full well 
 where to look for his grandfather; for if he had not come in, 
 it was evident that he had taken up his abode in the "Chateau 
 do Clichy." This impudent irony from the woman who, the 
 day before, had cajoled him so effectually, again drove the 
 VOL. 1644
 
 196 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 poor boy to frenzy, and he flew to the private hospital in the 
 Eue Basse-Saint-Pierre, in despair, as he thought of his 
 grandfather in prison. 
 
 Baron Bourlac had hung about all night in front of the 
 hospital which he was forbidden to enter, or close to the house 
 of Doctor Halpersohn, whom he naturally wished to call to 
 account for this conduct. The doctor did not get home till 
 two in the morning. The old man, who, at half-past one, had 
 been at the doctor's door, had just gone off to walk in the 
 Champs-filysees, and when he returned at half-past two the 
 gatekeeper told him that Monsieur Halpersohn was now in 
 bed and asleep, and was on no account to be disturbed. 
 
 Here, alone, at half-past two in the morning, the unhappy 
 father, in utter despair, paced the quay, and under the trees, 
 loaded with frost, of the sidewalks of the Cours-la-Beine, 
 waiting for the day. 
 
 At nine o'clock he presented himself at the doctor's, and 
 asked him why he thus kept his daughter under lock and key. 
 
 "Monsieur," said Halpersohn, "I yesterday made myself 
 answerable for your daughter's recovery ; and at this moment 
 I am responsible for her life, and you must understand that 
 in such a case I must have sovereign authority. I may tell 
 you that your daughter yesterday took a remedy which will 
 give her the Plica, that till the disease is brought out the lady 
 must remain invisible. I will not allow myself to lose my 
 patient or you to lose your daughter by exposing her to any 
 excitement, any error of treatment; if you really insist on 
 seeing her, I shall demand a consultation of three medical 
 men to protect myself against any responsibility, as the pa- 
 tient might die." 
 
 The old man, exhausted with fatigue, had dropped on to a 
 chair; he quickly rose, however, saying: 
 
 "Forgive me, monsieur; I have spent the night in mortal 
 anguish, for you cannot imagine how much I love my daugh- 
 ter, whom I have nursed for fifteen years between life and 
 death, and this week of waiting is torture to me !"
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 197 
 
 The Baron left Halpersohn's study, tottering like a drunken 
 man, the doctor giving him his arm to the top of the stairs. 
 
 About an hour later, he saw Auguste de Mergi walk into 
 his room. On questioning the lodge-keeper of the private 
 hospital, the poor lad had just heard that the father of the 
 lady admitted the day before had called again in the evening, 
 had asked for her, and had spoken of going early in the day 
 to Doctor Halpersohn, who, no doubt, would know something 
 about him. At the moment when Auguste de Mergi appeared 
 in the doctor's room, Halpersohn was breakfasting off a cup 
 of chocolate and a glass of water, all on a small round table ; 
 he did not disturb himself for the youth, but went on soaking 
 his strip of bread in the chocolate; for he ate nothing but a 
 roll, cut into four with an accuracy that argued some skill as 
 an operator. Halpersohn had, in fact, practised surgery in 
 the course of his travels. 
 
 "Well, young man," said he as Vanda's son came in, "you 
 too have come to require me to account for your mother?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," said Auguste. 
 
 The young fellow had come forward as far as the large 
 table, and his eye was immediately caught by several bank- 
 notes lying among the little piles of gold pieces. In the posi- 
 tion in which the unhappy boy found himself, the temptation 
 was stronger than his principles, well grounded as they were. 
 He saw before him the means of rescuing his grandfather, and 
 saving the fruits of twenty years' labor imperiled by avari- 
 cious speculators. He fell. The fascination was as swift as 
 thought, and justified itself by an idea of self-immolation that 
 smiled on the boy. He said to himself: 
 
 "I shall be done for, but I shall save my mother and my 
 grandfather." 
 
 Under this stress of antagonism between his reason and the 
 impulse to crime, he acquired, as madmen do, a strange and 
 fleeting dexterity, and instead of asking after his grandfather, 
 he listened and agreed to all the doctor was saying. 
 
 Halpersohn, like all acute observers, had understood the 
 whole past history of the father, the daughter, and her son.
 
 198 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 He had scented or guessed the facts which Madame de Mergi's 
 conversation had confirmed, and he felt in consequence a sort 
 of benevolence towards his new clients; as to respect or ad- 
 miration, he was incapable of them. 
 
 "Well, my dear boy," said he familiarly, "I am keeping 
 your mother to restore her to you young, handsome, and in 
 good health. Hers is one of those rare diseases which doc- 
 tors find very interesting; and besides, she is, through her 
 mother, a fellow-countrywoman of mine. You and your 
 grandfather must be brave enough to live without seeing her 
 for a fortnight, and madame ?" 
 
 "La Baronne de Mergi." 
 
 "If she is a Baroness, you are Baron ?" asked Halper- 
 
 sohn. 
 
 At this moment the theft was effected. While the doctor 
 was looking at his bread, heavy with chocolate, Auguste 
 snatched up four folded notes, and had slipped them into his 
 trousers pocket, affecting to keep his hand there out of sheer 
 embarrassment. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur, I am a Baron. So too is my grandfather; 
 he was public prosecutor at the time of the Kestoration." 
 
 "You blush, young man. You need not blush because you 
 are a Baron and poor it is a very common case." 
 
 "And who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?" 
 
 "Well, your grandfather told me that he had spent the night 
 in the Champs-filysees ; and though I know no palace where 
 there is so fine a vault overhead as that which was glittering 
 at two o'clock this morning, it was cold, I can tell you, in the 
 palace where your grandfather was taking his airing. A man 
 does not go "to the Hotel de la belle-Etoile by preference." 
 
 "Has my grandfather been here?" cried Auguste, seizing 
 the opportunity to beat a retreat. "Thank* you, monsieur. I 
 will come again, with your permission, for news of my 
 mother." 
 
 As soon as he got out, the young Baron went off to the bail- 
 iff's office, taking a hackney cab to get there the sooner. The 
 man gave up the agreement, and the bill of costs duly re-
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 199 
 
 eeipted, and then desired the young man to take one of the 
 clerks with him to release the person in charge from her func- 
 tions. 
 
 "And as Messrs. Barbet and Metivier live in your part of 
 the town," added he, "my boy will take them the money and 
 desire them to restore you the deed of lien on the property." 
 
 Auguste, who understood nothing of these phrases and 
 formalities, submitted. He received seven hundred francs in 
 silver, the change out of his four thousand-franc notes, and 
 went off in the clerk's company. He got into the cab in a 
 state of indescribable bewilderment, for the end being 
 achieved, remorse was making itself felt ; he saw himself dis- 
 graced and cursed by his grandfather, whose austerity was 
 well known to him ; and he believed that his mother would die 
 of grief if she heard of his guilt. All nature had changed 
 before his eyes. He was lost ; he no longer saw the snow, the 
 houses looked like ghosts. 
 
 No sooner was he at home than the young Baron decided 
 on his course of action, and it was certainly that of an honest 
 man. He went into his mother's room and took the diamond 
 snuff-box given to his grandfather by the Emperor to send it 
 with the seven hundred francs to Doctor Halpersohn with the 
 following letter, which required several rough copies : 
 
 "MONSIEUR, The fruits of twenty years' labor my grand- 
 father's work were about to be absorbed by some money- 
 lenders, who threatened him with imprisonment. Three thou- 
 sand three hundred francs were enough to save him ; and see- 
 ing so much gold on your table, I could not resist the idea of 
 seeing my parent free by thus making good to him the earn- 
 ings of his long toil. I borrowed from you, without your 
 leave, four thousand francs; but as only three thousand three 
 hundred francs were needed, I send you the remaining seven 
 hundred, and with them a snuff-box set with diamonds, given 
 by the Emperor to my grandfather; this will, I hope, indem- 
 nify you. . 
 
 "If you should not after this believe that I, who shall all
 
 200 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 my life regard you as my benefactor, am a man of honor, if 
 you will at any rate preserve silence as to an action so unjusti- 
 able in any other circumstances, you will have saved my grand- 
 father as you will save my mother, and I shall be for life your 
 devoted slave. 
 
 "AUGOSTE DE MERGI." 
 
 At about half-past two, Auguste, who had walked to the 
 Champs-filysees, sent a messenger on to deliver at Doctor 
 Halpersohn's door a sealed box containing ten louis, a five- 
 hundred-franc note, and the snuff-box; then he slowly went 
 home across the Pont d'lena by the Invalides and the Boule- 
 vards, trusting to Doctor Halpersohn's generosity. 
 
 The physician, who had at once discovered the theft, had 
 meanwhile changed his views as to his clients. He supposed 
 that the old man had come to rob him, and, not having suc- 
 ceeded, had sent this boy. He put no credence in the rank 
 and titles they had assumed, and went off at once to the public 
 prosecutor's office to state his case, and desire that immediate- 
 steps should be taken for the prosecution. 
 
 The prudence of the law rarely allows of such rapid pro- 
 ceedings as the complaining parties would wish ; but, at about 
 three in the afternoon, a police officer, followed by some detec- 
 tives, who affected to be lounging on the boulevard, was cate- 
 chizing Madame Vauthier as to her lodgers, and the widow 
 quite unconsciously was confirming the constable's suspi- 
 cions. 
 
 Ne'pomucene, scenting the policeman, thought that it was 
 the old man they wanted ; and as he was very fond of Mon- 
 sieur Auguste, he hurried out to meet Monsieur Bernard, 
 whom he intercepted in the Avenue de 1'Observatoire. 
 
 "Make your escape, monsieur," cried he. "They have come 
 to take you. The bailiffs were in yesterday and laid hands 
 on everything. Mother Vauthier, who has hidden feome 
 stamped papers of yours, said you would be in Clichy by last 
 night or this morning. There, do you see those sneaks?" 
 
 The old judge recognized the men as bailiffs, and he under- 
 stood everything.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 201 
 
 "And Monsieur Godefroid ?" he asked. 
 
 "Gone, never to come back. Mother Vauthier says he was a 
 spy for your enemies." 
 
 Monsieur Bourlac determined that he would go at once to 
 Barbet, and in a quarter of an hour he was there; the old 
 bookseller lived in the Rue Sainte-Catherine-d'Enfer. 
 
 "Oh, you have come yourself to fetch your agreement," said 
 the publisher, bowing to his victim. "Here it is," and, to the 
 Baron's great amazement, he handed him the document, which 
 the old lawyer took, saying : 
 
 "I do not understand " 
 
 "Then it was not you who paid up?" said Barbet. 
 
 "Are you paid?" 
 
 "Your grandson carried the money to the bailiff this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 "And is it true that you took possession of my goods yester- 
 day?" 
 
 "Have you not been home for two days?" said Barbet. 
 "Still, a retired public prosecutor must know what it is to be 
 threatened with imprisonment for debt !" 
 
 On this the Baron bowed coldly to Barbet, and returned 
 home, supposing that the authorities had in fact come in 
 search of the authors living on the first floor. He walked 
 slowly, absorbed in vague apprehensions, for Nepomucene's 
 warning seemed to him more and more inexplicable. Could 
 Godefroid have betrayed him ? He mechanically turned down 
 the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and went in by the back 
 door, which happened to be open, running against Nepomu- 
 cene. 
 
 "Oh, monsieur, make haste, come on ; they are taking Mon- 
 sieur Auguste to prison; they caught him on the boulevard; 
 it was him they were hunting they have been questioning 
 him " 
 
 The old man, with a spring like a tiger's, rushed through 
 the house and garden and out on to the boulevard, as swift as 
 an arrow, and was just in time to see his grandson get into 
 a hackney coach between three men.
 
 202 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Aiiguste," he cried, "what is the meaning of this?" 
 
 The youth burst into tears, and turned faint. 
 
 "Monsieur," said he to the police officer, whose scarf struck 
 his eye, "I am Baron Bourlac, formerly a public prosecutor; 
 for pity's sake, explain the matter." 
 
 "Monsieur, if you are Baron Bourlac, you will understand 
 it in two words. I have just questioned this young man, and 
 he has unfortunately confessed " 
 
 "What ?" 
 
 "A theft of four thousand francs from Doctor Halpersohn." 
 
 "Auguste ! Is it possible ?" 
 
 "Grandpapa, I have sent him your diamond snuff-box as a 
 guarantee. I wanted to save you from the disgrace of im- 
 prisonment." 
 
 "Wretched boy, what have you done?" cried the Baron. 
 "The diamonds are false; I sold the real stones three years 
 ago." 
 
 The police officer and his clerk looked at each other with 
 strange meaning. This glance, full of suggestions, was seen 
 by the Baron, and fell like a thunderbolt. 
 
 "Monsieur," said he to the officer, "be quite easy ; I will go 
 and see the public prosecutor; you can testify to the delusion 
 in which I have kept my daughter and my grandson. You 
 must do your duty, but in the name of humanity, send my 
 grandson to a cell by himself. I will go to prison. Where 
 are you taking him ?" 
 
 "Are you Baron Bourlac ?" said the constable. 
 
 "Oh! Monsieur " 
 
 "Because the public prosecutor, the examining judge, and 
 I myself could not believe that such men as you and your 
 grandson could be guilty; like the doctor, we concluded that 
 some swindlers had borrowed your names." 
 
 He took the Baron aside and said : 
 
 "Were you at Doctor Halpersohn's house this morning?" 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "And your grandson too, about half-an-hour later?" 
 
 "I know nothing about that; I have this instant come in, 
 and I have not seen my grandson since yesterday."
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 203 
 
 "The writs he showed me and the warrant for arrest ex- 
 p) un everything," said the police agent. "I know his motive 
 fot the crime. I ought indeed to arrest you, monsieur, as 
 abetting your grandson, for your replies confirm the facts 
 alleged by the complainant; but the notices served on you, 
 and 1 which I return to you," he added, holding out a packet 
 of stamped papers which he had in his hand, "certainly prove 
 you to be Baron Bourlac. At the same time, you must be pre- 
 pared to be called up before Monsieur Marest, the examining 
 judge in this case. I believe I am right in relaxing the usual 
 rule in consideration of your past dignity. 
 
 "As to your grandson, I will speak of him to the public 
 prosecutor as soon as I go in, and we will show every possible 
 consideration for the grandson of a retired judge, and the vic- 
 tim of a youthful error. Still, there is the indictment, the 
 accused has confessed; I have sent in my report, and have a 
 warrant for his imprisonment; I cannot help myself. As to 
 the place of detention, your grandson will be taken to the 
 Conciergerie." 
 
 "Thank you, monsieur," said the miserable Bourlac. He 
 fell senseless on the snow, and tumbled into one of the rain- 
 water cisterns, which at that time divided the trees on the 
 boulevard. 
 
 The police officer called for help, and Nepomucene hurried 
 out with Madame Vauthier. The old man was carried in- 
 doors, and the woman begged the police constable, as he went 
 by the Rue d'Eufer, to send Doctor Berton as quickly as pos- 
 sible. 
 
 "What is the matter with my grandfather?" asked poor 
 Auguste. 
 
 "He is crazed, sir. That is what comes of thieving!" 
 
 Auguste made a rush as though to crack his skull ; but the 
 two men held him back. 
 
 "Come, come, young man. Take it quietly," said the officer. 
 "Be calm. You have done wrong, but it is not irremediable." 
 
 "But pray, monsieur, tell tho woman that my grandfather 
 has probably not touched food for these twenty-four hours."
 
 204 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 "Oh, poor creatures !" said the officer to himself. 
 
 He stopped the coach, which had started, and said a word 
 in his clerk's ear; the man ran off to speak to old Vauthier, 
 and then returned at once. 
 
 Monsieur Berton was of opinion that Monsieur Bernard 
 for he knew him hy no other name was suffering from an 
 attack of high fever; but when Madame Vauthier had told 
 him of all the events that had led up to it in the way in which 
 a housekeeper tells a stor} r , the doctor thought it necessary 
 to report the whole business next day to Monsieur Alain at 
 the Church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, and Monsieur 
 Alain sent a pencil note by messenger to Monsieur Nicolas, 
 Eue Chanoinesse. 
 
 Godefroid, on reaching home the night before, had given 
 the notes on the book to Monsieur Nicolas, who spent the 
 greater part of the night in reading the first volume of Baron 
 Bourlac's work. 
 
 On the following day Madame de la Chanterie told Gode- 
 froid that if his determination still held good, he might begin 
 on his work at once. 
 
 Godefroid, initiated by her into the financial secrets of the 
 Society, worked for seven or eight hours a day, and for several 
 months, under the supervision of Frederic Mongenod, who 
 came every Sunday to look through the work, and who praised 
 him for the way in which it was done. 
 
 "You are a valuable acquisition for the saints among whom 
 you live," said the banker when all the accounts were clearly 
 set forth and balanced. "Two or three hours a day will now 
 be enough to keep the accounts in order, and during the rest 
 of your time you can help them, if you still feel the vocation 
 as you did six months since." 
 
 This was in the month of July 1838. During the time that 
 had elapsed since the affair of the Boulevard du Mont-Par- 
 nasse, Godefroid, eager to prove himself worthy of his com- 
 panions, had never asked a single question as to Baron Bour- 
 )ac; for, as he had not heard a word, nor found anything in
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 205 
 
 the account-books that bore on the matter, he suspected that 
 the silence that was preserved with regard to the two men who 
 had been so ruthless to Madame de la Chanterie, was intended 
 as a test to which he was being put, or perhaps as proof that 
 the noble lady's friends had avenged her. 
 
 But, two months later, in the course of a walk one day, he 
 went as far as the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, managed 
 to meet Madame Vauthier, and asked her for some news of the 
 Bernard family. 
 
 "Who can tell, my dear Monsieur Godefroid, what has be- 
 come of those people. Two days after your expedition for it 
 was you, you cunning dog, who blabbed to my landlord 
 som'ebody came who took that old swaggerer off my hands. 
 Then, in four-and-twenty hours, everything was cleared out 
 not a stick left, nor a word said perfect strangers to me, 
 and they told me nothing. I believe he packed himself off 
 to Algiers with his precious grandson; for Nepomucene, who 
 was very devoted to that young thief he is no better than he 
 should be himself did not find him in the Conciergerie, and 
 he alone knows where they are, and the scamp has gone off and 
 left me. You bring up these wretched foundlings, and this 
 is the reward you get; they leave you high and dry. I have 
 not been able to find any one to take his place, and as the 
 neighborhood is very crowded, and the house is full, I am 
 worked to death." 
 
 And Godefroid would never have known anything more of 
 Baron Bourlac but for the conclusion of the adventure, which 
 came about through one of the chance meetings which occur 
 in Paris. 
 
 In the month of September, Godefroid was walking down 
 the Champs-filysees, when, as he passed the end of the Eue 
 Marbeuf, he remembered Doctor Halpersohn. 
 
 "I ought to call on him," thought he, "and ask if he cured 
 Bourlac's daughter. What a voice, what a gift she had ! She 
 wanted to dedicate herself to God !" 
 
 As he got to the Rond-Point, Godefroid crossed the road 
 hurriedly to avoid the carriages that came quickly down the
 
 206 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 grand avenue, and he ran up against a youth who had a young- 
 looking woman on his arm. 
 
 "Take care I" cried the young man. "Are you blind ?" 
 
 "Why, it is you !" cried Godefroid, recognizing Auguste de 
 Mergi. 
 
 Auguste was so well dressed, so handsome, so smart, so 
 proud of the lady he was escorting, that, but for the mem- 
 ories that rushed on his mind, Godefroid would hardly have 
 recognized them. 
 
 "Why, it is dear Monsieur Godefroid !" exclaimed the lady. 
 
 On hearing the delightful tones of Vanda's enchanting 
 voice, and seeing her walking, Godefroid stood riveted to the 
 spot. 
 
 "Cured !" he exclaimed. 
 
 "Ten days ago he allowed me to walk," she replied. 
 
 "Halpersohn?" 
 
 "Yes," said she. "And why have you never come to see us ? 
 But, indeed, you were wise. My hair was not cut off till 
 about a week ago. This that you see is but a wig; but the 
 doctor assures me it will grow again ! But we have so much 
 to say to each other. Will you not come to dine with us ? 
 Oh, that harmonium ! Oh, monsieur !" and she put her hand- 
 kerchief to her eyes. "I will treasure it all my life ! My son 
 will preserve it as a relic. My father has sought for you all 
 through Paris, and he is anxiously in search, too, of his un- 
 known benefactors. He will die of grief if you cannot help 
 him to find them. He suffers from the darkest melancholy, 
 and I cannot always succeed in rousing him from it." 
 
 Fascinated alike by the voice of this charming woman re- 
 called from the grave, and by that of irresistible curiosity, 
 Godefroid gave his arm to the hand held out by the Baronne 
 de Mergi, who let her son go on in front with an errand, which 
 the lad had understood from his mother's nod. 
 
 "I shall not take you far ; we are living in the Allee d'Antin 
 in a pretty little house a I'Anglaise; we have it all to our- 
 selves, each of us occupies a floor. Oh, we are very comfort- 
 able ! And my father believes that you have had a great deal 
 to do with the good fortune that is poured upon us "
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 207 
 
 "I ?" 
 
 "Did you not know that a place has been created for him 
 in consequence of a report from the Minister for Public In- 
 struction,, a Chair of Legislature, like one at the Sorbonne? 
 My father will give his first course of lectures in the month 
 of November next. The great work on which he was engaged 
 will be published in a month or so; the house of Cavalier is 
 bringing it out on half-profits with my father, and has paid 
 him thirty thousand francs on account of his share; so he is 
 buying the house we live in. The Minister of Justice allows 
 me a pension of twelve hundred francs as the daughter of a 
 retired magistrate; my father has his pension of a thousand 
 crowns, and he had five thousand francs with his professor- 
 ship. We are so economical that we shall be almost rich. 
 
 "My Auguste will begin studying the law a few months 
 hence; meanwhile, he has employment in the public prosecu- 
 tor's office, and gets twelve hundred francs. Oh, Monsieur 
 Godefroid, never mention that miserable business of my poor 
 Auguste's. For my part, I bless him every day for the deed 
 which his grandfather has not yet forgiven. His mother 
 blesses him, Halpersohn is devoted to him, but the old public 
 prosecutor is implacable !" 
 
 "What business?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "Ah ! that is just like your generosity !" cried Vanda. "You 
 have a noble heart. Your mother must be proud of you ! -" 
 
 "On my word, I know nothing of the matter you allude to," 
 said Godefroid. 
 
 "Really, you did not hear?" And she frankly told the story 
 of Auguste's borrowing from the doctor, admiring her son for 
 the action. 
 
 "But if I am to say nothing about this bef6re the Baron," 
 said Godefroid, "tell me how your son got out of the scrape." 
 
 "Well," said Vanda, "as I told you, my son is in the public 
 prosecutor's office, and has met with the greatest kindness. He 
 was not kept more than eight-and-forty hours in the Con- 
 ciergerie, where he was lodged with the governor. The 
 worthy doctor, who did not get Auguste's beautiful, sublime
 
 208 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 letter till the evening, withdrew the charge ; and by the inter- 
 vention of a former presiding judge of the Supreme Court 
 a man my father had never even seen the public prosecutor 
 had the police agent's report and the warrant for arrest both 
 destroyed. In fact, not a trace of the affair survives but in my 
 heart, in my son's conscience, and in his grandfather's mind 
 who, since that day, speaks to my boy in the coldest terms, 
 and treats him as a stranger. 
 
 "Only yesterday, Halpersohn was interceding for him ; but 
 my father, who will not listen to me, much as he loves me, 
 replied: 'You are the person robbed, you can and ought to 
 forgive. But I am answerable for the thief and when I sat 
 on the Bench, I never pronounced a pardon !' 'You will kill 
 your daughter,' said Halpersohn I heard them. My father 
 kept silence." 
 
 "But who is it that has helped you?" 
 
 "A gentleman who is, we believe, employed to distribute 
 the benefactions of the Queen." 
 
 "What is he like?" asked Godefroid. 
 
 "He is a grave, thin man, sad-looking something like my 
 father. It was he who had my father conveyed to the house 
 where we now are, when he was in a high fever. And, just 
 fancy, as soon as my father was well, I was removed from the 
 private hospital and brought there, where I found my old 
 bedroom just as though I had never left it. Halpersohn, 
 whom the tall gentleman had quite bewitched how I know 
 not then told me all about my father's sufferings, and how he 
 had sold the diamonds off his snuff-box ! My father and my 
 boy often without bread, and making believe to be rich in my 
 presence ! Oh, Monsieur Godefroid, those two men are mar- 
 tyrs ! What can I say to my father ? I can only repay him 
 and my son by suffering for them, like them." 
 
 "And had the tall gentleman something of a military air?" 
 
 "Oh, you know him !" cried Vanda, as they reached the 
 door of the house. 
 
 She seized Godefroid's hand with the grip of a woman in 
 hysterics, and dragging him into a drawing-room of which
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 209 
 
 the door stood open, she exclaimed "Father, Monsieur Gode- 
 froid knows your benefactor." 
 
 Baron Bourlac, whom Godefroid found dressed in a style 
 suitable to a retired judge of his high rank, held out his hand 
 to Godefroid, and said : 
 
 "I thought as much." 
 
 Godefroid shook his head in negation of any knowledge of 
 the details of this noble revenge; but the Baron did not give 
 him time to speak. 
 
 "Monsieur," he want on, "only Providence can be more 
 powerful, only Love can be more thoughtful, only Mother- 
 hood can be more clear-sighted, than your friends who are 
 allied with those great divinities. I bless the chance that has 
 led to our meeting again, for Monsieur Joseph has vanished 
 completely ; and as he has succeeded in avoiding every snare I 
 could lay to ascertain his real name and residence, I should 
 have died in grief. But here, read his letter. And you know 
 him?" 
 
 Godefroid read as follows : 
 
 "Monsieur le Baron Bourlac, the money we have laid out 
 for you by the orders of a charitable lady amounts to a sum 
 of fifteen thousand francs. Take note of this, that it may be 
 repaid either by you or by your descendants when your family 
 is sufficiently prosperous to allow of it, for it belongs to the 
 poor. When such repayment is possible, deposit the money 
 you owe with the Brothers Mongenod, bankers. God forgive 
 you your sins !" 
 
 The letter was mysteriously signed with five crosses. 
 
 Godefroid returned it. "The five crosses, sure enough!" 
 said he to himself. 
 
 "Xow, since you know all," said the old man, "you who 
 were this mysterious lady's messenger tell me her name." 
 
 "Her name !" cried Godefroid ; "her name ! Unhappy man, 
 never ask it ! never try to find it out. Oh, madame," said he, 
 taking Madame de Mergi's hand in his own, which shook, "if
 
 210 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
 
 you value your father's sanity, keep him in his ignorance; 
 never let him make any attempt " 
 
 The father, the daughter, and Auguste stood frozen with 
 amazement. 
 
 "Well, then, the woman who has preserved your daughter 
 for you," said Godefroid, looking at the old lawyer, "who has 
 restored her to you, young, lovely, fresh, and living who has 
 snatched her from the grave who has rescued } r our grandson 
 from disgrace who has secured to you a happy and respected 
 
 old age who has saved you all three " he paused, "is a 
 
 woman whom you sent innocent to the hulks for twenty years," 
 he went on, addressing Monsieur Bourlac, "on whom, from 
 your judgment-seat, you poured every insult, whose saintli- 
 ness you mocked at, and from whom you snatched a lovely 
 daughter to send her to the most horrible death, for she was 
 guillotined !" 
 
 Godefroid, seeing Vanda drop senseless on to a chair, rushed 
 out of the room, and from thence into the Alice d'Antin, 
 where he took to his heels. 
 
 "If you would earn my forgiveness," said Baron Bourlac 
 to his grandson, "follow that man and find out where he lives." 
 
 Auguste was off like a dart. 
 
 By half-past eight next morning, Baron Bourlac was knock- 
 ing at the old yellow gate of the Hotel de la Chanterie, Eue 
 Chanoinesse. He asked for Madame de la Chanterie, and 
 the porter pointed to the stone steps. Happily they were all 
 going to breakfast, and Godefroid recognized the Baron in the 
 courtyard through one of the loopholes that lighted the stairs. 
 He had but just time to fly down and into the drawing-room 
 where they were all assembled, crying out "Baron Bourlac." 
 
 On hearing this name, Madame de la Chanterie, supported 
 by the Abbe de Veze, disappeared into her room. 
 
 "You shall not come in, you hnp of Satan !" cried Manon, 
 who recognized the lawyer, and placed herself in front of the 
 drawing-room door. "Do you want to kill my mistress?" 
 
 "Come, Manon, let the gentleman pass," said Monsieur 
 Alain.
 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY ' 211 
 
 Manon dropped on to a chair as if her knees had both given 
 way at once. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said the Baron in a voice of 'deep emotion, as 
 he recognized Godefroid and Monsieur Joseph, and bowed to 
 the two strangers, "Beneficence confers a claim on those bene- 
 fited by it !" 
 
 "You ove nothing to us," said the worthy Alain ; "you owe 
 everything to God." 
 
 "You aie saints, and you have the serenity of saints," re- 
 plied the old lawyer. "You will hear me, I beg. I have 
 learned that the superhuman blessings that have been heaped 
 on me for eighteen months past are the work of a person whom 
 I deeply injured in the course of my duty ; it was fifteen years 
 before I was assured of her innocence ; this, gentlemen, is the 
 single remorse I have known as due to the exercise of my 
 powers. Listen ! I have not much longer to live, but I shall 
 lose that short term of life, necessary still to my children 
 whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, if I cannot win her 
 forgiveness. Gentlemen, I will remain kneeling on the square 
 of Notre-Dame till she has spoken one word ! I will wait for 
 her there ! I will kiss the print of her feet ; I will find tears 
 to soften her heart I who have been dried up like a straw 
 by seeing my daughter's sufferings " 
 
 The door of Madame de la Chanterie's room was opened, 
 the Abbe de Veze came through like a shade, and said to Mon- 
 sieur Joseph : 
 
 "That voice is killing Madame." 
 
 "What ! she is there ! She has passed there !" cried Bourlac. 
 
 He fell on his knees, kissed the floor, and melted into tears, 
 crying in a heartrending tone : 
 
 "In the name of Jesus who died on the Cross, forgive ! for- 
 give ! For my child has suffered a thousand deaths !" 
 
 The old man collapsed so entirely that the spectators be- 
 lieved he was dead. 
 
 At this moment Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a 
 spectre in the doorway, leaning, half-fainting, against the 
 side-post.
 
 212 THE SEAMY SIDE OP HISTORY 
 
 "In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, whom 
 I see on the scaffold, of Madame Elizabeth, of my daughter, 
 and of yours in" the name of Jesus, I forgive you." 
 
 As he heard the words, the old man looked up and said : 
 
 "Thus are the angels avenged." 
 
 Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas helped him to his 
 feet, and led him out to the courtyard; Godefroid went to 
 call a coach ; and when they heard the rattle of wheels, Mon- 
 sieur Xicolas said as he helped the old man into it : 
 
 "Come no more, monsieur, or you will kill the mother too. 
 The power of God is infinite, but human nature has its 
 limits." 
 
 That day Godefroid joined the Order of the Brethren of 
 Consolation. 
 
 VIESZCHOVNIA, UKRAINE, December 1847.
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 To Henri Heine. 
 
 I inscribe this to you, my dear Heine, to you that represent in' 
 Paris the ideas and poetry of Germany, in Germany the lively and 
 witty criticism of France ; for you better than any other will know 
 whatsoever this Study may contain of criticism and of jest, of 
 
 love and truth. 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 "MY dear friend/' said Mme. de la Baudraye, drawing a pile 
 of manuscript from beneath her sofa cushion, "will you par- 
 don me in our present straits for making a short story of some- 
 thing which you told me a few weeks ago?" 
 
 "Anything is fair in these times. Have you not seen writers 
 serving up their own hearts to the public, or very often their 
 mistress' hearts when invention fails? We are coming to 
 this, dear; we shall go in quest of adventures, not so much for 
 the pleasure of them as for the sake of having the story to 
 tell afterwards." 
 
 "After all, you and the Marquise de Eochefide have paid 
 the rent, and I do not think, from the way things are going 
 here, that I ever pay yours." 
 
 "Who knows? Perhaps the same good luck that befell 
 Mme. de Rochefide may come to you." 
 
 "Do you call it good luck to go back to one's husband?" 
 
 "No ; only great luck. Come, I am listening." 
 
 And Mme. de la Baudraye read as follows : 
 
 "Scene a splendid salon in the Rue de Chartres-du-Roule. 
 One of the most famous writers of the day discovered sit- 
 ting on a settee beside a very illustrious Marquise, with whom 
 
 (213)
 
 214 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 he is on such terms of intimacy, as a man has a right to claim 
 when a woman singles him out and keeps him at her side as a 
 complacent souffre-douleur rather than a makeshift." 
 
 "Well," says she, "have you found those letters of which 
 you spoke yesterday? You said that you could not tell me 
 all about him without them?" 
 
 "Yes, I have them." 
 
 "It is your turn to speak; I am listening like a child when 
 his mother begins the tale of Le Grand Serpenlin Vert." 
 
 "I count the young man in question in that group of our 
 acquaintances which we are wont to style our friends. He 
 comes of a good family; he is a man of infinite parts and 
 ill-luck, full of excellent dispositions and most charming 
 conversation; young as he is, he has seen much, and while 
 awaiting better things, he dwells in Bohemia. Bohemianism, 
 which by rights should be called the doctrine of the Boule- 
 vard des Italiens, finds its recruits among young men be- 
 tween twenty and thirty, all of them men of genius in their 
 way, little known, it is true, as yet, but sure of recognition 
 one day, and when that day comes, of great distinction. They 
 are distinguished as it is at carnival time, when their ex- 
 uberant wit, repressed for the rest of the year, finds a vent 
 in more or less ingenious buffoonery. 
 
 "What times we live in ! What an irrational central power 
 which allows such tremendous energies to run to waste! 
 There are diplomatists in Bohemia quite capable of over- 
 turning Eussia's designs, if they but felt the power of 
 France at their backs. There are writers, adminis- 
 trators, soldiers, and artists in Bohemia; every faculty, 
 every kind of brain is represented there. Bohemia is a 
 microcosm. If the Czar would buy Bohemia for a score 
 of millions and set its population down in Odessa always 
 supposing that they consented to leave the asphalt of the 
 boulevards Odessa would be Paris with the year. In 
 Bohemia, you find the flower doomed to wither and come 
 to nothing; the flower of the wonderful young manhood of
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 215 
 
 France, so sought after by Napoleon and Louis XIV., so 
 neglected for the last thirty years by the modern Gerontocracy 
 that is blighting everything else that splendid young man- 
 hood of whom a witness so little prejudiced as Professor 
 Tissot wrote, 'On all sides the Emperor employed a younger 
 generation in every way worthy of him; in his councils, in 
 the general administration, in negotiations bristling with 
 difficulties or full of danger, in the government of conquered 
 countries; and in all places Youth responded to his demands 
 upon it. Young men were for Napoleon the missi hominici 
 of Charlemagne.' 
 
 "The word Bohemia tells you everything. Bohemia has 
 nothing and lives upon what it has. Hope is its religion; 
 faith (in oneself) its creed; and charity is supposed to be its 
 budget. All these young men are greater than their mis- 
 fortune; they are under the feet of Fortune, yet more than 
 equal to Fate. Always ready to mount and ride an if, witty 
 as a feuilleton, blithe as only those can be that are deep in 
 debt and drink deep to match, and finally for here I come to 
 my point hot lovers, and what lovers ! Picture to yourself 
 Lovelace, and Henri Quatre, and the Regent, and Werther, and 
 Saint-Preux, and Rene, and the Marechal de Richelieu think 
 of all these in a single man, and you will have some idea of 
 their way of love. What lovers ! Eclectic of all things in 
 love, they will serve up a passion to a woman's order; their 
 hearts are like a bill of fare in a restaurant. Perhaps they 
 have never read Stendhal's De I' Amour, but unconsciously 
 they put it in practice. They have by heart their chapters 
 Love-Taste, Love-Passion, Love-Caprice, Love-Crystal- 
 ized, and more than all, Love-Transient. All is good in their 
 eyes. They invented the burlesque axiom, 'In the sight of 
 man, all women are equal.' The actual text is more vigorously 
 worded, but as in my opinion the spirit is false, I do not stand 
 nice upon the letter. 
 
 "My friend, madame, is named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor 
 Benjamin George Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, 
 Comte de la Palferine. The Rusticolis came to France with
 
 216 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 Catherine del Medici, having been ousted about that time 
 from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are dis- 
 tantly related to the house of Este, and connected by mar- 
 riage with the Guises. On the Day of Saint-Bartholomew 
 they slew a goodly number of Protestants, and Charles IX. 
 bestowed the hand of the heiress of the Comte de la Palferine 
 upon the Eusticoli of that time. The Comte, however, being 
 a part of the confiscated lands of the Duke of Savoy, was re- 
 purchased by Henri IV. when that great king so far blun- 
 dered as to restore the fief; and in exchange, the Rusticoli 
 who had borne arms long before the Medici bore them, 
 to- wit, argent a cross flory azure (the cross flower-de-luced 
 by letters patent granted by Charles IX.), and a count's coro- 
 net, with two peasants for supporters with the motto IN HOC 
 SIGNO VINCIMUS the Rusticoli, I repeat, retained their title, 
 and received a couple of offices under the crown with the 
 government of a province. 
 
 "From the time of the Valois till the reign of Richelieu, as 
 it may be called, the Rusticoli played a most illustrious part ; 
 under Louis XIV. their glory waned somewhat, under Louis 
 XV. it went out altogether. My friend's grandfather wasted 
 all that was left to the once brilliant house with Mile. La- 
 guerre, whom he first discovered, and brought into fashion 
 before Bouret's time. Charles Edward's own father was an 
 officer without any fortune in 1789. The Revolution came 
 to his assistance ; he had the sense to drop his title, and became 
 plain Rusticoli. Among other deeds, M. Rusticoli married a 
 wife during the war in Italy, a Capponi, a goddaughter of the 
 Countess of Albany (hence La Palferine's final names). Rus- 
 ticoli was one of the best colonels in the army. The Emperor 
 made him a commander of the Legion of Honor and a count. 
 His spine was slightly curved, and his son was wont to say 
 of him laughingly that he was un comte refait (contrefait) . 
 
 "General Count Rusticoli, for he became a brigadier-gen- 
 eral at Ratisbon and a general of the division on the field of 
 Wagram, died at Vienna almost immediately after his promo- 
 tion, or his name and ability would sooner or later have
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 217 
 
 brought him the marshal's baton. Under the Restoration 
 he would certainly have repaired the fortunes of a great and 
 noble family so brilliant even as far back as 1100, centuries 
 before they took the French title for the Rusticoli had given 
 a pope to the church and twice revolutionized the kingdom 
 of Naples so illustrious again under the Valois ; so dexterous 
 in the days of the Fronde, that obstinate Frondeurs though 
 they were, they still existed through the reign of Louis XIV. 
 Mazarin favored them; there was the Tuscan strain in them 
 still, and he recognized it. 
 
 "To-day, when Charles Edward de la Palferine's name is 
 mentioned, not three persons in a hundred know the history 
 of his house. But the Bourbons have actually left a Foix- 
 Grailly to live by his easel. 
 
 "Ah ! if you but knew how brilliantly Charles Edward ac- 
 cepts his obscure position ! how he scoffs at the bourgeois of 
 1830 ! What Attic salt in his wit ! He would be the king of 
 Bohemia, if Bohemia would endure a king. His verve is in- 
 exhaustible. To him we owe a map of the country and the 
 names of the seven castles which Nodier could not discover." 
 
 "The one thing wanting in one of the cleverest skits of 
 our time," said the Marquise. 
 
 "You can form your own opinion of La Palferine from 
 a few characteristic touches," continued Nathan. "He once 
 came upon a friend of his, a fellow-Bohemian, involved in a 
 dispute on the boulevard with a bourgeois who chose to con- 
 sider himself affronted. To the modern powers that be, Bo- 
 hemia is insolent in the extreme. There was talk of calling 
 one another out. 
 
 " 'One moment/ interposed La Palferine, as much Lauzun 
 for the occasion as Lauzun himself could have been. 'One 
 moment. Monsieur was born, I suppose?' 
 
 ""What, sir?' 
 
 "'Yes, are you born? What is your name?' 
 
 " 'Godin." 
 
 "'Godin, eh!' exclaimed La Palferine's friend. 
 
 " 'One moment, my dear fellow,' interrupted La Palferine. 
 'There are the Trigaudins. Are you one of them ?'
 
 218 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 "Astonishment. 
 
 " 'No ? Then you are one of the new dukes of Gaeta, I 
 suppose, of imperial creation? No? Oh, well, how can you 
 expect my friend to cross swords with you when he will be 
 secretary of an embassy and ambassador some day, and you 
 will owe him respect ? Go din ! the thing is non-existent ! You 
 are a nonentity, Godin. My friend cannot be expected to beat 
 the air ! When one is somebody, one cannot fight with a no- 
 body ! 'Come, my dear fellow good-day.' 
 
 " 'My respects to madame/ added the friend. 
 
 "Another day La Palferine was walking with a friend who 
 flung his cigar end in the face of a passer-by. The recipient 
 had the bad taste to resent this. 
 
 " 'You have stood your antagonist's fire/ said the young 
 Count, 'the witnesses declare that honor is satisfied/ 
 
 "La Palferine owed his tailor a thousand francs, and the 
 man instead of going himself sent his assistant to ask for the 
 money. The assistant found the unfortunate debtor up six 
 pairs of stairs at the back of a yard at the further end of the 
 Faubourg du Eoule. The room was unfurnished save for a 
 bed (such a bed!), a table, and such a table! La Palferine 
 heard the preposterous demand 'A demand which I should 
 qualify as illegal/ he said when he told us the story, 'made, as 
 it was, at seven o'clock in the morning.' 
 
 " 'Go/ he answered, with the gesture and attitude of a 
 Mirabeau, 'tell your master in what condition you find me.' 
 
 "The assistant apologized and withdrew. La Palferine, 
 seeing the young man on the landing, rose in the attire cele- 
 brated in verse in Britannicus to add, 'Eemark the stairs ! 
 Pay particular attention to the stairs; do not forget to tell 
 him about the stairs !' 
 
 "In every position into which chance has thrown La Pal- 
 ferine, he has never failed to rise to the occasion. All that 
 he does is witty and never in bad taste; always and in every- 
 thing he displays the genius of Rivarol, the polished subtlety 
 of the old French noble. It was he who told that delicious 
 anecdote of a friend of Laffitte the banker. A national fund
 
 A PETNCE OF BOHEMIA 219 
 
 had been started to give back to Laffitte the mansion in which 
 the Revolution of 1830 was brewed, and this friend ap- 
 peared at the offices of the fund with, 'Here are five francs, 
 give me a hundred sous change !' A caricature was made of 
 it. It was once La Palferine's misfortune, in judicial style, 
 to make a young girl a mother. The girl, not a very simple in- 
 nocent, confessed all to her mother, a respectable matron, who 
 hurried forthwith to La Palferine and asked what he meant 
 to do. 
 
 " 'Why, madame,' said he, 'I am neither a surgeon nor a 
 midwife.' 
 
 "She collapsed, but three or four years later she returned to 
 the charge, still persisting in her inquiry, 'What did La Pal- 
 ferine mean to do?' 
 
 " 'Well, madame,' returned he, 'when the child is seve^i 
 years old, an age at which a boy ought to pass out of wo- 
 men's hands' an indication of entire agreement on the 
 mother's part 'if the child is really mine' another gesture 
 of assent 'if there is a striking likeness, if he bids fair to 
 be a gentleman, if I can recognize in him my turn of mind, 
 and more particularly the Rusticoli air; then, oh ah!' a 
 new movement from the matron 'on my word and honor, I 
 will make him a cornet of sugar-plums !' 
 
 "All this, if you will permit me to make use of the phraseol- 
 ogy employed by M. Sainte-Beuve for his biographies of ob- 
 scurities all this, I repeat, is the playful and sprightly yet 
 already somewhat decadent side of a strong race. It smacks 
 rather of the Parc-aux-Cerfs than of the Hotel de Eambouillet. 
 It is a race of the strong rather than of the sweet; I incline 
 to lay a little debauchery to its charge, and more than I should 
 wish in brilliant and generous natures ; it is gallantry after 
 the fashion of the Marechal de Richelieu, high spirits and 
 frolic carried rather too far; perhaps we may see in it the 
 outrances of another age, the Eighteenth Century pushed to 
 extremes; it harks back to the Musketeers; it is an exploit 
 stolen from Champcenetz; nay, such light-hearted incon- 
 etancy takes us back to the festooned and ornate period of the
 
 220 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 old court of the Yalois. In an age as moral as the present, 
 we are bound to regard audacity of this kind sternly ; still, at 
 the same time that 'cornet of sugar-plums' may serve to warn 
 young girls of the perils of lingering where fancies, more 
 charming than chastened, come thickly from the first ; on the 
 rosy flowery unguarded slopes, where trespasses ripen into 
 errors full of equivocal effervescence, into too palpitating 
 issues. The anecdote puts La Palferine's genius before you 
 in all its vivacity and completeness. He realizes Pascal's 
 entre-deux, he comprehends the whole scale between tender- 
 ness and pitilessness, and, like Epaminondas, he is equally 
 great in extremes. And not merely so, his epigram stamps 
 the epoch; the accoucheur is a modern innovation. All the 
 refinements of modern civilization are summed up in the 
 phrase. It is monumental." 
 
 "Look here, my dear Nathan, what farrago of nonsense 
 is this?" asked the Marquise in bewilderment. 
 
 "Madame la Marquise," returned Nathan, "you do not 
 know the value of these 'precious' phrases; I am talking 
 Sainte-Beuve, the new kind of French. I resume. Walking 
 one day arm in arm with a friend along the boulevard, he was 
 accosted by a ferocious creditor, who inquired : 
 
 " 'Are you thinking of me, sir ?' 
 
 " 'Not the least in the world,' answered the Count. 
 
 "Eemark the difficulty of the position. Talleyrand, in 
 similar circumstances, had already replied, 'You are very in- 
 quisitive, my dear fellow!' To imitate the inimitable great 
 man was out of the question. La Palferine, generous as 
 Buckingham, could not bear to be caught empty-handed. One 
 day when he had nothing to give a little Savoyard chimney- 
 sweeper, he dipped a hand into a barrel of grapes in a grocer's 
 doorway and filled the child's cap from it. The little one ate 
 away at his grapes; the grocer began by laughing, and ended 
 by holding out his hand. 
 
 " 'Oh, fie ! monsieur/ said La Palferine, 'your left hand 
 ought not to know what my right hand doth.' 
 
 "With his adventurous courage, he never refuses any "odds,
 
 A PRINCE OP BOHEMIA 221 
 
 but there is wit in his bravado. In the Passage de 1'Opera 
 he chanced to meet a man who had spoken slightingly of him, 
 elbowed him as he passed, and then turned and jostled him a 
 second time. 
 
 " 'You are very clumsy !' 
 
 " 'On the contrary ; I did it on purpose/ 
 
 "The young man pulled out his card. La Palferine dropped 
 it. 'It has been carried too long in the pocket. Be good 
 enough to give me another.' 
 
 "On the ground he received a thrust ; blood was drawn ; his 
 antagonist wished to stop. 
 
 " 'You are wounded, monsieur I' 
 
 " 'I disallow the botte/ said La Palferine, as coolly as if 
 he had been in the fencing-saloon; then as he riposted (send- 
 ing the point home this time), he added, 'There is the right 
 thrust, monsieur !' 
 
 "His antagonist kept his bed for six months. 
 
 "This, still following on M. Sainte-Beuve's tracks, recalls 
 the raffines, the fine-edged raillery of the best days of the 
 monarchy. In this speech you discern an untrammeled but 
 drifting life; a gaiety of imagination that deserts us when 
 our first youth is past. The prime of the blossom is over, 
 but there remains the dry compact seed with the germs of life 
 in it, ready against the coming winter. Do you not see that 
 these things are symptoms of something unsatisfied, of an un- 
 rest .impossible to analyze, still less to describe, yet not in- 
 comprehensible ; a something ready to break out if occasion 
 calls into flying upleaping flame? It is the accidia of the 
 cloister; a trace of sourness, of ferment engendered by the 
 enforced stagnation of youthful energies, a, vague, obscure 
 melancholy." 
 
 "That will do," said the Marquise; "you are giving me a 
 mental shower bath." 
 
 "It is the early afternoon languor. If a man has noth- 
 ing to do, he will sooner get into mischief than do nothing at 
 all; this invariably happens in France. Youth at the pres- 
 ent day has two sides to it; the studious or unappreciated, 
 and the ardent or passionne"
 
 222 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 "That will do !" repeated Mme. de Rochefide, with, an au- 
 thoritative gesture. "You are setting my nerves on edge." 
 
 "To finish my portrait of La Palferine, I hasten to make 
 the plunge into the gallant regions of his character, or you 
 will not understand the peculiar genius of an admirable rep- 
 resentative of a certain section of mischievous youth youth 
 strong enough, be it said, to laugh at the position in which 
 it is put by those in power; shrewd enough to do no work, 
 since work profiteth nothing, yet so full of life that it fastens 
 upon pleasure the one thing that cannot be taken away. 
 And meanwhile a bourgeois, mercantile, and bigoted policy 
 continues to cut off all the sluices through which so much 
 aptitude and ability would find an outlet. Poets and men 
 of science are not wanted. 
 
 "To give you an idea of the stupidity of the new court, I 
 will tell you of something which happened to La Palferine. 
 There is a sort of relieving officer on the civil list. This func- 
 tionary one day discovered that La Palferine was in dire dis- 
 tress, drew up a report, no doubt, and brought the descendant 
 of the Rusticolis fifty francs by way of alms. La Palferine 
 received the visitor with perfect courtesy, and talked of 
 various persons at court. 
 
 "'Is it true,' he asked, 'that Mile. d'Orleans contributes 
 such and such a sum to this benevolent scheme started by her 
 nephew? If so, it is very gracious of her.' 
 
 "JSTow La Palferine had a servant, a little Savoyard, .aged 
 ten, who waited on him without wages. La Palferine called 
 him Father Anchises, and used to say, 'I have never seen such 
 a mixture of besotted foolishness with great intelligence; he 
 would go through fire and water for me; he understands 
 everything and yet he cannot grasp the fact that I can do 
 nothing for him.' 
 
 "Anchises was despatched to a livery stable with instruc- 
 tions to hire a handsome brougham with a man in livery be- 
 hind it. By the time the carriage arrived below, La Palferine 
 had skilfully piloted the conversation to the subject of the 
 functions of his visitor, whom he has since called 'the un-
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 223 
 
 mitigated misery man/ and learned the nature of his duties 
 and his stipend. 
 
 " 'Do they allow you a carriage to go about the town in this 
 way?' 
 
 "'Oh! no.' 
 
 "At that La Palferine and a friend who happened to be 
 with him went downstairs with the poor soul, and insisted 
 on putting him into the carriage. It was raining in torrents. 
 La Palferine had thought of everything. He offered to drive 
 the official to the next house on his list ; and when the almoner 
 came down again, he found the carriage waiting for him at 
 the door. The man in livery handed him a note written in 
 pencil : 
 
 " 'The carriage has been engaged for thrse days. Count 
 Rusticoli de la Palferine is too happy to associate himself 
 with Court charities by lending wings to Royal beneficence.' 
 
 "La Palferine now calls the civil list the uncivil' list. 
 
 "He was once passionately loved by a lady of somewhat light 
 conduct. Antonia lived in the Rue du Helder; she had seen 
 and been seen to some extent, but at the time of her ac- 
 quaintance with La Palferine she had not yet f an establish- 
 ment.' Antonia was not wanting in the insolence of old 
 days, now degenerating into rudeness among women of her 
 class. After a fortnight of unmixed bliss, she was compelled, 
 in the interest of her civil list, to return to a less exclusive 
 system; and La Palferine, discovering a certain lack of sin- 
 cerity in her dealings with him, sent Madame Antonia a note 
 which made her famous. 
 
 "'MADAME, Your conduct causes me much surprise and 
 no less distress. Not content with rending my heart with 
 your disdain, you have been so little thoughtful as to retain 
 a toothbrush, which my means will not permit me to replace, 
 my estates being mortgaged beyond -their value. 
 
 " 'Adieu, too fair and too ungrateful friend ! May we meet 
 again in a better world. 
 
 "'CHABLES EDWARD/
 
 224 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 "Assuredly (to avail ourselves yet further of Sainte-Beuve'b 
 Babylonish dialect), this far outpasses the raillery of Sterne's 
 Sentimental Journey; it might be Scarron without his gross- 
 ness. Nay, I do not know but that Moliere in his lighter 
 mood would not have said of it, as of Cyrano de Bergerac's 
 best 'This is mine.' Richelieu himself was not more com- 
 plete when he wrote to the princess waiting for him in the 
 Palais Eoyal 'Stay there, my queen, to charm the scullion 
 lads.' At the same time, Charles Edward's humor is less 
 biting. I am not sure that this kind of wit was known 
 among the Greeks and Romans. Plato, possibly, upon a 
 closer inspection approaches it, but from the austere and 
 musical side 
 
 "No more of that jargon," the Marquise broke in, "in print 
 it may be endurable; but to have it grating upon my ears is 
 a punishment which I do not in the least deserve." 
 
 "He first met Claudine on this wise," continued Nathan. 
 "It was one of the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to 
 itself ; days when youth, reduced by the overweening presump- 
 tion of Age to a condition of potential energy and dejection, 
 emerges therefrom (like Blondet under the Restoration), 
 either to get into mischief or to set about some colossal piece 
 of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its concep- 
 tion. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and 
 down the pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the 
 Rue de Richelieu, when in the distance he descried a woman 
 too elegantly dressed, covered, as he phrased it, with a great 
 deal of portable property, too expensive and too carelessly 
 worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the Court 
 or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which. But 
 after July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the in- 
 dications the princess can only be a princess of the stage. 
 
 "The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had 
 given him an assignation. He followed her with a courteous 
 persistence, a persistence in good -taste, giving the lady from 
 time to time, and always at the right moment, an authorita- 
 tive glance, which compelled her to submit to his escort. Any-
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 225 
 
 body but La Palferine would have been frozen by his recep- 
 tion, and disconcerted by the lady's first efforts to rid herself 
 of her cavalier, by her chilly air, her curt speeches; but no 
 gravity, with all the will in the world, could hold out long 
 against La Palferine' s jesting replies. The fair stranger went 
 into her milliner's shop. Charles Edward followed, took a 
 seat, and gave his opinions and advice like a man that meant 
 to pay. This coolness disturbed the lady. She went out. 
 
 "On the stairs she spoke to her persecutor. 
 
 " 'Monsieur, I am about to call upon one of my hus- 
 band's relatives, an elderly lady, Mme. de Bonfalot ' 
 
 " 'Ah ! Mme. de Bonfalot, charmed, I am sure. I am going 
 there.' 
 
 "The pair accordingly went. Charles Edward came in 
 with the lady, every one believed that she had brought him 
 with her. He took part in the conversation, was lavish of 
 his polished and brilliant wit. The visit lengthened out. That 
 was not what he wanted. 
 
 " 'Madame,' he said, addressing the fair stranger, 'do not 
 forget that your husband is waiting for us, and only allowed 
 us a quarter of an hour.' 
 
 "Taken aback by such boldness (which, as you know, is 
 never displeasing to you women), led captive by the con- 
 queror's glance, by the astute yet candid air which Charles 
 Edward can assume when he chooses, the lady rose, took the 
 arm of her self-constituted escort, and went downstairs, but 
 on the threshold she stopped to speak to him. 
 
 " 'Monsieur, I like a joke ' 
 
 " 'And so do I.' 
 
 "She laughed. 
 
 " 'But this may turn to earnest,' he added ; 'it only rests 
 with you. I am the Comte de la Palferine, and I am delighted 
 that it is in my power to lay my heart and my fortune at 
 your feet.' 
 
 "La Palferine was at that time twenty-two years old. 
 (This happened in 1834.) Luckily for him, he was fashion- 
 ably dressed. I can paint his portrait for you in a few words.
 
 226 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 He was the living image of Louis XIII., with the same white 
 forehead and gracious outline of the temples, the same olive 
 skin (that Italian olive tint which turns white where the 
 light falls on it), the brown hair worn rather long, the 
 black 'royale/ the grave and melancholy expression, for La 
 Palferine's character and exterior were amazingly at variance. 
 
 "At the sound of the name, and the sight of its owner, 
 something like a quiver thrilled through Claudine. La Pal- 
 ferine saw the vibration, and shot a glance at her out of the 
 dark depths of almond-sKaped eyes with purpled lids, and 
 those faint lines about them which tell of pleasures as costly 
 as painful fatigue. With those eyes upon her, she said 
 'Your address ?' 
 
 " 'What want of address !' 
 
 " 'Oh, pshaw !' she said, smiling. 'A bird on the bough ?' 
 
 " 'Good-bye, madame, you are such a woman as I seek, 
 but my fortune is far from equaling my desire ' 
 
 "He bowed, and there and then left her. Two days later, 
 by one of the strange chances that can only happen in Paris, 
 he had betaken himself to a money-lending wardrobe dealer 
 to sell such of his clothing as he could spare. He was just re- 
 ceiving the price with an uneasy air, after long chaffering, 
 when the stranger lady passed and recognized him. 
 
 " 'Once for all/ cried he to the bewildered wardrobe dealer, 
 'I tell you I am not going to take your trumpet !' 
 
 "He pointed to a huge, much-dinted musical instrument, 
 hanging up outside against a background of uniforms, civil 
 and military. Then, proudly and impetuously, he followed 
 the lady. 
 
 "From that great day of the trumpet these two understood 
 one another to admiration. Charles Edward's ideas on the 
 subject of love are as sound as possible. According to him, 
 a man cannot love twice, there is but one love in his life- 
 time, but that love is a deep and shoreless sea. It may break 
 in upon him at any time, as the grace of God found St. Paul ; 
 and a man may live sixty years and never know love. Per- 
 haps, to quote Heine's superb phrase, it is 'the secret malady
 
 A PRIXCE OF BOHEMIA 227 
 
 of the heart' a sense of the Infinite that there is within us, 
 together with the revelation of the ideal Beauty in its visible 
 form. This love, in short, comprehends both the creature and 
 creation. But so long as there is no question of this great 
 poetical conception, the loves that cannot last can only be 
 taken lightly, as if they were in a manner snatches of song 
 compared with Love the epic. 
 
 "To Charles Edward the adventure brought neither the 
 thunderbolt signal of love's coming, nor yet that gradual 
 revelation of an inward fairness which draws two natures 
 by degrees more and more strongly each to each. For there 
 are but two ways of love love at first sight, doubtless akin 
 to the Highland 'second-sight,' and that slow fusion of two 
 natures which realizes Plato's 'man-woman.' But if Charles 
 Edward did not love, he was loved to distraction. Claudine 
 found love made complete, body and soul; in her, in short, 
 La Palf erine awakened the one passion of her life ; while for 
 him Claudine was only a most charming mistress. The Devil 
 himself, a most potent magician certainly, with all hell at 
 his back, could never have changed the natures of these two 
 unequal fires. I dare affirm that Claudine not unfrequently 
 bored Charles Edward. 
 
 " 'Stale fish and the woman you do not love are only fit to 
 fling out of the window after three days/ he used to say. 
 
 "In Bohemia there is little secrecy observed over these af- 
 fairs. La Palferine used to talk a good deal of Claudine; 
 but, at the same time, none of us saw her, nor so much as 
 knew her name. For us Claudine was almost a mythical per- 
 sonage. All of us acted in the same way, reconciling the re- 
 quirements of our common life with the rules of good taste. 
 Claudine, Hortense, the Baroness, the Bourgeoise, the Em- 
 press, the Spaniard, the Lioness, these were cryptic 
 titles which permitted us to pour out our joys, our cares, vexa- 
 tions, and hopes, and to communicate our discoveries. Fur- 
 ther, none of us went. It has been known, in Bohemia, that 
 chance discovered the identity of the fair unknown ; and at 
 once, as by tacit convention, not one of us spoke of her again. 
 VOL. 16 46
 
 228 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 This fact may show how far youth possesses a sense of true 
 delicacy. How admirably certain natures of a finer clay know 
 the limit line where jest must end, and all that host of things 
 French covered by the slang word blague, a word which will 
 shortly be cast out of the language (let us hope), and yet it 
 is the only one which conveys an idea of the spirit of Bo- 
 Hernia. 
 
 "So we often used to joke about Claudine and the Count 
 'Toujours Claudine ?' sung to the air of Toujours Oessler. 
 'What are you making of Claudine?' 'How is Claudine?' 
 
 " 'I wish you all such a mistress, for all the harm I wish 
 you,' La Palferine began one day. 'Xo greyhound, no basset- 
 dog, no poodle can match her in gentleness, submissiveness, 
 and complete tenderness. There are times when I reproach 
 myself, when I take myself to task for my hard heart. 
 Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me, 
 I tell her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she is out 
 in the courtyard. I refuse to see her for a whole week at a 
 time. I tell her to come at such an hour on Tuesday; and 
 be it midnight or six o'clock in the morning, ten o'clock, five 
 o'clock, breakfast time, dinner time, bed time, any particu- 
 larly inconvenient hour in the day she will come, punctual 
 to the minute, beautiful, beautifully dressed, and enchanting. 
 And she is a married woman, with all the complications and 
 duties of a household: The fibs that she must invent, the rea- 
 sons she must find for conforming to my whims would tax 
 the ingenuity of some of us! . . . Claudine never 
 wearies; you can always count upon her. It is not love, I 
 tell her, it is infatuation. She writes to me every day; I do 
 not read her letters; she found that out, but still she writes. 
 See here; there are two hundred letters in this casket. She 
 begs me to wipe my razors on one of her letters every day, 
 and I punctually do so. She thinks, and rightly, that the 
 sight of her handwriting will put me in mind of her.' 
 
 "La Palferine was dressing as he told us this. I took up the 
 letter which he was about to put to this use, read it, and kept 
 it, as he did not ask to have it back. Here it is. I looked 
 for it, and found it as I promised.
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 229 
 
 " Monday (Midnight). 
 
 "'Well, my dear, are you satisfied with me? I did not 
 even ask for your hand, yet you might easily have given it 
 to me, and I longed so much to hold it to my heart, to my 
 lips. No, I did not ask, I am so afraid of displeasing you. 
 Do you know one thing ? Though I am cruelly sure that any- 
 thing I do is a matter of perfect indifference to you, I am 
 none the less extremely timid in my conduct : the woman 
 that belongs to you, whatever her title to call herself yours, 
 must not incur so much as the shadow of blame. In so far 
 as love comes from the angels in heaven, from whom there 
 are no secrets hid, my love is as pure as the purest ; wherever 
 I am I feel that I am in your presence, and I try to do you 
 honor. 
 
 " 'All that you said about my manner of dress impressed 
 me very much; I began to understand how far above others 
 are those that come of a noble race. There was still some- 
 thing of the opera girl in my gowns, in my way of dressing 
 my hair. In a moment I saw the distance between me and 
 good taste. Next time you shall receive a duchess, you shall 
 not know me again ! Ah ! ho\\ good you have been to your 
 Claudine ! How many and many a time I have thanked you 
 for telling me those things ! What interest lay in those few 
 words! You had taken thought for that thing belonging to 
 you called Claudine? This imbecile would never have opened 
 my eyes; he thinks that everything I do is right; and besides, 
 he is much too humdrum, too matter-of-fact to have any feel- 
 ing for the beautiful. 
 
 " 'Tuesday is very slow of coming for my impatient mind ! 
 On Tuesday I shall be with you for several hours. Ah ! when 
 it comes I will try to think that the hours are months, that it 
 will be so always. I am living in hope of that morning now, 
 as I shall live upon the memory of it afterwards. Hope is 
 memory that craves; and recollection, memory sated. What a 
 beautiful life within life thought makes for us in this way ! 
 
 " 'Sometimes I dream of inventing new ways of tenderness 
 all my own, a secret which no other woman shall guess. A
 
 230 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 cold sweat breaks out over me at the thought that something 
 may happen to prevent this meeting. Oh, I would break 
 with him for good, if need was, but nothing here could pos- 
 sibly interfere; it would be from your side. Perhaps you may 
 decide to go out, perhaps to go to see some other woman. 
 Oh ! spare me this Tuesday for pity's sake. If you take it 
 from me, Charles, you do not know what he will suffer; I 
 should drive him wild. But even if you do not want me, if 
 you are going out, let me come, all the same, to be with you 
 while you dress ; only to see you, I ask no more than that ; 
 only to show you that I love you without a thought of self. 
 
 " 'Since you gave me leave to love you, for you gave me 
 leave, since I am yours; since that day I loved and love you 
 with the whole strength _of my soul ; and I shall love you for 
 ever, for once having loved you, no one could, no one ought 
 to love another. And, you see, when those eyes that ask 
 nothing but to see you are upon you, you will feel that in 
 your Claudine there is a something divine, called into exist- 
 ence by you. 
 
 " 'Alas ! with you I can never play the coquette. I am like 
 a mother with her child; I endure anything from you; I, 
 that was once so imperious 'and proud. I have made dukes 
 and princes fetch and carry for me; aides-de-camp, worth 
 more than all the court of Charles X. put together, have done 
 my errands, yet I am treating you as my spoilt child. But 
 where is the use of coquetry? It would be pure waste. And 
 yet, monsieur, for want of coquetry I shall never inspire love 
 in you. I know it; I feel it; yet I do as before, feeling a 
 power that I cannot withstand, thinking that this utter self- 
 surrender will win me the sentiment innate in all men (so 
 he tells me) for the thing that belongs to them. 
 
 ' Wednesday. 
 
 " 'Ah ! how darkly sadness entered my heart yesterday 
 when I found that I must give up the joy of seeing you. One 
 single thought held me back from the arms of Death ! It was 
 thy will ! To stay away was to do thy will, to obey an order
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 231 
 
 from thee. Oh ! Charles, I was so pretty ; I looked a lovelier 
 woman for you than that beautiful German princess whom 
 you gave me for an example, whom I have studied at the Opera. 
 And yet you might have thought that I had overstepped 
 the limits of my nature. You have left me no confidence 
 in myself ; perhaps I am plain after all. Oh ! I loathe myself, 
 I dream of my radiant Charles Edward, and my brain turns. 
 I shall go mad, I know I shall. Do not laugh, do not talk 
 to me of the fickleness of women. If we are inconstant, you 
 are strangely capricious. You take away the hours of love 
 that made a poor creature's happiness for ten whole days; 
 the hours on which she drew to be charming and kind to all 
 that came to see her ! After all, you were the source of my 
 kindness to him; you do not know what pain you give him. 
 I wonder what I must do to keep you, or simply to keep the 
 right to be yours sometimes. . . . When I think that you 
 never would come here to me ! . . . With what delicious 
 emotion I would wait upon you ! There are other women 
 more favored than I. There are women to whom you say, 
 'I love you/ To me you have never said more than 'You are a 
 good girl/ Certain speeches of yours, though you do not 
 know it, gnaw at my heart. Clever men sometimes ask me 
 what I am thinking. ... I am thinking of my self- 
 abasement the prostration of the poorest outcast in the 
 presence of the Saviour.' 
 
 "There are still three more pages, you see. La Pal- 
 ferine allowed me to take the letter, with the traces of tears 
 that still seemed hot upon it ! Here was proof of the truth of 
 his story. Marcas, a shy man enough with women, was in 
 ecstacies over a second which he read in his corner before 
 lighting his pipe with it. . 
 
 " 'Why, any woman in love will write that sort of thing !' 
 cried La Palferine. 'Love gives all women intelligence and 
 style, which proves that here in France style proceeds from 
 the matter and not from the words. See now how well this is 
 thought out, how clear-headed sentiment is' and with that
 
 232 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 he reads us another letter, far superior to the artificial and 
 labored productions which we novelists write. 
 
 "One day poor Claudine heard that La Palferine was in a 
 critical position; it was a question of meeting a bill of ex- 
 change. An unlucky idea occurred to her ; she put a tolerably 
 large sum in gold into an exquisitely embroidered purse and 
 went to him. 
 
 " 'Who has taught you to be so bold as to meddle with my 
 household affairs?' La Palferine cried angrily. 'Mend my 
 
 socks and work slippers for me, if it amuses you. So ! 
 
 you will play the duchess, and you turn the story of Danae 
 against the aristocracy.' 
 
 "He emptied the purse into his hand as he spoke, and made 
 as though he would fling the money in her face. Claudine, 
 in her terror, did not guess that he was joking; she shrank 
 back, stumbled over a chair, and fell with her head against 
 the corner of the marble chimney-piece. She thought she 
 should have died. When she could speak, poor woman, as 
 she lay on the bed, all that she said was, 'I deserved it, 
 Charles !' 
 
 "For a moment La Palferine was in despair; his anguish 
 revived Claudine. She rejoiced in the mishap; she took ad- 
 vantage of her suffering to compel La Palferine to take the 
 money and release him from an awkward position. Then 
 followed a variation on La Fontaine's fable, in which a man 
 blesses the thieves that brought him a sudden impulse of 
 tenderness from his wife. And while we are upon this sub- 
 ject, another saying will paint the man for you. 
 
 "Claudine went home again, made up some kind of tale as 
 best she could to account for her bruised forehead, and fell 
 dangerously ill. .An abscess formed in the head. The doctor 
 Bianchon, I believedyes, it was Bianchon wanted to cut 
 off her hair. The Duchesse de Berri's hair is not more beauti- 
 ful than Claudine's; she would not hear of it, she told Bian- 
 chon in confidence that she could not allow it to be cut with- 
 out leave from the Comte de Palferine. Bianchon went to
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 233 
 
 Charles Edward. Charles Edward heard' him with much 
 seriousness. The doctor had explained the case at length, 
 and showed that it was absolutely necessary to sacrifice the 
 hair to insure the success of the operation. 
 
 " 'Cut off Claudine's hair !' cried he in peremptory tones. 
 'No. I would sooner lose her.' r 
 
 "Even now, after a lapse of four years, Bianchon still 
 quotes that speech ; we have laughed over it for half an hour 
 together. Claudine, informed of the verdict, saw in it a 
 proof of affection ; she felt sure that she was loved. In the 
 face of her weeping family, with her husband on his knees, 
 she was inexorable. She kept her hair. The strength that 
 came with the belief that she was loved came to her aid, the 
 operation succeeded perfectly. There are stirrings of the 
 inner life which throw all the calculations of surgery into 
 disorder and baffle the laws of medical science. 
 
 "Claudine wrote a delicious letter to La Palferine, a letter 
 in which the orthography was doubtful and the punctuation 
 all to seek, to tell him of the happy result of the operation, 
 and to add that Love was wiser than all the sciences. 
 
 " 'Now/ said La Palferine one day, 'what am I to do to get 
 rid of Claudine?' 
 
 " 'Why, she is not at all troublesome ; she leaves you master 
 of your actions,' objected we. 
 
 " 'That is true,' returned La Palferine, 'but I do not choose 
 that anything shall slip into my life without my consent.' 
 
 "From that day he set himself to torment Claudine. It 
 seemed that he held the bourgeoise, the nobody, in utter 
 horror; nothing would satisfy him but a woman with a title. 
 Claudine, it was true, had made progress; she had learned to 
 dress as well as the best-dressed women of the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain; she had freed her bearing of unhallowed 
 traces ; she walked with a chastened, inimitable grace ; but this 
 was not enough. This praise of her enabled Claudine to swal- 
 low down the rest. 
 
 "But one day La Palferine said, 'If you wish to be the mis- 
 tress of one La Palferine, poor, penniless, and without pros-
 
 234 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 pects as he is, you ought at least to represent him worthily. 
 You should have a carriage and liveried servants and a title. 
 Give me all the gratifications of vanity that will never be 
 mine in my own person. The woman whom I honor with my 
 regard ought never to go on foot; if she is bespattered with 
 mud, I suffer. That is how I am made. If she is mine, she 
 must be admired of all Paris. All Paris shall envy me my 
 good fortune. If some little whipper-snapper seeing a 
 brilliant countess pass in her brilliant carriage shall say to 
 himself, "Who can call such a divinity his?" and grow 
 thoughtful why, it will double my pleasure.' 
 
 "La Palferine owned to us that he flung this programme 
 at Claudine's head simply to rid himself of her. As a result 
 he was stupefied with astonishment for the first and probably 
 the only time in his life. 
 
 " 'Dear,' she said, and there was a ring in her voice that 
 betrayed the great agitation which shook her whole being, 
 'it is well. All this shall be done, or I will die.' 
 
 "She let fall a few happy tears on his hand as she kissed it. 
 
 " 'You have told me what I must do to be your mistress 
 still,' she added ; 'I am glad.' 
 
 " 'And then' (La Palferine told us) 'she went out with a 
 little coquettish gesture like a woman that has had her way. 
 As she stood in my garret doorway, tall and proud, she 
 seemed to reach the stature of an antique sibyl.' 
 
 "All this should sufficiently explain the manners and cus- 
 toms of the Bohemia in which the young condottiere is one 
 of the most brilliant figures," Nathan continued after a 
 pause. "Now it so happened that I discovered Claudine's 
 identity, and could understand the appalling truth of one 
 line which you perhaps overlooked in that letter of hers. It 
 was on this wise." 
 
 The Marquise, too thoughtful now for laughter, bade Na- 
 than "Go on," in a tone that told him plainly how deeply 
 she had been impressed by these strange things, and even 
 more plainly how much she was interested in La Palferine. 
 
 "In 1829, one of the most influential, steady, and clever of
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 235 
 
 dramatic writers was du Bruel. His real name is unknown to 
 the public, on the play-bills he is de Cursy. Under the Resto- 
 ration he had a place in the Civil Service; and being really 
 attached to the elder branch, he sent in his resignation 
 bravely in 1830, and ever since has written twice as many 
 plays to fill the deficit in his budget made by his noble con- 
 duct. At that time du Bruel was forty years old; you know 
 the story of his life. Like many of his brethren, he bore a 
 stage dancer an affection hard to explain, but well known in 
 the whole world of letters. The woman, as you know, was 
 Tullia, one of the premiers sujets of the Academic Royale de 
 Musique. Tullia is merely a pseudonym like du Bruel's name 
 of de Cursy. 
 
 "For the ten years between 1817 and 1827 Tullia was in 
 her glory on the heights of the stage of the Opera. With more 
 beauty than education, a mediocre dancer with rather more 
 sense than most of her class, she took no part in the virtuous 
 reforms which ruined the corps de ballet; she continued the 
 Guimard dynasty. She owed her ascendency, moreover, to 
 various well-known protectors, to the Due de Rhetore (the 
 Due de Chaulieu's eldest son), to the influence of a famous 
 Superintendent of Fine Arts, and sundry diplomatists and 
 rich foreigners. During her apogee she had a neat little house 
 in the Rue Chauchat, and lived as Opera nymphs used to live 
 in the old days. Du Bruel was smitten with her about the 
 time when the Duke's fancy came to an end in 1823. Being 
 a mere subordinate in the- Civil Service, du Bruel tolerated 
 the Superintendent of Fine Arts, believing that he himself 
 was really preferred. After six years this connection was 
 almost a marriage. Tullia has always been very careful to 
 say nothing of her family; we have a vague idea that she 
 comes from Nanterre. One of her uncles, formerly a simple 
 bricklayer or carpenter, is now, it is said, a very rich con- 
 tractor, thanks to her influence and generous loans. This 
 fact leaked out through du Bruel. He happened to say that 
 Tullia would inherit a fine fortune sooner or later. The con- 
 tractor was a bachelor; he had a weakness for the niece to 
 whom he is indebted.
 
 236 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 " 'He is not clever enough to be ungrateful,' said she. 
 
 "In 1829 Tullia retired from the stage of her own accord. 
 At the age of thirty she saw that she was growing somewhat 
 stouter, and she had tried pantomime without success. Her 
 whole art consisted in the trick of raising her skirts, after 
 Noblet's manner, in a pirouette which inflated them balloon- 
 fashion and exhibited the smallest possible quantity of cloth- 
 ing to the pit. The aged Vestris had told her at the very be- 
 ginning that this temps, well executed by a fine woman, is 
 worth all the art imaginable. It is the chest-note C of 
 dancing. For which reason, he said, the very greatest 
 dancers Camargo, Guimard, and Taglioni, all of them 
 thin, brown, and plain could only redeem their physi- 
 cal defects by their genius. Tullia, still in the height 
 of her glory, retired before younger and cleverer dancers ; she 
 did wisely. She was an aristocrat; she had scarcely stooped 
 below the noblesse in her liaisons; she declined to dip her 
 ankles in the troubled waters of July. Insolent and beautiful 
 as she was, Claudine possessed handsome souvenirs, but very 
 little ready money; still, her jewels were magnificent, and 
 she had as fine furniture as any one in Paris. 
 
 "On quitting the stage when she, forgotten to-day, was yet 
 in the height of her fame, one thought possessed her she 
 meant du Bruel to marry her; and at the time of this story, 
 you must understand that the marriage had taken place, but 
 was kept a secret. How do women of her class contrive to 
 make a man marry them after seven or eight years of in- 
 timacy? What springs do they touch? What machinery 
 do they set in motion? But, however comical such domestic 
 dramas may be, we are not now concerned with them. Du 
 Bruel was secretly married; the thing was done. 
 
 "Cursy before his marriage was supposed to be a jolly com- 
 panion; now and again he stayed out all night, and to some 
 extent led the life of a Bohemian ; he would unbend at a 
 supper-party. He went out to all appearance to a rehearsal 
 at the Opera-Comique, and found himself in some unaccount- 
 able way at Dieppe, or Baden, or Saint-Germain; he gave
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 237 
 
 dinners, led the Titanic thriftless life of artists, journalists, 
 and writers ; levied his tribute on all the greenrooms of Paris ; 
 and, in short, was one of us. Finot, Lousteau, du Tillet, 
 Desroches, Bixiou, Blondet, Couture, and des Lupeaulx 
 tolerated him in spite of his pedantic manner and ponderous 
 official attitude. But once married, Tullia made a slave of 
 du Bruel. There was no help for it. He was in love with 
 Tullia, poor devil. 
 
 " 'Tullia' (so he said) 'had left the stage to be his alone, 
 to be a good and charming wife.' And somehow Tullia man- 
 aged to induce the most Puritanical members of du Bruel's 
 family to accept her. From the very first, before any one 
 suspected her motives, she assiduously visited old Mme. de 
 Bonfalot, who bored her horribly; she made handsome pres- 
 ents to mean old Mme. de Chisse, du Bruel's great-aunt ; she 
 spent a summer with the latter lady, and never missed a 
 single mass. She even went to confession, received absolu- 
 tion, and took the sacrament; but this, you must remember, 
 was in the country, and under the aunt's eyes. 
 
 " ( I shall have real aunts now, do you understand?' she 
 said to us when she came back in the winter. 
 
 "She was so delighted with her respectability, so glad to 
 renounce her independence, that she found means to compass 
 her end. She flattered the old people. She went on foot 
 every day to sit for a couple of hours with Mme. du Bruel 
 the elder while that lady was ill a Maintenon's stratagem 
 which amazed du Bruel. And he admired his wife without 
 criticism; he was so fast in the toils already that he did not 
 feel his bonds. 
 
 "Claudine succeeded in making him understand that only 
 under the elastic system of a bourgeois government, only at 
 the bourgeois court of the Citizen-King, could a Tullia, now 
 metamorphosed into a Mme. du Bruel, be accepted in the so- 
 ciety which her good sense prevented her from attempting 
 to enter. Mme. de Bonfalot, Mme. de Chisse, and Mme. du 
 Bruel received her; she was satisfied. She took up the posi- 
 tion of a well-conducted, simple, and virtuous woman, and
 
 238 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 never acted out of character. In three years' time she was 
 introduced to the friends of these ladies. 
 
 " 'And still I cannot persuade myself that young Mme. du 
 Bruel used to display her ankles, and the rest, to all Paris, 
 with the light of a hundred gas-jets pouring upon her,' Mme. 
 Anselme Popinot remarked naively. 
 
 "From this point of view, July 1830 inaugurated an era 
 not unlike the time of the Empire, when a waiting-woman 
 was received at Court in the person of Mme. Garat, a chief- 
 justice's 'lady.' Tullia had completely broken, as you may 
 guess, with all her old associates ; of her former acquaintances, 
 she only recognized those who could not compromise her. 
 At the time of her marriage she had taken a very charming 
 little hotel between a court and a garden, lavishing money 
 on it with wild extravagance and putting the best part of her 
 furniture and du Bruel's into it. Everything that she thought 
 common or ordinary was sold. To find anything comparable 
 to her sparkling splendor, you could only look back to the 
 days when a Sophie Arnould, a Guimard, or a Duthe, in all 
 her glory, squandered the fortunes of princes. 
 
 "How far did this sumptuous existence affect du Bruel? 
 It is a delicate question to ask, and a still more delicate one 
 to answer. A single incident will suffice to give you an idea 
 of Tullia's crotchets. Her bed-spread of Brussels lace was 
 worth ten thousand francs. A famous actress had another 
 like it. As soon as Claudine heard this, she allowed her cat, 
 a splendid Angora, to sleep on the bed. That trait gives you 
 the woman. Du Bruel dared not say a word ; he was ordered 
 to spread abroad that challenge in luxury, so that it might 
 reach the other. Tullia was very fond of this gift from the 
 Due de Rhetore; but one day, five years after her marriage, 
 she played with her cat to such purpose that the coverlet fur- 
 belows, flounces, and all was torn to shreds, and replaced by 
 a sensible quilt, a quilt that was a quilt, and not a symptom 
 of the peculiar form of insanity which drives these women 
 to make up by an insensate luxury for the childish days when 
 they lived on raw apples, to quote the expression of a journal-
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 239 
 
 ist. The day when the bed-spread was torn to tatters marked 
 a new epoch in her married life. 
 
 "Cursy was remarkable for his ferocious industry. No- 
 body suspects the source to which Paris owes the patch-and- 
 powder eighteenth century vaudevilles that flooded the stage. 
 Those thousand-and-one vaudevilles, which raised such an 
 outcry among the feuilletonistes, were written at Mme. du 
 Bruel's express desire. She insisted that her husband should 
 purchase the hotel on which she had spent so much, where she 
 had housed five hundred thousand francs' worth of furniture. 
 Wherefore Tullia never enters into explanations; she under- 
 stands the sovereign woman's reason to admiration. 
 
 " 'People made a good deal of fun of Cursy/ said she ; 
 *but, as a matter of fact, he found this house in the eight- 
 eenth century rouge-box, powder, puffs, and spangles. He 
 would never have thought of it but for me/ she added, bury- 
 ing herself in her cushions in her fireside corner. 
 
 "She delivered herself thus on her return from a first night. 
 Du BrueFs piece had succeeded, and she foresaw an avalanche 
 of criticisms. Tullia had her At Homes. Every Monday 
 she gave a tea-party; her society was as select as might be, 
 and she neglected nothing that could make her house pleasant. 
 There was bouillotte in one room, conversation in another, 
 qnd sometimes a concert (always short) in the large draw- 
 ing-room. None but the most eminent artists performed in 
 her house. Tullia had so much good sense, that she attained 
 to the most exquisite tact, and herein, in all probability, lay 
 the secret of her ascendency over du Bruel; at any rate, he 
 loved her with the love which use and wont at length makes 
 indispensable to life. Every day adds another thread to the 
 strong, irresistible, intangible web, which enmeshes the most 
 delicate fancies, takes captive every most transient mood, and 
 binding them together, holds a man captive hand and foot, 
 heart and head. 
 
 "Tullia knew Cursy well ; she knew every weak point in his 
 armor, knew also how to heal his wounds. 
 
 "A passion of this kind is inscrutable for any observer, even
 
 240 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 for a man who prides himself, as I do, on a certain expertness. 
 It is everywhere unfathomable; the dark depths in it are 
 darker than in any other mystery; the colors confused even 
 in the highest lights. 
 
 "Cursy was an old playwright, jaded by the life of the 
 theatrical world. He liked comfort; he liked a luxurious, 
 affluent, easy existence; he enjoyed being a king in his own 
 house; he liked to be host to a party of men of letters in a 
 hotel resplendent with royal luxury, with carefully chosen 
 works of art shining in the setting. Tullia allowed du Bruel 
 to enthrone himself amid the tribe; there were plenty of 
 journalists whom it was easy enough to catch and ensnare; 
 and, thanks to her evening parties and a well-timed loan here 
 and there, Cursy was not attacked too seriously his plays 
 succeeded. For these reasons he would not have separated 
 from Tullia for an empire. If she had been unfaithful, he 
 would probably have passed it over, on condition that none 
 of his accustomed joys should be retrenched; yet, strange to 
 say, Tullia caused him no twinges on this account. No fancy 
 was laid to her charge; if there had been any, she certainly 
 had been very careful of appearances. 
 
 " 'My dear fellow,' du Bruel would say, laying down the 
 law to us on the boulevard, 'there is nothing like one of these 
 women who have sown their wild oats and got over their pas- 
 sions. Such women as Claudine have lived their bachelor 
 life ; they h'ave been over head and ears in pleasure, and make 
 the most adorable wives that could be wished ; they have noth- 
 ing to learn, they are formed, they are not in the least 
 prudish ; they are well broken in, and indulgent. So I strongly 
 recommend everybody to take the "remains of a racer." I 
 am the most fortunate man on earth.' 
 
 "Du Bruel said this to me himself with Bixiou there to 
 hear it. 
 
 " 'My dear fellow/ said the caricaturist, 'perhaps he is right 
 to be in the wrong.' 
 
 "About a week afterwards, du Bruel asked us to dine with 
 him one Tuesday. That morning I went to see him on a piece 
 of theatrical business, a case submitted to us for arbitration
 
 A PRINCE OP BOHEMIA 241 
 
 by the commission of dramatic authors. We were obliged 
 to go out again; but before we started he went to Claudine's 
 room, knocked, as he always does, and asked for leave to enter. 
 
 " 'We live in grand style/ said he, smiling ; 'we are free. 
 Each is independent/ 
 
 "We were admitted. Du Bruel spoke to Claudine. 'I have 
 asked a few people to dinner to-day " 
 
 " 'Just like you !' cried she. 'You ask people without speak- 
 ing to me; I count for nothing here. Now' (taking me as ar- 
 bitrator Dy a glance) 'I ask you yourself. When a man has 
 been so foolish as to live with a woman of my sort; for, after 
 all, I was an opera dancer yes, I ought always to remember 
 that, if other people are to forget it well, under those cir- 
 cumstances, a clever man seeking to raise his wife in public 
 opinion would do his best to impose her upon the world as a 
 remarkable woman, to justify the step he had taken by ac- 
 knowledging that in some ways she was something more 
 than ordinary women, The best way of compelling respect 
 from others is to pay respect to her at home, and to leave 
 her absolute mistress of the house. Well, and yet it is enough 
 to waken one's vanity to see how frightened he is of seeming 
 to listen to me. I must be in the right ten times over if he 
 concedes a single point.' 
 
 " ( Emphatic negative gestures from du Bruel at every other 
 word.) 
 
 " 'Oh, yes, yes/ she continued quickly, in answer to this 
 mute dissent. 'I know all about it, du Bruel, my dear, I that 
 have been like a queen in my house all my life till I married 
 you. My wishes were guessed, fulfilled, and more than fulfilled. 
 After all, I am thirty-five, and at five-and-thirty a woman can- 
 not expect to be loved. Ah, if I were a girl of sixteen, if I had 
 not lost something that is dearly bought at the Opera, what at- 
 tention you would pay me, M. du Bruel ! I feel the most su- 
 preme contempt for men who boast that they can love and grow 
 careless and neglectful in little things as time grows on. You 
 are short and insignificant, yon see, du Bruel ; you love to tor- 
 ment a woman ; it is your only way of showing your strength.
 
 242 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 A Napoleon is ready to be swayed by the woman he loves ; he 
 loses nothing by it ; but as for such as you, you believe that you 
 are nothing apparently, you do not wish to be ruled. Five- 
 and-thirty, my dear boy/ she continued, turning to me, 'that is 
 the clue to the riddle. "No," does he say again ? You know 
 quite well that I am thirty-seven. I am very sorry, but just 
 ask your friends to dine at the Rocher de Cancale. I could 
 have them here, but I will not; they shall not come. And 
 then perhaps my poor little monologue may engrave that 
 salutary maxim, "Each is master at home," upon your mem- 
 ory. That is our charter/ she added, laughing, with a return 
 of the opera girl's giddiness and caprice. 
 
 " 'Well, well, my dear little puss ; there, there, never mind. 
 We can manage to get on together/ said du Bruel, and he 
 kissed her hands, and we came away. But he was very wroth. 
 
 "The whole way from the Eue de la Victoire to the boule- 
 vard a perfect torrent of venomous words poured fjom his 
 mouth like a waterfall in flood ; but as the shocking language 
 which he used on the occasion was quite unfit to print, the 
 report is necessarily inadequate. 
 
 " 'My dear fellow, I will leave that vile, shameless opera 
 dancer, a worn-out jade that has been set spinning like a top 
 to every operatic air ; a foul hussy, an organ-grinder's monkey ! 
 Oh, my dear boy, you have taken up with an actress ; may the 
 notion of marrying your mistress never get a hold on you. 
 It is a torment omitted from the hell of Dante, you see. 
 Look here ! I will beat her ; I will give her a thrashing ; I will 
 give it to her ! Poison of my life, she sent me off like a run- 
 ning footman/ 
 
 "By this time we had reached the boulevard, and he had 
 worked himself up to such a pitch of fury that the words 
 stuck in his throat. 
 
 " 'I will kick the stuffing out of her !' 
 
 "'And why?' 
 
 " 'My dear fellow, you will never know the thousand-and- 
 one fancies that slut takes into her head. When I want to 
 stay at home, she, forsooth, must go out; when I want to go
 
 A PRINCE OP BOHEMIA 243 
 
 out, she wants me to stop at home; and she spouts out argu- 
 ments and accusations and reasoning and talks and talks till 
 she drives you crazy. Eight means any whim that they 
 happen to take into their heads, and wrong means our notion. 
 Overwhelm them with something that cuts their arguments 
 to pieces they hold their tongues and look at you as if you 
 were a dead dog. My happiness indeed ! I lead the life of a 
 yard-dog; I am a perfect slave. The little happiness that I 
 have with her costs me dear. Confound it all. I will leave 
 her everything and take myself off to a garret. Yes, a garret 
 and liberty. I have not dared to have my own way once in 
 these five years.' 
 
 "But instead of going to his guests, Cursy strode up and 
 down the boulevard between the Kue de Richelieu and the 
 Rue du Mont Blanc, indulging in the most fearful impreca- 
 tions, his unbounded language was most comical to hear. His 
 paroxysm of fury in the street contrasted oddly with his 
 peaceable demeanor in the house. Exercise assisted him to 
 work off his nervous agitation and inward tempest. About 
 two o'clock, on a sudden frantic impulse, he exclaimed : 
 
 " 'These damned females never know what they want. I 
 will wager my head now that if I go home and tell her that 
 I have sent to ask my friends to dine with me at the Rocker 
 de Cancale, she will not be satisfied though she made the 
 arrangement herself. But she will have gone off somewhere 
 or other. I wonder whether there is something at the bottom 
 of all this, an assignation with some goat ? No. In the bot- 
 tom of her heart she loves me !' ' ; 
 
 The Marquise could not help smiling. 
 
 "Ah, madame," said Nathan, looking keenly at her, "only 
 women and prophets know how to turn faith to account. Du 
 Bruel would have me go home with him," he continued, "and 
 we went slowly back. It was three o'clock. Before he ap- 
 peared, he heard a stir in the kitchen, saw preparations 
 going forward, and glanced at me as he asked the cook the 
 reason of this. 
 
 "'Madame ordered dinner/ said the woman. 'Madame
 
 244 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 dressed and ordered a cab, and then she changed her mind 
 and ordered it again for the theatre this evening.' 
 
 " 'Good/ exclaimed du Bruel, 'what did I tell you ?' 
 
 "We entered the house stealthily. No one was there. We 
 went from room to room until we reached a little houdoir, 
 and came upon Tullia in tears. She dried her eyes without 
 affectation, and spoke to du Bruel. 
 
 " 'Send a note to the Rocher de Cancale/ she said, 'and ask 
 your guests to dine here.' 
 
 "She was dressed as only women of the theatre can dress, 
 in a simply-made gown of some dainty material, neither too 
 costly nor too common, graceful, and harmonious in outline 
 and coloring; there was nothing conspicuous about her, noth- 
 ing exaggerated a word now dropping out of use, to be re- 
 placed by the word 'artistic,' used by fools as current coin. 
 In short, Tullia looked like a gentlewoman. At thirty-seven 
 she had reached the prime of a Frenchwoman's beauty. At 
 this moment the celebrated oval of her face was divinely pale ; 
 she had laid her hat aside ; I could see a faint down like the 
 bloom of fruit softening the silken contours of a cheek itself 
 so delicate. There was a pathetic charm about her face with 
 its double cluster of fair hair; her brilliant gray eyes were 
 veiled by a mist of tears; her nose, delicately carved as a 
 Roman cameo, with its quivering nostrils; her little mouth, 
 like a child's even now; her long queenly throat, with the 
 veins standing out upon it ; her chin, flushed for the moment 
 by some secret despair; the pink tips of her ears, the hands 
 that trembled under her gloves, everything about her told 
 of violent feeling. The feverish twitching of her eyebrows 
 betrayed her pain. She looked sublime. 
 
 "Her first words had crushed du Bruel. She looked at us 
 both, with that penetrating, impenetrable cat-like glance 
 which only actresses and great ladies can use. Then she held 
 out her hand to her husband. 
 
 " 'Poor dear, you had scarcely gone before I blamed myself 
 a thousand times over. It seemed to me that I had been 
 horribly ungrateful. I told myself that I had been unkind.
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 245 
 
 Was I very unkind?' she asked, turning to me. *Why not 
 receive your friends? Is it not your house? Do you want 
 to know the reason of it all ? Well, I was afraid that I was not 
 loved ; and indeed I was half-way between repentance and the 
 shame of going back. I read the newspapers, and saw that 
 there was a first night at the Varietes, and I thought you had 
 meant to give the dinner to a collaborator. Left to myself, 
 I gave way, I dressed to hurry out after you poor pet/ 
 
 Du Bruel looked at me triumphantly, not a vestige of a 
 recollection of his orations contra Tullia, in his mind. ' 
 
 " 'Well, dearest, I have not spoken to any one of them/ he 
 said. 
 
 " 'How well we understand each other !' quoth she. 
 
 "Even as she uttered those bewildering sweet words, I 
 caught sight of something in her belt, the corner of a little 
 note thrust sidewise into it; but I did not need that indica- 
 tion to tell me that Tullia's fantastic conduct was referable 
 to occult causes. Woman, in my opinion, is the most logical 
 of created beings, the child alone excepted. In both we be- 
 hold a sublime phenomenon, the unvarying triumph of one 
 dominant, all-excluding thought. The child's thought 
 changes every moment; but while it possesses him, he acta 
 upon it with such ardor that others give way before him, fas- 
 cinated by the ingenuity, the persistence of a strong desire. 
 Woman is less changeable, but to call her capricious is a 
 stupid insult. Whenever she acts, she is always swayed by 
 one dominant passion; and wonderful it is to see how she 
 makes that passion the very centre of her world. 
 
 "Tullia was irresistible; she twisted du Bruel round her 
 fingers, the sky grew blue again, the evening was glorious. 
 And ingenious writer of plays as he is, he never so much as 
 saw that his wife had buried a trouble out of sight. 
 
 " 'Such is life, my dear fellow,' he said to me, 'ups and 
 downs and contrasts.' 
 
 " 'Especially life off the stage,' I put in. 
 
 " 'That is just what I mean/ he continued. 'Why, but 
 for these violent emotions, one would be bored to death ! Ah - 
 that woman has the gift of rousing me.'
 
 26 A PRINCE OP BOHEMIA 
 
 "We went to the Varietes after dinner; but before we left 
 the house I slipped into du Bruel's room, and on a shelf 
 among a pile of waste papers found the copy of the Petites- 
 Affiches, in which, agreeably to the reformed law, notice of 
 the purchase of the house was inserted. The words stared 
 me in the face 'At the request of Jean Frangois du Bruel 
 and Claudine Chaffaroux, his wife -' Here was the expla- 
 nation of the whole matter. I offered my arm to Claudine, 
 and allowed the guests to descend the stairs in front of us. 
 When 'we were alone 'If I were La Palferine/ I said, 'I 
 would not break an appointment.' 
 
 "Gravely she laid her finger on her lips. She leant on my 
 arm as we went downstairs, and looked at me with almost 
 something like happiness in her eyes because I knew La Pal- 
 ferine. Can you see the first idea that occurred to her? She 
 thought of making a spy of me, but I turned her off with the 
 light jesting talk of Bohemia. 
 
 "A month later, after a first performance of one of du 
 Bruel's plays, we met in the vestibule of the theatre. It was 
 raining; I went to call a cab. We had been delayed for a 
 few minutes, so that there were no cabs in sight. Claudine 
 scolded du Bruel soundly; and as we rolled through the 
 streets (for she set me down at Florine's), she continued 
 the quarrel with a series of most mortifying remarks. 
 
 " 'What is this about ?' I inquired. 
 
 " 'Oh, my dear fellow, she blames me for allowing you to 
 run out for a cab, and thereupon proceeds to wish for a car- 
 riage/ 
 
 "'As a dancer/ said she, 'I have never been accustomed 
 to use my feet except on the boards. If you have any spirit, 
 you will turn out four more plays or so in a year; you will 
 make up your mind that succeed they must, when you think 
 of the end in view, and that your wife will not walk in the 
 mud. It is a shame that I should have to ask for it. You 
 ought to have guessed my continual discomfort during the five 
 years since I married you.' 
 
 " 'I am quite willing,' returned du Bruel. 'But we shall 
 ruin ourselves.'
 
 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 24? 
 
 " 'If you run into debt/ she said, 'my uncle's money will 
 clear it off some day.' 
 
 " 'You are quite capable of leaving me the debts and tak- 
 ing the property.' 
 
 " 'Oh ! is that the way you take it ?' retorted she. 'I have 
 nothing more to say to you ; such a speech stops my mouth.' 
 
 "Whereupon du Bruel poured out his soul in excuses and 
 protestations of love. Not a word did she say. He took her 
 hands, she allowed him to take them; they were like ice, like 
 a dead woman's hands. Tullia, you can understand, was 
 playing to admiration the part of corpse that women can 
 play to show you that they refuse their consent to anything and 
 everything; that for you they are suppressing soul, spirit, 
 and life, and regard themselves as beasts of burden. Noth- 
 ing so provokes a man with a heart as this strategy. Women 
 can only use it with those who worship them. 
 
 "She turned to me. 'Do you suppose,' she said scornfully, 
 'that a Count would have uttered such an insult even if the 
 thought had entered his mind? For my misfortune I have 
 lived with dukes, ambassadors, and great lords, and I know 
 their ways. How intolerable it makes bourgeois life ! After 
 all, a playwright is not a Rastignac nor a Rhetore ' 
 
 "Du Bruel looked ghastly at this. Two days afterwards 
 we met in the foyer at the Opera, and took a few turns to- 
 gether. The conversation fell on Tullia. 
 
 " 'Do not take my ravings on the boulevard too seriously/ 
 said he; 'I have a violent temper.' 
 
 "For two winters I was a tolerably frequent visitor at du 
 Bruel's house, and I followed Claudine's tactics closely. She 
 had a splendid carriage. Du Bruel entered public life; she 
 made him abjure his Royalist opinions. He rallied himself; 
 he took his place again in the administration; the National 
 Guard was discreetly canvassed, du Bruel was elected major, 
 and behaved so valorously in a street riot, that he was deco- 
 rated with the rosette of an officer of the Legion of Honor. 
 He was appointed Master of Requests and head of a depart- 
 ment. Uncle Chaffaroux died and left his niece forty thou-
 
 248 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 sand francs per annum, three-fourths of his fortune. Du 
 Bruel became a deputy; but beforehand, to save the necessity 
 of re-election, he secured his nomination to the Council of 
 State.' He reprinted divers archaeological treatises, a couple 
 of political pamphlets, and a statistical work, by way of pre- 
 text for his appointment to one of the obliging academies of 
 the Institut. At this moment he is a Commander of the Le- 
 gion, and (after fishing in the troubled waters of political 
 intrigue) has quite recently been made a peer of France and 
 a count. As yet our friend does not venture to bear his 
 honors; his wife merely puts 'La Comtesse du Bruel' on her 
 cards. The sometime playwright has the Order of Leopold, 
 the Order of Isabella, the Cross of Saint-Vladimir, second 
 class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria, the Papal Order of 
 the Golden Spur, all the lesser orders, in short, besides the 
 Grand Cross. 
 
 "Three months ago Claudine drove to La Palferine's door 
 in her splendid carriage with its armorial bearings. Du 
 Bruel's grandfather was a farmer of taxes ennobled towards 
 the end of Louis Quatorze's reign. Cherin composed his coat- 
 of-arms for him, so the Count's coronet looks not amiss above 
 a scutcheon innocent of Imperial absurdities. In this way, 
 in the short space of three years, Claudine had carried out 
 the programme laid down for her by the charming, light- 
 hearted La Palferine. 
 
 "One day, just a month ago, she climbed the miserable 
 staircase to her lover's lodging ; climbed in her glory, dressed 
 like a re#l countess of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to our 
 friend's garret. La Palferine, seeing her, said, 'You have 
 made a peeress of yourself I know. But it is too late, Claud- 
 ine ; every one is talking just now about the Southern Cross,, 
 I should like to see it !' 
 
 " 'I will get it for you.' 
 
 "La Palferine burst into a peal of Homeric laughter. 
 
 " 'Most distinctly,' he returned, 'I do not wish to have a 
 woman as ignorant as a carp for my mistress, a woman that 
 springs like a flying fish from the green-room of the Opera
 
 A PRINCE OP BOHEMIA 249 
 
 to Court, for I should like to see you at the Court of the Citi- 
 zen King.' 
 
 "She turned to me. 
 
 " 'What is the Southern Cross ?' she asked, in a sad, down- 
 cast voice. 
 
 "I was struck with admiration for this indomitable love, 
 outdoing the most ingenious marvels of fairy tales in real 
 life a love that would spring over a precipice to find a roc's 
 egg, or to gather the singing flower. I explained that the 
 Southern Cross was a nebulous constellation even brighter 
 than the Milky Way, arranged in the form of a cross, and 
 that it could only be seen in southern latitudes. 
 
 " 'Very well, Charles, let us go,' said she. 
 
 "La Palferine, ferocious though he was, had tears in his 
 eyes; but what a look there was in Claudine's face, what a 
 note in her voice ! I have seen nothing like the thing that 
 followed, not even in the supreme touch of a great actor's 
 art; nothing to compare with her movement when she saw 
 the hard eyes softened in tears ; Claudine sank upon her knees 
 and kissed La Palferine's pitiless hand. He raised her with 
 his grand manner, his 'Rusticoli air/ as he calls it 'There, 
 child !' he said, 'I will do something for you ; I will put you 
 in my will.' 
 
 "Well," concluded Nathan, "I ask myself sometimes 
 whether du Bruel is really deceived. Truly there is nothing 
 more comic, nothing stranger than the sight of a careless 
 young fellow ruling a married couple, his slightest whims 
 received as law, the weightiest decisions revoked at a word 
 from him. That dinner incident, as you can see, is repeated 
 times without number, it interferes with important matters. 
 Still, but for Claudine's caprices, du Bruel would be de Cursy 
 still, one vaudevillist among five hundred; whereas he is in 
 the House of Peers." 
 
 "You will change the names, I hope!" said Nathan, ad- 
 dressing Mme. de la Baudraye. 
 "I should think so ! I have only set names to the masks for
 
 250 A PRINCE OF BOHEMIA 
 
 you. My dear Nathan," she added in the poet's ear, "I know 
 another case in which the wife takes du Bruel's place." 
 
 "And the catastrophe?" queried Lousteau, returning just 
 at the end of Mme. de la Baudraye's story. 
 
 "I do not believe in catastrophes. One has to invent such 
 good ones to show that art is quite a match for chance; and 
 nobody reads a book twice, my friend, except for the details." 
 
 "But there is a catastrophe," persisted Nathan. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "The Marquise de Rochefide is infatuated with Charles 
 Edward. My story excited her curiosity." 
 
 "Oh, unhappy woman !" cried Mme. de la Baudraye. 
 
 "Not so unhappy," said Nathan, "for Maxime de Trailles 
 and La Pal ferine have brought about a rupture between the 
 Marquis and Mme. Schontz, and they mean to make it up 
 between Arthur and Beatrix." 
 
 1839-1845.
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 To Monsieur le Baron James de Rothschild, Banker and 
 Austrian Consul-General at Paris. 
 
 THE word lorette is a euphemism invented to describe the 
 status of a personage, or a personage of a status, of which it 
 is awkward to speak; the French Academie, in its modesty, 
 having omitted to supply a definition out of regard for the 
 age of its forty members. Whenever a new word comes to 
 supply the place of an unwieldy circumlocution, its fortune 
 is assured; the word lorette has passed into the language of 
 every class of society, even where the lorette herself will never 
 gain an entrance. It was only invented in 1840, and derived 
 beyond a doubt from the agglomeration of such swallows' 
 nests about the Church of Our Lady of Loretto. This infor- 
 mation is for etymologists only. Those gentlemen would not 
 be so often in a quandary if mediaeval writers had only taken 
 euch pains with details of contemporary manners as we take 
 in these days of analysis and description. 
 
 Mile. Turquet, or Malaga, for she is better known by her 
 pseudonym,* was one of the earliest parishioners of that 
 charming church. At the time to which this story belongs, 
 that lighthearted and lively damsel gladdened the existence 
 of a notary with a wife somewhat too bigoted, rigid, and frigid 
 for domestic happiness. 
 
 Now, it so fell out that one Carnival evening Maitre Cardot 
 was entertaining guests at Mile. Turquet's house Desroches 
 the attorney, Bixiou of the caricatures, Lousteau the journal- 
 ist, Nathan, and others; it is quite unnecessary to give any 
 further description of these personages, all bearers of illus- 
 trious names in the Comedic Hninaine. Young La Palferine, 
 
 *See Lafausse Maitresse. 
 (251)
 
 252 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 in spite of his title of Count and his great descent, which, 
 alas ! means a great descent in fortune likewise, had honored 
 the notary's little establishment with his presence. 
 
 At dinner, in such a house, one does not expect to meet 
 the patriarchal beef, the skinny fowl and salad of domestic 
 and family life, nor is there any attempt at the hypocritical 
 conversation of drawing-rooms furnished with highly respect- 
 able matrons. When, alas! will respectability be charming? 
 When will the women in good society vouchsafe to show rather 
 less of their shoulders and rather more wit or geniality ? Mar- 
 guerite Turquet, the Aspasia of the Cirque-Olympique, is 
 one of those frank, very living personalities to whom all is 
 forgiven, such unconscious sinners are they, such intelligent 
 penitents; of such as Malaga one might ask, like Cardot a 
 witty man enough, albeit a notary to be well "deceived." 
 And yet you must not think that any enormities were com- 
 mitted. Desroches and Cardot were good fellows grown too 
 gray in the profession not to feel at ease with Bixiou, Lous- 
 teau, Nathan, and young La Palferine. And they on their 
 side had too often had recourse to their legal advisers, and 
 knew them too well to try to "draw them out," in lorette lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Conversation, perfumed with seven cigars, at first was as 
 fantastic as a kid let loose, but finally it settled down upon 
 the strategy of the constant war waged in Paris between cred- 
 itors and debtors. 
 
 Now, if you will be so good as to recall the history and 
 antecedents of the guests, you will know that in all Paris you 
 could scarcely find a group of men with more experience in 
 this matter ; the professional men on one hand, and the artists 
 on the other, were something in the position of magistrates 
 and criminals hobnobbing together. A set of Bixiou's draw- 
 ings to illustrate life in the debtors' prison, led the conversa- 
 tion to take this particular turn; and from debtors' prisons 
 they went to debts. 
 
 It was midnight. They had broken up into little knots 
 round the table and before the fire, and gave themselves up
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 253 
 
 to the burlesque fun which is only possible or comprehensible 
 in Paris and in that particular region which is bounded 
 by the Faubourg Montmartre, the Eue Chaussee d'Antin, the 
 upper end of the Eue de Navarin and the line of the boule- 
 vards. 
 
 In ten minutes' time they had come to an end of all the 
 deep reflections, all the moralizings, small and great, all the 
 bad puns made on a subject already exhausted by Eabelais 
 three hundred and fifty years ago. It is not a little to their 
 credit that the pyrotechnic display was cut short with a final 
 squib from Malaga. 
 
 "It all goes to the shoemakers," she said. "I left a milliner 
 because she failed twice with my hats. The vixen has been 
 here twenty-seven times to ask for twenty francs. She did 
 not know that we never have twenty francs. One has a thou- 
 sand francs, or one sends to one's notary for five hundred; 
 but twenty francs I have never had in my life. My cook and 
 my maid may, perhaps, have so much between them; but for 
 my own part, I have nothing but credit, and I should lose that 
 if I took to borrowing small sums. If I were to ask for twenty 
 francs, I should have nothing to distinguish me from my col- 
 leagues that walk the boulevard." 
 
 "Is the milliner paid?" asked La Palferine. 
 
 "Oh, come now, are you turning stupid?" said she, with a 
 wink. "She came this morning for the twenty-seventh time, 
 that is how I came to mention it." 
 
 "What did you do?" asked Desroches. 
 
 "I took pity upon her, and ordered a little hat that I 
 have just invented, a quite new shape. If Mile. Amanda 
 succeeds with it, she will say no more about the money, her 
 fortune is made." 
 
 "In my opinion," put in Desroches, "the finest things that 
 I have seen in a duel of this kind give those who know Paris 
 a far better picture of the city than all the fancy portraits 
 that they paint. Some of you think that you know a thing 
 or two," he continued, glancing round at Nathan, Bixiou, La 
 Palferine, and Lousteau, "but the king of the ground is a
 
 254 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 certain Count, now busy ranging himself. In his time, he 
 was supposed to be the cleverest, adroitest, canniest, boldest, 
 stoutest, most subtle and experienced of all the pirates, who, 
 equipped with fine manners, yellow kid gloves, and cabs, have 
 ever sailed or ever will sail upon the stormy sea of Paris. He 
 fears neither God nor man. He applies in private life the 
 principles that guide the English Cabinet. Up to the time 
 of his marriage, his life was one continual war, like Lous- 
 teau's, for instance. I was, and am still his solicitor." 
 
 "And the first letter of his name is Maxime de Trailles," 
 said La Palferine. 
 
 "For that matter, he has paid every one, and injured no 
 one," continued Desroches. "But as our friend Bixiou was 
 saying just now, it is a violation of the liberty of the subject 
 to be made to pay in March when you have no mind to pay 
 till October. By virtue of this article of his particular code, 
 Maxime regarded a creditor's scheme for making him pay at 
 once as a swindler's trick. It was long since he had grasped 
 the significance of the bill of exchange in all its bearings, 
 direct and remote. A young man once, in my place, called a 
 bill of exchange the 'asses' bridge' in his hearing. 'No,' said' 
 he, 'it is the Bridge of Sighs ; it is the shortest way to an exe- 
 cution.' Indeed, his knowledge of commercial law was so 
 complete, that a professional could not have taught him any- 
 thing. At that time he had nothing, as you know. His car- 
 riage and horses were jobbed; he lived in his valet's house; 
 and, by the way, he will be a hero to his valet to the end of 
 the chapter, even after the marriage that he proposes to make. 
 He belonged to three clubs, and dined at one of them when- 
 ever he did not dine out. As a rule, he was to be found very 
 seldom at his own address " 
 
 "He once said to me," interrupted La Palferine, " 'My one 
 affectation is the pretence that I make of living in the Eue 
 Pigalle/ ' ; 
 
 ''Well," resumed Desroches, "he was one of the combatants ; 
 and now for the other. You have heard more or less talk of 
 one Claparon?"
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 255 
 
 "Had hair like this !" cried Bixiou, ruffling his locks till 
 they stood on end. Gifted with the same talent for mimick- 
 ing absurdities which Chopin the pianist possesses to so high 
 a degree, he proceeded forthwith to represent the character 
 with startling truth. 
 
 "He rolls his head like this when he speaks ; he was once a 
 commercial traveler; he has been all sorts of things " 
 
 "Well, he was born to travel, for at this minute, as I speak, 
 he is on the sea on his way to America," said Desroches. "It 
 is his only chance, for in all probability he will be condemned 
 by default as a fraudulent bankrupt next session." 
 
 "Very much at sea !" exclaimed Malaga. 
 
 "For six or seven years this Claparon acted as man of straw, 
 cat's-paw, and scapegoat to two friends of ours, du Tillet and 
 Nucingen; but in 1829 his part was so well known that " 
 
 "Our friends dropped him," put in Bixiou. 
 
 "They left him to his fate at last, and he wallowed in the 
 mire," continued Desroches. "In 1833 he went into partner- 
 ship with one Cerizet " 
 
 "What ! he that promoted a joint-stock company so nicely 
 that the Sixth Chamber cut short his career with a couple 
 of years in jail?" asked the lorette. 
 
 "The same. Under the Eestoration, between 1823 and 
 1827, Cerizet's occupation consisted in first putting his name 
 intrepidly to various paragraphs, on which the public prose- 
 cutor fastened with avidity, and subsequently marching off 
 to prison. A man could make a name for himself with small 
 expense in those days. The Liberal party called their pro- 
 vincial champion 'the courageous Cerizet,' and towards 1828 
 so much zeal received its reward in 'general interest.' 
 
 " 'General interest' is a kind of civic crown bestowed on the 
 deserving by the daily press. Cerizet tried to discount the 
 'general interest' taken in him. He came to Paris, and, with 
 some help from capitalists in the Opposition, started as a 
 broker, and conducted financial operations to some extent, the 
 capita] being found by a man in hiding, a skilful gambler who 
 overreached himself, and in consequence, in July 1830, his 
 capital foundered in the shipwreck of the Government.'"'
 
 256 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 "Oh! it was he whom we used to call the System/' cried 
 Bixiou. 
 
 "Say no harm of him, poor fellow," protested Malaga. 
 "D'Estourny was a good sort." 
 
 "You can imagine the part that a ruined man was sure to 
 play in 1830 when his name in politics was 'the courageous 
 Cerizet." He was sent off into a very snug little sub-prefec- 
 ture. Unluckily for him, it is one thing to be in opposition 
 any missile is good enough to throw, so long as the fight lasts ; 
 but quite another to be in office. Three months later, he was 
 obliged to send in his resignation. Had he not taken it into 
 his head to attempt to win popularity? Still, as he had 
 done nothing as yet to imperil his title of 'courageous Cerizet/ 
 the Government proposed by way of compensation that he 
 should manage a newspaper; nominally an Opposition paper, 
 but Ministerialist in petto. So the fall of this noble nature was 
 really due to the Government. To Cerizet, as manager of*the 
 paper, it was rather too evident that he was as a bird perched 
 on a rotten bough ; and then it was that he promoted that nice 
 little joint-stock company, and thereby secured a couple of 
 years in prison; he was caught, while more ingenious swin- 
 dlers succeeded in catching the public." 
 
 "We are acquainted with the more ingenious," said Bixiou ; 
 "let us say no ill of the poor fellow ; he was nabbed ; Couture 
 allowed them to squeeze his cash-box; who would ever have 
 thought it of him ?" 
 
 "At all events, Cerizet was a low sort of fellow, a good deal 
 damaged by low debauchery. Now for the duel I spoke about. 
 Never did two tradesmen of the worst type, with the worst 
 manners, the lowest pair of villains imaginable, go into part- 
 nership in a dirtier business. Their stock-in-trade consisted 
 of the peculiar idiom of the man about town, the audacity of 
 poverty, the cunning that comes of experience, and a special 
 knowledge of Parisian capitalists, their origin, connections, 
 acquaintances, and intrinsic value. This partnership of two 
 'dabblers' (let the Stock Exchange term pass, for it is the 
 only word which describes them), this partnership of dabblers
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 257 
 
 did not last very long. They fought like famished curs over 
 every bit of garbage. 
 
 "The earlier speculations of the firm of Cerizet and Cla- 
 paron were, however, well planned. The two scamps joined 
 forces with Barbet, Chaboisseau, Samanon, and usurers of 
 that stamp, and bought up hopelessly bad debts. 
 
 "Claparon's place of business at that time was a cramped 
 entresol in the Rue Chabannais five rooms at a rent of seven 
 hundred francs at most. Each partner slept in a little closet, 
 so carefully closed from prudence, that iny head-clerk could 
 never get inside. The furniture of the other three rooms 
 an ante-chamber, a waiting-room, and a private office would 
 not have fetched three hundred francs altogether at a distress- 
 warrant sale. You know enough of Paris to know the look 
 of it ; the stuffed horsehair-covered chairs, a table covered with 
 a green cloth, a trumpery clock between a couple of candle 
 sconces, growing tarnished under glass shades, the small gilt- 
 framed mirror over the chimney-piece, and in the grate a 
 charred stick or two of firewood which had lasted them for 
 two winters, as my head-clerk put it. As for the office, you 
 can guess what it was like more letter-files than business 
 letters, a set of common pigeon-holes for either partner, a 
 cylinder desk, empty as the cash-box, in the middle of the 
 room, and a couple of armchairs on either side of a coal fire. 
 The carpet on the floor was bought cheap at second-hand (like 
 the bills and bad debts). In short, it was the mahogany fur- 
 niture of furnished apartments which usually descends from 
 one occupant of chambers to another during fifty years of ser- 
 vice. Now you know the pair of antagonists. 
 
 "During the first three months of a partnership dissolved 
 four months later in a bout of fisticuffs, Cerizet and Claparon 
 bought up two thousand francs' worth of bills bearing Max- 
 ime's signature (since Maxime is his name), and filled a 
 couple of letter files to bursting with judgments, appeals, or- 
 ders of the court, distress-warrant, application for stay of 
 proceedings, and all the rest of it; to put it briefly, they had 
 bills for three thousand two hundred francs odd centimes, for
 
 258 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 which they had given five hundred francs ; the transfer being 
 made under private seal, with special power of attorney, to 
 save the expense of registration. Now it so happened at this 
 juncture, Maxime, being of ripe age, was seized with one of 
 the fancies peculiar to the man of fifty " 
 
 "Antonia !" exclaimed La Palferine. "That Antonia whose 
 fortune I made by writing to ask for a toothbrush !" 
 
 "Her real name is Chocardellc," said Malaga, not over well 
 pleased by the fine-sounding pseudonym. 
 
 "The same," continued Desroches. 
 
 "It was the only mistake Maxime ever made in his life. 
 But what would you have, no vice is absolutely perfect ?" put 
 in Bixiou. 
 
 "Maxime had still to learn what sort of a life a man may 
 be led into by a girl of eighteen when she is minded to take 
 a header from her honest garret into a sumptuous carriage ; it 
 is a lesson that all statesmen should take to heart. At this 
 time, de Marsay had just been employing his friend, our friend 
 de Trailles, in the high comedy of politics. Maxime had 
 looked high for his conquests; he had no experience of un- 
 titled women ; and at fifty years he felt that he had a right to 
 take a bite of a little so-called wild fruit, much as a sports- 
 man will halt under a peasant's apple-tree. So the Count 
 found a reading-room for Mile. Chocardelle, a rather smart 
 little place to be had cheap, as usual " 
 
 "Pooh !" said Xathan. "She did not stay in it six months. 
 She was too handsome to keep a reading-room." 
 
 "Perhaps you are the father of her child?" suggested the 
 lorette. 
 
 Desroches resumed. 
 
 "Since the firm bought up Maxime's debts, Cerizet's like- 
 ness to a bailiff's officer grew more and more striking, and 
 one morning after seven fruitless attempts he succeeded in 
 penetrating into the Count's presence. Suzon, the old man- 
 servant, albeit he was by no means in his novitiate, at last 
 mistook the visitor for a petitioner, come to propose a thou- 
 sand crowns if Maxime would obtain a license to sell postage
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 259 
 
 stamps for a young lady. Suzon, without the slightest sus- 
 picion of the little scamp, a thoroughbred Paris street-boy 
 into whom prudence had been rubbed by repeated personal ex- 
 perience of the police-courts, induced his master to receive 
 him. Can you see the man of business, with an uneasy eye, 
 a bald forehead, and scarcely any hair on his head, standing 
 in his threadbare jacket and muddy boots " 
 
 "What a picture of a Dun!" cried Lousteau. 
 
 " standing before the Count, that image of flaunting 
 
 Debt, in his blue flannel dressing-gown, slippers worked by 
 some Marquise or other, trousers of white woolen stuff, and 
 a dazzling shirt? There he stood, with a gorgeous cap on 
 his black dyed hair, playing with the tassels at his waist " 
 
 " 'Tis a bit of genre for anybody who knows the pretty little 
 morning room, hung with silk and full of valuable paintings, 
 where Maxime breakfasts," said Nathan. "You tread on a 
 Smyrna carpet, you admire the sideboards filled with curiosi- 
 ties and rarities fit to make a King of Saxony envious " 
 
 "Now for the scene itself," said Desroches, and the deep- 
 est silence followed. 
 
 " 'Monsieur le Comte,' began Cerizet, 'I have come from a 
 M. Charles Claparon, who used to be a banker ' 
 
 " 'Ah ! poor devil, and what does he want with me ?' 
 
 " 'Well, he is at present your creditor for a matter of three 
 thousand two hundred francs, seventy-five centimes, princi- 
 pal, interest, and costs " 
 
 " 'Coutelier's business ?' put in Maxime, who knew his af- 
 fairs as a pilot knows his coast. 
 
 " 'Yes, Monsieur le Comte,' said Cerizet with a bow. 1 
 have come to ask your intentions.' 
 
 " 'I shall only pay when the fancy takes me/ returned 
 Maxime, and he rang for Suzon. 'It was very rash of Cla- 
 paron to buy up bills of mine without speaking to me before- 
 hand. I am sorry for him, for he did so very well for such a 
 long time as a man of straw for friends of mine. I always 
 said that a man must really be weak in his intellect to work 
 
 for men that stuff themselves with millions, and to serve them 
 VOL. 1648
 
 260 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 so faithfully for such low wages. And now here he gives me 
 another proof of his stupidity ! Yes, men deserve what they 
 get. It is your own doing whether you get a crown on your 
 forehead or a bullet through your head; whether you are a 
 millionaire or a porter, justice is always done you. I cannot 
 help it, my dear fellow ; I myself am not a king, I stick to my 
 principles. I have no pity for those that put me to expense 
 or do not know their business as creditors. Suzon ! my tea ! 
 Do you see this gentleman ?' he continued when the man came 
 in. 'Well, you have allowed yourself to be taken in, poor old 
 boy. This gentleman is a creditor ; you ought to have known 
 him by his boots. No friend nor foe of mine, nor those that 
 are neither and want something of me, come to see me on foot. 
 My dear M. Cerizet, do you understand? You will not 
 wipe your boots on my carpet again' (looking as he spoke at 
 the mud that whitened the enemy's soles). 'Convey my com- 
 pliments and sympathy to Claparon, poor buffer, for I shall 
 file this business under the letter Z.' 
 
 "All this with an easy good-humor fit to give a virtuous 
 citizen the colic. 
 
 " 'You are wrong, Monsieur le Comte,' retorted Cerizet, in 
 a slightly peremptory tone. 'We will be paid in full, and that 
 in a way which you may not like. That was why I came to 
 you first in a friendly spirit, as is right and fit between gen- 
 tlemen ' 
 
 " 'Oh ! so that is how you understand it ?' began Maxime, 
 enraged by this last piece of presumption. There was some- 
 thing of Talleyrand's wit in the insolent retort, if you have 
 quite grasped the contrast between the two men and their 
 costumes. Maxime scowled and looked full at the intruder; 
 Cerizet not merely endured the glare of cold fury, but even 
 returned it, with an icy, cat-like malignance and fixity of gaze. 
 
 " 'Very good, sir, go out ' 
 
 " 'Very well, good-day, Monsieur le Comte. We shall be 
 quits before six months are out.' 
 
 " 'If you can steal the amount of your bill, which is legally 
 due I own, I shall be indebted to you, sir,' replied Maxime.
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 261 
 
 'You will have taught me a new precaution to take. I am very 
 much your servant.' 
 
 " 'Monsieur le Comte,' said Cerizet, 'it is I, on the con- 
 trary, who am yours.' 
 
 "Here was an explicit, forcible, confident declaration on 
 either side. A couple of tigers confabulating, with the prey 
 before them, and a fight impending, would have been no finer 
 and no shrewder than this pair; the insolent fine gentleman 
 as great a blackguard as the other in his soiled and mud- 
 stained clothes. 
 
 "Which will you lay your money on?" asked Desroches, 
 looking round at an audience, surprised to find how deeply it 
 was interested. 
 
 "A pretty story I" cried Malaga. "My dear boy, go on, I 
 beg of you. This goes to one's heart." 
 
 "Nothing commonplace could happen between two fighting- 
 cocks of that calibre," added La Palferine. 
 
 "Pooh !" cried Malaga, "I will wager my cabinet-maker's 
 invoice (the fellow is dunning me) that the little toad was 
 too many for Maxime." 
 
 "I bet on Maxime," said Cardot. "Nobody ever caught 
 him napping." 
 
 Desroches drank off a glass that Malaga handed to him. 
 
 "Mile. Chocardelle's reading-room," he continued, after a 
 pause, "was in the Eue Coquenard, just a step or two from 
 the Rue Pigalle where Maxime was living. The said Mile. 
 Chocardelle lived at the back on the garden side of the house, 
 beyond a big, dark place where the books were kept. Antonia 
 left her aunt to look after the business " 
 
 "Had she an aunt even then?" exclaimed Malaga. "Hang 
 it all, Maxime did things handsomely." 
 
 "Alas ! it was a real aunt," said Desroches ; "her name was 
 let me see " 
 
 "Ida Bonamy/' said Bixiou. 
 
 "So as Antonia's aunt took a good deal of the work off her 
 hands, she went to bed late and lay late of a morning, never 
 showing her face at the desk until the afternoon, some time
 
 262 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 between two and four. From the very first her appearance 
 was enough to draw custom. Several elderly men in the quar- 
 ter used to come, among them a retired coach-builder, one 
 Croizeau. Beholding this miracle of female loveliness 
 through the window-panes, he took it into his head to read 
 the newspapers in the beauty's reading-room ; and a sometime 
 custom-house officer, named Denisart, with a ribbon in his 
 button-hole, followed the example. Croizeau chose to look 
 upon Denisart as a rival. 'Mosieur' he said afterwards, 'I 
 did not know what to buy for you !' 
 
 "That speech should give you an idea of the man. The 
 Sieur Croizeau happens to belong to a particular class of old 
 man which should be known as 'Coquerels' since Henri Mou- 
 rner's time; so well did Monnier render the piping voice, the 
 little mannerisms, little queue, little sprinkling of powder, 
 little movements of the head, prim little manner, and tripping 
 gait in the part of Coquerel in La Famille Improvisee. This 
 Croizeau used to hand over his halfpence with a flourish and a 
 'There, fair lady !' 
 
 "Mme. Ida Bonamy the aunt was not long in finding out 
 through the servant that Croizeau, by popular report of the 
 neighborhood of the Rue de Buffault, where he lived, was u 
 man of exceeding stinginess, possessed of forty thousand 
 francs per annum. A week after the instalment of the charm- 
 ing librarian he was delivered of a pun : 
 
 "'You lend me books (livres), but I give you plenty of 
 francs in return,' said he. 
 
 "A few days later he put on a knowing little air, as much 
 as to say, 'I know you are engaged, but my turn will come one 
 day; I am a widower.' 
 
 "He always came arrayed in fine linen, a cornflower blue 
 coat, a paduasoy waistcoat, black trousers, and black ribbon 
 bows on the double soled shoes that creaked like an abbe's ; he 
 always held a fourteen franc silk hat in his hand. 
 
 " 'I am old and I have no children,' he took occasion to 
 confide to the young lady some few days after Cerizet's visit to 
 Maxime. 'I hold my relations in horror. They are peasants
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 263 
 
 born to work in the fields. Just imagine it, I came up from 
 the country with six francs in my pocket, and made my for- 
 tune here. I am not proud. A pretty woman is my equal. 
 Xow would it not be nicer to be Mme. Croizeau for some years 
 to come than to do a Count's pleasure for a twelvemonth ? He 
 will go off and leave you some time or other; and when that 
 day comes, you will think of me . . . your servant, my 
 pretty lady !' 
 
 "All this was simmering below the surface. The slightest 
 approach at love-making was made quite on the sly. Not a 
 soul suspected that the trim little old fogy was smitten with 
 Antonia; and so prudent was the elderly lover, that no rival 
 could have guessed anything from his behavior in the reading- 
 room. For a couple of months Croizeau watched the retired 
 custom-house official; but before the third month was out he 
 had good reason to believe that his suspicions were groundless. 
 He exerted his ingenuity to scrape an acquaintance with De- 
 nisart, came up with him in the street, and at length seized his 
 opportunity to remark, 'It is a fine day, sir!' 
 
 "Whereupon the retired official responded with, 'Austerlitz 
 weather, sir. I was there myself I was wounded indeed, I 
 won my Cross on that glorious day/ 
 
 "And so from one thing to another the two drifted wrecks 
 of the Empire struck up an acquaintance. Little Croizeau 
 was attached to the Empire through his connection with Na- 
 poleon's sisters. He had been their coach-builder, and had 
 frequently dunned them for money; so he gave out that he 
 'had had relations with the Imperial family/ Maxime, duly 
 informed by Antonia of the 'nice old man's' proposals (for so 
 the aunt called Croizeau), wished to see him. Cerizet's de- 
 claration of war had so far taken effect that he of the yellow 
 kid gloves was studying the position of every piece, however 
 insignificant, upon the board; and it so happened that at 
 the mention of that 'nice old man/ an ominous tinkling 
 sounded in his ears. One evening, therefore, Maxime seated 
 himself among the book-shelves in the dimly lighted back 
 room, reconnoitred the seven or eight customers through the
 
 264 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 chink between the green curtains, and took the little coach- 
 builder's measure. He gauged the man's infatuation, and 
 was very well satisfied to find that the varnished doors of a 
 tolerably sumptuous future were ready to turn at a word 
 from Antonia so soon as his own fancy had passed off. 
 
 " 'And that other one yonder ?' asked he, pointing out the 
 stout fine-looking elderly man with the Cross of the Legion 
 of Honor. 'Who is he?' 
 
 " 'A retired custom-house officer.' 
 
 " 'The cut of his countenance is not reassuring/ said Max- 
 ime, beholding the Sieur Denisart. 
 
 "And indeed the old soldier held himself upright as a 
 steeple. His head was remarkable for the amount of powder 
 and pomatum bestowed upon it; he looked almost like a pos- 
 tilion at a fancy ball. Underneath that felted covering, 
 moulded to the top of the wearer's cranium, appeared an eld- 
 erly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical ad- 
 mixture of arrogance, altogether something like caricatures 
 of the Constitutionnel. The sometime official finding that 
 age, and hair-powder, and the conformation of his spine made 
 it impossible to read a word without spectacles, sat dis- 
 playing a very creditable expanse of chest with all the pride 
 of nn old man with a mistress. Like old General Montcornet, 
 that pillar of the Vaudeville, he wore earrings. Denisart was 
 partial to blue; his roomy trousers and well-worn greatcoat 
 were both of blue cloth. 
 
 " 'How long is it since that old fogy came here ?' inquired 
 Maxime, thinking that he saw danger in the spectacles. 
 
 " 'Oh, from the beginning,' returned Antonia, 'pretty 
 nearly two months ago now.' 
 
 " 'Good,' said Maxime to himself, 'Cerizet only came to me 
 a month ago. Just get him to talk/ he added in Antonia's 
 ear; 'I want to hear his voice.' 
 
 " 'Pshaw/ said she, 'that is not so easy. He never says a 
 word to me.' 
 
 " 'Then why does he come here ?' demanded Maxime. 
 
 " 'For a queer reason/ returned the fair Antonia. 'In the 
 first place, although he is sixty-nine, he has a fancy; and be-
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 26,^ 
 
 cause he is sixty-nine, he is as methodical as a clock face. 
 Every day at five o'clock the old gentleman goes to dine with 
 her in the Rue de la Victoire. (I am sorry for her.) Then 
 at six o'clock, he comes here, reads steadily at the papers for 
 four hours, and goes back at ten o'clock. Daddy Croizeau says 
 that he knows M. Denisart's motives, and approves his con- 
 duct; and in his place, he would do the same. So I know 
 exactly what to expect. If ever I am Mme. Croizeau, I shall 
 have four hours to myself between six and ten o'clock.' 
 
 "Maxime looked through the directory, and found the fol- 
 lowing reassuring item: 
 
 " DENISART,* retired custom-house officer, Rue de la Victoire. 
 
 "His uneasiness vanished. 
 
 "Gradually the Sieur Denisart and the Sieur Croizeau be- 
 gan to exchange confidences. Nothing so binds two men to- 
 gether as a similarity of views in the matter of womankind. 
 Daddy Croizeau went to dine with 'M. Denisart's fair lady,' 
 as he called her. And here I must make a somewhat impor- 
 tant observation. 
 
 "The reading-room had been paid for half in cash, half in 
 bills signed by the said Mile. Chocardelle. The quart d'heure 
 de Rabelais arrived; the Count had no money. So the first 
 bill of three thousand-franc bills was met by the amiable 
 coach-builder; that old scoundrel Denisart having recom- 
 mended him to secure himself with a mortgage on the reading- 
 , room. 
 
 " 'For my own part,' said Denisart, 'I have seen pretty 
 doings from pretty women. So, in all cases, even when I 
 have lost my head, I am always on my guard with a woman. 
 There is this creature, for instance; I am madly in love with 
 her; but this is not her furniture; no, it belongs to me. The 
 lease is taken out in my name.' 
 
 "You know Maxime! He thought the coach-builder un- 
 commonly green. Croizeau might pay all three bills, and get 
 nothing for a long while; for Maxime felt more infatuated 
 with Antonia than ever/'
 
 266 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 "I can well believe it," said La Palferine. "She is the 
 bella Imperia of our day." 
 
 "With her rough skin !" exclaimed Malaga ; "so rough, that 
 she ruins herself in bran baths !" 
 
 "Croizeau spoke with a coach-builder's admiration of the 
 sumptuous furniture provided by the amorous Denisart as a 
 setting for his fair one, describing it all in detail with dia- 
 bolical complacency for Antonia's benefit," continued Des- 
 roches. "The ebony chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl and 
 gold wire, the Brussels carpets, a medieval bedstead worth 
 three thousand francs, a Boule clock, candelabra in the four 
 corners of the dining-room, silk curtains, on which Chinese 
 patience had wrought pictures of birds, and hangings over 
 the doors, worth more than the portress that opened them. 
 
 " 'And that is what you ought to have, my pretty lady. 
 And that is what I should like to offer you/ he would con- 
 clude. 'I am quite aware that you scarcely care a bit about 
 me; but, at my age, we cannot expect too much. Judge how 
 much I love you ; I have lent you a thousand francs. I must 
 confess that, in all my born days, I have not lent anybody that 
 much ' 
 
 "He held out his penny as he spoke, with the important air 
 of a man that gives a learned demonstration. 
 
 "That evening at the Varietes, Antonia spoke to the Count. 
 
 " 'A reading-room is very dull, all the same,' said she ; 'I 
 feel that I have no sort of taste for that kind of life, and I 
 see no future in it. It is only fit for a widow that wishes to 
 keep body and soul together, or for some hideously ugly thing 
 that fancies she can catch a husband with a little finery.' 
 
 " 'It was your own choice,' returned the Count. Just at 
 that moment, in came Nucingen, of whom Maxime, king of 
 lions (the 'yellow kid gloves' were the lions of that day) had 
 won three thousand francs the evening before. Nucingen 
 had come to pay his gaming debt. 
 
 " *Ein writ of attachment haf shoost peen served on me by 
 der order of dot teufel Glabaron,' he said, seeing Maxime's 
 astonishment.
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 267 
 
 " 'Oh, so that is how they are going to work, is it ?' cried 
 Maxime. 'They are not up to much, that pair ' 
 
 " 'It makes not/ said the banker, 'bay dem, for dey may 
 apply demselfs to oders pesides, und do you harm. I dake 
 dees bretty voman to vitness dot I haf baid you dees morning, 
 long pefore dat writ vas serfed.' '' 
 
 "Queen of the boards," smiled La Palferine, looking at 
 Malaga, "thou art about to lo?e thy bet." 
 
 "Once, a long time ago, in a similar case," resumed Des- 
 roches, "a too honest debtor took fright at the idea of a solemn 
 declaration in a court of law, and declined to pay Maxime 
 after notice was given. That time we made it hot for the 
 creditor by piling on writs of attachment, so as to absorb the 
 whole amount in costs " 
 
 "Oh, what is that ?" cried Malaga ; "it all sounds like gib- 
 berish to me. As you thought the sturgeon so excellent at 
 dinner, let me take out the value of the sauce in lessons in 
 chicanery." 
 
 "Very well," said Desroches. "Suppose that a man owes 
 you money, and your creditors serve a writ of attachment upon 
 him ; there is nothing to prevent all your other creditors from 
 doing the same thing. And now what does the court do when 
 all the creditors make application for orders to pay? The 
 court divides the whole sum attached, proportionately among 
 them all. That division, made under the eye of a magistrate, 
 is what we call a contribution. If you owe ten thousand 
 francs, and your creditors issue writs of attachment on a debt 
 due to you of a thousand francs, each one of them gets so 
 much per cent, 'so much in the pound/ in legal phrase; so 
 much (that means) in proportion to the amounts severally 
 claimed by the creditors. But the creditors cannot touch the 
 money without a special order from the clerk of the court. Do 
 you guess what all this work drawn up by a judge and pre- 
 pared by attorneys must mean? It means a quantity of 
 stamped paper full of diffuse lines and blanks, the figures 
 almost lost in vast spaces of completely empty ruled columns. 
 The first proceeding is to deduct the costs. Now, as the costs
 
 268 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 are precisely the same whether the amount attached is one 
 thousand or one million francs, it is not difficult to eat up 
 three thousand francs (for instance) in costs, especially if 
 you can manage to raise counter applications." 
 
 "And an attorney always manages to do it," said Cardot. 
 "How many a time one of you has come to me with, 'What is 
 there to be got out of the case ?' " 
 
 "It is particularly easy to manage it if the debtor eggs you 
 on to run up costs till they eat up the amount. And, as a 
 rule, the Count's creditors took nothing by that move, and 
 were out of pocket in law and personal expenses. To get 
 money out of so experienced a debtor as the Count, a creditor 
 should really be in a position uncommonly difficult to reach; 
 it is a question of being creditor and debtor both, for then you 
 are legally entitled to work the confusion of rights, in law 
 language " 
 
 "To the confusion of the debtor?" asked Malaga, lending 
 an attentive ear to this discourse. 
 
 "No, the confusion of rights of debtor and creditor, and pay 
 yourself through your own hands. So Claparon's innocence 
 in merely issuing writs of attachment eased the Count's mind. 
 As he came back from the Varietes with Antonia, he was 
 so much the more taken with the idea of selling the reading- 
 room to pay off the last two thousand francs of the purchase- 
 money, because he did not care to have his name made public 
 as a partner in such a concern. So he adopted Antonia's plan. 
 Antonia wished to reach the higher ranks of her calling, with 
 splendid rooms, a maid, and a carriage; in short, she wanted 
 to rival our charming hostess, for instance 
 
 "She was not woman enough for that," cried the famous 
 beauty of the Circus; "still, she ruined young d'Esgrignon 
 very neatly." 
 
 "Ten days afterwards, little Croizeau, perched on his dig- 
 nity, said almost exactly the same thing, for the fair Antonia's 
 benefit," continued Desroches. 
 
 " 'Child,' said he, 'your reading-room is a hole of a place. 
 You will lose your complexion; the gas will ruin your eye-
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 269 
 
 sight. You ought to come out of it ; and, look here, let us take 
 advantage of an opportunity. I have found a young lady for 
 you that asks no better than to buy your reading-room. She is 
 a ruined woman with nothing before her but a plunge into 
 the river) but she has four thousand francs in cash, and the 
 best thing to do is to turn them to account, so as to feed and 
 educate a couple of children.' 
 
 " 'Very well. It is kind of you, Daddy Croizeau,' said An- 
 tonia. 
 
 " 'Oh, I shall be much kinder before I have done. Just 
 imagine it, poor M. Denisart has been worried into the jaun- 
 dice ! Yes, it has gone to the liver, as it usually does with 
 susceptible old men. It is a pity he feels things so. I told 
 him so myself; 1 said, "Be passionate, there is no harm in 
 that, but as for taking things to heart draw the line at that ! 
 It is the way to kill yourself." Eeally, I would not have 
 expected him to take on so about it; a man that has sense 
 enough and experience enough to keep away as he does while 
 he digests his dinner ' 
 
 " 'But what is the matter ?' inquired Mile. Chocardelle. 
 
 " 'That little baggage with whom I dined has cleared out 
 and left him ! . . . Yes. Gave him the slip without any 
 warning but a letter, in which the spelling was all to seek.' 
 
 " 'There, Daddy Croizeau, you see what comes of boring a 
 woman ' 
 
 " 'It is indeed a lesson, my pretty lady,' said the guileful 
 Croizeau. 'Meanwhile, I have never seen a man in such a 
 state. Our friend Denisart cannot tell his le^t hand from 
 his right; he will not go back to look at the "scene of his hap- 
 piness," as he calls it. He has so thoroughly lost his wits, that 
 he proposes that I should buy all Hortense's furniture (Hor- 
 tense was her name) for four thousand francs.' 
 
 " 'A pretty name,' said Antonia. 
 
 " 'Yes. Napoleon's stepdaughter was called Hortense. I 
 built carriages for her, as you know.' 
 
 " 'Very well, I will see,' said cunning Antonia ; 'begin by 
 sending this young woman to me.'
 
 270 A MAN OF BUSINESS 
 
 "Antonia hurried off to see the furniture, and came back 
 fascinated. She brought Maxime under the spell of anti- 
 quarian enthusiasm. That very evening the Count agreed to 
 the sale of the reading-room. The establishment, you see, 
 nominally belonged to Mile. Chocardelle. Maxime burst out 
 laughing at the idea of little Croizeau's finding him a buyer. 
 The firm of Maxime and Chocardelle was losing two thousand 
 francs, it is true, but what was the loss compared with four 
 glorious thousand-franc notes in hand? 'Four thousand 
 francs of live coin ! there are moments in one's life when one 
 would sign bills for eight thousand to get them/ as the Count 
 said to me. 
 
 "Two days later the Count must see the furniture himself, 
 and took the four thousand francs upon him. The sale had 
 been arranged ; thanks to little Croizeau's diligence, he pushed 
 matters on; he had 'come round' the widow, as he expressed 
 it. It was Maxime's intention to have all the furniture re- 
 moved at once to a lodging in a new house in the Rue Tron- 
 chet, taken in the name oi Mme. Ida Bonamy; he did not 
 trouble himself much about the nice old man that was about 
 to lose his thousand francs. But he had sent beforehand for 
 several big furniture vans. 
 
 "Once again he was fascinated by the beautiful furniture 
 which a wholesale dealer would have valued at six thousand 
 francs. By the fireside sat the wretched owner, yellow with 
 jaundice, his head tied up in a couple of printed handker- 
 chiefs, and a cotton night-cap on the top of them ; he was 
 huddled up in wrappings like a chandelier, exhausted, unable 
 to speak, and altogether so knocked to pieces that the Count 
 was obliged to transact his business with the man-servant. 
 When he had paid down the four thousand francs, and the 
 servant had taken the money to his master for a receipt, Max- 
 ime turned to tell the man to call up the vans to the door ; but 
 even as he spoke, a voice like a rattle sounded in his ears. 
 
 " 'It is not worth while, Monsieur le Comte. You and I are 
 quits; I have six hundred and thirty francs fifteen centimes 
 to give you !'
 
 A MAN OF BUSINESS 271 
 
 "To his utter consternation, he saw Cerizet, emerged from 
 his wrappings like a butterfly from the chrysalis, holding out 
 the accursed bundle of documents. 
 
 " 'When I was down on my luck, I learned to act on the 
 stage,' added Cerizet. 'I am as good as Bouffe at old men/ 
 
 " 'I have fallen among thieves !' shouted Maxime. 
 
 " 'No, Monsieur le Comte, you are in Mile. Hortense's 
 house. She is a friend of old Lord Dudley's; he keeps her 
 hidden away here ; but she has the bad taste to like your hum- 
 ble servant.' 
 
 " 'If ever I longed to kill a man,' so the Count told me 
 afterwards, 'it was at that moment; but what could one do? 
 Hortense showed her pretty face, one had to laugh. To keep 
 my dignity, I flung her the six hundred francs. "There's for 
 the girl," said I.' " 
 
 "That is Maxime all over!" cried La Palferine. 
 
 "More especially as it was little Croizeau's money," added 
 Cardot the profound. 
 
 "Maxime scored a triumph," continued Desroches, "for 
 Hortense exclaimed, 'Oh ! if I had only known that it was 
 you !' " 
 
 "A pretty 'confusion' indeed !" put in Malaga. "You have 
 lost, milord," she added, turning to the notary. 
 
 And in this way the cabinetmaker, to whom Malaga owed a 
 hundred crowns, was paid. 
 
 PARIS, 1845.
 
 GAUDISSART II. 
 
 To Madame la Princesse Cristina de Belgiojoso, nee 
 Trivulzio. 
 
 To know how to sell, to be able to sell, and to sell. People 
 generally do not suspect how much of the stateliness of Paris 
 is due to these three aspects of the same problem. The brill- 
 iant display of shops as rich as the salons of the noblesse 
 before 1789; the splendors of cafes which eclipse, and easily 
 eclipse, the Versailles of our day; the shop-window illusions, 
 new every morning, nightly destroyed ; the grace and elegance 
 of the young men that come in contact with fair customers; 
 the piquant faces and costumes of young damsels, who cannot 
 fail to attract the masculine customer; and (and this espe- 
 cially of late) the length, the vast spaces, the Babylonish 
 luxury of galleries where shopkeepers acquire a monopoly of 
 the trade in various articles by bringing them all together, 
 all this is as nothing. Everything, so far, has been done to 
 appeal to a single sense, and that the most exacting and jaded 
 human faculty, a faculty developed ever since the days of the 
 Roman Empire, until, in our own times, thanks to the efforts 
 of the most fastidious civilization the world has yet seen, its 
 demands are grown limitless. That faculty resides in the 
 "eyes of Paris." 
 
 Those eyes require illuminations costing a hundred thou- 
 sand francs, and many-colored glass palaces a couple of miles 
 long and sixty feet high; they must have a fairyland at some 
 fourteen theatres every night, and a succession of panoramas 
 and exhibitions of the triumphs of art; for them a whole 
 world of suffering and pain, and a universe of joy, must re- 
 volve through the boulevards or stray through the streets of 
 Paris; for them encyclopedias of carnival frippery and a 
 
 (273)
 
 274 GAUDISSART II. 
 
 score of illustrated books are brought out every year, to say 
 nothing of caricatures by the hundred, and vignettes, litho- 
 graphs, and prints by the thousand. To please those eyes, 
 fifteen thousand francs' worth of gas must blaze every night ; 
 and, to conclude, for their delectation the great city yearly 
 spends several millions of francs in opening up views and 
 planting trees. And even yet this is as nothing it is only 
 the material side of the question ; in truth, a mere trifle com- 
 pared with the expenditure of brain power on the shifts, 
 worthy of Moliere, invented by some sixty thousand assistants 
 and forty thousand damsels of the counter, who fasten upon 
 the customer's purse, much as myriads of Seine whitebait fall 
 upon a chance crust floating down the river. 
 
 Gaudissart in the mart is at least the equal of his illustrious 
 namesake, now become the typical commercial traveler. Take 
 him away from his shop and his line of business, he is like a 
 collapsed balloon; only among his bales of merchandise do 
 his faculties return, much as an actor is sublime only upon 
 the boards. A French shopman is better educated than his 
 fellows in other European countries; he can at need talk as- 
 phalt, Bal Mabille, polkas, literature, illustrated books, rail- 
 ways, politics, parliament, and revolution ; transplant 
 him, take away his stage, his yardstick, his artificial 
 graces ; he is foolish beyond belief ; but on his own boards, on 
 the tight-rope of the counter, as he displays a shawl with a 
 speech at his tongue's end, and his eye on his customer, he 
 puts the great Talleyrand into the shade; he has more wit 
 than a Desaugiers, more wiles than Cleopatra; he is a match 
 for a Monrose and a Moliere to boot. Talleyrand in his own 
 house would have outwitted Gaudissart, but in the shop the 
 parts would have been reversed. 
 
 An incident will illustrate the paradox. 
 
 Two charming duchesses were chatting with the above-men- 
 tioned great diplomatist. The ladies wished for a bracelet; 
 they were waiting for the arrival of a man from a great Pa- 
 risian jeweler. A Gaudissart accordingly appeared with three 
 bracelets of marvelous workmanship. The great ladies hesi>
 
 GAUDISSART II. 275 
 
 tated. Choice is a mental lightning flash; hesitate there 
 is no more to be said, you are at fault. Inspiration in matters 
 of taste will not come twice. At last, after about ten minutes, 
 the Prince was called in. He saw the two duchesses confront- 
 ing doubt with its thousand facets, unable to decide between 
 the transcendent merits of two of the trinkets, for the third 
 had been set aside at once. Without leaving his book, without 
 a glance at the bracelets, the Prince looked at the jeweler's 
 assistant. 
 
 "Which would you choose for your sweetheart ?" asked he. 
 
 The young man indicated one of the pair. 
 
 "In that case, take the other, you will make two women 
 happy," said the subtlest of modern diplomatists, "and make 
 your sweetheart happy too, in my name." 
 
 The two fair ladies smiled, and the young shopman took 
 his departure, delighted with the Prince's present and the 
 implied compliment to his taste. 
 
 A woman alights from her splendid carriage before one of 
 the expensive shops where shawls are sold in the Eue Vivi- 
 enne. She is not alone; women almost always go in pairs on 
 these expeditions; always make the round of half a score of 
 shops before they make up their minds, and laugh together in 
 the intervals over the little comedies played for their benefit. 
 Let us see which of the two acts most in character the fair 
 customer or the seller, and which has the best of it in such 
 miniature vaudevilles? 
 
 If you attempt to describe a sale, the central fact of Pari- 
 sian trade, you are in duty bound, if you attempt to give the 
 gist of the matter, to produce a type, and for this purpose a 
 shawl or a chtitelaine costing some three thousand francs is a 
 more exciting purchase than a length of lawn or dress that 
 costs three hundred. But know, oh foreign visitors from the 
 Old World and the New (if ever this study of the physiology 
 of the Invoice should be by you perused), that this selfsame 
 comedy is played in haberdashers' shops over a barege at two 
 francs or a printed muslin at four francs the yard. 
 
 And you, princess, or simple citizen's wife, whichever you 
 VOL. iu 49
 
 276 GAUDISSAET II. 
 
 may be, how should you distrust that good-looking, very young 
 man, with those frank, innocent eyes, and a cheek like a peach 
 covered with down? He is dressed almost as well as your 
 cousin, let us say. His tones are as soft as the woolen stuffs 
 which he spreads before you. There are three or four more of 
 his like. One has dark eyes, a decided expression, and an 
 imperial manner of saying, "This is what you wish"; another, 
 that blue-eyed youth, diffident of manner and meek of speech, 
 prompts the remark, "Poor boy! he was not born for busi- 
 ness"; a third, with light auburn hair, and laughing tawny 
 eyes, has all the lively humor, and activity, and gaiety of the 
 South; while the fourth, he of the tawny red hair and fan- 
 shaped beard, is rough as a communist, with his portentous 
 cravat, his sternness, his dignity, and curt speech. 
 
 These varieties of shopmen, corresponding to the principal 
 types of feminine customers, are arms, as it were, directed 
 by the head, a stout personage with a full-blown countenance. 
 a partially bald forehead, and a chest measure befitting a 
 Ministerialist deputy. Occasionally this person wears the rib- 
 bon of the Legion of Honor in recognition of the manner 
 in which he supports the dignity of the French draper's wand. 
 From the comfortable curves of his figure you can see that he 
 has a wife and family, a country house, and an account with 
 the Bank of France. He descends like a deus ex macliina, 
 whenever a tangled problem demands a swift solution. The 
 feminine purchasers are surrounded on all sides with urban- 
 ity, youth, pleasant manners, smiles, and jests; the most 
 seeming-simple human products of civilization are here, all 
 sorted in shades to suit all tastes. 
 
 Just one word as to the natural effects of architecture, op- 
 tical science, and house decoration; one short, decisive, ter- 
 rible word, of history made on the spot. The work which 
 contains this instructive page is sold at number 76 Rue de 
 Eichelieu, where above an elegant shop, all white and gold 
 and crimson velvet, there is an entresol into which the light 
 pours straight from the Rue de Menars, as into a painter's 
 studio clean, clear, even daylight. What idler in the streets
 
 GAUDISSART II. 277 
 
 has not beheld the Persian, that Asiatic potentate, ruffling 
 it above the door at the corner of the Eue de la Bourse and 
 the Hue de Eichelieu, with a message to deliver urbi et orbi, 
 "Here I reign more tranquilly than at Lahore"? Perhaps 
 but for this immortal analytical study, archaeologists might 
 begin to puzzle their heads about him five hundred years 
 hence, and set about writing quartos with plates (like M. 
 Quatremere's work on Olympian Jove) to prove that Napoleon 
 was something of a Sofi in the East before he became "Em- 
 peror of the French." Well, the wealthy shop laid siege to 
 the poor little entresol ; and after a bombardment with bank- 
 notes, entered and took possession. The Human Comedy gave 
 way before the comedy of cashmeres. The Persian sacrificed 
 a diamond or two from his crown to buy that so necessary 
 daylight; for a ray of sunlight shows the play of the colors, 
 brings out the charms of a shawl, and doubles its value; 'tis 
 an irresistible light; literally, a golden ray. From this fact 
 you may judge how far Paris shops are arranged with a view 
 to effect. 
 
 But to return to the young assistants, to the beribboned 
 man of forty whom the King of the French receives at his 
 table, to the red-bearded head of the department with his 
 autocrat's air. Week by week these emeritus Gaudissarts are 
 brought in contact with whims past counting; they know 
 every vibration of the cashmere chord in the heart of woman. 
 No one, be she lady or lorette, a young mother of a family, 
 a respectable tradesman's wife, a woman of easy virtue, a 
 duchess or a brazen-fronted ballet-dancer, an innocent young 
 girl or a too innocent foreigner, can appear in the shop, but 
 she is watched from the moment when she first lays her fin- 
 gers upon the door-handle. Her measure is taken at a glance 
 by seven or eight men that stand, in the windows, at the coun- 
 ter, by the door, in a corner, in the middle of the shop, med- 
 itating, to all appearance, on the joys of a bacchanalian Sun- 
 day holiday. As you look at them, you ask yourself invol- 
 untarily, "What can they be thinking about?" Well, in the 
 space of one second, a woman's purse, wishes, intentions, and
 
 278 GAUDISSART II. 
 
 whims are ransacked more thoroughly than a traveling car- 
 riage at a frontier in an hour and three-quarters. Nothing is 
 lost on these intelligent rogues. As the)' stand, solemn as 
 noble fathers on the stage, they take in all the details of a 
 fair customer's dress; an invisible speck of mud on a little 
 shoe, an antiquated hat-brim, soiled or ill-judged bonnet- 
 strings, the fashion of the dress, the age of a pair of gloves. 
 They can tell whether the gown was cut by the intelligent 
 scissors of a Victorine IV. ; they know a modish gewgaw or a 
 trinket from Froment-Meurice. Nothing, in short, which can 
 reveal a woman's quality, fortune, or character passes unre- 
 marked. 
 
 Tremble before them. Never was the Sanhedrim of Gaudis- 
 sarts, with their chief at their head, known to make a mis- 
 take. And, moreover, they communicate their conclusions to 
 one another with telegraphic speed, in a glance, a smile, the 
 movement of a muscle, a twitch of the lip. If you watch 
 them, you are reminded of the sudden outbreak of light along 
 the Champs-filysees at dusk; one gas-jet does not succeed an- 
 other more swiftly than an idea flashes from one shopman's 
 eyes to the next. 
 
 At once, if the lady is English, the dark, mysterious, por- 
 tentous Gaudissart advances like a romantic character out of 
 one of Byron's poems. 
 
 If she is a city madam, the oldest is put forward. He 
 brings out a hundred shawls in fifteen minutes; he turns 
 her head with colors and patterns ; every shawl that he shows 
 her is like a circle described by a kite wheeling round a hap- 
 less rabbit, till at the end of half an hour, when her head is 
 swimming and she is utterly incapable of making a decision 
 for herself, the good lady, meeting with a nattering response 
 to all her ideas, refers the question to the assistant, who 
 promptly leaves her on the horns of a dilemma betweeji two 
 equally irresistible shawls. 
 
 "This, madame, is very becoming apple-green, the color 
 of the season; still, fashions change; while as for this other 
 black-and-white shawl (an opportunity not to be missed),
 
 GAUDISSART II. 279 
 
 you will never see the end of it, and it will go with any dress." 
 
 This is the A B C of the trade. 
 
 "You would not believe how much eloquence is wanted 
 in that beastly line/' the head Gaudissart of this particular 
 establishment remarked quite lately to two acquaintances 
 (Duronceret and Bixiou) who had come trusting in his judg- 
 ment to buy a shawl. "Look here; you are artists and dis- 
 creet, I can tell you about the governor's tricks, and of all 
 the men I ever saw, he is the cleverest. I do not mean as a 
 manufacturer, there M. Fritot is first ; but as a salesman. He 
 discovered the 'Selim shawl,' an absolutely unsalable article, 
 yet we never bring it out but we sell it. We keep always a 
 shawl worth five or six hundred francs in a cedar-wood box, 
 perfectly plain outside, but lined with satin. It is one of the 
 shawls that Selim sent to the Emperor Napoleon. It is our 
 Imperial Guard; it is brought to the front whenever the day 
 is almost lost; il se vend et ne meurt pas it sells its life 
 dearly time after time." 
 
 As he spoke, an Englishwoman stepped from her jobbed 
 carriage and appeared in all the glory of that phlegmatic 
 humor peculiar to Britain and to all its products which make 
 believe they are alive. The apparition put you in mind of the 
 Commandant's statue in Don Juan, it walked along, jerkily 
 by fits and starts, in an awkward fashion invented in London, 
 and cultivated in every family with patriotic care. 
 
 "An Englishwoman !" he continued for Bixiou's ear. "An 
 Englishwoman is our Waterloo. There are women who slip 
 through our fingers like eels ; we catch them on the staircase. 
 There are lorettes who chaff us, we join in the laugh, we have 
 a hold on them because we give credit. There are sphinx-like 
 foreign ladies; we take a quantity of shawls to their houses, 
 and arrive at an understanding by flattery; but an English- 
 woman ! you might as well attack the bronze statue of Louis 
 Quatorze ! That sort of woman turns shopping into an occu- 
 pation, an amusement. She quizzes us, forsooth!" 
 
 The romantic assistant came to the front. 
 
 "Does madame wish for real Indian shawls or French, some- 
 thing expensive or "
 
 280 GAUDISSART II. 
 
 "I will see." (Je veraie.) 
 
 "How much would madame propose " 
 
 "I will see/' 
 
 The shopman went in quest of shawls to spread upon the 
 mantle-stand, giving his colleagues a significant glance. "What 
 a hore!" he said plainly, with an almost imperceptible shrug 
 of the shoulders. 
 
 "These are our best quality in Indian red, blue, and pale 
 orange all at ten thousand francs. Here are shawls at five 
 thousand francs, and others at three." 
 
 The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and looked round 
 the room with gloomy indifference; then she submitted the 
 three stands to the same scrutiny, and made no sign. 
 
 "Have you any more?" (Havaivod'hote?) demanded she. 
 
 "Yes, madame. But perhaps madame has not quite de- 
 cided to take a shawl ?" 
 
 "Oh, quite decided" (trei-deycidai) . 
 
 The young man went in search of cheaper wares. These he 
 spread out solemnly as if they were things of price, saying 
 by his manner, "Pay attention to all this magnificence !" 
 
 "These are much more expensive," said he. "They have 
 never been worn : they have come by courier direct from the 
 manufacturers at Lahore." 
 
 "Oh ! I see," said she ; "they are much more like the thing 
 I want." 
 
 The shopman kept his countenance in spite of inward irri- 
 tation, which communicated itself to Duronceret and Bixiou. 
 The Englishwoman, cool as a cucumber, appeared to rejoice 
 in her phlegmatic humor. 
 
 "What price?" she asked, indicating a sky-blue shawl cov- 
 ered with a pattern of birds nestling in pagodas. 
 
 "Seven thousand francs." 
 
 She took it up, wrapped it about her shoulders, looked in 
 the glass, and handed it back again. 
 
 "No, I do not like it at all." (Je n'ame pouinte.) 
 
 A long quarter of an hour went by in trying on other 
 shawls; to no purpose.
 
 GAUDISSART II. 281 
 
 "This is all we have, madame," said the assistant, glanc- 
 ing at the master as he spoke. 
 
 "Madame is fastidious, like all persons of taste," said the 
 head of the establishment, coming forward with that trades- 
 man's suavity in which pomposity is agreeably blended with 
 subservience. The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and 
 scanned the manufacturer from head to foot, unwilling to 
 understand that the man before her was eligible for Parlia- 
 ment and dined at the Tuileries. 
 
 "I have only one shawl left," he continued, "but I never 
 show it. It is not to everybody's taste ; it is quite out of the 
 common. I was thinking this morning of giving it to my wife. 
 We have had it in stock since 1805; it belonged to the Em- 
 press Josephine." 
 
 "Let me see it, monsieur." 
 
 "Go for it," said the master, turning to a shopman. "It is 
 at my house." 
 
 "I should be very much pleased to see it," said the English 
 lady. 
 
 This was a triumph. The splenetic dame was apparently 
 on the point of going. She made as though she saw nothing 
 but the shawls; but all the while she furtively watched the 
 shopmen and the two" customers, sheltering her eyes behind 
 the rims of her eyeglasses. 
 
 "It cost sixty thousand francs in Turkey, madame." 
 
 "Oh!" (haul) 
 
 "It is one of seven shawls which Selim sent, before his fall, 
 to the Emperor Xapoleon. The Empress Josephine, a Creole, 
 as you know, my lady, and very capricious in her tastes, ex- 
 changed this one for another brought by the Turkish ambassa- 
 dor, and purchased by my predecessor; but I have never seen 
 the money back. Our ladies in France are not rich enough : 
 it is not as it is in England. The shawl is worth seven thou- 
 sand francs; and taking interest and compound interest al- 
 together, it makes up fourteen or fifteen thousand by now " 
 
 "How does it make up?" asked the Englishwoman. 
 
 "Here it is, madame."
 
 282 GAUDISSART II. 
 
 With precautions, which a custodian of the Dresden Grunc. 
 Gewolbe might have admired, he took out an infinitesimal 
 key and opened a square cedar-wood box. The Englishwoman 
 was much impressed with its shape and plainness. From that 
 box, lined with black satin, he drew a shawl worth about fif- 
 teen hundred francs, a black pattern on a golden-yellow 
 ground, of which the startling color was only surpassed by 
 the surprising efforts of tht Indian imaginsrtion. 
 
 "Splendid," said the lady, in a mixture of French and 
 English, "it is really handsome. Just my ideal" (ideal] "of a 
 shawl; it is very magnificent." The rest was lost in a ma- 
 donna's pose assumed for the purpose of displaying a pair oi 
 frigid eyes which she believed to be very fine. 
 
 "It was a great favorite with the Emperor Napoleon; he 
 took " 
 
 "A grat favorite/' repeated she with her English accent. 
 Then &he arranged the shawl about her shoulders and looked 
 at herself in the glass. The proprietor took it to the light, 
 gathered it up in his hands, smoothed it out, showed the gloss 
 on it, played on it as Liszt plays on the pianoforte keys. 
 
 "It is very fine; beautiful, sweet!" said the lady, as com- 
 posedly as possible. 
 
 Duronceret, Bixiou, and the shopmen exchanged amused 
 glances. "The shawl is sold," they thought. 
 
 "Well, madame?" inquired the proprietor, as the English- 
 woman appeared to be absorbed in meditations infinitely pro- 
 longed. 
 
 "Decidedly," said she; "I would rather have a carriage" 
 (une voteure). 
 
 All the assistants, listening with silent rapt attention, 
 started as one man, as if an electric shock had gone through 
 them. 
 
 "I have a very handsome one, madame," said the proprietor 
 with unshaken composure ; "it belonged to a Russian princess, 
 the Princess Narzicof; she left it with me in payment for 
 goods received. If madame would like -to see it, she would 
 be astonished. It is new; it has not been in use altogether 
 for ten days; there is not its like in Paris."
 
 GAUDISSART II. 283 
 
 The shopmen's amazement was suppressed by profound 
 admiration. 
 
 "I am quite willing/' 
 
 "If madame will keep the shawl," suggested the proprietor, 
 "she can try the effect in the carriage." And he went for his 
 hat and gloves. 
 
 "How will this end?" asked the head assistant, as he 
 watched his employer offer an arm to the English lady and 
 go down with her to the jobbed brougham. 
 
 By this time the thing had come to be as exciting as the 
 last chapter of a novel for Duronceret and Bixiou, even with- 
 out the additional interest attached to all contests, however 
 trifling, between England and France. 
 
 Twenty minutes later the proprietor returned. 
 
 "Go to the Hotel Lawson (here is the card, 'Mrs. ISTos- 
 welP), and take an invoice that I will give you. There are 
 six thousand francs to take." 
 
 "How did you do it?" asked Duronceret, bowing before 
 the king of invoices. 
 
 "Oh, I saw what she was, an eccentric woman that loves to 
 be conspicuous. As soon as she saw that every one stared at 
 her, she said, 'Keep your carriage, monsieur, my mind is 
 made up ; I will take the shawl.' While M. Bigorneau (indi- 
 cating the romantic-looking assistant) was serving, I watched 
 her carefully ; she kept one eye on you all the time to see what 
 you thought of her ; she was thinking more about you than of 
 the shawls. Englishwomen are peculiar in their distaste (for 
 one cannot call it taste) ; they do not know what they want; 
 they make up their minds to be guided by circumstances at 
 the time, and not by their own choice. I saw the kind of 
 woman at once, tired of her husband, tired of her brats, re- 
 gretfully virtuous, craving excitement, always posing as a 
 weeping willow. . . ." 
 
 These were his very words. 
 
 Which proves that in all other countries of the world a shop- 
 keeper is a shopkeeper; while in France, and in Paris more 
 particularly, he is a student from a College Royal, a well-read
 
 284 GAUDISSART II. 
 
 man with a taste for art, or angling, or the theatre, and con- 
 sumed, it may be, with a desire to be M. Cunin-Gridaine's 
 successor, or a colonel of the National Guard, or a member 
 of the General Council of the Seine, or a referee in the Com- 
 mercial Court. 
 
 "M. Adolphe," said the mistress of the establishment, ad- 
 dressing the slight fair-haired assistant, "go to the joiner and 
 order another cedar-wood box." 
 
 "And now/' remarked the shopman who had assisted Du- 
 ronceret and Bixiou to choose a shawl for Mme. Schontz, "now 
 we will go through our old stock to find another Selim shawl." 
 
 PARIS, November 1844.
 
 SARRASINE
 
 COPYBIGHT, 1899, 
 BY CBOSCUP & STERLING COMPANY.
 
 SARRASINE 
 
 To Monsieur diaries Bernard du Grail. 
 
 I WAS buried in one of those profound reveries to which every- 
 body, even a frivolous man, is subject in the midst of the most 
 uproarious festivities. The clock on the filysee-Bourbon had 
 just struck midnight. Seated in a window recess and con- 
 cealed behind the undulating folds of a curtain of watered 
 silk, I was able to contemplate at my leisure the garden of the 
 mansion at which I was passing the evening. The trees, being 
 partly covered with snow, were outlined indistinctly against 
 the grayish background formed by a cloudy sky, barely whit- 
 ened by the moon. Seen through the medium of that strange 
 atmosphere, they bore a vague resemblance to spectres care- 
 lessly enveloped in their shrouds, a gigantic image of the fa- 
 mous Dance of Death. Then, turning in the other direction, 
 I could gaze admiringly upon the dance of the living ! a mag- 
 nificent salon, with walls of silver and gold, with gleaming 
 chandeliers, and bright with the light of many candles. There 
 the loveliest, the wealthiest women in Paris, bearers of the 
 proudest titles, moved hither and thither, fluttered from room 
 to room in swarms, stately and gorgeous, dazzling with dia- 
 monds ; flowers on their heads and breasts, in their hair, scat- 
 tered over their dresses or lying in garlands at their feet. 
 Light quiverings of the body, voluptuous movements, made 
 the laces and gauzes and silks swirl about their graceful fig- 
 ures. Sparkling glances here and there eclipsed the lights, 
 and the blaze of the diamonds, and fanned the flame of hearts 
 already burning too brightly. I detected also significant nods 
 of the head for lovers and repellent attitudes for husbands. 
 The exclamations of the card-players at every unexpected 
 coup, the jingle of gold, mingled with the music and the mur- 
 
 (287)
 
 288 SARRASINE 
 
 mur of conversation; and to put the finishing touch to the 
 vertigo of that multitude, intoxicated by all the seductions the 
 world can offer, a perfume-laden atmosphere and general ex- 
 altation acted upon their over-wrought imaginations. Thus, 
 at my right was the depressing, silent image of death ; at my 
 left the decorous bacchanalia of life ; on the one side nature, 
 cold and gloomy, and in mourning garb; on the other side, 
 man on pleasure bent. And, standing on the borderland of 
 those two incongruous pictures, which, repeated thousands 
 of times in diverse ways, make Paris the most entertaining 
 and most philosophical city in the world, I played a mental 
 macedoine* half jesting, half funereal. With my left foot I 
 kept time to the music, and the other felt as if it were in a 
 tomb. My leg was, in fact, frozen by one of those draughts 
 which congeal one half of the body while the other suffers 
 from the intense heat of the salons a state of things not un- 
 usual at balls. 
 
 "Monsieur de Lanty has not owned this house very long, 
 has he?" 
 
 "Oh, yes ! It is nearly ten years since the Marechal de Ca- 
 rigliano sold it to him." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 "These people must have an enormous fortune." 
 
 "They surely must." 
 
 "What a magnificent party ! It is almost insolent in its 
 splendor." 
 
 "Do you imagine they are as rich as Monsieur de Nucin- 
 gen or Monsieur de Gondreville ?" 
 
 "Why, don't you know?" 
 
 I leaned forward and recognized the two persons who were 
 talking as members of that inquisitive genus which, in Paris, 
 busies itself exclusively with the Whys and Hows. Where 
 does he come from ? Who are they ? What's the matter with 
 him? What has she done? They lowered their voices and 
 
 Jfacfdoine, in the sense in which it is here used, is a game, or rather a series of 
 games, of cards, each player, when it is his turn to deal, selecting the game to 
 be played.
 
 SAREASINE 289 
 
 walked away in order to talk more at their ease on some re- 
 tired couch. Never was a more promising mine laid open to 
 seekers after mysteries. No one knew from what country 
 the Lanty family came, nor to what source commerce, extor- 
 tion, piracy, or inheritance they owed a fortune estimated 
 at several millions. All the members of the family spoke 
 Italian, French, Spanish, English, and German, with suffi- 
 cient fluency to lead one to suppose that they had lived long 
 among those different peoples. Were they gypsies ? were they 
 buccaneers ? 
 
 "Suppose they're the devil himself," said divers young poli- 
 ticians, "they entertain mighty well." 
 
 "The Comte de Lanty may have plundered some Casbah for 
 all I care ; I would like to marry his daughter !" cried a phil- 
 osopher. 
 
 Who would not have married Marianina, a girl of sixteen, 
 whose beauty realized the fabulous conceptions of Oriental 
 poets ! Like the Sultaja's daughter in the tale of the Won- 
 derful Lamp, she should have remained always veiled. Her 
 singing obscured the imperfect talents of the Malibrans, the 
 Sontags, and the Fodors, in whom some one dominant quality 
 always mars the perfection of the whole; whereas Marianina 
 combined in equal degree purity of tone, exquisite feeling, 
 accuracy of time and intonation, science, soul, and delicacy. 
 She was the type of that hidden poesy, the link which con- 
 nects all the arts and which always eludes those who seek it. 
 Modest, sweet, well-informed, and clever, none could eclipse 
 Marianina unless it were her mother. 
 
 Have you ever met one of those women whose startling 
 beauty defies the assaults of time, and who seem at thirty- 
 six more desirable than they could have been fifteen years 
 earlier? Their faces are impassioned souls; they fairly 
 sparkle ; each feature gleams with intelligence ; each possesses 
 a brilliancy of its own, especially in the light. Their capti- 
 vating eyes attract or repel, speak or are silent; their gait is 
 artlessly seductive ; their voices unfold the melodious treasures 
 of the most coquettishly sweet and tender tones. Praise of
 
 290 SARRASINE 
 
 their beauty, based upon comparisons, flatters the most sensi- 
 tive self-esteem. A movement of their eyebrows, the slightest 
 play of the eye, the curling of the lip, instils a sort of terror 
 in those whose lives and happiness depend upon their favor. 
 A maiden inexperienced in love and easily moved by words 
 may allow herself to be seduced; but in dealing with women 
 of this sort, a man must be able, like M. de Jaucourt, to re- 
 frain from crying out when, in hiding him in a closet, the 
 lady's maid crushes two of his fingers in the crack of a door. 
 To love one of these omnipotent sirens is to stake one's life, is 
 it not? And that, perhaps, is why we love them so passion- 
 ately ! Such was the Comtesse de Lanty. 
 
 Filippo, Marianina's brother, inherited, as did his sister, the 
 Countess* marvelous beauty. To tell the whole story in a 
 word, that young man was a living image of Antinoiis, with 
 somewhat slighter proportions. But how well such a slender 
 and delicate figure accords with youth, when an olive com- 
 plexion, heavy eyebrows, and the gleam of a velvety eye prom- 
 ise virile passions, noble ideas for the future ! If Filippo 
 remained in the hearts of young women as a type of manly 
 beauty, he likewise remained in the memory of all mothers as 
 the best match in France. 
 
 The beauty, the great wealth, the intellectual qualities, of 
 these two children came entirely from their mother. The 
 Comte de Lauty was a short, thin, ugly little man, as dismal 
 as a Spaniard, as great a bore as a banker. He was looked 
 upon, however, as a profound politician, perhaps because he 
 rarely laughed, and was always quoting M. de Metternich or 
 Wellington. 
 
 This mysterious family had all the attractiveness of a poem 
 by Lord Byron, whose difficult passages were translated dif- 
 ferently by each person in fashionable society; a poem that 
 grew more obscure and more sublime from strophe to strophe. 
 The reserve which Monsieur and Madame de Lanty main- 
 tained concerning their origin, their past lives, and their re- 
 lations with the four quarters of the globe would not, of itself, 
 have been for long a subject of wonderment in Paris. In no
 
 SARRASINE 291 
 
 other country, perhaps, is Vespasian's maxim more thor- 
 oughly understood. Here gold pieces, even when stained with 
 blood or mud, betray nothing, and represent everything. Pro- 
 vided that good society knows the amount of your fortune, you 
 are classed among those figures which equal yours, and no 
 one asks to see your credentials, because everybody knows how 
 little they cost. In a city where social problems are solved 
 by algebraic equations, adventurers have many chances in 
 their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it 
 was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could 
 well afford to overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortu- 
 nately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family offered a 
 perpetual subject of curiosity, not unlike that aroused by the 
 novels of Anne Radcliffe. 
 
 People of an observing turn, of the sort who are bent upon 
 finding out where you buy your candelabra, or who ask you 
 what rent you pay when they are pleased with your apart- 
 ments, had noticed, from time to time, the appearance of an 
 extraordinary personage at the fetes, concerts, balls, and 
 routs given by the countess. It was a man. The first time 
 that he was seen in the house was at a concert, when he seemed 
 to have been drawn to the salon by Marianina's enchanting 
 voice. 
 
 "I have been cold for the last minute or two," said a lady 
 near the door to her neighbor. 
 
 The stranger, who was standing near the speaker, moved 
 away. 
 
 "This is very strange! now I am warm," she said, after 
 his departure. "Perhaps you will call me mad, but I cannot 
 help thinking that my neighbor, the gentleman in black who 
 just walked away, was the cause of my feeling cold." 
 
 Ere long the exaggeration to which people in society are 
 naturally inclined, produced a large and growing crop of the 
 most amusing ideas, the most curious expressions, the most ab- 
 surd fables concerning tjiis mysterious individual. Without 
 being precisely a vampire, a ghoul, a fictitious man, a sort of 
 
 Faust or Robin des Bois, he partook of the nature of all these 
 VOL. 1650
 
 292 SAERASINE 
 
 anthropomorphic conceptions, according to those persons who 
 were addicted to the fantastic. Occasionally some German 
 would take for realities these ingenious jests of Parisian evil- 
 speaking. The stranger was simply an old man. Some young 
 men, who were accustomed to decide the future of Europe 
 every morning in a few fashionable phrases, chose to see in 
 the stranger some great criminal, the possessor of enormous 
 wealth. Novelists described the old man's life and gave some 
 really interesting details of the atrocities committed by him 
 while he was in the service of the Prince of Mysore. Bankers, 
 men of a more positive nature, devised a specious fable. 
 
 "Bah !" they would say, shrugging their broad shoulders 
 pityingly, "that little old fellow's a Genoese head !" 
 
 "If it is not an impertinent question, monsieur, would 
 you have the kindness to tell me what you mean by a Genoese 
 head?" 
 
 "I mean, monsieur, that he is a man upon whose life enor- 
 mous sums depend, and whose good health is undoubtedly es- 
 sential to the continuance of this family's income. I remem- 
 ber that I once heard a mesmerist, at Madame d'Espard's, 
 undertake to prove by very specious historical deductions, 
 that this old man, if put under the magnifying glass, would 
 turn out to be the famous Balsamo, otherwise called Cagli- 
 ostro. According to this modern alchemist, the Sicilian had 
 escaped death, and amused himself making gold for his grand- 
 children. And the Bailli of Ferette declared that he recog- 
 nized in this extraordinary personage the Comte de Saint- 
 Germain." 
 
 Such nonsense as this, put forth with the assumption of 
 superior cleverness, with the air of raillery, which in our day 
 characterize a society devoid of faith, kept alive vague sus- 
 picions concerning the Lanty family. At last, by a strange 
 combination of circumstances, the members of that family jus- 
 tified the conjectures of society by adopting a decidedly mys- 
 terious course of conduct with this old man, whose life was, 
 in a certain sense, kept hidden from all investigations. 
 
 If he crossed the threshold of the apartment he was sup-
 
 SARRASINE 293 
 
 posed to occupy in the Lanty mansion, his appearance always 
 caused a great sensation in the family. One would have sup- 
 posed that it was an event of the greatest importance. Only 
 Filippo, Marianina, Madame de Lanty, and an old servant 
 enjoyed the privilege of assisting the unknown to walk, to rise, 
 to sit down. Each one of them kept a close watch on his 
 slightest movements. It seemed as if he were some enchanted 
 person upon whom the happiness, the life, or the fortune of all 
 depended. Was it fear or affection? Society could discover 
 no indication which enabled them to solve this problem. Con- 
 cealed for months at a time in the depths of an unknown 
 sanctuary, this familiar spirit suddenly emerged, furtively as 
 it were, unexpectedly, and appeared in the salons like the fair- 
 ies of old, who alighted from their winged dragons to disturb 
 festivities to which they had not been invited. Only the most 
 experienced observers could divine the anxiety, at such times, 
 of the masters of the house, who were peculiarly skilful in 
 concealing their feelings. But sometimes, while dancing a 
 quadrille, the too ingenuous Marianina would cast a terrified 
 glance at the old man, whom she watched closely from the 
 circle of dancers. Or perhaps Filippo would leave his place 
 and glide through the crowd to where he stood, and remain be- 
 side him, affectionate and watchful, as if the touch of man, 
 or the faintest breath, would shatter that extraordinary crea- 
 ture. The countess would try to draw nearer to him without 
 apparently intending to join him; then, assuming a manner 
 and an expression in which servility and affection, submissive- 
 ness and tyranny, were equally noticeable, she would say two 
 or three words, to which the old man almost always deferred ; 
 and he would disappear, led, or I might better say carried 
 away, by her. If Madame de Lanty were not present, the 
 Count would employ a thousand ruses to reach his side; but 
 it always seemed as if he found difficulty in inducing him to 
 listen, and he treated him like a spoiled child, whose mother 
 gratifies his whims and at the same time suspects mutiny. 
 Some prying persons having ventured to question the Comte 
 de Lanty indiscreetly, that cold and reserved individual
 
 294 SARRASINE 
 
 seemed not to understand their questions. And so, after many 
 attempts, which the circumspection of all the members of the 
 family rendered fruitless, no one sought to discover a secret so 
 well guarded. Society spies, triflers, and politicians, weary of 
 the strife, ended by ceasing to concern themselves about the 
 mystery. 
 
 But at that moment, it may be, there were in those gor- 
 geous salons philosophers who said to themselves, as they dis- 
 cussed an ice or a sherbet, or placed their empty punch glasses 
 on a tray: 
 
 "I should not be surprised to learn that these people are 
 knaves. That old fellow who keeps out of sight and appears 
 only at the equinoxes or solstices, looks to me exactly like an 
 assassin." 
 
 "Or a bankrupt." 
 
 "There's very little difference. To destroy a man's fortune 
 is worse sometimes than to kill the man himself." 
 
 "I bet twenty louis, monsieur ; there are forty due me." 
 
 "Faith, monsieur; there are only thirty left on the cloth." 
 
 "Just see what a mixed company there is here ! One can't 
 play cards in peace." 
 
 "Very true. But it's almost six months since we saw the 
 Spirit. Do you think he's a living being?" 
 
 "Well, barely." 
 
 These last remarks were made in my neighborhood by per- 
 sons whom I did not know, and who passed out of hearing just 
 as I was summarizing in one last thought my reflections, in 
 which black and white, life and death, were inextricably 
 mingled. My wandering imagination, like my eyes, contem- 
 plated alternately the festivities, which had now reached the 
 climax of their splendor, and the gloomy picture presented by 
 the gardens. I have no idea how long I meditated upon those 
 two faces of the human medal ; but I was suddenly aroused by 
 the stifled laughter of a young woman. I was stupefied at the 
 picture presented to my eyes. By virtue of one of the strang- 
 est of nature's freaks, the thought half draped in black, which 
 was tossing about in my brain, emerged from it and stood be-
 
 SARRASINE 295 
 
 fore me personified, living; it had come forth like Minerva 
 from Jupiter's brain, tall and strong ; it was at once a hundred 
 years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead. Escaped 
 from his chamber, like a madman from his cell, the little old 
 man had evidently crept behind a long line of people who were 
 listening attentively to Marianina's voice as she finished the 
 cavatina from Tancred. He seemed to have come up through 
 the floor, impelled by some stage mechanism. He stood for a 
 moment motionless and sombre, watching the festivities, a 
 murmur of which had perhaps reached his ears. His almost 
 somnambulistic preoccupation was so concentrated upon 
 things that, although he was in the midst of many people, he 
 saw nobody. He had taken his place unceremoniously beside 
 one of the most fascinating women in Paris, a young and 
 graceful dancer, with slender figure, a face as fresh as a child's, 
 all pink and white, and so fragile, so transparent, that it 
 seemed that a man's glance must pass through her as the sun's 
 rays pass through flawless glass. They stood there before 
 me, side by side, so close together, that the stranger rubbed 
 against the gauze dress, and the wreaths of flowers, and the 
 hair, slightly crimped, and the floating ends of the sash. 
 
 I had brought that young woman to Madame de Lanty's 
 ball. As it was her first visit to that house, I forgave her her 
 stifled laugh; but I hastily made an imperious sign which 
 abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat 
 down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the 
 charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the 
 silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old 
 persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. 
 In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a fold- 
 ing-chair. His slightest movements were marked by the inert 
 heaviness, the stupid hesitancy, which characterize the move- 
 ments of a paralytic. He sat slowly down upon his chair with 
 great caution, mumbling some unintelligible words. His 
 cracked voice resembled the noise made by a stone falling into 
 a well. The young woman nervously pressed my hand, as if 
 she were trying to avoid a precipice, and shivered when that
 
 296 SARRASINE 
 
 man- at whom she happened to be looking, turned upon her 
 two lifeless, sea-green eyes, which could be compared to 
 nothing save tarnished mother-of-pearl. 
 
 "I am afraid," she said, putting her lips to my ear. 
 
 "You can speak," I replied ; "he hears with great difficulty." 
 
 "You know him, then?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 ! Thereupon she summoned courage to scrutinize for a mo- 
 'ment that creature for which no human language has a name, 
 form without substance, a being without life, or life without 
 action. She was under the spell of that timid curiosity which 
 impels women to seek perilous excitement, to gaze at chained 
 tigers and boa-constrictors, shuddering all the while because 
 the barriers between them are so weak. Although the little 
 old man's back was bent like a day-laborer's, it was easy to 
 see that he must formerly have been of medium height. His 
 excessive thinness, the slenderness of his limbs, proved that he 
 had always been of slight build. He wore black silk breeches 
 which hung about his fleshless thighs in folds, like a lowered 
 veil. An anatomist would instinctively have recognized the 
 symptoms of consumption in its advanced stages, at sight of 
 the tiny legs which served to support that strange frame. You 
 would have said that they were a pair of cross-bones on a 
 gravestone. A feeling of profound horror seized the heart 
 when a close scrutiny revealed the marks made by decrepitude 
 upon that frail machine. 
 
 He wore a white waistcoat embroidered with gold, in the 
 old style, and his linen was of dazzling whiteness. A shirt- 
 frill of English lace, yellow with age, the magnificence of 
 which a queen might have envied, formed a series of yellow 
 ruffles on his breast; but upon him the lace seemed rather a 
 worthless rag than an ornament. In the centre of the frill a 
 diamond of inestimable value gleamed like a sun. That super- 
 annuated splendor, that display of treasure, of great intrinsic 
 worth, but utterly without taste, served to bring out in still 
 bolder relief the strange creature's face. The frame was 
 worthy of the portrait. That dark face was full of angles
 
 SARRASINE 297 
 
 and furrowed deep in every direction ; the chin was furrowed ; 
 there were great hollows at the temples ; the eyes were sunken 
 in yellow orbits. The maxillary bones, which his indescribable 
 gauntness caused to protrude, formed deep cavities in the 
 centre of both cheeks. These protuberances, as the light fell 
 upon them, caused curious effects of light and shadow which 
 deprived that face of the last vestige of resemblance to the 
 human countenance. And then, too, the lapse of years had 
 drawn the fine, yellow skin so close to the bones that it de- 
 scribed a multitude of wrinkles everywhere, either circular like 
 the ripples in the water caused by a stone which a child throws 
 in, or star-shaped like a pane of glass cracked by a blow; but 
 everywhere very deep, and as close together as the leaves of a 
 closed book. We often see more hideous old men; but what 
 contributed more than aught else to give to the spectre that 
 rose before us the aspect of an artificial creation was the red 
 and white paint with which he glistened. The eyebrows shone 
 in the light with a lustre which disclosed a very well executed 
 bit of painting. Luckily for the eye, saddened by such a mass 
 of ruins, his corpse-like skull was concealed beneath a light 
 wig, with innumerable curls which indicated extraordinary 
 pretensions to elegance. Indeed, the feminine coquettishness 
 of this fantastic apparition was emphatically asserted by the 
 gold ear-rings which hung at his ears, by the rings contain- 
 ing stones of marvelous beauty which sparkled on his fingers, 
 like the brilliants in a river of gems around a woman's neck. 
 Lastly, this species of Japanese idol had constantly upon his 
 blue lips, a fixed, unchanging smile, the shadow of an implac- 
 able and sneering laugh, like that of a death's head. As silent 
 and motionless as a statue, he exhaled the musk-like odor of 
 the old dresses which a duchess' heirs exhume from her ward- 
 robe during the inventory. If the old man turned his eyes 
 toward the company, it seemed that the movements of those 
 globes, no longer capable of reflecting a gleam, were accom- 
 plished by an almost imperceptible effort ; and, when the eyes 
 stopped, he who was watching them was not certain finally 
 that they had moved at all. As I saw, beside that human ruin,
 
 298 SARRASINE 
 
 a young woman whose bare neck and arms and breast were 
 white as snow; whose figure was well-rounded and beautiful 
 in its youthful grace ; whose hair, charmingly arranged above 
 an alabaster forehead, inspired love; whose eyes did not re- 
 ceive but gave forth light, who was sweet and fresh, and whose 
 fluffy curls, whose fragrant breath, seemed too heavy, too 
 harsh, too overpowering for that shadow, for that man of dust 
 ah ! the thought that came into my mind was of death and 
 life, an imaginary arabesque, a half -hideous chimera, divinely 
 feminine from the waist up. 
 
 "And yet such marriages are often made in society !" I said 
 to myself. 
 
 "He smells of the cemetery !" cried the terrified young wo- 
 man, grasping my arm as if to make sure of my protection, 
 and moving about in a restless, excited way, which convinced 
 me that she was very much frightened. "It's a horrible 
 vision," she continued ; "I cannot stay here any longer. If I 
 look at him again I shall believe that Death himself has come 
 in search of me. But is he alive ?" 
 
 She placed her hand on the phenomenon, with the boldness 
 which women derive from the violence of their wishes, but a 
 cold sweat burst from her pores, for, the instant she touched 
 the old man, she heard a cry like the noise made by a rattle. 
 That shrill voice, if indeed it were a voice, escaped from a 
 throat almost entirely dry. It was at once succeeded by a 
 convulsive little cough like a child's, of a peculiar resonance. 
 At that sound, Marianina, Filippo, and Madame de Lanty 
 looked toward us, and their glances were like lightning 
 flashes. The young woman wished that she were at the bot- 
 tom of the Seine. She took my arm and pulled me away to- 
 ward a boudoir. Everybody, men and women, made room for 
 us to pass. Having reached the farther end of the suite of 
 reception-rooms, we entered a small semi-circular cabinet. 
 My companion threw herself on a divan, breathing fast with 
 terror, not knowing where she was. 
 
 "You are mad, madame," I said to her. 
 
 "But," she rejoined, after a moment's silence, during which
 
 SARRASINE 299 
 
 I gazed at her in admiration, "is it my fault? Why does 
 Madame de Lanty allow ghosts to wander round her house?" 
 
 "Nonsense," I replied; "you are doing just what fools do. 
 You mistake a little old man for a spectre." 
 
 "Hush," she retorted, with the imposing, yet mocking, air 
 which all women are so well able to assume when they are 
 determined to put themselves in the right. "Oh ! what a sweet 
 boudoir !" she cried, looking about her. "Blue satin hangings 
 always produce an admirable effect. How cool it is ! Ah ! the 
 lovely picture !" she added, rising and standing in front of a 
 magnificently framed painting. 
 
 We stood for a moment gazing at that marvel of art, which 
 seemed the work of some supernatural brush. The picture 
 represented Adonis stretched out on a lion's skin. The lamp, 
 in an alabaster vase, hanging in the centre of the boudoir, cast 
 upon the canvas a soft light which enabled us to grasp all the 
 beauties of the picture. 
 
 "Does such a perfect creature exist?" she asked me, after 
 examining attentively, and not without a sweet smile of sat- 
 isfaction, the exquisite grace of the outlines, the attitude, the 
 color, the hair, in fact everything. 
 
 "He is too beautiful for a man," she added, after such a 
 scrutiny as she would have bestowed upon a rival. 
 
 Ah ! how sharply I felt at that moment those pangs of 
 jealousy in which a poet had tried in vain to make me believe ! 
 the jealousy of engravings, of pictures, -of statues, wherein 
 artists exaggerate human beauty, as a result of the doctrine 
 which leads them to idealize everything. 
 
 "It is a portrait," I replied. "It is a product of Vien's 
 genius. But that great painter never saw the original, and 
 your admiration will be modified somewhat perhaps, when I 
 tell you that this study was made from a statue of a woman." 
 
 "But who is it?" 
 
 I hesitated. 
 
 "I insist upon knowing," she added earnestly. 
 
 "I believe," I said, "that this Adonis represents a a rela- 
 tive of Madame de Lanty."
 
 300 SARRASINE 
 
 I had the chagrin of seeing that she was lost in contempla- 
 tion of that figure. She sat down in silence, and I seated my- 
 self beside her and took her hand without her noticing it. 
 Forgotten for a portrait ! At that moment we heard in the 
 silence a woman's footstep and the faint rustling of a dress. 
 We saw the youthful Marianina enter the houdoir, even more 
 resplendent by reason of her expression of innocence than by 
 reason of her grace and her fresh costume; she was walking 
 slowly and leading with motherly care, with a daughter's 
 solicitude, the spectre in human attire, who had driven us 
 from the music-room ; as she led him, she watched with some 
 anxiety the slow movement of his feeble feet. They walked 
 painfully across the boudoir to a door hidden in the hang- 
 ings. Marianina knocked softly. Instantly a tall, thin man, 
 a sort of familiar spirit, appeared as if by magic. Before en- 
 trusting the old man to this mysterious guardian, the lovely 
 child, with deep veneration, kissed the ambulatory corpse, and 
 her chaste caress was not without a touch of that graceful 
 playfulness, the secret of which only a few privileged women 
 possess. 
 
 "Addio, addio!" she said, with the sweetest inflection of 
 her young voice. 
 
 She added to the last syllable a wonderfully executed trill, 
 in a very low tone, as if to depict the overflowing affection 
 of her heart by a poetic expression. The old man, suddenly 
 arrested by some memory, remained on the threshold of that 
 secret retreat. In the profound silence we heard the sigh that 
 came forth from his breast ; he removed the most beautiful of 
 the rings with which his skeleton fingers were laden, and 
 placed it in Marianina's bosom. The young madcap laughed, 
 plucked out the ring, slipped it on one of her fingers over her 
 glove, and ran hastily back toward the salon, where the or- 
 chestra were, at that moment, beginning the prelude of a 
 contra-dance. 
 
 She spied us. 
 
 "Ah! were you here?" she said, blushing. 
 
 After a searching glance at us as if to question us, she ran
 
 SARRASINE 301 
 
 away to her partner with the careless petulance of her years. 
 
 "What does this mean?" queried my young partner. "Is 
 he her husband ? I believe I am dreaming. Where am I ?" 
 
 "You!" I retorted, "you, madame, who are easily excited, 
 and who, understanding so well the most imperceptible emo- 
 tions, are able to cultivate in a man's heart the most delicate 
 of sentiments, without crushing it, without shattering it at 
 the very outset, you who have compassion for the tortures of 
 the heart, and who, with the wit of the Parisian, combine a 
 passionate temperament worthy of Spain or Italy " 
 
 She realized that my words were heavily charged with bit- 
 ter irony; and, thereupon, without seeming to notice it, she 
 interrupted me to say: 
 
 "Oh ! you describe me to suit your own taste. A strange 
 kind of tyranny ! You wish me not to be myself!" 
 
 "Oh ! I wish nothing," I cried, alarmed by the severity of 
 her manner. "At all events, it is true, is it not, that you like 
 to hear stories of the fierce passions kindled in our hearts by 
 the enchanting women of the South?" 
 
 "Yes. And then?" 
 
 "Why, I will come to your house about nine o'clock to- 
 morrow evening, and elucidate this mystery for you." 
 
 "No," she replied, with a pout; "I wish it done now." 
 
 "You have not yet given me the right to obey you when 
 you say, 'I wisli it.' ' 
 
 "At this moment," she said, with an exhibition of coquetry 
 of the sort that drives men to despair, "I have a most violent 
 desire to know this secret. To-morrow ib may be that I will 
 not listen to you." 
 
 She smiled and we parted, she still as proud and as cruel, I 
 as ridiculous, as ever. She had the audacity to waltz with a 
 young aide-de-camp, and I was by turns angry, sulky, admir- 
 ing, loving, and jealous. 
 
 "Until to-morrow," she said to me, as she left the ball about 
 two o'clock in the morning. 
 
 "I won't go," I thought. "I give you up. You are a thou- 
 sand times more capricious, more fanciful, than my imagina- 
 tion."
 
 302 SARRASINE . 
 
 The next evening we were seated in front of a bright fire 
 in a dainty little salon, she on a couch, I on cushions almost 
 at her feet, looking up into her face. The street was silent. 
 The lamp shed a soft light. It was one of those evenings 
 which delight the soul, one of those moments which are never 
 forgotten, one of those hours passed in peace and longing, 
 whose charm is always in later years a source of regret, even 
 when we are happier. What can efface the deep imprint of 
 the first solicitations of love ? 
 
 "Go on," she said. "I am listening." 
 
 "But I dare not begin. There are passages in the story 
 which are dangerous to the narrator. If I become excited, 
 you will make me hold my peace." 
 
 "Speak." 
 
 "I obey. 
 
 "Ernest-Jean Sarrasine was the only son of a prosecuting 
 attorney of Franche-Comte," I began, after a pause. "His 
 father had, by faithful work, amassed a fortune which yielded 
 an income of six to eight thousand francs, then considered a 
 colossal fortune for an attorney in the provinces. Old Maitre 
 Sarrasine, having but one child, determined to give him a 
 thorough education; he hoped to make a magistrate of him, 
 and to live long enough to see, in his old age, the grandson 
 of Mathieu Sarrasine, a ploughman in the Saint-Die country, 
 seated on the lilies, and dozing through the sessions for the 
 greater glory of the Parliament ; but Heaven had not that joy 
 in store for the attorney. Young Sarrasine, entrusted to the 
 care of the Jesuits at an early age, gave indications of an ex- 
 traordinarily unruly disposition. His was the childhood of a 
 man of talent. He would not study except as his inclination 
 led him, .often rebelled, and sometimes remained for whole 
 hours at a time buried in tangled meditations, engaged now 
 in watching his comrades at play, now in forming mental 
 pictures of Homer's heroes. And, when he did choose to 
 amuse himself, he displayed extraordinary ardor in his games. 
 Whenever there was a contest of any sort between a comrade 
 and himself, it rarely ended without bloodshed. If he were
 
 SARRASINE 303 
 
 the weaker, he would use his teeth. Active and passive by 
 turns, either lacking in aptitude, or too intelligent, his ab- 
 normal temperament caused him to distrust his masters as 
 much as his schoolmates. Instead of learning the elements of 
 the Greek language, he drew a picture of the reverend father 
 who was interpreting a passage of Thucydides, sketched the 
 teacher of mathematics, the prefect, the assistants, the man 
 who administered punishment, and smeared all the walls with 
 shapeless figures. Instead of singing the praises of the Lord 
 in the chapel, he amused himself, during the services, by 
 notching a bench ; or, when he had stolen a piece of wood, he 
 would carve the figure of some saint. If he had no wood or 
 stone or pencil, he worked out his ideas with bread. Whether 
 he copied the figures in the pictures which adorned the choir, 
 or improvised, he always left at his seat rough sketches whose 
 obscene character drove the young fathers to despair ; and the 
 evil-tongued alleged that the Jesuits smiled at them. At last, 
 if we are to believe college traditions, he was expelled because, 
 while awaiting his turn to go to the confessional one Good 
 Friday, he carved a figure of the Christ from a stick of wood. 
 The impiety evidenced by that figure was too flagrant not to 
 draw down chastisement on the artist. He had actually had 
 the hardihood to place that decidedly cynical image on the top 
 of the tabernacle ! 
 
 "Sarrasine came to Paris to seek a refuge against the 
 threats of a father's malediction. Having one of those strong 
 wills which know no obstacles, he obeyed the behests of his 
 genius and entered Bouchardon's studio. He worked all day 
 and went about at night begging for subsistence. Bouchardon, 
 marveling at the young artist's intelligence and rapid prog- 
 ress, soon divined his pupil's destitute condition ; he assisted 
 him, became attached to him, and treated him like his own 
 child. Then, when Sarrasine's genius stood revealed in one 
 of those works wherein future talent contends with the effer- 
 vescence of youth, the generous Bouchardon tried to restore 
 him to the old attorney's good graces. The paternal wrath 
 subsided in face of the famous sculptor's authority. All Be-
 
 304 SARRASINE 
 
 sangon congratulated itself on having brought forth a future 
 great man. In the first outburst of delight due to his flat- 
 tered vanity, the miserly attorney supplied his son with the 
 means to appear to advantage in society. The long and la- 
 borious study demanded by the sculptor's profession subdued 
 for a long time Sarrasine's impetuous temperament and un- 
 ruly genius. Bouchardon, foreseeing how violently the pas- 
 sions would some day rage in that youthful heart, as highly 
 tempered perhaps as Michelangelo's, smothered its vehemence 
 with constant toil. He succeeded in restraining within rea- 
 sonable bounds Sarrasine's extraordinary impetuosity, by for- 
 bidding him to work, by proposing diversions when he saw 
 that he was carried away by the violence of some idea, or by 
 placing important work in his hands when h$ saw that he was 
 on the point of plunging into dissipation. But with that 
 passionate nature, gentleness was always the most powerful of 
 all weapons, and the- master did not acquire great influence 
 over his pupil until he had aroused his gratitude by fatherly 
 kindness. 
 
 "At the age of twenty-two Sarrasine was forcibly removed 
 from the salutary influence which Bouchardon exercised over 
 his morals and his habits. He paid the penalty of his genius 
 by winning the prize for sculpture founded by the Marquis de 
 Marigny, Madame de Pompadour's brother, who did so much 
 for art. Diderot praised Bouchardon's pupil's statue as a 
 masterpiece. Not without profound sorrow did the king's 
 sculptor witness the departure for Italy of a young man whose 
 profound ignorance of the things of life he had, as a matter 
 of principle, refrained from enlightening. Sarrasine was 
 Bouchardon's guest for six years. Fanatically devoted to his 
 art, as Canova was at a later day, he rose at dawn and went 
 to the studio, there to remain until night, and lived with his 
 muse alone. If he went to the Comedie-Frangaise, he was 
 dragged thither by his master. He was so bored at Madame 
 Geoffrin's, and in the fashionable society to which Bouchardon 
 tried to introduce him, that he preferred to remain alone, and 
 held aloof from the pleasures of that licentious age. He had
 
 
 SARRASINE 305 
 
 no other mistresses than sculpture and Clotilde, one of the 
 celebrities of the Opera. Even that intrigue was of hrief du- 
 ration. Sarrasine was decidedly ugly, always badly dressed, 
 and naturally so independent, so irregular in his private life, 
 that the illustrious nymph, dreading some catastrophe, soon 
 remitted the sculptor to love of the arts. Sophie Arnould 
 made some witty remark on the subject. She was surprised, I 
 think, that her colleague was able to triumph over statues. 
 
 "Sarrasine started for Italy in 1758. On the journey his 
 ardent imagination took fire beneath a sky of copper and at 
 sight of the marvelous monuments with which the fatherland 
 of the arts is strewn. He admired the statues, the frescoes, 
 the pictures ; and, fired with a spirit of emulation, he went on 
 to Eome, burning to inscribe his name between the names of 
 Michelangelo and Bouchardon. At first, therefore, he divided 
 his time between his studio work and examination of the works 
 of art which abound in Rome. He had already passed a fort- 
 night in the ecstatic state into which all youthful imagina- 
 tions fall at sight of the queen of ruins, when he happened 
 one evening to enter the Argentina theatre, in front of which 
 there was an enormous crowd. He inquired the reasons for 
 the presence of so great a throng, and every one answered by 
 two names: 
 
 " 'Zambinella ! Jomelli !' 
 
 "He entered and took a seat in the pit, crowded between 
 two unconscionably stout abbati; but luckily he was quite 
 near the stage. The curtain rose. For the first time in his 
 life he heard the music whose charms Monsieur Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau had extolled so eloquently at one of Baron d'Hol- 
 bach's evening parties. The young sculptor's senses were lu- 
 bricated, so to speak, by Jomelli's harmonious strains. The 
 languorous peculiarities of those skilfully blended Italian 
 voices plunged him in an ecstasy of delight. He sat there, 
 mute and motionless, not even conscious of the crowding of 
 the two priests. His soul poured out through his ears and 
 his eyes. He seemed to be listening with every one of his 
 pores. Suddenly a whirlwind of applause greeted the appear-
 
 306 SARRASINE 
 
 ance of the prima donna. She came forward coquettishly to 
 the footlights and courtesied to the audience with infinite 
 grace. The brilliant light, the enthusiasm of a vast multitude, 
 the illusion of the stage, the glamour of a costume which was 
 most attractive for the time, all conspired in that woman's 
 favor. Sarrasine cried aloud with pleasure. He saw before 
 him at that moment the ideal beauty whose perfections he had 
 hitherto sought here and there in nature, taking from one 
 model, often of humble rank, the rounded outline of a shapely 
 leg; from another the contour of the breast; from another 
 her white shoulders ; stealing the neck of that young girl, the 
 hands of this woman, and the polished knees of yonder child, 
 but never able to find beneath the cold skies of Paris the rich 
 and satisfying creations of ancient Greece. La Zambinella 
 displayed in her single person, intensely alive and delicate 
 beyond words, all those exquisite proportions of the female 
 form which he had so ardently longed to behold, and of which 
 a sculptor is the most severe and at the same time the most 
 passionate judge. She had an expressive mouth, eyes instinct 
 with love, flesh of dazzling whiteness. And add to these de- 
 tails, which would have filled a painter's soul with rapture, all 
 the marvelous charms of the Venuses worshiped and copied 
 by the chisel of the Greeks. The artist did not tire of admir- 
 ing the inimitable grace with which the arms were attached 
 to the body, the wonderful roundness of the throat, the grace- 
 ful curves described by the eyebrows and the nose, and the 
 perfect oval of the face, the purity of its clean-cut lines, and 
 the effect of the thick, drooping lashes which bordered the 
 large and voluptuous eyelids. She was more than a woman ; 
 she was a masterpiece ! In that unhoped-for creation there 
 was love enough to enrapture all mankind, and beauties cal- 
 culated to satisfy the most exacting critic. 
 
 "Sarrasine devoured with his eyes what seemed to him Pyg- 
 malion's statue descended from its pedestal. When La Zam- 
 binella sang, he was beside himself. He was cold ; then sud- 
 denly he felt a fire burning in the secret depths of his being, 
 in what, for lack of a better word, we call the heart. He did
 
 SARRASINE 307 
 
 not applaud, he said nothing; he felt a mad impulse, a sort 
 of frenzy of the sort that seizes us only at the age when there 
 is a something indefinably terrible and infernal in our desires. 
 Sarrasine longed to rush upon the stage and seize that woman. 
 His strength, increased a hundredfold by a moral depression 
 impossible to describe, for such phenomena take place in a 
 sphere inaccessible to human observation, insisted upon man- 
 ifesting itself with deplorable violence. Looking at him, you 
 would have said that he was a cold, dull man. Eenown, sci- 
 ence, future, life, prizes, all vanished. 
 
 " 'To win her love or die !' Such was the sentence Sarrasine 
 pronounced upon himself. 
 
 "He was so completely intoxicated that he no longer saw 
 theatre, audience, or actors, no longer heard the music. Nay, 
 more, there was no space between him and La Zambinella; 
 he possessed her ; his eyes, fixed steadfastly upon her, took 
 possession of her. An almost diabolical power enabled him 
 to feel the breath of that voice, to inhale the fragrant powder 
 with which her hair was covered, to see the slightest inequali- 
 ties of her face, to count the blue veins which threaded their 
 way beneath the satiny skin. And that fresh, brisk voice of 
 silvery timbre, flexible as a thread to which the faintest breath 
 of air gives form, which it rolls and unrolls, tangles and blows 
 away, that voice attacked his heart so fiercely that he more 
 than once uttered an involuntary exclamation, extorted by 
 the convulsive ecstasy too rarely evoked by human passions. 
 He was soon obliged to leave the theatre. His trembling legs 
 almost refused to bear him. He was prostrated, weak, like a 
 nervous man who has given way to a terrible burst of anger. 
 He had had such exquisite pleasure, or perhaps had suffered 
 so, that his life had flowed away like water from an overturned 
 vessel. He felt a void within him, a sense of goneness like 
 the utter lack of strength which discourages a convalescent 
 just recovering from a serious sickness. Overwhelmed by in- 
 explicable melancholy, he sat down on the steps of a church. 
 There, with his back resting against a pillar, he lost himself 
 
 in a fit of meditation as confused as a dream. Passion had 
 VOL. 16 51
 
 308 SARRASINE 
 
 dealt him a crushing blow. On his return to his apartments 
 he was seized by one of those paroxysms of activity which re- 
 veal to us the presence of new principles in our existence. A 
 prey to that first fever of love which resembles pain as much 
 as pleasure, he sought to defeat his impatience and his frenzy 
 by sketching La Zambinella from memory. It was a sort of 
 material meditation. Upon one leaf La Zambinella appeared 
 in that pose, apparently calm and cold, affected by Kaphael, 
 Georgione, and all the great painters. On another, she was 
 coyly turning her head as she finished a roulade, and seemed 
 to be listening to herself. Sarrasine drew his mistress in all 
 poses: he drew her unveiled, seated, standing, reclining, 
 chaste, and amorous interpreting, thanks to the delirious ac- 
 tivity of his pencil, all the fanciful ideas which beset our 
 imagination when our thoughts are completely engrossed by 
 a mistress. But his frantic thoughts outran his pencil. He 
 met La Zambinella, spoke to her, entreated her, exhausted a 
 thousand years of life and happiness with her, placing her 
 in all imaginable situations, trying the future with her, so 
 to speak. The next day he sent his servant to hire a box near 
 the stage for the whole season. Then, like all young men of 
 powerful feelings, he exaggerated the difficulties of his under- 
 taking, and gave his passion, for its first pasturage, the joy 
 of being able to admire his mistress without obstacle. The 
 golden age of love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments, 
 and in which we are almost as happy by ourselves, was not 
 likely to last long with Sarrasine. However, events surprised 
 him when he was still under the spell of that springtime hal- 
 lucination, as naive as it was voluptuous. In a week he lived 
 a whole lifetime, occupied through the day in molding the 
 clay with which he succeeded in copying La Zambinella, not- 
 withstanding the veils, the skirts, the waists, and the bows of 
 ribbon which concealed her from him. In the evening, in- 
 stalled at an early hour in his box, alone, reclining on a sofa, 
 he made for himself, like a Turk drunk with opium, a happi- 
 ness as fruitful, as lavish, as he wished. First of all, he fa- 
 miliarized himself gradually with the too intense emotions
 
 SARRASINE 309 
 
 which his mistress' singing caused him; then he taught his 
 eyes to look at her, and was finally able to contemplate her at 
 his leisure without fearing an explosion of concealed frenzy, 
 like that which had seized him the first day. His passion be- 
 came more profound as it became more tranquil. But the un- 
 sociable sculptor would not allow his solitude, peopled as it 
 was with images, adorned with the fanciful creations of hope, 
 and full of happiness, to be disturbed by his comrades. His 
 love was so intense and so ingenuous, that he had to undergo 
 the innocent scruples with which we are assailed when we love 
 for the first time. As he began to realize that he would soon 
 be required to bestir himself, to intrigue, to ask where La 
 Zambinella lived, to ascertain whether she had a mother, an 
 uncle, a guardian, a family, in a word, as he reflected upon 
 the methods of seeing her, of speaking to her, he felt that his 
 heart was so swollen with such ambitious ideas, that he post- 
 poned those cares until the following day, as happy in his 
 physical sufferings as in his intellectual pleasures." 
 
 "But," said Madame de Eochefide, interrupting me, "I 
 see nothing of Marianina or her little old man in all this." 
 
 "You see nothing but him !" I cried, as vexed as an author 
 for whom some one has spoiled the effect of a coup de theatre. 
 
 "For some days," I resumed after a pause, "Sarrasine had 
 been so faithful in attendance in his box, and his glances ex- 
 pressed such passionate love, that his passion for La Zam- 
 binella's voice would have been town-talk in Paris, if the epi- 
 sode had happened here; but in Italy, madame, every one 
 goes to the theatre for his own enjoyment, with all his own 
 passions, with a heartfelt interest which precludes all thought 
 of espionage with opera-glasses. However, the sculptor's fran- 
 tic admiration could not long escape the notice of the per- 
 formers, male and female. One evening the Frenchman no- 
 ticed that they were laughing at him in the wings. It is hard 
 to say what violent measures he might have resorted to, had 
 not La Zambinella come on the stage. She cast at Sarrasine 
 one of those eloquent glances which often say more than wo- 
 men intend. That glance was a complete revelation in itself. 
 Sarrasine was beloved!
 
 310 SARRASINE 
 
 " 'If it is a mere caprice/ he thought, already accusing his 
 mistress of too great ardor, 'she does not know the sort of 
 domination to which she is about to become subject. Her 
 caprice will last, I trust, as long as my life.' 
 
 "At that moment, three light taps on the door of his box 
 attracted the artist's attention. He opened the door. An old 
 woman entered with an air of mystery. 
 
 " 'Young man,' she said, 'if you wish to be happy, be pru- 
 dent. Wrap yourself in a cloak, pull a broad-brimmed hat 
 over your eyes, and be on the Rue du Corso, in front of the 
 Hotel d'Espagne, about ten o'clock to-night." 
 
 " 'I will be there,' he replied, putting two louis in the du- 
 enna's wrinkled hand. 
 
 "He rushed from his box, after a sign of intelligence to La 
 Zambinella, who lowered her voluptuous eyelids modestly, like 
 a woman overjoyed to be understood at last. Then he hurried 
 home, in order to borrow from his wardrobe all the charms it 
 could loan him. As he left the theatre, a stranger grasped 
 his arm. 
 
 " 'Beware, Signor Frenchman,' he said in his ear. 'This is 
 a matter of life and death. Cardinal Cicognara is her pro- 
 tector, and he is no trifler.' 
 
 "If a demon had placed the deep pit of hell between Sar- 
 rasine and La Zambinella, he would have crossed it with one 
 stride at that moment. Like the horses of the immortal gods 
 described by Homer, the sculptor's love had traversed vast 
 spaces in a twinkling. 
 
 " 'If death awaited me on leaving the house, I would go 
 the more quickly,' he replied. 
 
 "'Poverino!' cried the stranger, as he disappeared. 
 
 "To talk of danger to a man in love is to sell him pleasure. 
 Sarrasine's valet had never seen his master so painstaking in 
 the matter of dress. His finest sword, a gift from Bouchar- 
 don, the bow-knot Clotilde gave him, his coat with gold braid, 
 his waistcoat of cloth of silver, his gold snuff-box, his valuable 
 watch, everything was taken from its place, and he arrayed 
 himself like a maiden about to appear before her first lover.
 
 SAERASINE 311 
 
 At the appointed hour, drunk with love and boiling over with 
 hope, Sarrasine, his nose buried in his cloak, hurried to the 
 rendezvous appointed by the old woman. She was waiting. 
 
 " 'You are very late/ she said. 'Come/ 
 
 "She led the Frenchman through several narrow streets and 
 stopped in front of a palace of attractive appearance. She 
 knocked ; the door opened. She led Sarrasine through a laby- 
 rinth of stairways, galleries, and apartments which were 
 lighted only by uncertain gleams of moonlight, and soon 
 reached a door through the cracks of which stole a bright light, 
 and from which came the joyous sound of several voices. Sar- 
 rasine was suddenly blinded when, at a word from the old 
 woman, he was admitted to that mysterious apartment and 
 found himself in a salon as brilliantly lighted as it was sump- 
 tuously furnished; in the centre stood a bountifully supplied 
 table, laden with inviolable bottles, with laughing decanters 
 whose red facets sparkled merrily. He recognized the singers 
 from the theatre, male and female, mingled with charming 
 women, all ready to begin an artists' spree and waiting only 
 for him. Sarrasine restrained a feeling of displeasure and 
 put a good face on the matter. He had hoped for a dimly 
 lighted chamber, his mistress leaning over a brazier, a jealous 
 rival within two steps, death and love, confidences exchanged 
 in low tones, heart to heart, hazardous kisses, and faces so 
 near together that La Zambinella's hair would have touched 
 caressingly his desire-laden brow, burning with happiness. 
 
 "'Vive la folie!' he cried. 'Signori e belle donne, you will 
 allow me to postpone my revenge and bear witness to my grati- 
 tude for the welcome you offer a poor sculptor." 
 
 "After receiving congratulations not lacking in warmth 
 from most of those present, whom he knew by sight, he tried 
 to approach the couch on which La Zambinella was noncha- 
 lantly reclining. Ah ! how his heart beat when he spied a tiny 
 foot in one of those slippers which if you will allow me to 
 say so, madame formerly imparted to a woman's feet such a 
 coquettish, voluptuous look that I cannot conceive how men 
 could resist them. Tightly fitting white stockings with green
 
 312 SAKRASINE 
 
 clocks, short skirts, and the pointed, high-heeled slippers of 
 Louis XV. 's time contributed somewhat, I fancy, to the de- 
 moralization of Europe and the clergy." 
 
 "Somewhat !" exclaimed the marchioness. "Have you read 
 nothing, pray?" 
 
 "La Zambinella," I continued, smiling, "had boldly crossed 
 her legs, and as she prattled swung the upper one, a duchess' 
 attitude very well suited to her capricious type of beauty, over- 
 flowing with a certain attractive suppleness. She had laid 
 aside her stage costume, and wore a waist which outlined a 
 slender figure, displayed to the best advantage by a panier 
 and a satin dress embroidered with blue flowers. Her breast, 
 whose treasures were concealed by a coquettish arrangement 
 of lace, was of a gleaming white. Her hair was dressed al- 
 most like Madame du Barry's; her face, although overshad- 
 owed by a large cap, seemed only the daintier therefor, and 
 the powder was very becoming to her. To see her thus was 
 to adore her. She smiled graciously at the sculptor. Sarra- 
 sine, disgusted beyond measure at finding himself unable to 
 speak to her without witnesses, courteously seated himself 
 beside her, and discoursed of music, extolling her prodigious 
 talent ; but his voice trembled with love and fear and hope. 
 
 " 'What do you fear ?' queried Vitagliani, the most cele- 
 brated singer in the troupe. 'Go on, you have no rival here 
 to fear.' 
 
 "After he had said this the tenor smiled silently. The lips 
 of all the guests repeated that smile, in which there was a 
 lurking expression of malice likely to escape a lover. The 
 publicity of his love was like a sudden dagger-thrust in Sar- 
 rasine's heart. Although possessed of a certain strength of 
 character, and although nothing that might happen could 
 subdue the violence of his passion, it had not before occurred 
 to him that La Zambinella was almost a courtesan, and that 
 he could not hope to enjoy at one and the same time the pure 
 delights which make a maiden's love so sweet, and the pas- 
 sionate transports with which one must purchase the perilous 
 favors of an actress. He reflected and resigned himself to his
 
 SARRASINE 313 
 
 fate. The supper was served. Sarrasine and La Zambinella 
 seated themselves side by side without ceremony. During 
 the first half of the feast the artists exercised some restraint, 
 and the sculptor was able to converse with the singer. He 
 found that she was very bright and quick-witted; but she 
 was amazingly ignorant and seemed weak and superstitious. 
 The delicacy of her organs was reproduced in her understand- 
 ing. When Vitagliani opened the first bottle of champagne, 
 Sarrasine read in his neighbor's eyes a shrinking dread of the 
 report caused by the release of the gas. The involuntary 
 shudder of that thoroughly feminine temperament was inter- 
 preted by the amorous artist as indicating extreme delicacy of 
 feeling. This weakness delighted the Frenchman. There is 
 so much of the element of protection in a man's love ! 
 " 'You may make use of my power as a shield !' 
 "Is not that sentence written at the root of all declarations 
 of love ? Sarrasine, who was too passionately in love to make 
 fine speeches to the fair Italian, was, like all lovers, grave, 
 jovial, meditative, by turns. Although he seemed to listen 
 to the guests, he did not hear a word that they said, he was 
 so wrapped up in the pleasure of sitting by her side, of touch- 
 ing her hand, of waiting on her. He was swimming in a sea 
 of concealed joy. Despite the eloquence of divers glances they 
 exchanged, he was amazed at La Zambinella's continued re- 
 serve toward him. She had begun, it is true, by touching 
 his foot with hers and stimulating his passion with the mis- 
 chievous pleasure of a woman who is free and in love; but 
 she had suddenly enveloped herself in maidenly modesty, after 
 she had heard Sarrasine relate an incident which illustrated 
 the extreme violence of his temper. When the supper became 
 a debauch, the guests began to sing, inspired by the Peralta 
 and the Pedro-Ximenes. There were fascinating duets, Cala- 
 brian ballads, Spanish sequidillas,and Neapolitan canzonettes. 
 Drunkenness was in all eyes, in the music, in the hearts and 
 voices of the guests. There was a sudden overflow of bewitch- 
 ing vivacity, of cordial unconstraint, of Italian good nature, 
 of which no words can convey an idea to those who know only
 
 314 SARRASINE 
 
 the evening parties of Paris, the routs of London, or the clubs 
 of Vienna. Jests and words of love flew from side to side 
 like bullets in a battle, amid laughter, impieties, invocations 
 to the Blessed Virgin or the Bambino. One man lay on a sofa 
 and fell asleep. A young woman listened to a declaration, 
 unconscious that she was spilling Xeres wine on the table- 
 cloth. Amid all this confusion La Zambinella, as if terror- 
 stricken, seemed lost in thought. She refused to drink, but 
 ate perhaps a little too much; but gluttony is attractive in 
 women, it is said. Sarrasine, admiring his mistress' modesty, 
 indulged in serious reflections concerning the future. 
 
 " 'She desires to be married, I presume,' he said to himself. 
 
 "Thereupon he abandoned himself to blissful anticipations 
 of marriage with her. It seemed to him that his whole life 
 would be too short to exhaust the living spring of happiness 
 which he found in the depths of his heart. Vitagliani, who sat 
 on his other side, filled his glass so often that, about three 
 in the morning, Sarrasine, while not absolutely drunk, was 
 powerless to resist his delirious passion. In a moment of 
 frenzy he seized the woman and carried her to a sort of bou- 
 doir which opened from the salon, and toward which he had 
 more than once turned his eyes. The Italian was armed with 
 a dagger. 
 
 " 'If you come near me,' she said, 'I shall be compelled to 
 plunge this blade into your heart. Go ! you would despise 
 me. I have conceived too great a respect for your character to 
 abandon myself to you thus. I do not choose to destroy the 
 sentiment with which you honor me.' 
 
 " 'Ah !' said Sarrasine, 'to stimulate a passion is a poor 
 way to extinguish it ! Are you already so corrupt that, being 
 old in heart, you act like a young prostitute who inflames the 
 emotions in which she trades?" 
 
 " 'Why, this is Friday,' she replied, alarmed by the French- 
 man's violence. 
 
 "Sarrasine, who was not piously inclined, began to laugh. 
 La Zambinella gave a bound like a young deer, and darted 
 into the salon. When Sarrasine appeared, running after her,
 
 SARRASINE 315 
 
 he was welcomed by a roar of infernal laughter. He saw La 
 Zambineila swooning on a sofa. She was very pale, as if ex- 
 hausted by the extraordinary effort she had made. Although 
 Sarrasine knew but little Italian, he understood his mistress 
 when she said to Vitagliani in a low voice: 
 
 " 'But he will kill me !' 
 
 "This strange scene abashed the sculptor. His reason re- 
 turned. He stood still for a moment ; then he recovered his 
 speech, sat down beside his mistress, and assured her of his 
 profound respect. He found strength to hold his passion in 
 check while talking to her in the most exalted strain ; and, to 
 describe his love, he displayed all the treasures of eloquence 
 -'that sorcerer, that friendly interpreter, whom women rarely 
 refuse to believe. When the first rays of dawn surprised the 
 boon companions, some woman suggested that they go to Fras- 
 cati. One and all welcomed with loud applause the idea of 
 passing the day at Villa Ludovisi. Vitagliani went down to 
 hire carriages. Sarrasine had the good fortune to drive La 
 Zambineila in a phaeton. When they had left Eome behind, 
 the merriment of the party, repressed for a moment by the 
 battle they had all been fighting against drowsiness, suddenly 
 awoke. All, men and women alike, seemed accustomed to that 
 strange life, that constant round of pleasures, that artistic 
 energy, which makes of life one never ending fete, where 
 laughter reigns, unchecked by fear of the future. The sculp- 
 tor's companion was the only one who seemed out of spirits. 
 
 " 'Are you ill ?' Sarrasine asked her. 'Would you prefer to 
 go home?' 
 
 " 'I am not strong enough to stand all this dissipation/ 
 she replied. 'I have to be very careful; but I feel so happy 
 with you ! Except for you, I should not have remained to 
 this supper ; a night like this takes away all my freshness.' 
 
 " 'You are so delicate !' rejoined Sarrasine, gazing in rap- 
 ture at the charming creature's dainty features. 
 
 " 'Dissipation ruins my voice.' 
 
 " 'Xow that we are -alone,' cried the artist, 'and that you 
 no longer have reason to fear the effervescence of my passion, 
 tell me that you love me.'
 
 316 SARRASINE 
 
 " 'Why ?' said she ; 'for what good purpose ? You think mg 
 pretty. But you are a Frenchman, and your fancy will pass 
 away. Ah ! you would not love me as I should like to be loved.' 
 
 "''How?'' 
 
 " 'Purely, with no mingling of vulgar passion. I abhor 
 men even more, perhaps, than I hate women. I need to take 
 refuge in friendship. The world is a desert to me. I am an 
 accursed creature, doomed to understand happiness, to feel it, 
 to desire it, and like many, many others, compelled to see it 
 always fly from me. Eemember, signer, that I have not de- 
 ceived you. I forbid you to love me. I can be a devoted friend 
 to you, for I admire your strength of will and your character. 
 I need a brother, a protector. Be both of these to me, but 
 nothing more.' 
 
 " 'And not love you !' cried Sarrasine ; 'but you are my life, 
 my happiness, dear angel !' 
 
 " 'If I should say a word, you would spurn me with hor- 
 ror.' 
 
 " 'Coquette ! nothing can frighten me. Tell me that you 
 will cost me my whole future, that I shall die two months 
 hence, that I shall be damned for having kissed you but 
 once 
 
 "And he kissed her, despite La Zambinella's efforts to avoid 
 that passionate caress. 
 
 " 'Tell me that you are a demon, that I must give you my 
 fortune, my name, all my renown ! Would you have me cease 
 to be a sculptor ? Speak.' 
 
 " 'Suppose I were not a woman ?' queried La Zambinella, 
 timidly, in a sweet, silvery voice. 
 
 " 'A merry jest !' cried Sarrasine. 'Think you that you can 
 deceive an artist's eye? Have I not, for ten days past, ad- 
 mired, examined, devoured, thy perfections? None but a 
 woman can have this soft and beautifully rounded arm, these 
 graceful outlines. Ah ! you seek compliments !' 
 
 "She smiled sadly, and murmured: 
 
 " 'Fatal beauty !' 
 
 "She raised her ejes to the sky. At that moment, there
 
 SARRASTKE 317 
 
 was in her eyes an indefinable expression of horror, so start- 
 ling, so intense, that Sarrasine shuddered. 
 
 " 'Signer Frenchman,' she continued, 'forget forever a 
 moment's madness. I esteem you, but as for love, do not ask 
 me for that ; that sentiment is suffocated in my heart. I have 
 no heart !' she cried, weeping bitterly. 'The stage on which 
 you saw me, the applause, the music, the renown to which I 
 am condemned those are my life; I have no other. A few 
 hours hence you will no longer look upon me with the same 
 eyes, the woman you love will be dead.' 
 
 "The sculptor did not reply. He was seized with a dull 
 rage which contracted his heart. He could do nothing but 
 gaze at that extraordinary woman, with inflamed, burning 
 eyes. That feeble voice, La Zambinella's attitude, manners, 
 and gestures, instinct with dejection, melancholy, and dis- 
 couragement, reawakened in his soul all the treasures of pas- 
 sion. Each word was a spur. At that moment, they arrived 
 at Frascati. When the artist held out his arms to help his 
 mistress to alight, he felt that she trembled from head to foot. 
 
 " 'What is the matter ? You would kill me,' he cried, seeing 
 that she turned pale, 'if you should suffer the slightest pain 
 of which I am, even innocently, the cause.' 
 
 " 'A snake !' she said, pointing to a reptile which was glid- 
 ing along the edge of a ditch. 'I am afraid of the disgusting 
 creatures.' 
 
 "Sarrasine crushed the snake's head with a blow of his foot. 
 
 " 'How could you dare to do it ?' said La Zambinella, gaz- 
 ing at the dead reptile with visible terror. 
 
 "'Aha!' said the artist, with a smile, 'would you venture 
 to say now that you are not a woman ?' 
 
 "They joined their companions and walked through the 
 woods of Villa Ludovisi, which at that time belonged to Car- 
 dinal Cicognara. The morning passed all too swiftly for the 
 amorous sculptor, but it was crowded with incidents which 
 laid bare to him the coquetry, the weakness, the daintiness, of 
 that pliant, inert soul. She was a true woman with her sud- 
 den terrors, her unreasoning caprices, her instinctive worries,
 
 318 SARRASINE 
 
 her causeless audacity, her bravado, and her fascinating deli- 
 cacy of feeling. At one time, as the merry little party of sing- 
 ers ventured out into the open country, they saw at some dis- 
 tance a number of men armed to the teeth, whose costume was 
 by no means reassuring. At the words, 'Those are brigands !' 
 they all quickened their pace in order to reach the shelter of 
 the wall enclosing the cardinal's villa. At that critical mo- 
 ment Sarrasine saw from La Zambinella's manner that she no 
 longer had strength to walk ; he took her in his arms and car- 
 ried her for some distance, running. When he was within 
 call of a vineyard near by, he set his mistress down. 
 
 " 'Tell me/ he said, 'why it is that this extreme weakness, 
 which in another woman would be hideous, would disgust me, 
 so that the slightest indication of it would be enough to de- 
 stroy my love, why is it that in you it pleases me, fascinates 
 me ? Oh, how I love you !' he continued. 'All your faults, 
 your frights, your petty foibles, add an indescribable charm 
 to your character. I feel that I should detest a Sappho, a 
 strong, courageous woman, overflowing with energy and pas- 
 sion. sweet and fragile creature ! how couldst thou be 
 otherwise ? That angel's voice, that refined voice, would have 
 been an anachronism coming from any other breast than 
 thine.' 
 
 " 'I can give you no hope,' she said. Tease to speak thus 
 to me, for people would make sport of you. It is impossible 
 for me to shut the door of the theatre to you ; but if you love 
 me, or if you are wise, you will come there no more. Listen to 
 me, monsieur,' she continued in a grave voice. 
 
 " 'Oh, hush !' said the excited artist. 'Obstacles inflame the 
 love in my heart.' 
 
 "La Zambinella maintained a graceful and modest attitude ; 
 but she held her peace, as if a terrible thought had suddenly 
 revealed some catastrophe. When it was time to return to 
 Eome she entered a berlin with four seats, bidding the sculp- 
 tor, with a cruelly imperious air, to return alone in the phae- 
 ton. On the road, Sarrasine determined to carry off La Zam- 
 binella. He passed the whole day forming plans, each more
 
 SARRASINE - 319 
 
 extravagant than the last. At nightfall, as he was going out 
 to inquire of somebody where his mistress lived, he met one 
 of his fellow-artists at the door. 
 
 " 'My dear fellow/ he said, 'I am sent by our ambassador 
 to invite you to come to the embassy this evening. He gives a 
 magnificent concert, and when I tell you that La Zambinella 
 will be there ' 
 
 " 'Zambinella !' cried Sarrasine, thrown into delirium by 
 that name; 'I am mad with love of her.' 
 
 " 'You are like everybody else/ replied his comrade. 
 
 " 'But if you are friends of mine, you and Vien and Lauter- 
 bourg and Allegrain, you will lend me your assistance for "a 
 coup de main, after the entertainment, will you not?' asked 
 Sarrasine. 
 
 " 'There's no cardinal to be killed ? no ?' 
 
 " 'No, no !' said Sarrasine, 'I ask nothing of you that men 
 of honor may not do.' 
 
 "In a few moments the sculptor laid all his plans to as- 
 sure the success of his enterprise. He was one of the last to 
 arrive at the ambassador's, but he went thither in a traveling 
 carriage drawn by four stout horses and driven by one of the 
 most skilful vetturini in Rome. The ambassador's palace 
 was .full of people; not without difficulty did the sculptor, 
 whom nobody knew, make his way to the salon where La Zam- 
 binella was singing at that moment. 
 
 " 'It must be in deference to all the cardinals, bishops, and 
 abbes who are here/ said Sarrasine, 'that she is dressed as a 
 man, that she has curly hair which she wears in a bag, and 
 that she has a sword at her side?' 
 
 " 'She ! what she ?' rejoined the old nobleman whom Sarra- 
 sine addressed. 
 
 "'La Zambinella." 
 
 " 'La Zambinella !' echoed the Roman prince. 'Are you 
 jesting ? Whence have you come ? Did a woman ever appear 
 in a Roman theatre ? And do you not know what sort of crea- 
 tures play female parts within the domains of the Pope? It 
 was I, monsieur, who endowed Zambinella with his voice. I
 
 320 SAKRASINE 
 
 paid all the knave's expenses, even his teacher in singing. And 
 he has so little gratitude for the service I have done him that 
 he has never been willing to step inside my house. And yet, 
 if he makes his fortune, he will owe it all to me.' 
 
 "Prince Chigi might have talked on forever, Sarrasine did 
 not listen to him. A ghastly truth had found its way into his 
 mind. He was stricken as if by a thunderbolt. He stood like 
 a statue, his eyes fastened on the singer. His flaming glance 
 exerted a sort of magnetic influence on Zambinella, for he 
 turned his eyes at last in Sarrasine's direction, and his divine 
 voice faltered. He trembled ! An involuntary murmur es- 
 caped the audience, which he held fast as if fastened to his 
 lips; and that completely disconcerted him; he stopped in 
 the middle of the aria he was singing and sat down. Cardinal 
 Cicognara, who had watched from the corner of his eye the 
 direction of his proteges glance, saw the Frenchman; he 
 leaned toward one of his ecclesiastical aides-de-camp, and ap- 
 parently asked the sculptor's name. When he had obtained 
 the reply he desired he scrutinized the artist with great at- 
 tention and gave orders to an abbe, who instantly disappeared. 
 Meanwhile Zambinella, having recovered his self-possession, 
 resumed the aria he had so capriciously broken off; but he 
 sang badly, and refused, despite all the persistent appeals 
 showered upon him, to sing anything else. It was the first 
 time he had exhibited that humorsome tyranny, which, at a 
 later date, contributed no less to his celebrity than his talent 
 and his vast fortune, which was said to be due to his beauty 
 as much as to his voice. 
 
 " 'It's a woman,' said Sarrasine, thinking that no one could 
 overhear him. 'There's some secret intrigue beneath all this. 
 Cardinal Cicognara is hoodwinking the Pope and the whole 
 city of Rome !' 
 
 "The sculptor at once left the salon, assembled his friends, 
 and lay in wait in the courtyard of the palace. When Zam- 
 binella was assured of Sarrasine's departure he seemed to 
 recover his tranquillity in some measure. About midnight, 
 after -wandering through the salons like a man looking for ar>
 
 SARRASINE 321 
 
 enemy, the musico left the party. As he passed through the 
 palace gate he was seized by men who deftly gagged him with 
 a handkerchief and placed him in the carriage hired by Sar- 
 rasine. Frozen with terror, Zambinella lay back in a corner, 
 not daring to move a muscle. He saw before him the terrible 
 face of the artist, who maintained a deathlike silence. The 
 journey was a short one. Zambinella, kidnapped by Sarra- 
 sine, soon found himself in a dark, bare studio. He sat, half 
 dead, upon a chair, hardly daring to glance at a statue of a 
 woman, in which he recognized his own features. He did not 
 utter a word, but his teeth were chattering; he was paralyzed 
 with fear. Sarrasine was striding up and down the studio. 
 Suddenly he halted in front of Zambinella. 
 
 " 'Tell me the truth/ he said, in a changed and hollow voice. 
 'Are you not a woman? Cardinal Cicognara ' 
 
 "Zambinella fell on his knees, and replied only by hanging 
 his head. 
 
 " 'Ah ! you are a woman !' cried the artist in a frenzy; 'for 
 even a ' 
 
 "He did not finish the sentence. 
 
 " 'No/ he continued, 'even he could not be so utterly base/ 
 
 " 'Oh, do not kill me !' cried Zambinella, bursting into tears. 
 'I consented to deceive you only to gratify my comrades, who 
 wanted an opportunity to laugh/ 
 
 " 'Laugh !' echoed the sculptor, in a voice in which there was 
 a ring of infernal ferocity. 'Laugh! laugh! You dared to 
 make sport of a man's passion you?' 
 
 " 'Oh, mercy !' cried Zambinella. 
 
 " 'I ought to kill you !' shouted Sarrasine, drawing his sword 
 fn an outburst of rage. 'But/ he continued, with cold dis- 
 dain, 'if I searched your whole being with this blade, should I 
 find there any sentiment to blot out, anything with which to 
 satisfy my thirst for vengeance ? You are nothing ! If you 
 were a man or a woman, I would kill you, but ' 
 
 "Sarrasine made a gesture of disgust, and turned his face 
 away; thereupon he noticed the statue. 
 
 " 'And that is a delusion !' he cried.
 
 322 SARKASINE 
 
 "Then, turning to Zambinella once more, he continued: 
 
 " 'A woman's heart was to me a place of refuge, a father- 
 land. Have you sisters who resemble you ? No. Then die ! 
 But no, you shall live. To leave you your life is to doom you 
 to a fate worse than death. I regret neither my hlood nor 
 my life, but my future and the fortune of my heart. Your 
 weak hand has overturned my happiness. What hope can I 
 extort from you in place of all those you have destroyed? 
 You have brought me down to your level. To love, to be loved! 
 are henceforth meaningless words to me, as to you. I shall 
 never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a 
 real woman.' 
 
 "He pointed to the statue with a gesture of despair. 
 
 " 'I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who 
 will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who 
 will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Mon- 
 ster ! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women 
 off the face of the earth.' 
 
 "Sarrasine seated himself in front of the terrified singer. 
 Two great tears came from his dry eyes, rolled down his 
 swarthy cheeks, and fell to the floor two tears of rage, two 
 scalding, burning tears. 
 
 " 'An end of love ! I am dead to all pleasure, to all human 
 emotions !' 
 
 "As he spoke, he seized a hammer and hurled it at the statue 
 with such excessive force that he missed it. He thought that 
 he had destroyed that monument of his madness, and there- 
 upon he drew his sword again, and raised it to kill the singer. 
 Zambinella uttered shriek after shriek. Three men burst into 
 the studio at that moment, and the sculptor fell, pierced by 
 three daggers. 
 
 " 'From Cardinal Cicognara/ said one of the men. 
 
 " 'A benefaction worthy of a Christian,' retorted the 
 Frenchman, as he breathed his last. 
 
 "These ominous emissaries told Zambinella of the anxiety 
 of his patron, who was waiting at the door in a closed carriage 
 in order to take him away as soon as he was set at liberty."
 
 SARRASINE 323 
 
 "But," said Madame de Bochefide, "what connection is 
 there between this story and the little old man we saw at the 
 Lantys'?" 
 
 "Madame, Cardinal Cicognara took possession of Zambi- 
 nella's statue and had it reproduced in marble; it is in the 
 Albani Museum to-day. In 1794 the Lanty family discovered 
 it there, and asked Vien to copy it. The portrait which 
 showed you Zambinella at twenty, a moment after you had 
 seen him as a centenarian, afterward figured in Girodet's 
 Endymion; you yourself recognized the type in Adonis" 
 
 "But this Zambinella, male or female ' : 
 
 "Must be, madame, Marianina's maternal great uncle. You 
 can conceive now Madame de Lanty's interest in concealing 
 the source of a fortune which comes " 
 
 "Enough !" said she, with an imperious gesture. 
 
 We remained for a moment in the most profound silence. 
 
 "Well?" I said at last. 
 
 "Ah !" she cried, rising and pacing the floor. 
 
 She came and looked me in the face, and said in an altered 
 voice : 
 
 "You have disgusted me with life and passion for a long 
 time to come. Leaving monstrosities aside, are not all human 
 sentiments dissolved thus, by ghastly disillusionment? Chil- 
 dren torture mothers by their bad conduct, or their lack of 
 affection. Wives are betrayed. Mistresses are cast aside, 
 abandoned. Talk of friendship ! Is there such a thing ! I 
 would turn pious to-morrow if I did not know that I can re- 
 main like the inaccessible summit of a cliff amid the tempests 
 of life. If the future of the Christian is an illusion too, at all 
 events it is not destroyed until after death. Leave me to my- 
 self." 
 
 "Ah !" said I, "you know how to punish." 
 
 "Am I in the wrong?" 
 
 "Yes," I replied, with a sort of desperate courage. "By 
 finishing this story, which is well known in Italy, I can give 
 you an excellent idea of the progress made by the civilization 
 of the present day. There are none of those wretched crea- 
 tures now."
 
 324 SARRASINE 
 
 "Paris," said she, "is an exceedingly hospitable place; it 
 welcomes one and all, fortunes stained with shame, and for- 
 tunes stained with blood. Crime and infamy have a right of 
 asylum here ; virtue alone is without altars. But pure hearts 
 have a fatherland in heaven ! No one will have known me ! 
 I am proud of it." 
 
 And the marchioness was lost in thought.
 
 FACING CANE 
 
 I ONCE used to V re in a little street which probably is not 
 known to you the Hue de Lesdiguieres. It is a turning 
 out of the Rue Saint-Antoine, beginning just opposite a foun- 
 tain near the Place de la Bastille, and ending in the Rue de 
 la Cerisaie. Love of knowledge stranded me in a garret; my 
 nights I spent in work, my days in reading at the Bibliotheque 
 d'Orleans, close by. I lived frugally, I had accepted the con- 
 ditions of the monastic life, necessary conditions for every 
 worker, scarcely permitting myself a walk along the Boulevard 
 Bourdon when the weather was fine. One passion only had 
 power to draw me from my studies; and yet, what was that 
 passion but a study of another kind? I used to watch the 
 manners and customs of the Faubourg, its inhabitants, and 
 their characteristics. As I dressed no better than a working 
 man, and cared nothing for appearances, I did not put them 
 on their guard; I could join a group and look on while they 
 drove bargains or wrangled among themselves on their way 
 home from work. Even then observation had come to be an 
 instinct with me ; a faculty of penetrating to the soul without 
 neglecting the body; or rather, a power of grasping external 
 details so thoroughly that they never detained me for a mo- 
 ment, and at once I passed beyond and through them. I could 
 enter into the life of the human creatures whom I watched, 
 just as the dervish in the Arabian Nights could pass into any 
 soul or body after pronouncing a certain formula. 
 
 If I met a working man and his wife in the streets between 
 eleven o'clock and midnight on their way home from the Am- 
 bigu Comique, I used to amuse myself by following them 
 from the Boulevard du Pont aux Choux to the Boulevard 
 Beanmarchais. The good folk would begin by talking about 
 the play; then from one thing to another they would come to
 
 326 FACING CANE 
 
 their own affairs, and the mother would walk on and on, heed- 
 less of complaints or question from the little one that dragged 
 at her hand, while she and her husband reckoned up the wages 
 to be paid on the morrow, and spent the money in a score of 
 different ways. Then came domestic details, lamentations 
 over the excessive dearness of potatoes, or the length of the 
 winter and the high price of block fuel, together with forcible 
 representations of amounts owing to the baker, ending in an 
 acrimonious dispute, in the course of which such couples 
 reveal their characters in picturesque language. As I listened, 
 I could make their lives mine, I felt their rags on my back, I 
 walked with their gaping shoes on my feet; their cravings, 
 their needs, had all passed into my soul, or my soul had passed 
 into theirs. It was the dream of a waking man. I waxed hot 
 with them over the foreman's tyranny, or the bad customers 
 that made them call again and again for payment. 
 
 To come out of my own ways of life, to be another than my- 
 self through a kind of intoxication of the intellectual facul- 
 ties, and to play this game at will, such was my recreation. 
 Whence comes the gift ? Is it a kind of second sight ? Is it 
 one of those powers which when abused end in madness? I 
 have never tried to discover its source; I possess it, I use it, 
 that is all. But this it behoves you to know, that in those days 
 I began to resolve the heterogeneous mass known as the People 
 into its elements, and to evaluate its good and bad qualities. 
 Even then I realized the possibilities of my suburb, that hot- 
 bed of revolution in which heroes, inventors, and practical 
 men of science, rogues and scoundrels, virtues and vices, were 
 all packed together by poverty, stifled by necessity, drowned 
 in drink, and consumed by ardent spirits. 
 
 You would not imagine how many adventures, how many 
 tragedies, lie buried away out of sight in that Dolorous City ; 
 how much horror and beauty lurks there. No imagination 
 can reach the Truth, no one can go down into that city to make 
 discoveries ; for one must needs descend too low into its depths 
 to see the wonderful scenes of tragedy or comedy enacted 
 there, the masterpieces brought forth by chance.
 
 FACING CANE 327 
 
 I do not know how it is that I have kept the following story 
 BO long untold. It is one of the curious things that stop in the 
 bag from which Memory draws out stories at haphazard, like 
 numbers in a lottery. There are plenty of tales just as 
 strange and just as well hidden still left; but some day, you 
 may be sure, their turn will come. 
 
 One day my charwoman, a working man's wife, came to 
 beg me to honor her sister's wedding with my presence. If 
 you are to realize what this wedding was like, you must know 
 that I paid my charwoman, poor creature, four francs a 
 month; for which sum she came every morning to make my 
 bed, clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, and 
 make ready my breakfast, before going to her day's work of 
 turning the handle of a machine, at which hard drudgery she 
 earned five-pence. Her husband, a cabinetmaker, made four 
 francs a day at his trade; but as they had three children, it 
 was all that they could do to gain an honest living. Yet I 
 have never met with more sterling honesty than in this man 
 and wife. For five years after I left the quarter, Mere Vail- 
 lant used to come on my birthday with a bunch of flowers and 
 some oranges for me she that had never a sixpence to put by ! 
 Want had drawn us together. I never could give her more 
 than a ten-franc piece, and often I had to borrow the money 
 for the occasion. This will perhaps explain my promise to 
 go to the wedding ; I hoped to efface myself in these poor peo- 
 ple's merry-making. 
 
 The banquet and the ball were given on a first floor above 
 a wineshop in the Hue de Charenton. It was a large room, 
 lighted by oil lamps with tin reflectors. A row of wooden 
 benches ran round the walls, which were black with grime to 
 the height of the tables. Here some eighty persons, all in 
 their Sunday best, tricked out with ribbons and bunches of 
 flowers, all of them on pleasure bent, were dancing away with 
 heated visages as if the world were about to come to an end. 
 Bride and bridegroom exchanged salutes to the general satis- 
 faction, amid a chorus of facetious "Oh, ohs !" and "Ah, ahs !"
 
 328 FACING CANE 
 
 less really indecent than the furtive glances of young girls 
 that have been well brought up. There was something inde- 
 scribably infectious about the rough, homely enjoyment in all 
 countenances. 
 
 But neither the faces, nor the wedding, nor the wedding- 
 guests have anything to do with my story. Simply bear them 
 in mind as the odd setting to it. Try to realize the scene, 
 the shabby red-painted wineshop, the smell of wine, the yells 
 of merriment ; try to feel that you are really in the faubourg, 
 among old people, working men and poor women giving them- 
 selves up to a night's enjoyment. 
 
 The band consisted of a fiddle, a clarionet, and a flageolet 
 from the Blind Asylum. The three were paid seven francs 
 in a lump sum for the night. For the money, they gave us, 
 not Beethoven certainly, nor yet Eossini ; they played as they 
 had the will and the skill; and every one in the room (with 
 charming delicacy of feeling) refrained from finding fault. 
 The music made such a brutal assault on the drum of my 
 ear, that after a first glance round the room my eyes fell at 
 once upon the blind trio, and the sight of their uniform in- 
 clined me from the first to indulgence. As the artists stood 
 in a window recess, it was difficult to distinguish their faces 
 except at close quarters, and I kept away at first; but when I 
 came nearer (I hardly know why) I thought of nothing else; 
 the wedding party and the music ceased to exist, my curiosity 
 was roused to the highest pitch, for my soul passed into the 
 body of the clarionet player. 
 
 The fiddle and the flageolet were neither of them interest- 
 ing ; their faces were of the ordinary type among the blind 
 earnest, attentive, and grave. Not so the clarionet player ; any 
 artist or philosopher must have come to a stop at the sight of 
 him. 
 
 Picture to yourself a plaster mask of Dante in the red lamp- 
 light, with a forest of silver-white hair above the brows. Blind- 
 ness intensified the expression of bitterness and sorrow in that 
 grand face of his; the dead eyes were lighted up, as it were, 
 by a thought within that broke forth like a burning flame, lit
 
 FACING CANE 329 
 
 by one sole insatiable desire, written large in vigorous char- 
 acters upon an arching brow scored across with as many lines 
 as an old stone wall. 
 
 The old man was playing at random, without the slightest 
 regard for time or tune. His fingers traveled mechanically 
 over the worn keys of his instrument ; he did not trouble him- 
 self over a false note now and again (a canard,, in the lan- 
 guage of the orchestra), neither did the dancers, nor, for that 
 matter, did my old Italian's acolytes ; for I had made up my 
 mind that he must be an Italian, and an Italian he was. There 
 was something great, something too of the despot about this 
 old Homer bearing within him an Odyssey doomed to oblivion. 
 The greatness was so real that it triumphed over his abject po- 
 sition ; the despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above 
 his poverty. 
 
 There are violent passions which drive a man to good or 
 evil, making of him a hero or a convict ; of these there was 
 not one that had failed to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn, 
 lividly Italian face. You trembled lest a flash of thought 
 should suddenly light up the deep sightless hollows under the 
 grizzled brows, as you might. fear to see brigands with torches 
 and poniards in the mouth of a cavern. You felt that there 
 was a lion in that cage of flesh, a lion spent with useless rag- 
 ing against iron bars. The fires of despair had burned them- 
 selves out into ashes, the lava had cooled; but the tracks of 
 the flames, the wreckage, and a little smoke remained to bear 
 witness to the violence of the eruption, the ravages of the fire. 
 These images crowded up at the sight of the clarionet player, 
 till the thoughts now grown cold in his face burned hot within 
 my soul. 
 
 The fiddle and the flageolet took a deep interest in bottles 
 and glasses; at the end of a country-dance, they hung their 
 instruments from a button on their reddish-colored coats, and 
 stretched out their hands to a little table set in the window 
 recess to hold their liquor supply. Each time they did so they 
 held out a full glass to the Italian, who could not reach it for 
 himself because he sat in front of the table, and each time
 
 330 FACING CANE 
 
 the Italian thanked them with a friendly nod. All their 
 movements were made with the precision which always amazes 
 you so much at the Blind Asylum. You could almost think 
 that they can see. I came nearer to listen ; but when I stood 
 beside them, they evidently guessed I was not a working man, 
 and kept themselves to themselves. 
 
 "What part of the world do you come from, you that are 
 playing the clarionet?" 
 
 "From Venice," he said, with a trace of Italian accent. 
 
 "Have you always been blind, or did it come on after- 
 wards ?" 
 
 "Afterwards," he answered quickly. "A cursed gutta se- 
 rena." 
 
 "Venice is a fine city; I have always had a fancy to go 
 there." 
 
 The old man's face lighted up, the wrinkles began to work, 
 he was violently excited. 
 
 "If I went with you, you would not lose your time," he said. 
 
 "Don't talk about Venice to our Doge," put in the fiddle, 
 "or you will start him off, and he has stowed away a couple 
 of bottles as it is has the prince !" 
 
 "Come, strike up, Daddy Canard !" added the flageolet, and 
 the three began to play. But while they executed the four 
 figures of a square dance, the Venetian was scenting my 
 thoughts; he guessed the great interest I felt in him. The 
 dreary, dispirited look died out of his face, some mysterious 
 hope brightened his features and slid like a blue flame over his 
 wrinkles. He smiled and wiped his brow, that fearless, ter- 
 rible brow of his, and at length grew gay like a man mounted 
 on his hobby. 
 
 "How old are you?" I asked. 
 
 "Eighty-two." 
 
 "How long have you been blind?" 
 
 "For very nearly fifty years," he said, and there was that in 
 his tone which told me that his regret was for something more 
 than his lost sight, for great power of which he had been 
 robbed.
 
 FACIXO CANE 331 
 
 "Then why do they call you 'the Doge' ?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, it is a joke. I am a Venetian noble, and I might have 
 been a doge like any one else." 
 
 "What is your name?" 
 
 "Here, in Paris, I am Pere Canet," he said. "It was the 
 only way of spelling my name on the register. But in Italy I 
 am Marco Facino Cane, Prince of Varese." 
 
 "What, are you descended from the great condottiere Facino 
 Cane, whose lands won by the sword were taken by the Dukes 
 of Milan?". 
 
 "E vero" returned he. "His son's life was not safe under 
 the Visconti; he fled to Venice, and his name was inscribed 
 on the Golden Book. And now neither Cane nor Golden 
 Book are in existence." His gesture startled me; it told of 
 patriotism extinguished and weariness of life. 
 
 "But if you were once a Venetian senator, you must have 
 been a wealthy man. How did you lose your fortune?" 
 
 "In evil days." 
 
 He waved away the glass of wine handed to him by the 
 flageolet, and bowed his head. He had no heart to drink. 
 These details were not calculated to extinguish my curiosity. 
 
 As the three ground out the music of the square dance, I 
 gazed at the old Venetian noble, thinking thoughts that set a 
 young man's mind afire at the age of twenty. I saw Venice 
 and the Adriatic; I saw her ruin in the ruin of the face before 
 me. I walked to and fro in that city, so beloved of her citi- 
 zens ; I went from the Rialto Bridge, along the Grand Canal, 
 and from the Kiva degli Schiavoni to the Lido, returning to 
 St. Mark's, that cathedral so unlike all others in its sublimity. 
 I looked up at the windows of the Casa Doro, each with its 
 different sculptured ornaments ; I saw old palaces rich in mar- 
 bles, saw all the wonders which a student beholds with the 
 more sympathetic eyes because visible things take their color 
 of his fancy, and the sight of realities cannot rob him of the 
 glory of his dreanio. Then I traced back a course of life for 
 this latest scion of a race of condottieri, tracking down his 
 misfortunes, looking for the reasons of the deep moral and
 
 332 FACING CANE 
 
 physical degradation out of which the lately revived sparks 
 of greatness and nobility shone so much the more brightly. 
 My ideas, no doubt, were passing through his mind, for all 
 processes of thought-communications are far more swift, I 
 think, in blind people, because their blindness compels them 
 to concentrate their attention. I had not long to wait for 
 proof that we were in sympathy in this way. Facino Cane 
 left off playing, and came up to me. "Let us go out !" he said ; 
 his tones thrilled through me like an electric shock. I gave 
 him my arm, and we went. 
 
 Outside in the street he said, "Will you take me back to 
 Venice? will you be my guide? Will you put faith in me? 
 You shall be richer than ten of the richest houses in Amster- 
 dam or London, richer than Eothschild; in short, you shall 
 have the fabulous wealth of the Arabian Nights" 
 
 The man was mad, I thought ; but in his voice there was a 
 potent something which I obeyed. I allowed him to lead, and 
 he went in the direction of the Fosses de la Bastille, as if he 
 could see; walking till he reached a lonely spot down by the 
 river, just where the bridge has since been built at the 
 junction of the Canal Saint-Martin and the Seine. Here he 
 sat down on a stone, and I, sitting opposite to him, saw the 
 old man's hair gleaming like threads of silver in the moon- 
 light. The stillness was scarcely troubled by the sound of the 
 far-off thunder of traffic along the boulevards; the clear 
 night air and everything about us combined to make a 
 strangely unreal scene. 
 
 "You talk of millions to a young man," I began, "and do 
 you think that he will shrink from enduring any number of 
 hardships to gain them ? Are you not laughing at me ?" 
 
 "May I die unshriven," he cried vehemently, "if all that 
 I am about to tell you is not true. I was one-and-twenty 
 years old, like you at this moment. I was rich, I was hand- 
 some, and a noble by birth. I began with the first madness 
 of all with Love. I loved as no one can love nowadays. I 
 I have hidden myself in a chest, at the risk of a dagger thrust, 
 for nothing more than the promise of a kiss. To die for Her
 
 Here he sat down on a stone
 
 FACING CANE 333 
 
 it seemed to me to be a whole life in itself. In 1760 I 
 fell in love with a lady of the Vendramin family; she was 
 eighteen years old, and married to a Sagredo, one of the 
 richest senators, a man of thirty, madly in love with his wife. 
 My mistress and I were guiltless as cheruhs when the sposo 
 caught us together talking of love. He was armed, I was not, 
 but he missed me ; I sprang upon him and killed him with my 
 two hands, wringing his neck as if he had been a chicken. 
 I wanted Bianca to fly with me ; but she would not. That is 
 the way with women ! So I went alone. I was condemned 
 to death, and my property was confiscated and made over to 
 my next-of-kin; but I had carried off my diamonds, five of 
 Titian's pictures taken down from their frames and rolled up, 
 and all my gold. 
 
 "I went to Milan, no one molested me, my affair in nowise 
 interested the State. One small observation before I go fur- 
 ther," he continued, after a pause, "whether it is true or no 
 that the mother's fancies at the time of conception or in the 
 months before birth can influence her child, this much is cer- 
 tain, my mother during her pregnancy had a passion for gold, 
 and I am the victim of a monomania, of a craving for gold 
 which must be gratified. Gold is so much of a necessity of life 
 for me, that I have never been without it ; I must have gold to 
 toy with and finger. As a young man I always wore jewelry, 
 and carried two or three hundred ducats about with me wher- 
 ever I went." 
 
 He drew a couple of gold coins from his pocket and showed 
 them to me as he spoke. 
 
 "I can tell by instinct when gold is near. Blind as I am, 
 I stop before the jeweler's shop windows. That passion was 
 the ruin of me ; I took to gambling to play with gold. I was 
 not a cheat, I was cheated, I ruined myself. I lost all my 
 fortune. Then the longing to see Bianca once more possessed 
 me like a frenzy. I stole back to Venice and found her again. 
 For six months I was happy ; she hid me in her house and fed 
 me. I thought thus delicidusly to finish my days. But the 
 Provveditore courted her, and guessed that he had a rival;
 
 334 FACING CANE 
 
 we in Italy can feel that. He played the spy upon us, and 
 surprised us together in bed, base wretch. You may judge 
 what a fight for life it was; I did not kill him outright, but 
 I wounded him dangerously. 
 
 "That adventure broke my luck. I have never found 
 another Bianca; I have known great pleasures; but among the 
 most celebrated women at the court of Louis XV. I never 
 found my beloved Venetian's charm, her love, her great quali- 
 ties. 
 
 "The Provveditore called his servants, the palace was sur- 
 rounded and entered; I fought for my life that I might die 
 beneath Bianca's eyes ; Bianca helped me to kill the Provvedi- 
 tore. Once before she had refused flight with 'me; but after 
 six months of happiness she wished only to die with me, and re- 
 ceived several thrusts. I was entangled in a great cloak that 
 they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried 
 to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped 
 the hilt of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have 
 taken it from me by. cutting off my hand at the wrist. A cu- 
 rious chance, or rather the instinct of self-preservation, led me 
 to hide the fragment of the blade in a corner of my cell, as if 
 it might still be of use. They tended me; none of my wounds 
 were serious. At two-and-twenty one can recover from any- 
 thing. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I shammed ill- 
 ness to gain time. It seemed to me that the canal lay just out- 
 side my cell. I thought to make my escape by boring a hole 
 through the wall and swimming for my life. I based my hopes 
 on the following reasons. 
 
 "Every time that the jailer came with my food, there was 
 light enough to read directions written on the walls 
 'Side of the Palace,' 'Side of the Canal/ 'Side of the Vaults.' 
 At last I saw a design in this, but I did not trouble myself 
 much about the meaning of it ; the actual incomplete condition 
 of the Ducal Palace accounted for it. The longing to regain 
 my freedom gave me something like genius. Groping about 
 with my fingers, I spelled out an Arabic inscription on the 
 wall. The author of the work informed those to come after
 
 FACING CANE 335 
 
 him that he had loosed two stones in the lowest course of 
 masonry and hollowed out eleven feet beyond underground. 
 As he went on with his excavations, it became necessary to 
 spread the fragments of stone and mortar over the floor of 
 his cell. But even if jailers and inquisitors had not felt sure 
 that the structure of the buildings was such that no watch 
 was needed below, the level of the Pozzi dungeons being sev- 
 eral steps below the threshold, it was possible gradually to 
 raise the earthen floor without exciting the warder's sus- 
 picions. 
 
 "The tremendous labor had profited nothing nothing at 
 least to him that began it. The very fact that it was left un- 
 finished told of the unknown worker's death. Unless his de- 
 voted toil was to be wasted for ever, his successor must have 
 some knowledge of Arabic,- but I had studied Oriental lan- 
 guages at the Armenian Convent. A few words written on 
 the back of the stone recorded the unhappy man's fate ; he had 
 fallen a victim to his great possessions; Venice had coveted 
 his wealth and seized upon it. A whole month went by before 
 I obtained any result; but whenever I felt my strength fail- 
 ing as I worked, I heard the chink of gold, I saw gold spread 
 before me, I was dazzled by diamonds. Ah ! wait. 
 
 "One night my blunted steel struck on wood. I whetted 
 the fragment of my blade and cut a hole ; I crept on my belly 
 like a serpent; I worked naked and mole-fashion, my hands 
 in front of me, using the stone itself to gain a purchase. I 
 was to appear before my judges in two days' time, I made 
 a final effort, and that night I bored through the wood and 
 felt that there was space beyond. 
 
 "Judge of my surprise when I applied my eye to the hole. 
 I was in the ceiling of a vault, heaps of gold were dimly 
 visible in the faint light. The Doge himself and one of the 
 Ten stood below; I could hear their voices and sufficient of 
 their talk to know that this was the Secret Treasury of the 
 Republic, full of the gifts of Doges and reserves of booty 
 called the Tithe of Venice from the spoils of military expedi- 
 tions. I was saved !
 
 336 FACING CANE 
 
 "When the jailer came I proposed that he should help me 
 to escape and fly with me, and that we should take with us 
 as much as we could carry. There was no reason for hesita- 
 tion; he agreed. Vessels were about to sail for the Levant. 
 All possible precautions were taken. Bianca furthered the 
 schemes which I suggested to my accomplice. It was ar- 
 ranged that Bianca should only rejoin us in Smyrna for fear 
 of exciting suspicion. In a single night the hole was enlarged, 
 and we dropped down into the Secret Treasury of Venice. 
 
 ''What a night that was ! Four great casks full of gold 
 stood there. In the outer room silver pieces were piled in 
 heaps, leaving a gangway between by which to cross the cham- 
 ber. Banks of silver coins surrounded the walls to the height 
 of five feet. 
 
 "I thought the jailer would go -mad. He sang and laughed 
 and danced and capered among the gold, till I threatened to 
 strangle him if he made a sound or wasted time. In his joy 
 he did not notice at first the table where the diamonds lay. 
 I flung myself upon these, and deftly filled the pockets of 
 my sailor jacket and trousers with the stones. Ah ! Heaven, 
 I did not take the third of them. Gold ignots lay underneath 
 the table. I persuaded my companion to fill as many bags as 
 we could carry with the gold, and made him understand that 
 this was our only chance of escaping detection abroad. 
 
 " Tearls, rubies, and diamonds might be recognized,' I 
 told him. 
 
 "Covetous though we were, we could not possibly take more 
 than two thousand livres weight of gold, which meant six 
 journeys across the prison to the gondola. The sentinel at the 
 water gate was bribed with a bag containing ten livres weight 
 of gold ; and as for the two gondoliers, they believed they were 
 serving the Republic. At daybreak we set out. 
 
 "Once upon the open sea, when I thought of that night, 
 when I recollected all that I had felt, when the vision of that 
 great hoard rose before my eyes, and I computed that I had 
 left behind thirty millions in silver, twenty in gold, and
 
 FACING CANE 337 
 
 many more in diamonds, pearls, and rubies then a sort of 
 madness began to work in me. I had the gold fever. 
 
 "We landed at Smyrna and took ship at once for France. 
 As we went on board the French vessel, Heaven favored me 
 by ridding me of my accomplice. I did not think at the time 
 of all the possible consequences of this mishap, and rejoiced 
 not a little. We were so completely unnerved by all that had 
 happened, that we were stupid, we said not a word to each 
 other, we waited till it should be safe to enjoy ourselves at 
 our ease. It was not wonderful that the rogue's head was 
 dizzy. You shall see how heavily God has punished me. 
 
 "I never knew a quiet moment until I had sold two-thirds 
 of my diamonds in London or Amsterdam, and held the value 
 of my gold dust in a negotiable shape. For five years I hid 
 myself in Madrid, then in 1770 I came to Paris with a Spanish 
 name, and led as brilliant a life as may be. Then in the 
 midst of my pleasures, as I enjoyed a fortune of six millions, 
 I was smitten with blindness. I do not doubt but that my in- 
 firmitjr was brought on by my sojourn in the cell and my work 
 in the stone, if, indeed, my peculiar faculty for 'seeing' gold 
 was not an abuse of the power of sight which predestined me to 
 lose it. Bianca was dead. 
 
 "At this time I had fallen in love with a woman to 
 whom I thought to link my fate. I had told her the secret 
 .of my name; she belonged to a powerful family; she was a 
 friend of Mme. du Barry ; I hoped everything from the favor 
 shown me by Louis XV.; I trusted in her. Acting on her 
 advice, I went to England to consult a famous oculist, and 
 after a stay of several months in London she deserted me in 
 Hyde Park. She had stripped me of all that I had, and left 
 me without resource. Nor could I make complaint, for to 
 disclose my name was to lay myself open to the vengeance of 
 my native city ; I could appeal to no one for aid, I feared Ven- 
 ice. The woman put spies about me to exploit my infirmity. 
 I spare you a tale of adventures worthy of Gil Bias. Your 
 Revolution followed. For two whole years that creature 
 kept me at the Bicetre as a lunatic, then she gained admit-
 
 338 FACING CANE 
 
 tance for me at the Blind Asylum ; there was no help for it, 
 I went. I could not kill her; I could not see; and I was so 
 poor that I could not pay another arm. 
 
 "If only I had taken counsel with my jailer, Benedetto 
 Carpi, before I lost him, I might have known the exact posi- 
 tion of my cell, 1 might have found my way back to the Treas- 
 ury and returned to Venice when Napoleon crushed the Re- 
 public 
 
 "Still, blind as I am, let us go back to Venice ! I shall find 
 the door of my prison, I shall see the gold through the prison 
 walls, I shall hear it where it lies under the water; for the 
 events which brought about the fall of Venice befell in such 
 a way that the secret of the hoard must have perished with 
 Bianca's brother, Vendramin, a doge to whom I looked to 
 make my peace with the Ten. I sent memorials to the First 
 Consul; I proposed an agreement with the Emperor of Aus- 
 tria ; every one sent me about my business for a lunatic. Come ! 
 we will go to Venice ; let us set out as beggars, we shall come 
 back millionaires. We will buy back my estates, and you shall 
 be my heir ! You shall be Prince of Varese !" 
 
 My head was swimming. For me his confidences reached 
 the proportions of tragedy; at the sight of that white head 
 of his and beyond it the black water in the trenches of the 
 Bastille lying still as a canal in Venice, I had no words to 
 answer him. Facino Cane thought, no doubt, that I judged 
 him, as the rest had done, with a disdainful pity ; his gesture 
 expressed the whole philosophy of despair. 
 
 Perhaps his story had taken him back to happy days and to 
 Venice. He caught up his clarionet and made plaintive music, 
 playing a Venetian boat-song with something of his lost 
 skill, the skill of the young patrician lover. It was a sort of 
 Super flumina Babylonis. Tears filled my eyes. Any belated 
 persons walking along the Boulevard Bourdon must have stood 
 still to listen to an exile's last prayer, a last cry of regret for a 
 lost name, mingled with memories of Bianca. But gold soon 
 gained the upper hand, the fatal passion quenched the light 
 of youth.
 
 FACING CANE 339 
 
 "I see it always," he said; "dreaming or waking, I see it; 
 and as I pace to and fro, I pace in the Treasury, and the dia- 
 monds sparkle. I am not as blind as you think; gold and 
 diamonds light up my night, the night of the last Facino 
 Cane, for my title 'passes to the Memmi. My God! the mur- 
 derer's punishment was not long delayed! Ave Maria" and 
 he repeated several prayers that I did not heed. 
 
 "We will go to Venice !" I said, when he rose. 
 
 "Then I have found a man!" he cried, with his face on 
 fire. 
 
 I gave him my arm and went home with him. We reached 
 the gates of the Blind Asylum just as some of the wedding 
 guests were returning along the street, shouting at the top 
 of their voices. He squeezed my hand. 
 
 "Shall we start to-morrow?" he asked. 
 
 "As soon as we can get some money." 
 
 "But we can go on foot. I will beg. I am strong, and you 
 feel young when you see gold before you." 
 
 Facino Cane died before the winter was out after a two 
 months' illness. The poor man had taken a chill. 
 
 PAKI3, March 1886.
 
 Z. MARCAS 
 
 To His Highness Count William of Wurtemberg, as a token 
 of the Author's respectful gratitude. 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 I NEVER saw anybody, not even among the most remarkable 
 men of the day, whose appearance was so striking as this 
 man's; the study of his countenance at first gave me a feel- 
 ing of great melancholy, and at last produced an almost pain- 
 ful impression. 
 
 There was a certain harmony between the man and his 
 name. The Z. preceding Marcas, which was seen on the ad- 
 dresses of his letters, and which he never omitted from his 
 signature, as the last letter of the alphabet, suggested some 
 mysterious fatality. 
 
 MARCAS ! say this two-syllabled name again and again ; do 
 you not feel as if it had some sinister meaning? Does it not 
 seem to you that its owner must be doomed to martyrdom? 
 Though foreign, savage, the name has a right to be handed 
 down to posterity; it is well constructed, easily pronounced, 
 and has the brevity that beseems a famous name. Is it not 
 pleasant as well as odd? But does it not sound unfinished? 
 
 I will not take it upon myself to assert that names have 
 no influence on the destiny of men. There is a certain secret 
 and inexplicable concord or a visible discord between the 
 events of a man's life and his name which is truly surprising; 
 often some remote but very real correlation is revealed. Our 
 globe is round ; everything is linked to everything else. Some 
 day perhaps we shall revert to the occult sciences. 
 
 Do you not discern in that letter Z an adverse influence? 
 Does it not prefigure the wayward and fantastic progress of a 
 
 (341)
 
 342 Z. MARCAS 
 
 storm-tossed life? What wind blew on that letter, which, 
 whatever language we find it in, begins scarcely fifty words? 
 Marcas' name was Zephirin; Saint Zephirin is highly 
 venerated in Brittany, and Marcas was a Breton. 
 
 Study the name once more : Z. Marcas ! The man's whole 
 life lies in this fantastic juxtaposition of seven letters; seven! 
 the most significant of all the cabalistic numbers. And he 
 died at five-and-thirty, so his life extended over seven lustres. 
 
 Marcas ! Does it not hint of some precious object that is 
 broken with a fall, with or without a crash ? 
 
 I had finished studying the law in Paris in 1836. I lived 
 at that time in the Eue Corneille in a house where none but 
 students came to lodge, one of those large houses where there 
 is a winding staircase quite at the back, lighted below from 
 the street, higher up by borrowed lights, and at the top by a 
 skylight. There were forty furnished rooms furnished as 
 students' rooms are ! What does youth demand more than was 
 here supplied? A bed, a few chairs, a chest of drawers, a 
 looking-glass, and a table. As soon as the sky is blue the stu- 
 dent opens his window. 
 
 But in this street there are no fair neighbors to flirt with. 
 In front is the Odeon, long since closed, presenting a wall 
 that is beginning to go black, its tiny gallery windows and its 
 vast expanse of slate roof. I was not rich enough to have a 
 good room ; I was not even rich enough to have a room to my- 
 self. Juste and I shared a double-bedded room on the fifth 
 floor. 
 
 On our side of the landing there were but two rooms 
 ours and a smaller one, occupied by Z. Marcas, our neighbor. 
 For six months Juste and I remained in perfect ignorance 
 of the fact. The old woman who managed the house had 
 indeed told us that the room was inhabited, but she had added 
 that we should not be disturbed, that the occupant was ex- 
 ceedingly quiet. In fact, for those six months, we never 
 met our fellow-lodger, and we never heard a sound in bis room, 
 in spite of the thinness of the partition that divided us one
 
 Z. MARCAS 343 
 
 of those walls of lath and plaster which are common in Paris 
 houses. 
 
 Our room, a little over seven feet high, was hung with a 
 vile cheap paper sprigged with blue. The floor was painted, 
 and knew nothing of the polish given by the frotteur's brush. 
 By our beds there was only a scrap of thin carpet. The chim- 
 ney opened immediately to the roof, and smoked so abomi- 
 nably that we were obliged to provide a stove at our own ex- 
 pense. Our beds were mere painted wooden cribs like those 
 in schools; on the chimney shelf there were but two brass 
 candlesticks, with or without tallow candles in them, and our 
 two pipes with some tobacco in a pouch or strewn abroad, also 
 the little piles of cigar-ash left there by our visitors or our- 
 selves. 
 
 A pair of calico curtains hung from the brass window rods, 
 and on each side of the window was a small bookcase in 
 cherry-wood, such as every one knows who has stared into the 
 shop windows of the Quartier Latin, and in which we kept the 
 few books necessary for our studies. 
 
 The ink in the inkstand was always in the state of lava con- 
 gealed in the crater of a volcano. May not any inkstand nowa- 
 days become a Vesuvius? The pens, all twisted, served to 
 clean the stems of our pipes; and, in opposition to all the 
 laws of credit, paper was even scarcer than coin. 
 
 How can young men be expected to stay at home in such 
 furnished lodgings? The students studied in the cafes, the 
 theatre, the Luxembourg gardens, in grisettes' rooms, even in 
 the law schools anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms 
 horrible for purposes of study, delightful as soon as they 
 are used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on the 
 table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best 
 eating-house in the neighborhood places for four two of 
 them in petticoats show a lithograph of this "Interior" to 
 the veriest bigot, and she will be bound to smile. 
 
 We thought only of amusing ourselves. The reason for our 
 dissipation lay in the most serious facts of the politics of the 
 time. Juste and I could not see any room for us in the two
 
 344 Z. MARCAS 
 
 professions our parents wished us to take up. There are a 
 hundred doctors, a hundred lawyers, for one that is wanted. 
 The crowd is choking these two paths which are supposed to 
 lead to fortune, but which are merely two arenas; men kill 
 each other there, fighting, not indeed with swords or fire- 
 arms, but with intrigue and calumny, with tremendous toil, 
 campaigns in the sphere of the intellect as murderous as those 
 in Italy were to the soldiers of the Republic. In these days, 
 when everything is an intellectual competition, a man must 
 be able to sit forty-eight hours on end in his chair before a 
 table, as a General could remain for two days on horseback 
 and in his saddle. 
 
 The throng of aspirants has necessitated a division of the 
 Faculty of Medicine into categories. There is the physician 
 who writes and the physician who practises, the political physi- 
 cian, and the physician militant four different ways of being 
 a physician, four classes already filled up. As to the fifth 
 class, that of physicians who sell remedies, there is such a 
 competition that they fight each other with disgusting ad- 
 vertisements on the walls of Paris. 
 
 In all the law courts there are almost as many lawyers as 
 there are cases. The pleader is thrown back on journalism, 
 on politics, on literature. In fact, the State, besieged for the 
 smallest appointments under the law, has ended by requiring 
 that the applicants should have some little fortune. The pear- 
 shaped head of the grocer's son is selected in preference to 
 the square skull of a man of talent who has not a sou. Work 
 as he will, with all his energy, a young man, starting from 
 zero, may at the end of ten years find himself below the point 
 he set out from. In these days, talent must have the good 
 luck which secures success to the most incapable ; nay, more, if 
 it scorns the base compromises which insure advancement 
 to crawling mediocrity, it will never get on. 
 
 If we thoroughly knew our time, we also knew ourselves, 
 and we preferred the indolence of dreamers to aimless stir, 
 easy-going pleasure to the useless toil which would have ex- 
 hausted our courage and worn out the edge of our intelligence.
 
 Z. MARCAS 345 
 
 We had analyzed social life while smoking, laughing, and 
 loafing. But, 'though elaborated by such means as these, our 
 reflections were none the less judicious and profound. 
 
 While we were fully conscious of the slavery to which youth 
 is condemned, we were amazed at the brutal indifference of the 
 authorities to everything connected with intellect, thought, 
 and poetry. How often have Juste and I exchanged glances 
 when reading the papers as we studied political events, or the 
 debates in the Chamber, and discussed the proceedings of a 
 Court whose wilful ignorance could find no parallel but in 
 the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity of the men 
 forming the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all alike 
 devoid of talent or breadth of view, of distinction or learning, 
 of influence or dignity ! 
 
 Could there be a higher tribute to the Court of Charles X. 
 than the present Court, if Court it may be called? What a 
 hatred of the country may be seen in the naturalization of 
 vulgar foreigners, devoid of talent, who are enthroned in the 
 Chamber of Peers ! What a perversion of justice ! What an 
 insult to the distinguished youth, the ambitions native to the 
 soil of France ! We looked upon these things as upon a spec- 
 tacle, and groaned over them, without taking upon ourselves 
 to act. 
 
 Juste, whom no one ever sought, and who never sought any 
 one, was, at five-and-twenty, a great politician, a man with 
 a wonderful aptitude for apprehending the correlation be- 
 tween remote history and the facts of the present and of the 
 future. In 1831, he told me exactly what would and did hap- 
 pen the murders, the conspiracies, the ascendency of the 
 Jews, the difficulty of doing anything in France, the scarcity 
 of talent in the higher circles, and the abundance of intellect 
 in the lowest ranks, where the finest courage is smothered 
 under cigar ashes. 
 
 What was to become of him? His parents wished him to 
 be a doctor. But if he were a doctor, must he not wait twenty 
 years for a practice? You know what he did? No? Well, 
 he is a doctor ; but he left France, he is in Asia. At this mo-
 
 346 Z. MARCAS 
 
 ment he is perhaps sinking under fatigue in a desert, or dying 
 of the lashes of a barbarous horde or perhaps he is some In- 
 dian prince's prime minister. 
 
 Action is my vocation. Leaving a civil college at the age 
 of twenty, the only way for me to enter the army was by en- 
 listing as a common soldier; so, weary of the dismal outlook 
 that lay before a lawyer, I acquired the knowledge needed 
 for a sailor. I imitate Juste, and keep out of France, where 
 men waste, in the struggle to make way, the energy needed 
 for the noblest works. Follow my example, friends; I am 
 going where a man steers his destiny as he pleases. 
 
 These great resolutions were formed in the little room in 
 the lodging-house in the Rue Corneille, in spite of our haunt- 
 ing the Bal Musard, flirting with girls of the town, and lead- 
 ing a careless and apparently reckless life. Our plans and 
 arguments long floated in the air. 
 
 Marcas, our neighbor, was in some degree the guide who 
 led us to the margin of the precipice or the torrent, who made 
 us sound it, and showed us beforehand what our fate would 
 be if we let ourselves fall into it. It was he who put us on 
 our guard against the time-bargains a man makes with 
 poverty under the sanction of hope, by accepting precarious 
 situations whence he fights the battle, carried along by the 
 devious tide of Paris that great harlot who takes you up or 
 leaves you stranded, smiles or turns her bapk on you with 
 equal readiness, wears out the strongest will in vexatious wait- 
 ing, and makes misfortune wait on chance. 
 
 At our first meeting, Marcas, as it were, dazzled us. On our 
 return from the schools, a little before the dinner-hour, we 
 were accustomed to go up to our room and remain there a 
 while, either waiting for the other, to learn whether there were 
 any change in our plans for the evening. One day, at four 
 o'clock, Juste met Marcas on the stairs, and I saw him in the 
 street. It was in the month of November, and Marcas had no 
 cloak ; he wore shoes with heavy soles, corduroy trousers, and 
 a blue double-breasted coat buttoned to the throat, which gave
 
 2. MARCAS 347 
 
 a military air to his broad chest, all the more so because he 
 wore a black stock. The costume was not in itself extraor- 
 dinary, but it agreed well with the man's mien and counte- 
 nance. 
 
 My first impression on seeing him was neither surprise, 
 nor distress, nor interest, nor pity, but curiosity mingled with 
 all these feelings. He walked slowly, with a step that be- 
 trayed deep melancholy, his head forward with a stoop, but 
 not bent like that of a conscience-stricken man. That head, 
 large and powerful, which might contain the treasures neces- 
 sary for a man of the highest ambition, looked as if it were 
 loaded with thought; it was weighted with grief of mind, 
 but there was no touch of remorse in his expression. As to 
 his face, it may be summed up in a word. A common super- 
 stition has it that every human countenance resembles some 
 animal. The animal for Marcas was the lion. His hair was 
 like a mane, his nose was short and flat; broad and dented 
 at the tip like a lion's; his brow, like a lion's, was strongly 
 marked with a deep median furrow, dividing two powerful 
 bosses. His high, hairy cheek-bones, all the more prominent 
 because his cheeks were so thin, his enormous mouth and 
 hollow jaws, were accentuated by lines of haughty signifi- 
 cance, and marked by a complexion full of tawny shadows. 
 This almost terrible countenance seemed illuminated by two 
 lamps two eyes, black indeed, but infinitely sweet, calm and 
 deep, full of thought. If I may say so, those eyes had a 
 humiliated expression. 
 
 Marcas was afraid of looking directly at others, not for 
 himself, but for those on whom his fascinating gaze might 
 rest ; he had a power, and he shunned using it ; he would spare 
 those he met, and he feared notice. This was not from mod- 
 esty, but from resignation not Christian resignation, which 
 implies charity, but resignation founded on reason, which had 
 demonstrated the immediate inutility of his gifts, the impos- 
 sibility of entering and living in the sphere for which he was 
 fitted. Those eyes could at times flash lightnings. From 
 those lips a voice of thunder must surely proceed; it was a 
 mouth like Mirabeau's.
 
 348 Z. MARCAS 
 
 "I have seen such a grand fellow in the street," said I to 
 Juste on coming in. 
 
 "It must be our neighbor," replied Juste, who described, 
 in fact, the man I had just met. "A man who lives like a 
 wood-louse would be sure to look like that," he added. 
 
 "What dejection and what dignity!" 
 
 "One is the consequence of the other." 
 
 "What ruined hopes ! What schemes and failures !" 
 
 "Seven leagues of ruins ! Obelisks palaces towers ! 
 The ruins of Palmyra in the desert !" said Juste, laughing. 
 
 So we called him the Ruins of Palmyra. 
 
 As we went out to dine at the wretched eating-house in the 
 Rue de la Harpe to which we subscribed, we asked the name 
 of Number 37, and then heard the weird name Z. Marcas. 
 Like boys, as we were, we repeated it more than a hundred 
 times with all sorts of comments, absurd or melancholy, and 
 the name lent itself to the jest. Juste would fire off the Z 
 like a rocket rising, z-z-z-z-zed; and after pronouncing the 
 first syllable of the name with great importance, depicted a 
 fall by the dull brevity of the second. 
 
 "Now, how and where does the man live?" 
 
 From this query, to the innocent espionage of curiosity 
 there was no pause but that required for carrying out our 
 plan. Instead of loitering about the streets, we both came 
 in, each armed with a novel. We read with our ears open. 
 And in the perfect silence of our attic rooms, we heard the 
 even, dull sound of a sleeping man breathing. 
 
 "He is asleep," said I to Juste, noticing this fact. 
 
 "At seven o'clock !" replied the Doctor. 
 
 This was the name by which I called Juste, and he called 
 me the Keeper of the Seals. 
 
 "A man must be wretched indeed to sleep as much as our 
 neighbor !" cried I, jumping on to the chest of drawers with 
 a knife in my hand, to which a corkscrew was attached. 
 
 I made a round hole at the top of the partition, about as 
 big as a five-sou piece. I had forgotten that there would be 
 DO light in the room, and on putting my eye to the hole, I
 
 Z. MARCAS 349 
 
 saw only darkness. At about one in the morning, when we 
 had finished our books and were about to undress, we heard 
 a, noise in our neighbor's room. He got up, struck a match, 
 and lighted his dip. I got on to the drawers again, and I 
 then saw Marcas seated at his table and copying law-papers. 
 
 His room was about half the size of ours ; the bed stood in 
 a recess by the door, for the passage ended there, and its 
 breadth was added to his garret; but the ground on which 
 the house was built was evidently irregular, for the party-wall 
 formed an obtuse angle, and the room was not square. There 
 was no fireplace, only a small earthenware stove, white 
 blotched with green, of which the pipe went up through the 
 roof. The window, in the skew side of the room, had shabby 
 red curtains. The furniture consisted of an armchair, a table, 
 a chair, and a wretched bed-table. A cupboard in the wall 
 held his clothes. The wall-paper was horrible; evidently 
 only a servant had ever lodged there before Marcas. 
 
 "What is to be seen ?" asked the Doctor as I got down. 
 
 "Look for yourself," said I. 
 
 At nine next morning, Marcas was in bed. He had break- 
 fasted off a saveloy; we saw on a plate, with some crumbs 
 of bread, the remains of that too familiar delicacy. He was 
 asleep ; he did not wake till eleven. He then set to work again 
 on the copy he had begun the night before, which was lying 
 on the table. 
 
 On going downstairs we asked the price of that room, and 
 were told fifteen francs a month. 
 
 In the course of a few days, we were fully informed as to 
 the mode of life of Z. Marcas. He did copying, at so much a 
 sheet no doubt, for a law-writer who lived in the courtyard of 
 the Sainte-Chapelle. He worked half the night; after sleep- 
 ing from six till ten, he began again and wrote till three. 
 Then he Avent out to take the copy home before dinner, which 
 he ate at Mizerai's in the Eue Michel-le-Comte, at a cost of 
 nine sous, and came in to bed at six o'clock. It became known 
 to us that Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in a month ; 
 he never talked to anybody, nor said a word to himself in hia 
 dreadful garret.
 
 350 Z. MARCAS 
 
 "The Euins of Palmyra are terribly silent !" said Juste. 
 
 This taciturnity in a man whose appearance was so im- 
 posing was strangely significant. Sometimes when we met 
 him, we exchanged glances full of meaning on both sides, 
 hut they never led to any advances. Insensibly this man be- 
 came the object of our secret admiration, though we knew no 
 reason for it. Did it lie in his secretly simple habits, his 
 monastic regularity, his hermit-like frugality, his idiotically 
 mechanical labor, allowing his mind to remain neuter or to 
 work on its own lines, seeming to us to hint at an expectation 
 of some stroke of good luck, or at some foregone conclusion 
 as to his life? 
 
 After wandering for a long time among the Euins of Pal- 
 myra, we forget them we were young ! Then came the 
 Carnival, the Paris Carnival, which, henceforth, will eclipse 
 the old Carnival of Venice, unless some ill-advised Prefect of 
 Police is antagonistic. 
 
 Gambling ought to be allowed during the Carnival; but 
 the stupid moralists who have had gambling suppressed are 
 inert financiers, and this indispensable evil will be re-estab- 
 lished among us when it is proved that France leaves millions 
 at the German tables. 
 
 This splendid Carnival brought us to utter penury, as it 
 does every student. We got rid of every object of luxury ; \ve 
 sold our second coats, our second boots, our second waistcoats 
 everything of which we had a duplicate,, except our friend. 
 We ate bread and cold sausages ; we looked where we walked ; 
 we had set to work in earnest. We owed two months' rent, 
 and were sure of having a bill from the porter for sixty or 
 eighty items each, and amounting to forty or fifty francs. 
 We made no noise, and did not laugh as we crossed the little 
 hall at the bottom of the stairs; we commonly took it at 
 a flying leap from the lowest step into the street. On the 
 day when we first found ourselves bereft of tobacco for our 
 pipes, it struck us that for some days we had been eating 
 bread without any kind of butter. 
 
 Great was our distress.
 
 Z. MARCAS 351 
 
 "No tobacco !" said the Doctor. 
 
 "No cloak !" said the Keeper of the Seals. 
 
 "Ah, you rascals, you would dress as the postilion de 
 Longjumeau, you would appear as Debardeurs, sup in the 
 morning, and breakfast at night at Very's sometimes even 
 at the Roclier de Cancale. Dry bread for you, my boys! 
 Why," said I, in a big bass voice, "you deserve to sleep under 
 the bed, you are not worthy to lie in it " 
 
 "Yes, yes ; but, Keeper of Seals, there is no more tobacco !" 
 said Juste. 
 
 "It is high time to write home, to our aunts, our mothers, 
 and our sisters, to tell them we have no underlinen left, that 
 the wear and tear of Paris would ruin garments of wire. Then 
 we will solve an elegant chemical problem by transmuting 
 linen into silver/' 
 
 "But we must live till we get the answer." 
 
 "Well, I will go and bring out a loan among such of our 
 friends as may still have some capital to invest." 
 
 "And how much will you find?" 
 
 "Say ten francs !" replied I with pride. 
 
 It was midnight. Marcas had heard everything. He 
 knocked at our door. 
 
 "Messieurs," said he, "here is some tobacco; you can repay 
 me on the first opportunity." 
 
 We were struck, not "by the offer, which we accepted, but 
 by the rich, deep, full voice in which it was made ; a tone only 
 comparable to the lowest string of Paganini's violin. Marcas 
 vanished without waiting for our thanks. 
 
 Juste and I looked at each other without a word. To be 
 rescued by a man evidently poorer than ourselves! Juste 
 sat down to write to every member of his family, and I went 
 off to effect a loan. I brought in twenty francs lent me by a 
 fellow-provincial. In that evil' but happy day gambling was 
 still tolerated, and in its lodes, as hard as the rocky ore of 
 Brazil, young men, by risking a small sum, had a chance of 
 winning a few gold pieces. My friend, too, had some Turkish 
 tobacco brought home from Constantinople by a sailor, and
 
 352 Z. MARCAS 
 
 he gave me quite as much as we had taken from Z. Marcas. 
 I conveyed the splendid cargo into port, and we went in tri- 
 umph to repay our neighbor with a tawny wig of Turkish 
 tobacco for his dark Caporal. 
 
 "You are determined not to be my debtors/' said he. 
 "You are giving me gold for copper. You are boys good 
 boys " 
 
 The sentences, spoken in varying tones, were variously em- 
 phasized. The words were nothing, but the expression ! 
 That made us friends of ten years' standing at once. 
 
 Marcas, on hearing us coming, had covered up his papers ; 
 we understood that it would be taking a liberty to allude to his 
 means of subsistence, and felt ashamed of having watched 
 him. His cupboard stood open; in it there were two shirts, 
 a white necktie, and a razor. The razor made me shudder. 
 A looking-glass, worth five francs perhaps, hung near the 
 window. 
 
 The man's few and simple movements had a sort of savage 
 grandeur. The Doctor and I looked at each other, wonder- 
 ing what we could say in reply. Juste, seeing that I was 
 speechless, asked Marcas jestingly : 
 
 "You cultivate literature, monsieur?" 
 
 "Far from it !" replied Marcas. "I should not be so 
 wealthy." 
 
 "I fancied," said I, "that poetry alone, in these days, was 
 amply . sufficient to provide a man with lodgings as bad as 
 ours." 
 
 My remark made Marcas smile, and the smile gave a charm 
 to his yellow face. 
 
 "Ambition is not a less severe taskmaster to those who fail," 
 said he. "You, who are beginning life, walk in the beaten 
 paths. Never dream of rising superior, you will be ruined !" 
 
 "You advise us to stay just as we are?" said the Doctor, 
 smiling. 
 
 There is something so infectious and childlike in the pleas- 
 antries of youth, that Marcas smiled again in reply. 
 
 "What incidents can have given you this detestable philos- 
 ophy ?" asked I.
 
 Z. MARCAS 353 
 
 "I forgot once more that chance is the result of an immense 
 equation of which we know not all the factors. When we start 
 from zero to work up to the unit, the chances are incalculable. 
 To ambitious men Paris is an immense roulette table, and 
 every young man fancies he can hit on a successful progres- 
 sion of numbers." 
 
 He offered us the tobacco I had brought that we might 
 smoke with him ; the Doctor went to fetch our pipes ; Marcas 
 filled his, and then he came to sit- in our room, bringing the 
 tobacco with him, since there were but two chairs in his. Juste, 
 as brisk as a squirrel, ran out, and returned with a boy carry- 
 ing three bottles of Bordeaux, some Brie cheese, and a loaf. 
 
 "Hah !" said I to myself, "fifteen francs," and I was right 
 to a sou. 
 
 Juste gravely laid five francs on the chimney-shelf. 
 
 There are immeasurable differences between the gregarious 
 man and the man who lives closest to nature. Toussaint 
 Louverture, after he was caught, died without speaking a 
 word. Napoleon, transplanted to a rock, talked like a magpie 
 he wanted to account for himself. Z. Marcas erred in the 
 same way, but for our benefit only. Silence in all its majesty 
 is to be found only in the savage. There never is a criminal 
 who, though he might let his secrets fall with his head into 
 the basket of sawdust, does not feel the purely social impulse 
 to tell them to somebody. 
 
 Nay, I am wrong. We have seen one Iroquois of the Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of 
 the natural savage a republican, a conspirator, a French- 
 man, an old man, who outdid all we have heard of Negro de- 
 termination, and all that Cooper tells us of the tenacity and 
 coolness of the Eedskins under defeat. Morey, the Guati- 
 mozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled 
 in the annals of European justice. 
 
 This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sand- 
 wiching his discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese 
 and washed down with wine. All the tobacco was burned out.
 
 354 Z. MARCAS 
 
 Now and then the hackney coaches clattering across the Place 
 de FOdeon, or the omnibuses toiling past, sent up their dull 
 rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still close to us. 
 
 His family lived at Vitre; his father and mother had 
 fifteen hundred francs a year in the funds. He had received 
 an education gratis in a Seminary, but had refused to enter 
 the priesthood. He felt in himself the fires of immense 
 ambition, and had come to Paris on foot at the age of twenty, 
 the possessor of two hundred francs. He had studied the 
 law, working in an attorney's office, where he had risen to 
 be superior clerk. He had taken his doctor's degree in law, 
 had mastered the old and modern codes, and could hold his 
 own with the most famous pleaders. He had studied the law 
 of nations, and was familiar with European treaties and in- 
 ternational practice. He had studied men and things in five 
 capitals London, Berlin, Vienna, Petersburg, and Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 No man was better informed than he as to the rules of the 
 Chamber. For five years he had been reporter of the debates 
 for a daily paper. He spoke extempore and admirably, and 
 could go on for a long time in that deep, appealing voice 
 which had struck us to the soul. Indeed, he proved by the 
 narrative of his life that he was a great orator, a concise 
 orator, serious and yet full of piercing eloquence; he re- 
 sembled Berryer in his fervor and in the impetus which com- 
 mands the sympathy of the masses, and was like Thiers 
 in refinement and skill; but he would have been less diffuse, 
 less in difficulties for a conclusion. He had intended to rise 
 rapidly to power without burdening himself first with the 
 doctrines necessary to begin with, for a man in opposition, 
 but an incubus later to the statesman. 
 
 Marcas had learned everything that a real statesman should 
 know; indeed, his amazement was considerable when he had 
 occasion to discern the utter ignorance of men who have risen 
 to the administration of public affairs in France. Though 
 in him it was vocation that had led to study, nature had been 
 generous and bestowed all that cannot be acquired keen per-
 
 Z. MARCAS 353 
 
 ceptions, self-command, a nimble wit, rapid judgment, de- 
 cisiveness, and, what is the genius of these men, fertility in 
 resource. 
 
 By the time when Marcas thought himself duly equipped, 
 France was torn by intestine divisions arising from the tri- 
 umph of the House of Orleans over the elder branch of the 
 Bourbons. 
 
 The field of political warfare is evidently changed. Civil 
 war henceforth cannot last for long, and will not be fought 
 out in the provinces. In France such struggles will be of 
 brief duration and at the seat of government ; and the battle 
 will be the close of the moral contest which will have been 
 brought to an issue by superior minds. This state of things 
 will continue so long as France has her present singular form 
 of government, which has no analogy with that of any other 
 country ; for there is no more resemblance between the Eng- 
 lish and the French constitutions than between the two lands. 
 
 Thus Marcas' place was in the political press. Being poor 
 and unable to secure his election, he hoped to make a sudden 
 appearance. He resolved on making the greatest possible sacri- 
 fice for a man of superior inte^ect, to work as subordinate 
 to some rich and ambitious deputy. Like a second Bonaparte, 
 he sought his Barras; the new Colbert hoped to find a Ma- 
 zarin. He did immense services, and he did them then and 
 there; he assumed no importance, he made no boast, he did 
 not complain of ingratitude. He did them in the hope that 
 his patron would put him in a position to be elected deputy ; 
 Marcas wished for nothing but a loan that might enable him 
 to purchase a house in Paris, the qualification required by 
 law. Richard III. asked for nothing but his horse. 
 
 In three years Marcas had made his man one of the fifty 
 supposed great statesmen who are the battledores with which 
 two cunning players toss the ministerial portfolios exactly 
 as the man behind the puppet-show hits Punch against the 
 constable in his street theatre, and counts on always getting 
 paid. This man existed only by Marcas, but he had just 
 
 brains enough to appreciate the value of his "ghost" and to 
 VOL. 16 54
 
 356 2. MARCAS 
 
 know that Marcas, if he ever came to the front, would remain 
 there, would be indispensable, while he himself would be 
 translated to the polar zone of the Luxembourg. So he deter- 
 mined to put insurmountable obstacles in the way of his 
 Mentor's advancement, and hid his purpose under the sem- 
 blance of the utmost sincerity. Like all mean men, he could 
 dissimulate to perfection, and he soon made progress in the 
 ways of ingratitude, for he felt that he must kill Marcas, not 
 to be killed by him. These two men, apparently so united, 
 hated each other as soon as one had once deceived the other. 
 
 The politician was made one of a ministry; Marcas re- 
 mained in the opposition to hinder his man from being at- 
 tacked ; nay, by skilful tactics he won him the applause of the 
 opposition. To excuse himself for not rewarding his subal- 
 tern, the chief pointed out the impossibility of finding a place 
 suddenly for a man on the other side, without a great deal of 
 manoeuvring. Marcas had hoped confidently for a place to 
 enable him to marry, and thus acquire the qualification he so 
 ardently desired. He was two-and-thirty, and the Chamber 
 ere long must be dissolved. Having detected his man in this 
 flagrant act of bad faith, he overthrew him, or at any rate con- 
 tributed largely to his overthrow, and covered him with mud. 
 
 A fallen minister, if he is to rise again to power, must show 
 that he is to be feared; this man, intoxicated by Royal glib- 
 ness, had fancied that his position would be permanent; he 
 acknowledged his delinquencies; besides confessing them, 
 he did Marcas a small money service, for Marcas had got into 
 debt. He subsidized the newspaper on which Marcas worked, 
 and made him the manager of it. 
 
 Though he despised the man, Marcas, who, practically, was 
 being subsidized too, consented to take the part of the fallen 
 minister. Without unmasking at once all the batteries of his 
 superior intellect, Marcas came a little further than before; 
 he showed half his shrewdness. The Ministry lasted only a 
 hundred and eighty days; it was swallowed up. Marcas had 
 put himself into communication with certain deputies, had 
 moulded them like dough, leaving each impressed with a high
 
 Z. MARCAS 357 
 
 opinion of his talent; his puppet again became a member of 
 the Ministry, and then the paper was ministerial. The Min- 
 istry united the paper with another, solely to squeeze out 
 Marcas, who in this fusion had to make way for a rich and 
 insolent rival, whose name was well known, and who already 
 had his foot in the stirrup. 
 
 Marcas relapsed into utter destitution ; his haughty patron 
 well knew the depths into which he had cast him. 
 
 Where was he to go? The ministerial papers, privily 
 warned, would have nothing to say to him. The opposition 
 papers did not care to admit him to their offices. Marcas 
 could side neither with the Eepublicans nor with the Le- 
 gitimists, two parties whose triumph would mean the over- 
 throw of everything that now is. 
 
 "Ambitious men like a fast hold on things," said he with a 
 smile. 
 
 He lived by writing a few articles on commercial affairs, 
 and contributed to one of those encyclopedias brought out by 
 speculation and not by learning. Finally a paper was 
 founded, which was destined to live but two years, but which 
 secured his services. From that moment he renewed his con- 
 nection with the minister's enemies ; he joined the party who 
 were working for the fall of the Government ; and as soon as 
 his pickaxe had free play, it fell. 
 
 This paper had now for six months ceased to exist ; he had 
 failed to find employment of any kind ; he was spoken of as a 
 dangerous man, calumny attacked him; he had unmasked a 
 huge financial and mercantile job by a few articles and a pam- 
 phlet. He was known to be the mouthpiece of a banker who 
 was said to have paid him largely, and from whom he was sup- 
 posed to expect some patronage in return for his champion- 
 ship. Marcas, disgusted by men and things, worn out by five 
 years of fighting, regarded as a free lance rather than as a 
 great leader, crushed by the necessity for earning his daily 
 bread, which hindered him from gaining ground, in despair 
 at the influence exerted by money over mind, and given over 
 to dire poverty, buried himself in a garret, to make thirty
 
 358 Z. MARCAS 
 
 sous a day, the sum strictly answering to his needs. Medi- 
 tation had leveled a desert all round him. He read the pa- 
 pers to be informed of what was going on. Pozzo di Borgo 
 had once lived like this for some time. 
 
 Marcas, no doubt, was planning a serious attack, accustom- 
 ing himself to dissimulation, and punishing himself for his 
 blunders by Pythagorean muteness. But he did not tell us 
 the reasons for his conduct. 
 
 It is impossible to give you an idea of the scenes of the 
 highest comedy that lay behind this algebraic statement of 
 his career; his useless patience dogging the footsteps of for- 
 tune, which presently took wings, his long tramps over the 
 thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, 
 his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail 
 through the influence of some frivolous woman ; the meetings 
 with men of business who expected their capital to bring 
 them places and a peerage, as well as large interest. Then the 
 hopes rising in a towering wave only to break in foam on the 
 shoal; the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse interests 
 which, after working together for a week, fell asunder; the 
 annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a dunce deco- 
 rated with the Legion of Honor, and preferred, though as 
 ignorant as a shop-boy, to a man of talent. Then, what Mar- 
 cas called the stratagems of stupidity you strike a man, and 
 he seems convinced, he nods his head everything is settled; 
 next day, this india-rubber ball, flattened for a moment, has 
 recovered itself in the course of the night ; it is as full of wind 
 as ever ; you must begin all over again ; and you go on till you 
 understand that you are not dealing with a man, but with a 
 lump of gum that loses shape in the sunshine. 
 
 These thousand annoyances, this vast waste of human 
 energy on barren spots, the difficulty of achieving any good, 
 the incredible facility of doing mischief; two strong games 
 played out, twice won, and then twice lost; the hatred of a 
 statesman a blockhead with a painted face and a wig, 
 but in whom the world believed all these things, great
 
 Z. MARCAS 359 
 
 and small, had not crushed, but for the moment had dashed, 
 Marcas. In the days when money had come into his hands, 
 his fingers had not clutched it; he had allowed himself the 
 exquisite pleasure of sending it all to his family to his sis- 
 ters, his brothers, his old father. Like Napoleon in his fall, 
 he asked for no more than thirty sous a day, and any man 
 of energy can earn thirty sous for a day's work in Paris. 
 
 When Marcas had finished the story of his life, inter- 
 mingled with reflections, maxims, and observations, revealing 
 him as a great politician, a few questions and answers on both 
 sides as to the progress of affairs in France and in Europe 
 were enough to prove to us that he was a real statesman ; for 
 a man maybe quickly and easily judged when he can be brought 
 on to the ground of immediate difficulties : there is a certain 
 Shibboleth for men of superior talents, and we were of the 
 tribe of modern Levites without belonging as yet to the Tem- 
 ple. As I have said, our frivolity covered certain purposes 
 which Juste has carried out, and which I am about to execute. 
 
 When we had done talking, we all three went out, cold as 
 it was, to walk in the Luxembourg gardens till the dinner 
 hour. In the course of that walk our conversation, grave 
 throughout, turned on the painful aspects of the political 
 situation. Each of us contributed his remarks, his com- 
 ment, or his jest, a pleasantry or a proverb. This was no 
 longer exclusively a discussion of life on the colossal scale 
 just described by Marcas, the soldier of political warfare. 
 Nor was it the distressful monologue of the wrecked navi- 
 gator, stranded in a garret in the Hotel Corneille; it was a 
 dialogue in which two well-informed young men, having 
 gauged the times they lived in, were endeavoring, under the 
 guidance of a man of talent, to gain some light on their own 
 future prospects. 
 
 "Why," asked Juste, "did you not wait patiently for an 
 opportunity, and imitate the only man who has been able 
 to keep the lead since the Eevolution of July by holding 
 his head above water?" 
 
 "Have I not said that we never know where the roots of
 
 360 Z. MARCAS 
 
 chance lie? Carrel was in identically the same position as 
 the orator you speak of. That gloomy young man, of a bitter 
 spirit, had a whole government in his head; the man of 
 whom you speak had no idea beyond mounting on the crupper 
 of every event. Of the two, Carrel was the better man. 
 Well, one became a minister, Carrel remained a journalist; 
 the incomplete but craftier man is living ; Carrel is dead. 
 
 "I may point out that your man has for fifteen years been 
 making his way, and is but making it still. He may yet be 
 caught and crushed between two cars full of intrigues on 
 the highroad to power. He has no house; he has not the 
 favor of the palace like Metternich; nor, like Villele, the 
 protection of a compact majority. 
 
 "I do not believe that the present state of things will last 
 ten years longer. Hence, supposing I should have such poor 
 good luck, I am already too late to avoid being swept away 
 by the commotion I foresee. I should need to be established 
 in a superior position." 
 
 "What commotion?" asked Juste. 
 
 "AUGUST, 1830," said Marcas in solemn tones, holding out 
 his hand towards Paris; "AUGUST, the offspring of Youth 
 which bound the sheaves, and of Intellect which had ripened 
 the harvest, forgot to provide for Youth and Intellect. 
 
 "Youth will explode like the boiler- of a steam-engine. 
 Youth has no outlet in France ; it is gathering an avalanche 
 of underrated capabilities, of legitimate and restless ambi- 
 tions ; young men are not marrying now ; families cannot tell 
 what to do with their children. What will the thunderclap 
 be that will shake down these masses ? I know not, but they 
 will crash down into the midst of things, and overthrow 
 everything. These are laws of hydrostatics which act on the 
 human race; the Eoman Empire had failed to understand 
 them, and the Barbaric hordes came down. 
 
 "The Barbaric hordes now are the intelligent class. The 
 laws of overpressure are at this moment acting slowly and 
 silently in our midst. The Government is the great criminal ; 
 it does not appreciate the two powers to which it owes every-
 
 z. MARCAS 361 
 
 thing; it has allowed its hands to be tied by the absurdities 
 of the Contract ; it is bound, ready to be the victim. 
 
 "Louis XIV., Napoleon, England, all were or are eager for 
 intelligent youth. In France the young are condemned by 
 the new legislation, by the blundering principles of elective 
 rights, by the unsoundness of the ministerial constitution. 
 
 "Look at the elective Chamber; you will find no deputies 
 of thirty ; the youth of Eichelieu and of Mazarin, of Turenne 
 and of Colbert, of Pitt and of Saint-Just, of Napoleon and 
 of Prince Metternich, would find no admission there; Burke, 
 Sheridan, or Fox could not win seats. Even if political 
 majority had been fixed at one-and-twenty, and eligibility 
 had been relieved of evey disabling qualification, the Depart- 
 ments would have returned the very same members, men 
 devoid of political talent, unable to speak without murdering 
 French grammar, and among whom, in ten years, scarcely 
 one statesman has been found. 
 
 "The causes of an impending event may be seen, but the 
 event itself cannot be foretold. At this moment the youth 
 of France is being driven into Eepublicanism, because it be- 
 lieves that the Kepublic would bring it emancipation. It 
 will always remember the young representatives of the people 
 and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the Gov- 
 ernment is only comparable to its avarice." 
 
 That day left its echoes in our lives. Marcas confirmed us 
 in our resolution to leave France, where young men of talent 
 and energy are crushed under the weight of successful com- 
 monplace, envious, and insatiable middle age. 
 
 We dined together in the Eue de la Harpe. We thence- 
 forth felt for Marcas the most respectful affection; he gave 
 us the most practical aid in the sphere of the mind. That 
 man knew everything; he had studied everything. For us 
 he cast his eye over the whole civilized world, seeking the 
 country where openings would be at once the most abundant 
 and the most favorable to the success of our plans. He in- 
 dicated what should be the goal of our studies; he bid us 
 make haste, explaining to us that time was precious, that
 
 382 Z. MARCAS 
 
 emigration would presently begin, and that its effect would 
 be to deprive France of the cream of its powers and of its 
 youthful talent ; that their intelligence, necessarily sharpened, 
 would select the best places, and that the great thing was to 
 be first in the field. 
 
 Thenceforward, we often sat late at work under the lamp. 
 Our generous instructor wrote some notes for our guidance 
 two pages for Juste and three for me full of invaluable 
 advice the sort of information which experience alone can 
 supply, such landmarks as only genius can place. In those 
 papers, smelling of tobacco, and covered with writing so vile 
 as to be almost hieroglyphic, there are suggestions for a 
 fortune, and forecasts of unerring acumen. There are hints 
 as to certain parts of America and Asia which have been fully 
 justified, both before and since Juste and I could set out. 
 
 Marcas, like us, was in the most abject poverty. He earned, 
 indeed, his daily bread, but he had neither linen, clothes, nor 
 shoes. He did not make himself out any better than he was ; 
 his dreams had been of luxury as well as of power. He did 
 not admit that this was the real Marcas; he abandoned his 
 person, indeed, to the caprices of life. What he lived by was 
 the breath of ambition ; he dreamed of revenge while blaming 
 himself for yielding to so shallow a feeling. The true states- 
 man ought, above all things, to be superior to vulgar passions ; 
 like the man of science, he should have no passion but for his 
 science. It was in these days of dire necessity that Marcas 
 seemed to us so great nay, so terrible ; there was something 
 awful in the gaze which saw another world than that which 
 strikes the eye of ordinary men. To us he was a subject of 
 contemplation and astonishment; for the young which of 
 us has not known it ? the young have a keen craving to ad- 
 mire; they love to attach themselves, and are naturally in- 
 clined to submit to the men they feel to be superior, as they 
 are to devote themselves to a great cause. 
 
 Our surprise was chiefly aroused by his indifference in mat- 
 ters of sentiment; woman had no place in his life. When we 
 spoke of this matter, a perennial theme of conversation among 
 Frenchmen, he simply remarked:
 
 Z. MARCAS 363 
 
 "Gowns cost too much." 
 
 He saw the look that passed between Juste and me, and 
 went on : 
 
 "Yes, far too much. The woman you buy and she is the 
 least expensive takes a great deal of money. The woman 
 who gives herself takes all your time ! Woman extinguishes 
 every energy, every ambition. Napoleon reduced her to what 
 she should be. From that point of view, he really was great. 
 He did not indulge such ruinous fancies of Louis XIV. and 
 Louis XV. ; at the same time, he could love in secret." 
 
 We discovered that, like Pitt, who made England his wife, 
 Marcas bore France in his heart; he idolized his country; he 
 had not a thought that was not for his native land. His fury 
 at feeling that he had in his hands the remedy for the evils 
 which so deeply saddened him, and could not apply it, ate 
 into his soul, and this rage was increased by the inferiority of 
 France at that time, as compared with Russia and England. 
 France a third-rate power! This cry came up again and 
 again in his conversation. The intestinal disorders of his 
 country had entered into his soul. All the contests between 
 the Court and the Chamber, showing, as they did, incessant 
 change and constant vacillation, which must injure the pros- 
 perity of the country, he scoffed at as backstairs squabbles. 
 
 "This is peace at the cost of the future," said he. 
 
 One evening Juste and I were at work, sitting in perfect 
 silence. Marcas had just risen to toil at his copying, for he 
 had refused our assistance in spite of our most earnest en- 
 treaties. We had offered to take it in turns to copy a batch 
 of manuscript, so that he should do but a third of his dis- 
 tasteful task; he had been quite angry, and we had ceased to 
 insist. 
 
 \Ve heard the sound of gentlemanly boots in the pas- 
 sage, and raised our heads, lefoking at each other. There was 
 a tap at Marcas' door he ne^e took the key out of the lock 
 and \ve heard the hero answer J" 
 
 "Come in." Then "Wl&t ! ^ou here, monsieur?"
 
 364 Z. MARCAS 
 
 "I myself," replied the retired minister. 
 
 It was the Diocletian of this unknown martyr. 
 
 For some time he and our neighbor conversed in an under 
 tone. Suddenly Marcas, whose voice had been heard but 
 rarely, as is natural in a dialogue in which the applicant be- 
 gins by setting forth the situation, broke out loudly in reply 
 to some offer we had not overheard. 
 
 "You would laugh at me for a fool," cried he, "if I took 
 you at your word. Jesuits are a thing of the past, but Jesuit- 
 ism is eternal. Your Machiavelism and your generosity are 
 equally hollow and untrustworthy. You can make your own 
 calculations, but who can calculate on you? Your Court is 
 made up of owls who fear the light, of old men who quake 
 in the presence of the young, or who simply disregard them. 
 The Government is formed on the same pattern as the Court. 
 You have hunted up the remains of the Empire, as the 
 Restoration enlisted the Voltigeurs of Louis XIV. 
 
 "Hitherto the evasions of cowardice have been taken for 
 the manoeuvring of ability; but dangers will come, and the 
 younger generation will rise as they did in 1790. They did 
 grand things then. Just now you change ministries as a 
 sick man turns in his bed ; these oscillations betray the weak- 
 ness of the Government. You work on an underhand system 
 of policy which will be turned against you, for France will 
 be tired of your shuffling. France will not tell you that she 
 is tired of you; a man never knows whence his ruin comes; 
 it is the historian's task to find out ; but you will undoubtedly 
 perish as the reward of not having the youth of France to 
 lend you its strength and energy; for having hated really 
 capable men ; for not having lovingly chosen them from this 
 noble generation ; for having in all cases preferred mediocrity. 
 
 "You have come to ask my support, but you are an atom 
 in that decrepit heap which is made hideous by self-interest, 
 which trembles and squirms, ad/ because it is so mean, tries 
 to make France mean too. My strong nature, my ideas, 
 would work like poison in you;, .twice you have tricked me, 
 twice have I overthrown you. If we unite a third time, it
 
 Z. MARCAS 365 
 
 must be a very serious matter. I should kill myself if I 
 allowed myself to be duped; for I should be to blame, not 
 you." 
 
 Then we heard the humblest entreaties, the most fervent 
 adjurations, not to deprive the country of such superior 
 talents. The man spoke of patriotism, and Marcas uttered 
 a significant "Ouh! ouh!" He laughed at his would-be 
 patron. Then the statesman was more explicit; he bowed to 
 the superiority of his erewhile counselor; he pledged himself 
 to enable Marcas to remain in office, to be elected deputy; 
 then he offered him a high appointment, promising him that 
 he, the speaker, would thenceforth be the subordinate of a 
 man whose subaltern he was only worthy to be. He was in 
 the newly-formed ministry, and he would not return to power 
 unless Marcas had a post in proportion to his merit; he had 
 already made it a condition, Marcas had been regarded as 
 indispensable. 
 
 Marcas refused. 
 
 "I have never before been in a position to keep my prom- 
 ises ; here is an opportunity of proving myself faithful to my 
 word, and you fail me." 
 
 To this Marcas made no reply. The boots were again 
 audible in the passage on the way to the stairs. 
 
 "Marcas ! Marcas !" we both cried, rushing into his room. 
 "Why refuse? He really meant it. His offers are very 
 handsome; at any rate, go to see the ministers." 
 
 In a twinkling, we had given Marcas a hundred reasons. 
 The minister's voice was sincere ; without seeing him, we had 
 felt sure that he was honest. 
 
 "I have no clothes," replied Marcas. 
 
 "Eely on us," said Juste, with a glance at me. 
 
 Marcas had the courage to trust us; a light flashed in his 
 eye, he pushed his fingers through his hair, lifting it from his 
 forehead with a gesture that showed some confidence in his 
 luck ; and when he had thus unveiled his face, so to speak, we 
 saw in him a man absolutely unknown to us Marcas sublime, 
 Marcas in his power! His mind in its element the bird
 
 366 Z. MARCAS 
 
 restored to the free air, the fish, to the water, the horse gal- 
 loping across the plain. 
 
 It was transient. His brow clouded again; he had, it 
 would seem, a vision of his fate. Halting doubt had followed 
 close on the heels of white-winged hope. 
 
 We left him to himself. 
 
 "Now, then/' said I to the Doctor, "we have given our 
 word ; how are we to keep it ?" 
 
 "We will sleep upon it," said Juste, "and to-morrow morn- 
 ing we will talk it over." 
 
 Next morning we went for a walk in the Luxembourg. 
 
 We had had time to think over the incident of the past 
 night, and were both equally surprised at the lack of address 
 shown by Marcas in the minor difficulties of life he, a man 
 who never saw any difficulties in the solution of the hardest 
 problems of abstract or practical politics. But these elevated 
 characters can all be tripped up on a grain of sand, and will, 
 like the grandest enterprise, miss fire for want of a thousand 
 francs. It is the old story of Napoleon, who, for lack of a 
 pair of boots, did not set out for India. 
 
 "Well, what have you hit upon?" asked Juste. 
 
 "I have thought of a way to get him a complete outfit/' 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "From Humann." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "Humann, my boy, never goes to his customers his cus- 
 tomers go to him; so that he does not know whether I am 
 rich or poor. He only knows that I dress well and look 
 decent in the clothes he makes for me. I shall tell him that 
 an uncle of mine has dropped in from the country, and that 
 his indifference in matters of dress is quite a discredit to me 
 in the upper circles where I am trying to find a wife. It will 
 not be Humann if he sends in his bill before three months." 
 
 The Doctor thought this a capital idea for a vaudeville, 
 but poor enough in real life, and doubted my success. But 
 I give you my word of honor, Humann dressed Marcas, and, 
 being an artist, turned him out as a political personage ought 
 to be dressed.
 
 Z. MARCAS 367 
 
 Juste lent Marcas two hundred francs in gold, the product 
 of two watches bought on credit, and pawned at the Mont- 
 de-Piete. For my part, I had said nothing of six shirts and 
 all necessary linen, which cost me no more than the pleasure 
 of asking for them from a forewoman in a shop whom I had 
 treated to Musard's during the carnival. 
 
 Marcas accepted everything, thanking us no more than he 
 ought. He only inquired as to the means by which we had 
 got possession of such riches, and we made him laugh for the 
 last time. We looked on our Marcas as shipowners, when 
 they have exhausted their credit and every resource at their 
 command to fit out a vessel, must look on it as it puts to sea. 
 
 Here Charles was silent; he seemed crushed by his mem- 
 ories. 
 
 "Well," cried the audience, "and what happened?" 
 
 "I will tell you in a few words for this is not romance 
 it is history." 
 
 We saw no more of Marcas. The administration lasted 
 for three months; it fell at the end of the session. Then 
 Marcas came back to us, worked to death. He had sounded 
 the crater of power ; he came away from it with the beginnings 
 of brain fever. The disease made rapid progress; we nursed 
 him. Juste at once called in the chief physician of the hos- 
 pital where he was working as house-surgeon. I was then 
 living alone in our room, and I was the most attentive at- 
 tendant; but care and science alike were in vain. By the 
 month of January, 1838, Marcas himself felt that he had but 
 a few days to live. 
 
 The man whose soul and brain he had been for six months 
 never even sent to inquire after him. Marcas expressed the 
 greatest contempt for the Government; he seemed to doubt 
 what the fate of France might be, and it was this doubt that 
 had made him ill. He had, he thought, detected treason 
 in the heart of power, not tangible, seizable treason, the result 
 of facts, but the treason of a system, the subordination of 
 national interests to selfish ends. His belief in the degrada- 
 tion of the country was enough to aggravate his complaint.
 
 368 Z. MARCAS 
 
 I myself was witness to the proposals made to him by one 
 of the leaders of the antagonistic party which he had fought 
 against. His hatred of the men he had tried to serve was 
 so virulent, that he would gladly have joined the coalition 
 that was about to be formed among certain ambitious spirits 
 who, at least, had one idea in common that of shaking off 
 the yoke of the Court. But Marcas could only reply to the 
 envoy in the words of the Hotel de Ville : 
 
 "It is too late !" 
 
 Marcas did not leave money enough to pay for his funeral. 
 Juste and I had great difficulty in saving him from the 
 ignominy of a pauper's bier, and we alone followed the coffin 
 of Z. Marcas, which was dropped into the common grave of 
 the cemetery of Mont-Parnasse. 
 
 We looked sadly at each other as we listened to this tale, 
 the last we heard from the lips of Charles Rabourdin the 
 day before he embarked at le Havre on a brig that was to 
 convey him to the islands of Malay. We all knew more than 
 one Marcas, more than one victim of his devotion to a party, 
 repaid by betrayal or neglect. 
 
 LES JARDIKS, May 1840.
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1898, 
 . M. DENT & COMPANY
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 To Monsieur Guyonnet-Merville. 
 
 Is it not a necessity to explain to a public curious to know every- 
 thing, how I came to be sufficiently learned in the law to carry on 
 the business of my little world? And in so doing, am I not bound 
 to put on record the memory of the amiable and intelligent man 
 who, meeting Scribe (another clerk-amateur) at a ball, said, "Just 
 give the office a turn; there is work for you there, I assure you"? 
 But do you need this public testimony to feel assured of the affec- 
 tion of the writer ? 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 ON the 22d of January, 1793, towards eight o'clock in the 
 evening, an old lady came down the steep street that comes 
 to an end opposite the Church of Saint Lauirent in the 
 Faubourg Saint Martin. It had snowed so heavily all day 
 long that the lady's footsteps were scarcely audible; the 
 streets were deserted, and a feeling of dread, not unnatural 
 amid the silence, was further increased by the whole extent 
 of the Terror beneath which France was groaning in those 
 days; what was more, the old lady so far had met no one by 
 the way. Her sight had long been failing, so that the few 
 foot passengers dispersed like shadows in the distance over 
 the wide thoroughfare through the faubourg, were quite 
 invisible to her by the light of the lanterns. 
 
 She had passed the end of the Rue des Morts, when she 
 fancied that she could hear the firm, heavy tread of a man 
 walking behind her. Then it seemed to her that she had 
 heard that sound before, and dismayed by the idea of being 
 followed, she tried to walk faster toward a brightly lit shop 
 window, in the hope of verifying the suspicions which had 
 taken hold of her mind. 
 TOL. 16-55
 
 372 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 So soon as she stood in the shaft of light that streamed 
 out across the road, she turned her head suddenly, and 
 caught sight of a human figure looming through the fog. 
 The dim vision was enough for her. For one moment she 
 reeled beneath an overpowering weight of dread, for she 
 could not doubt any longer that the man had followed her 
 the whole way from her own door; then the desire to escape 
 from the spy gave her strength. Unable to think clearly, she 
 walked twice as fast as before, as if it were possible to 
 escape from a man who of course could move much faster; 
 and for some minutes she fled on, till, reaching a pastry- 
 cook's shop, she entered and sank rather than sat down upon 
 a chair by the counter. 
 
 A young woman busy with embroidery looked up from her 
 work at the rattling of the door-latch, and looked out through 
 the square window-panes. She seemed to recognize the old- 
 fashioned violet silk mantle, for she went at once to a drawer 
 as if in search of something put aside for the newcomer. 
 Not only did this movement and the expression of the woman's 
 face show a very evident desire to be rid as soon as possible 
 of an unwelcome visitor, but she even permitted herself an 
 impatient exclamation when the drawer proved to be empty. 
 Without looking at the lady, she hurried from her desk into 
 the back shop and called to her husband, who appeared at 
 once. 
 
 "Wherever have you put? " she began mysteriously, 
 
 glancing at the customer by way of finishing her question. 
 
 The pastry-cook could only see the old lady's head-dress, 
 a huge black silk bonnet with knots of violet ribbon round 
 it, but he looked at his wife as who should say, "Did you 
 think I should leave such a thing as that lying about in your 
 drawer?" and then vanished. 
 
 The old lady kept so still and silent that the shopkeeper's 
 wife was surprised. She went back to her, and on a nearer 
 view a sudden impulse of pity, blended perhaps with curi- 
 osity, got the better of her. The old lady's face was naturally 
 pale; she looked as though she secretly practised austerities;
 
 .AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 373 
 
 but it was easy to see that she was paler than usual from 
 recent agitation of some kind. Her head-dress was so ar- 
 ranged as almost to hide hair that was white, no doubt with 
 age, for there was not a trace of powder on the collar of her 
 dress. The extreme plainness of her dress lent an air of 
 austerity to her face, and her features were proud and grave. 
 The manners and habits of people of condition were so 
 different from those of other classes in former times that a 
 noble was easily known, and the shopkeeper's wife felt per- 
 suaded that her customer was a ci-devant, and that she had 
 been about the Court. 
 
 "Madame," she began with involuntary respect, forgetting 
 that the title was proscribed. 
 
 But the old lady made no answer. She was staring fixedly 
 at the shop window as though some dreadful thing had taken 
 shape against the panes. The pastry-cook came back at that 
 moment, and drew the lady from her musings, by holding 
 out a little cardboard box wrapped in blue paper. 
 
 "What is the matter, citoyenne?" he asked. 
 
 "Nothing, nothing, my friends," she answered, in a gentle 
 voice. She looked up at the man as she spoke, as if to thank 
 him by a glance; but she saw the red cap on his head, and 
 a cry broke from her. "Ah ! You have betrayed me !" 
 
 The man and his young wife replied by an indignant 
 gesture, that brought the color to the old lady's face ; perhaps 
 she felt relief, perhaps she blushed for her suspicions. 
 
 "Forgive me !" she said, with a childlike sweetness in her 
 tones. Then, drawing a gold louis from her pocket, she held 
 it out to the pastry-cook. "That is the price agreed upon," 
 she added. 
 
 There is a kind of want that is felt instinctively by those 
 who know want. The man and his wife looked at one another, 
 then at the elderly woman before them, and read the same 
 thoughts in each other's eyes. That bit of gold was so plainly 
 the last. Her hands shook a little as she held it out, looking 
 at it sadly but ungrudgingly, as one who knows the full ex- 
 tent of the sacrifice. Hunger and penury had carved lines
 
 374 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 as easy to read in her face as the traces of asceticism and fear. 
 There were vestiges of bygone splendor in her clothes. She 
 was dressed in threadbare silk, a neat but well-worn mantle, 
 and daintily mended lace, in the rags of former grandeur, in 
 short. The shopkeeper and his wife, drawn two ways by pity 
 and self-interest, began by lulling their consciences with 
 words. 
 
 "You seem very poorly, citoyenne " 
 
 "Perhaps madame might like to take something," the wife 
 broke in. 
 
 "We have some very* nice broth," added the pastry-cook. 
 
 "And it is so cold," continued his wife ; "perhaps you have 
 caught a chill, madame, on your way here. But you can rest 
 and warm yourself a bit." 
 
 "We are not so black as the devil !" cried the man. 
 
 The kindly intention in the words and tones of the charita- 
 ble couple won the old lady's confidence. She said that a 
 strange man had been following her, and she was afraid to 
 go home alone. 
 
 "Is that all !' returned he of the red bonnet ; "wait for me, 
 citoyenne." 
 
 He handed the gold coin to his wife, and then went out to 
 put on his National Guard's uniform, impelled thereto by 
 the idea of making some adequate return for the money; an 
 idea -that sometimes slips into a tradesman's head when he 
 has been prodigiously overpaid for goods of no great value. 
 He took up his cap, buckled on his sabre, and came out in 
 full dress. But his wife had had time to reflect, and reflec- 
 tion, as not unfrequently happens, closed the hand that kindly 
 intentions had opened. Feeling frightened and uneasy lest 
 her husband might be drawn into something unpleasant, she 
 tried to catch at the skirt of his coat, to hold him back, but 
 he, good soul, obeying his charitable first thought, brought 
 out his offer to see the lady home, before his wife could stop 
 him. 
 
 "The man of whom the citoyenne is afraid is still prowling 
 about the shop, it seems," she said sharply.
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 375 
 
 "I am afraid so," said the lady innocently. 
 
 "How if it is a spy ? . . . a plot ? . . . Don't go. 
 And take the box away from her " 
 
 The words whispered in the pastry-cook's ear cooled his hot 
 fit of courage down to zero. 
 
 "Oh ! I will just go out and say a word or two. I will rid 
 you of him soon enough," he exclaimed, as he bounced out 
 of the shop. 
 
 The old lady meanwhile, passive as a child and almost 
 dazed, sat down on her chair again. But the honest pastry- 
 cook came back directly. A countenance red enough to begin 
 with, and further flushed by the bake-house fire, was suddenly 
 blanched; such terror perturbed him that he reeled as he 
 walked, and stared about him like a drunken man. 
 
 "Miserable aristocrat ! Do you want to have our heads cut 
 off ?" he shouted furiously. "You just take to your heels and 
 never show yourself here again. Don't come to me for ma- 
 terials for your plots." 
 
 He tried, as he spoke, to take away the little box which she 
 had slipped into one of her pockets. But at the touch of a 
 profane hand on her clothes, the stranger recovered youth and 
 activity for a moment, preferring to face the dangers of the 
 street with no protector save God, to the loss of the thing 
 that she had just paid for. She sprang to the door, flung it 
 open, and disappeared, leaving the husband and wife dum- 
 founded and quaking with fright. 
 
 Once outside in the street, she started away at a quick 
 walk ; but her strength soon failed her. She heard the sound 
 of the snow crunching under a heavy step, and knew that the 
 pitiless spy was on her track. She was obliged to stop. He 
 stopped likewise. From sheer terror, or lack of intelligence, 
 she did not dare to speak or to look at him. She went slowly 
 on; the man slackened his pace and fell behind so that 
 he could still keep her in sight. He might have been her very 
 shadow. 
 
 Nine o'clock struck as the silent man and woman passed 
 again by the Church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature
 
 376 
 
 of things that calm must succeed to violent agitation, even 
 in the weakest soul; for if feeling is infinite, our capacity to 
 feel is limited. So, as the stranger lady met with no harm 
 from her supposed persecutor, she tried to look upon him as 
 an unknown friend anxious to protect her. She thought of 
 all the circumstances in which the stranger had appeared, 
 and put them together, as if to find some ground for this 
 comforting theory, and felt inclined to credit him with good 
 intentions rather than bad. 
 
 Forgetting the fright that he had given the pastry-cook, 
 she walked on with a firmer step through the upper end 
 of the Faubourg Saint Martin; and another half-hour's 
 walk brought her to a house at the corner where the road 
 to the Barriere de Pantin turns off from the main thorough- 
 fare. Even at this day, the place is one of the least fre- 
 quented parts of Paris. The north wind sweeps over the 
 Buttes-Chaumont and Belleville, and whistles through the 
 houses (the hovels rather), scattered over an almost unin- 
 habited low-lying waste, where the fences are heaps of earth 
 and bones. It was a desolate-looking place, a fitting refuge 
 for despair and misery. 
 
 The sight of it appeared to make an impression upon the 
 relentless pursuer of a poor creature so daring as to walk 
 alone at night through the'silent streets. He stood in thought, 
 and seemed by his attitude to hesitate. She could see him 
 dimly now, under the street lamp that sent a faint, flickering 
 light through the fog. Fear gave her eyes. She saw, or 
 thought she saw, something sinister about the stranger's 
 features. Her old terrors awoke; she took advantage of a 
 kind of hesitation on his part, slipped through the shadows 
 to the door of the solitary house, pressed a spring, and van- 
 ished swiftly as a phantom. 
 
 For awhile the stranger stood motionless, gazing up at 
 the house. It was in some sort a type of the wretched 
 dwellings in the suburb; a tumble-down hovel, built of 
 rough stones, daubed over with a coat of yellowish stucco, 
 and so riven with great cracks that there seemed to be danger
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 377 
 
 3est the slightest puff of wind might blow it down. The 
 roof, covered with brown moss-grown tiles, had given way 
 in several places, and looked as though it might break down 
 altogether under the weight of the snow. The frames of 
 the three windows on each story were rotten with damp and 
 warped by the sun ; evidently the cold must find its way inside. 
 The house standing thus quite by itself looked like some old 
 tower that Time had forgotten to destroy. A faint light 
 shone from the attic windows pierced at irregular distances 
 in the roof; otherwise the whole building was in total dark- 
 ness. 
 
 Meanwhile the old lady climbed not without difficulty up 
 the rough, clumsily built staircase, with a rope by way of a 
 hand-rail. At the door of the lodging in the attic she stopped 
 and tapped mysteriously; an old man brought forward a 
 chair for her. She dropped into it at once. 
 
 "Hide ! hide !" she exclaimed, looking up at him. "Seldom 
 as we leave the house, everything that we do is known, and 
 every step is watched " 
 
 "What is it now?" asked another elderly woman, sitting 
 by the fire. 
 
 "The man that has been prowling about the house yes- 
 terday and to-day, followed me to-night " 
 
 At those words all three dwellers in the wretched den 
 looked in each other's faces and did not try to dissimulate 
 the profound dread that they felt. The old priest was the least 
 overcome, probably because he ran the greatest danger. If a 
 brave man is weighed down by great calamities or the yoke of 
 persecution, he begins, as it were, by making the sacrifice of 
 himself ; and thereafter every day of his life becomes one more 
 victory snatched from fate. But from the way in which the 
 women looked at him it was easy to see that their intense 
 anxiety was on his account. 
 
 "Why should our faith in God fail us, my sisters?" he 
 said, in low but fervent tones. "We sang His praises through 
 the shrieks of murderers and their victims at the Carmelites. 
 If it was His will that I should come alive out of that
 
 378 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 butchery, it was, no doubt, because I was reserved for some 
 fate which I am bound to endure without murmuring. God 
 will protect His own ; He can do with them according to His 
 will. It is for you, not for me that we must think." 
 
 "No," answered one of the women. "What is our life 
 compared with a priest's life?" 
 
 "Once outside the Abbaye de Chelles, I look upon myself 
 as dead," added the nun who had not left the house, while 
 the Sister that had just returned held out the little box to the 
 priest. 
 
 "Here are the wafers . . . but I can hear some one coming 
 up the stairs." 
 
 At this, the three began to listen. The sound cased. 
 
 "Do not be alarmed if somebody tries to come in," said 
 the priest. "Somebody on whom we could depend was to 
 make all necessary arrangements for crossing the frontier. 
 He is to come for the letters that I have written to the Due 
 de Langeais and the Marquis de Beauseant, asking them to 
 find some way of taking you out of this dreadful country, 
 and away from the death or the misery that waits for you 
 here." 
 
 "But are you not going to follow us ?" the nuns cried under 
 their breath, almost despairingly. 
 
 "My post is here where the sufferers are," the priest said 
 simply, and the women said no more, but looked at their 
 guest in reverent admiration. He turned to the nun with 
 the wafers. 
 
 "Sister Marthe," he said, "the messenger will say Fiat 
 Voluntas in answer to the word Hosanna." 
 
 "There is some one on the stairs !" cried the other nun, 
 opening a hiding-place contrived in the roof. 
 
 This time it was easy to hear, amid the deepest silence, a 
 sound echoing up the staircase; it was a man's tread on the 
 steps covered with dried lumps of mud. With some difficulty 
 the priest slipped into a kind of cupboard, and the nun 
 flung some clothes over him. 
 
 "You can shut the door, Sister Agathe," he said in a muffled 
 voice.
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 379 
 
 He was scarcely hidden before three raps sounded on the 
 door. The holy women looked into each other's eyes for 
 counsel, and dared not say a single word. 
 
 They seemed both to be about sixty years of age. They 
 had lived out of the world for forty years, and had grown so 
 accustomed to the life of the convent that they could scarcely 
 imagine any other. To them, as to plants kept in a hot-house, 
 a change of air meant death. And so, when the grating was 
 broken down one morning, they knew with a shudder that 
 they were free. The effect produced by the Eevolution upon 
 their simple souls is easy to imagine; it produced a tem- 
 porary imbecility not natural to them. They could not bring 
 the ideas learned in the convent into harmony with life and 
 its difficulties; they could not even understand their own 
 position. They were like children whom mothers have always 
 cared for, deserted by their maternal providence. And as a 
 child cries, they betook themselves to prayer. Now, in the 
 presence of imminent danger, they were mute and passive, 
 knowing no defence save Christian resignation. 
 
 The man at the door, taking silence for consent, presented 
 himself, and the women shuddered. This was the prowler 
 that had been making inquiries about them for some time 
 past. But they looked at him with frightened curiosity, much 
 as shy children stare silently at a stranger; and neither of 
 them moved. 
 
 The newcomer was a tall, burly man. Nothing in his be- 
 havior, bearing, or expression suggested malignity as, follow- 
 ing the example set by the nuns, he stood motionless, while 
 his eyes traveled round the room. 
 
 Two straw mats laid upon planks did duty as beds. On 
 the one table, placed in the middle of the room, stood a brass 
 candlestick, several plates, three knives, and a round loaf. 
 A small fire burned in the grate. A few bits of wood in a 
 heap in a corner bore further witness to the poverty of the 
 recluses. You had only to look at the coating of paint on the 
 walls to discover the bad condition of the roof, and the ceiling 
 was a perfect network of brown stains made by rain-water.
 
 380 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 A relic, saved no doubt from the wreck of. the Abbaye de 
 Chelles, stood like an ornament on the chimney-piece. Three 
 chairs, two boxes, and a rickety chest of drawers completed 
 the list of the furniture, but a door beside the fireplace sug- 
 gested an inner room beyond. 
 
 The brief inventory was soon made by the personage intro- 
 duced into their midst under such terrible auspices. It was 
 with a compassionate expression that he turned to the two 
 women ; he looked benevolently at them, and seemed, at least, 
 as much embarrassed as they. But the strange silence did 
 not last long, for presently the stranger began to understand. 
 He saw how inexperienced, how helpless (mentally speak- 
 ing), the two poor creatures were, and he tried to speak 
 gently. 
 
 "I am far from coming as an enemy, citoyennes " he 
 
 began. Then he suddenly broke off and went on, "Sisters, 
 if anything should happen to you, believe me, I shall have no 
 share in it. I have come to ask a favor of you." 
 
 Still the women were silent. 
 
 "If I am annoying you if if I am intruding, speak 
 freely, and I will go; but you must understand that I am 
 entirely at your service; that if I can do anything for you, 
 you need not fear to make use of me. I, and I only, perhaps, 
 am above the law, since there is no King now." 
 
 There was such a ring of sincerity in the words that Sister 
 Agathe hastily pointed to a chair as if to bid their guest be 
 seated. Sister Agathe came of the house of Langeais; her 
 manner seemed to indicate that once she had been familiar 
 with brilliant scenes, and had breathed the air of courts. 
 The stranger seemed half pleased, half distressed when he 
 understood her invitation; he waited to sit down until the 
 women were seated. 
 
 "You are giving shelter to a reverend father who refused 
 to take the oath, and escaped the massacres at the Carmelites 
 by a miracle " 
 
 "Hosanna!" Sister Agathe exclaimed eagerly, interrupting 
 the stranger, while she watched him with curious eyes.
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 381 
 
 "That is not the name, I think/' he said. 
 
 "But, monsieur," Sister Marthe hroke in quickly, "we 
 have no priest here, and 
 
 "In that case you should be more careful and on your 
 guard," he answered gently, stretching out his hand for a 
 breviary that lay on the table. "I do not think that you 
 know Latin, and " 
 
 He stopped; for, at the sight of the great emotion in the 
 faces of the two poor nuns, he was afraid that he had gone 
 too far. They were trembling, and the tears stood in their 
 eyes. 
 
 "Do not fear," he said frankly. "I know your names and 
 the name of your guest. Three days ago I heard of your dis- 
 tress and devotion to the venerable Abbe de " 
 
 "Hush!" Sister Agathe cried, in the simplicity of her 
 heart, as she laid her finger on her lips. 
 
 "You see, Sisters, that if I had conceived the horrible idea 
 of betraying you, I could have given you up already, more 
 than once " 
 
 At the words the priest came out of his hiding-place and 
 stood in their midst. 
 
 "I cannot believe, monsieur, that you can be one of our 
 persecutors," he said, addressing the stranger, "and I trust 
 you. What do you want with me ?" 
 
 The priest's holy confidence, the nobleness expressed in 
 every line in his face, would have disarmed a murderer. For 
 a moment the mysterious stranger, who had brought an 
 element of excitement into lives of misery and resignation, 
 gazed at the little group; then he turned to the priest and 
 said, as if making a confidence, "Father, I came to beg you 
 to celebrate a mass for the repose of the soul of of of an 
 august personage whose body will never rest in consecrated 
 earth " 
 
 Involuntarily the abbe shivered. As yet, neither of the 
 Sisters understood of whom the stranger was speaking; they 
 sat with their heads stretched out and faces turned towards 
 the speaker, curiosity in their whole attitude. The priest,
 
 382 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 meanwhile, was scrutinizing the stranger; there was no mis- 
 taking the anxiety in the man's face, the ardent entreaty in 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Very well," returned the abbe. "Come back at midnight. 
 I shall be ready to celebrate the only funeral service that it 
 is in our power to offer in expiation of the crime of which 
 you speak." 
 
 A quiver ran through the stranger, but a sweet yet sober 
 satisfaction seemed to prevail over a hidden anguish. He 
 took his leave respectfully, and the three generous souls felt 
 his unspoken gratitude. 
 
 Two hours later, he came back and tapped at the garret 
 door. Mademoiselle de Beauseant showed the way into the 
 second room of their humble lodging. Everything had been 
 made ready. The Sisters had moved the old chest of drawers 
 between the two chimneys, and covered its quaint outlines 
 over with a splendid altar cloth of green watered silk. 
 
 The bare walls looked all the barer, because the one thing 
 that hung there was the great ivory and ebony crucifix, which 
 of necessity attracted the eyes. Four slender little altar 
 candles, which the Sisters had contrived to fasten into their 
 places with sealing-wax, gave a faint, pale light, almost ab- 
 sorbed by the walls ; the rest of the room lay well-nigh in the 
 dark.. But the dim brightness, concentrated upon the 
 holy things, looked like a ray from Heaven shining down upon 
 the unadorned shrine. The floor was reeking with damp. 
 An icy wind swept in through the chinks here and there, in 
 a roof that rose sharply on either side, after the fashion of 
 attic roofs. Nothing could be less imposing ; yet perhaps, too, 
 nothing could be more solemn than this mournful ceremony. 
 A silence so deep that they could have heard the faintest 
 sound of a voice on the Route d'Allemagne, invested the night- 
 piece with a kind of sombre majesty; while the grandeur of 
 the service all the grander for the strong contrast with the 
 poor surroundings produced a feeling of reverent awe. 
 
 The Sisters kneeling on each side the altar, regardless 
 of the deadly chill from the wej; brick floor, were engaged
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 383 
 
 in prayer, while the priest, arrayed in pontifical vestments, 
 brought out a golden chalice set with gems; doubtless one of 
 the sacred vessels saved from the pillage of the Abbaye de 
 Chelles. Beside a ciborium, the gift of royal munificence, 
 the wine and water for the holy sacrifice of the mass stood 
 ready in two glasses such as could scarcely be found in the 
 meanest tavern. For want of a missal, the priest had laid 
 his breviary on the altar, and a common earthenware plate 
 was set for the washing of hands that were pure and unde- 
 filed with blood. It was all so infinitely great, yet so little, 
 poverty-stricken yet noble, a mingling of sacred and profane. 
 
 The stranger came forward reverently to kneel between 
 the two nuns. But the priest had tied crape round the chalice 
 of the crucifix, having no other way of marking the mass as 
 a funeral service; it was as if God himself had been in 
 mourning. The man suddenly noticed this, and the sight 
 appeared to call up some overwhelming memory, for great 
 drops of sweat stood out on his broad forehead. 
 
 Then the four silent actors in the scene looked mysteriously 
 at one another; and their souls in emulation seemed to stir 
 and communicate the thoughts within them until all were 
 melted into one feeling of awe and pity. It seemed to them 
 that the royal martyr whose remains had been consumed with 
 quicklime, had been called up by their yearning and now 
 stood, a shadow in their midst, in all the majesty of a king. 
 They were celebrating an anniversary service for the dead 
 whose body lay elsewhere. Under the disjointed laths and 
 tiles, four Christians were holding a funeral service without 
 a coffin, and putting up prayers to God for the soul of a King 
 of France. Xo devotion could be purer than this. It was a 
 wonderful act of faith achieved without an afterthought. 
 Surely in the sight of God it was like the cup of cold water 
 which counterbalances the loftiest virtues. The prayers put 
 up by two feeble nuns and a priest represented the whole 
 Monarchy, and possibly at the same time, the Kevolution 
 found expression in the stranger, for the remorse in his face 
 was so great that it was impossible not to think that he was 
 fulfilling the vows of a boundless repentance.
 
 384 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 When the priest came to the Latin words, Introibo ad altar e 
 Dei, a sudden divine inspiration flashed upon him ; he looked 
 at the three kneeling figures, the representatives of Christian 
 France, and said instead, as though to blot out the poverty 
 of the garret, "We are about to enter the Sanctuary of God !" 
 
 These words, uttered with thrilling earnestness, struck 
 reverent awe into the nuns and the stranger. Under the 
 vaulted roof of St. Peter's at Eome, God would not have 
 revealed Himself in greater majesty than here for the eyes 
 of the Christians in that poor refuge; so true is it that all 
 intermediaries between God and the soul of man are super- 
 fluous, and all the grandeur of God proceeds from Himself 
 alone. 
 
 The stranger's fervor was sincere. One emotion blended 
 the prayers of the four servants of God and the King in 
 a single supplication. The holy words rang like the music 
 of heaven through the silence. At one moment, tears gath- 
 ered in the stranger's eyes. This was during the Pater 
 Nosier; for the priest added a petition in Latin, and his 
 audience doubtless understood him when he said : "Et remitte 
 scelus regicidis sicu-t Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse" for- 
 give the regicides as Louis himself forgave them. 
 
 The Sisters saw two great tears trace a channel down 
 the stranger's manly cheeks and fall to the floor. Then the 
 office for the dead was recited ; the Domine salvum fac regem 
 chanted in an undertone that went to the hearts of the faith- 
 ful Eoyalists, for they thought how the child-King for whom 
 they were praying was even then a captive in the hands of 
 his enemies; and a shudder ran through the stranger, as he 
 thought that a new crime might be committed, and that he 
 could not choose but take his part in it. 
 
 The service came to an end. The priest made a sign to 
 the Sisters, and they withdrew. As soon as he was left alone 
 with the stranger, he went toward him with a grave, gentle 
 face, and said in fatherly tones : 
 
 "My son, if your hands are stained with the blood of the 
 royal martyr, confide in me. There is no sin that may not
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 385 
 
 be blotted out in the sight of God by penitence as sincere 
 and touching as yours appears to be." 
 
 At the first words, the man started with terror, in spite 
 of himself. Then he recovered composure, and looked quietly 
 at the astonished priest. 
 
 "Father," he said, and the other could not miss the tremor 
 in his voice, "no one is more guiltless than I of the blood 
 shed " 
 
 "I am bound to believe you," said the priest. He paused 
 a moment, and again he scrutinized his penitent. But, -per- 
 sisting in the idea that the man before him was one of the 
 members of the Convention, one of the timorous voters who 
 betrayed an inviolable and anointed head to save their own, 
 he began again gravely : 
 
 "Kemember, my son, that it is not enough to have taken 
 no active part in the great crime; that fact does not absolve 
 you. The men who might have defended the King and left 
 their swords in their scabbards, will have a very heavy ac- 
 count to render to the King of Heaven Ah ! yes," he added, 
 with an eloquent shake of the head, "heavy indeed! for by 
 doing nothing they became accomplices in the awful wicked- 
 ness " 
 
 "But do you think that an indirect participation will be 
 punished?" the stranger asked with a bewildered, look. 
 "There is the private soldier commanded to fall into line 
 is he actually responsible ?" 
 
 The priest hesitated. The stranger was glad; he had put 
 the Royalist precisian in a dilemma, between the dogma of 
 passive obedience on the one hand (for the upholders of the 
 Monarchy maintained that obedience was the first principle 
 of military law), and the equally important dogma which 
 turns respect for the person of a King into a matter of 
 religion. In the priest's indecision he was eager to see a 
 favorable solution of the doubts which seemed to torment 
 him. To prevent too prolonged reflection on the part of the 
 reverend Jansenist, he added: 
 
 "I should blush to offer remuneration of any kind for the
 
 386 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 funeral service which you have just performed for the re- 
 pose of the King's soul and the relief of my conscience. 
 The only possible return for something of inestimable value 
 is an offering likewise beyond price. Will you deign, mon- 
 sieur, to take my gift of a holy relic? A day will perhaps 
 come when you will understand its value." 
 
 As he spoke the stranger held out a box ; it was very small 
 and exceedingly light. The priest took it mechanically, as 
 it were, so astonished was he by the man's solemn words, the 
 tones of his voice, and the reverence with which he held out 
 the gift. 
 
 The two men went back together into the first room. The 
 Sisters were waiting for them. . 
 
 "This house that you are living in belongs to Mucius 
 Scaevola, the plasterer on the first floor," he said. "He is 
 well known in the Section for his patriotism, but in reality 
 he is an adherent of the Bourbons. He used to be a hunts- 
 man in the service of his Highness the Prince de Conti, and 
 he owes everything to him. So long as you stay in the house, 
 you are safer here than anywhere else in France. Do not go 
 out. Pious souls will minister to your necessities, and you 
 can wait in safety, for better times. Next year, on the 21st 
 of January," he could not hide an involuntary shudder as 
 he spoke, "next year, if you are still in this dreary refuge, 
 I will come back again to celebrate the expiatory mass with 
 you " 
 
 He broke off, bowed to the three, who answered not a word, 
 gave a last look at the garret with its signs of poverty, and 
 vanished. 
 
 Such an adventure possessed all the interest of a romance 
 in the lives of the innocent nuns. So, as soon as the venerable 
 abbe told them the story of the mysterious gift, it was placed 
 upon the table, and by the feeble light of the tallow dip an 
 indescribable curiosity appeared in the three anxious faces. 
 Mademoiselle de Langeais opened the box, and found a very 
 fine lawn handkerchief, soiled with sweat; darker stains ap- 
 peared as they unfolded it.
 
 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 381 
 
 "That is blood !" exclaimed the priest. 
 
 "It is marked with a royal crown !" cried Sister Agathe. 
 
 The women, aghast, allowed the precious relic to fall. 
 For their simple souls the mystery that hung about the 
 stranger grew inexplicable; as for the priest, from that day 
 forth he did not even try to understand it. 
 
 Before very long the prisoners knew that, in spite of the 
 Terror, some powerful hand was extended over them. It 
 began when they received firewood and provisions; and next 
 the Sisters knew that a woman had lent counsel to their 
 protector, for linen was sent to them, and clothes in which 
 they could leave the house without causing remark upon the 
 aristocrat's dress that they had been forced to wear. After 
 awhile Mucius Scgevola gave them two civic cards; and often 
 and often tidings necessary for the priest's safety came to 
 them in roundabout ways. Warnings and advice reached 
 them so opportunely that they could only have been sent by 
 some person in the possession of state secrets. And, at a 
 time when famine threatened Paris, invisible hands brought 
 rations of "white bread" for the proscribed women in the 
 wretched garret. Still they fancied that Citizen Mucius 
 Scaevola was only the mysterious instrument of a kindness 
 always ingenious, and no less intelligent. 
 
 The noble ladies in the garret could no longer doubt that 
 their protector was the stranger of the expiatory mass on 
 the night of the 22d of January, 1793; and a kind of cult 
 of him sprung up among them. Their one hope was in him ; 
 they lived through him. They added special petitions for 
 him to their prayers ; night and morning the pious souls 
 prayed for his happiness, his prosperity, his safety; entreat- 
 ing God to remove all snares far from his path, to deliver 
 him from his enemies, to grant him a long and peaceful life. 
 And with this daily renewed gratitude, as it may be called, 
 there blended a feeling of curiosity which grew more lively 
 day by day. They talked over the circumstances of his first 
 sudden appearance, their conjectures were endless; the
 
 388 AN EPISODE UNDER THE TERROR 
 
 stranger had conferred one more benefit upon them by divert- 
 ing their minds. Again, and again, they said, when he next 
 came to see them as he promised, to celebrate the sad anni- 
 versary of the death of Louis XVI., he should not escape their 
 friendship. 
 
 The night so impatiently awaited came at last. At mid- 
 night the old wooden staircase echoed with the stranger's 
 heavy footsteps. They had made the best of their room for 
 his coming ; the altar was ready, and this time the door stood 
 open, and the two Sisters were out at the stairhead, eager to 
 light the way. Mademoiselle de Langeais even came down a 
 few steps, to meet their benefactor the sooner. 
 
 "Come," she said, with a quaver in the affectionate tones, 
 "come in; we are expecting you." 
 
 He raised his face, gave her a dark look, and made no 
 answer. The Sister felt as if an icy mantle had fallen over 
 her, and said no more. At the sight of him, the glow of 
 gratitude and curiosity died away in their hearts. Perhaps 
 he was not so cold, not so taciturn, not so stern as he seemed 
 to them, for in their highly wrought mood they were ready 
 to pour out their feeling of friendship. But the three poor 
 prisoners understood that he wished to be a stranger to them ; 
 and submitted. The priest fancied that he saw a smile 'on 
 the man's lips as he saw their preparations for his visit, but 
 it was at once repressed. He heard mass, said his prayer, 
 and then disappeared, declining, with a few polite words, 
 Mademoiselle de Langeais' invitation to partake of the little 
 collation made ready for him. 
 
 After the 9th Thermidor, the Sisters and the Abbe de 
 Marolles could go about Paris without the least danger. 
 The first time that the abbe went out he walked to a per- 
 fumer's shop at the sign of The Queen of Roses, kept by the 
 Citizen Eagon and his wife, court perfumers. The Eagons 
 had been faithful adherents of the Eovalist cause; it was 
 through their means that the Vendean leaders kept up a 
 correspondence with the Princes and the Eoyalist Committee 
 in Paris. The abbe, in the ordinary dress of the time, was
 
 389 
 
 standing on the threshold of the shop which stood between 
 Saint Eoch and the Rue des Frondeurs when he saw that 
 the Rue Saint Honore was filled with a crowd and he could 
 not go out. 
 
 "What is the matter?" he asked Madame Ragon. 
 
 "Nothing/' she said; "it is only the tumbril cart and the 
 executioner going to the Place Louis XV. Ah ! we used to see 
 it often enough last year; but to-day, four days after the 
 anniversary of the twenty-first of January, one does not feel 
 sorry to see the ghastly procession." 
 
 "Why not?" asked the abbe. "That is not said like a 
 Christian." 
 
 "Eh ! but it is the execution of Robespierre's accom- 
 plices. They defended themselves as long as they could, but 
 now it is their turn to go where they sent so many innocent 
 people." 
 
 The crowd poured by like a flood. The abbe, yielding to 
 an impulse of curiosity, looked up above the heads, and there 
 in the tumbril stood the man who had heard mass in the 
 garret three days ago. 
 
 "Who is it ?" he asked ; "who is the man with " 
 
 "That is the headsman," answered M. Ragon, calling the 
 executioner the executeur des hautes ceuvres by the name 
 he had borne under the Monarchy. 
 
 "Oh! my dear, my dear! M. 1'Abbe is dying!" cried out 
 old Madame Ragon. She caught up a flask of vinegar, and 
 tried to restore the old priest to consciousness. 
 
 "He must have given me the handkerchief that the King 
 used to wipe his brow on the way to his martyrdom," mur- 
 mured he. "... Poor man ! . . . There was a heart in the 
 steel blade, when none was found in all France. . . ." 
 
 The perfumers thought that the poor abbe was raving. 
 
 PAKIS, January 1831.
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 INDEX 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE as arranged by Balzac is a curious ex- 
 ample of subdivision and inter-subdivision. It is composed of 
 some eighty-eight separate stories which, however, are connected 
 nearly all of them with the general scheme of the Com6die. 
 This scheme embraces six Scenes and two Studies, as follows: 
 
 Scenes from Private Life. 
 
 Scenes from Provincial Life. 
 
 Scenes from Parisian Life. 
 
 Scenes from Political Life. 
 
 Scenes from Military Life. 
 
 Scenes from Country Life. 
 
 Philosophical Studies. 
 
 Analytical Studies. 
 
 The above Scenes or Studies, in turn, are divided into groups in- 
 cluding stories which the author desired to connect as intimately 
 as possible. The stories themselves are liable to subdivision, be- 
 ing made up possibly of two or more narratives strung together 
 on the slightest thread under some general title. As an example 
 of this may be cited The Thirteen, a book composed of three dis- 
 tinct tales Ferragus, The Duchesse de Langeais, and The Girl 
 with the Golden Eyes. 
 
 Granted that a story were entirely coherent in plot, it was not 
 always or often suffered to lie undisturbed by its restless author. 
 It was wrought upon, both internally and externally. Internally 
 it met with the frequent decapitation or addition of chapter 
 heads. Perchance all the chapters might be merged in one. Per- 
 chance some incident lightly dwelt upon might reveal another sit- 
 
 (391)
 
 392 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 uation for the same actors; a budding process would begin, and 
 thus a new story of the Com6die would be born. Externally a 
 story might be changed in title, in grouping, or even in its posi- 
 tion in the ComSdie; it might lose its identity entirely (in a re- 
 verse process to one described above) by being incorporated into 
 another story, in the form of a chapter. All these operations 
 might and did happen in the evolution of the Comgdie, which fact 
 explains the difficulty oftentimes experienced in locating tales by 
 the titles given in the earlier French editions; also for the vary- 
 ing number of stories accredited to the Comdie. 
 
 The present edition does not give the original grouping in abso- 
 lute order; this was not possible in a given number of volumes of 
 uniform size. The original grouping has never been considered 
 vital the author himself was constantly changing it, up to the 
 very day of his death. Nevertheless, the arrangement as finally 
 left by him has been maintained in so far as mechanical con- 
 venience would permit. And for those who desire to follow the 
 Balzacian scheme, or to consider a story in relation to its group- 
 mates and the general plan, these Indices have been prepared, 
 showing: (1) Alphabetical Index of stories and their position 
 in the accompanying edition; (2) Titles of Volumes; (3) Orig- 
 inal Balzac Scheme. J. WALKEB MCSPADDEX, Publisher's Editor.
 
 ALPHABETICAL INDEX 
 
 THE STORIES CONSTITUTING THE COMEDIE HUMAINE, 
 AND THEIR POSITION IN THE ACCOM- 
 PANYING EDITION 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Abb6 Birotteau, The (See, Vicar of Tours) 4 
 
 About Catherine de' Medici 2 
 
 Absolute, The Quest of the 1 
 
 Albert Savarus 10 
 
 Another Study of Woman 3 
 
 Antiquities, The Collection of (See, Jealousies of a Country 
 
 Town) 7 
 
 Arcis, The Member for 16 
 
 Atheist's Mass, The 6 
 
 At the Sign of the Cat and Racket 4 
 
 Author and His Works, The 1 
 
 Author's Introduction 1 
 
 Avatar, Vautrin's Last (See, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life) 12 
 
 Bachelor's Establishment, A 4 
 
 Ball at Sceaux, The 4 
 
 Balzac, Honorg de 1 
 
 Balzac's Introduction to Comgdie Humaine 1 
 
 Beatrix 7 
 
 Betty, Cousin 11 
 
 Birotteau, The Abb6 (See, Vicar of Tours) 4 
 
 Birotteau, The Rise and Fall of Cesar 14 
 
 Bohemia, A Prince of 16 
 
 Breteche, La Grande 3 
 
 Brides, Letters of Two 5 
 
 Business, A Man of 16 
 
 (393)
 
 394 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Calvinist Martyr, The (See, About Catherine de' Medici) 2 
 
 Cane, Facino 16 
 
 Cat and Racket, At the Sign of the 4 
 
 Catherine de' Medici, About 2 
 
 Celibates, The 4 
 
 Cesar Birotteau, The Rise and Fall of 14 
 
 Chouans, The 15 
 
 Christ in Flanders 1 
 
 Classes, The Middle 14 
 
 Clerks, The Government 12 
 
 Collection of Antiquities, The (See, Jealousies of a Country 
 
 Town) 7 
 
 Colonel Chabert 9 
 
 Commission in Lunacy, The 7 
 
 Conscript, The 1 
 
 Cornelius, Maltre 2 
 
 Country Doctor, The 9 
 
 Country Parson The 10 
 
 Country Town, The Jealousies of a 7 
 
 Country, Parisians in the 13 
 
 Courtesan's Life, Scenes from a 12 
 
 Cousin Betty 11 
 
 Cousin Pons 11 
 
 Daughter of Eve 5 
 
 Department, The Muse of the 15 
 
 Desert, A Passion in the 15 
 
 Deserted Woman, The 5 
 
 Distinguished Provincial at Paris, A (Third Part of "Lost 
 
 Illusions ") 8 
 
 Doctor, The Country 9 
 
 Domestic Peace 3 
 
 Doni, Massimilla 3
 
 INDEX 395 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Dreams, The Two (See, About Catherine de' Medici) 2 
 
 Duchesse de Langeais, The (See, The Thirteen) 13 
 
 Elixir of Life, The 2 
 
 El Verdugo 1 
 
 End of Evil Ways, The (See, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life) 12 
 
 Episode Under the Terror, An 16 
 
 Establishment, A Bachelor's 4 
 
 Esther Happy (See, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life) 12 
 
 Eugenie Grandet 3 
 
 Eve, A Daughter of 5 
 
 Eve and David (See, Lost Illusions) 8 
 
 Exiles, The 2 
 
 Eyes, The Girl With the Golden (See, The Thirteen) 13 
 
 Facino Cane 16 
 
 Fall of Cesar Birotteau, The Rise and 14 
 
 Farewell 1 
 
 Father Goriot 13 
 
 Ferragus ( See, The Thirteen) 13 
 
 Firmiani, Madame 4 
 
 Firm of Nucingen, The 9 
 
 Flanders, Christ in 1 
 
 Gambara 2 
 
 Gaudissart II. 16 
 
 Gaudissart the Great (First Part of "Parisians in the Coun- 
 try") 13 
 
 Girl With the Golden Eyes, The (See, The Thirteen) 13 
 
 Gobseck 5 
 
 Gondreville Mystery, The 15 
 
 Goriot, Father 13 
 
 Government Clerks, The 12
 
 396 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Grande Brete"che, La 3 
 
 Grandet, Eugenie 3 
 
 Grassou, Pierre 5 
 
 Grenadiere, La 5 
 
 Hated Son, The 6 
 
 History, The Seamy Side of 16 
 
 Home, A Second 6 
 
 Honorine 4 
 
 Humorists, The Unconscious 13 
 
 Illusions, Lost 8 
 
 Imaginary Mistress, The 3 
 
 Inn, The Red 3 
 
 Introduction, Author's 1 
 
 Introduction, General 1 
 
 Jealousies of a Country Town, The 7 
 
 La Grande Breteche (Sequel to "Another Study of Woman") 3 
 
 La Grenadiere 5 
 
 Langeais, The Duchesse de (See, The Thirteen) 13 
 
 Letters of Two Brides 5 
 
 Life, A Start in 6 
 
 Life, Scenes from a Courtesan's 12 
 
 Life, The Elixir of 2 
 
 Lily of the Valley, The 9 
 
 Lost Illusions 8 
 
 Louis Lambert 2 
 
 Lunacy, The Commission in 7 
 
 Madame Firmiani 4 
 
 Magic Skin, The 1 
 
 Maid, The Old (See, Jealousies of a Country Town) 7
 
 INDEX 397 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Maitre Cornelius 2 
 
 Man of Business, A 16 
 
 Maranas, The 1 
 
 Marcas, Z 16 
 
 Marriage Settlement, A 6 
 
 Martyr, The Calvinist (See, About Catherine de' Medici) 2 
 
 Massimilla Doni 3 
 
 Mass, The Atheist's 6 
 
 Masterpiece, The Unknown 1 
 
 Medici, About Catherine de' 2 
 
 Melmoth Reconciled 1 
 
 Member for Arcis, The 16 
 
 Message, The 5 
 
 Middle Classes, The 14 
 
 Mirouet, Ursule 3 
 
 Mistress, The Imaginary 3 
 
 Modeste Mignon 6 
 
 Muse of the Department, The (Second Part of "Parisians 
 
 in the Country " ) 15 
 
 Mystery, The Gondreville 15 
 
 Nucingen, The Firm of 9 
 
 Old Maid, The (See, Jealousies of a Country Town) 7 
 
 Parson, The Country 10 
 
 Parisians in the Country 13 
 
 Passion in the Desert, A 15 
 
 Peace, Domestic 3 
 
 Peasantry, The 10 
 
 Pierre Grassou 5 
 
 Pierrette 4
 
 398 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Poets, Two ( See, Lost Illusions) 8 
 
 Pons, Cousin 11 
 
 Poor Relations 11 
 
 Prince of Bohemia, A 16 
 
 Princess, The Secrets of a 14 
 
 Provincial at Paris, A Distinguished 8 
 
 Purse, The 4 
 
 Quest of the Absolute, The 1 
 
 Rabouilleuse, La (See, "A Bachelor's Establishment") 4 
 
 Reconciled, Melmoth 1 
 
 Red Inn, The 3 
 
 Relations, Poor 11 
 
 Rise and Fall of C6sar Birotteau, The 14 
 
 Ruggieri's Secret, The (See, About Catherine de' Medici) 2 
 
 Sarrasine 16 
 
 Savarus, Albert 10 
 
 Seamy Side of History, The 16 
 
 Seaside Tragedy, A 3 
 
 Sceaux, The Ball at 4 
 
 Scenes from a Courtesan's Life 12 
 
 Second Home, A 6 
 
 Secrets of a Princess, The I 4 
 
 Secret, The Ruggieri's (See, About Catherine de' Medici) 2 
 
 Seraphita 2 
 
 Settlement, A Marriage 6 
 
 Sign of the Cat and Racket, At the 4 
 
 Skin, The Magic 1 
 
 Son, The Hated 6 
 
 Start in Life, A 6
 
 INDEX 399 
 
 TITLE VOLUME 
 
 Study of Woman, A ....................................... 3 
 
 Study of Woman, Another ................................. 3 
 
 Terror, An Episode Under the ............................. 16 
 
 Thirteen, The ............................................ 13 
 
 Thirty, A Woman of ....................................... 5 
 
 Tours, The Vicar of ................................ ....... 4 
 
 Town, The Jealousies of a Country ......................... 7 
 
 Tragedy, A Seaside ....................................... 3 
 
 Two Brides, Letters of .................................... 5 
 
 Two Dreams, The (See, About Catherine de' Medici) ........ 2 
 
 Two Poets (See, Lost Illus:ons) ........................... 8 
 
 Unconscious Humorists, The ............................. 13 
 
 Under the Terror, An Episode ............................. 16 
 
 Unknown Masterpieces, The ............................... 1 
 
 Ursule Mirouet ........................................... 3 
 
 Valley, The Lily of the .................................... 9 
 
 Vautrin's Last Avatar (See, Scenes from a Courtesan's Life) 12 
 
 Vendetta, The ........................................... 9 
 
 Verdugo, El .............................................. 1 
 
 Vicar of Tours, The ..................................... 4 
 
 What Love Costs an Old Man (See, Scenes from a Courtesan's 
 
 Life) ................................................ 12 
 
 Woman, A Study of ...................................... 3 
 
 Woman, Another Study of ................................. 3 
 
 Woman of Thirty, A ...................................... 5 
 
 Woman, The Deserted .................................... 5 
 
 Works, The Author and His ................................ 1 
 
 Z. Marcas
 
 TITLES OF VOLUMES 
 
 1. I. THE MAGIC SKIN. 
 
 II. THE QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 2. I. ABOUT CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 II. SEBAPHITA. 
 
 3. I. EUGENIE GRANDET. 
 II. UBSULE MIROUET. 
 
 4. I. AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 
 II. A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 5. I. A DAUGHTER OF EVE. 
 II. A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 
 
 6. I. A MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT. 
 
 II. MODESTE MlGNON. 
 
 7. I. BEATRIX. 
 
 II. THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY TOWN. 
 
 8. I. LOST ILLUSIONS. 
 
 II. A DISTINGUISHED PROVINCIAL AT PABIS. 
 
 9. I. THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 II. THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
 
 10. I. THE COUNTRY PARSON. 
 II. THE PEASANTRY. 
 
 11. I. COUSIN BETTY, 
 II. COUSIN PONS. 
 
 (401)
 
 402 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 12. I. SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE. I. 
 II. SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S LIFE. II. 
 
 13. I. THE THIRTEEN. 
 II. FATHER GORIOT. 
 
 14. I. CESAR BIROTTEAU. 
 
 II. THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 
 
 15. I. THE CHOUANS. 
 
 II. THE GONDREVILLE MYSTERY. 
 
 16. I. THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS. 
 
 II. THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 
 
 17. I. DRAMAS. 
 II. DRAMAS. 
 
 18. I. PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 II. REPERTORY OF THE COMEDIE HUMAHTE,
 
 THE BALZAC PLAN 
 
 OF THE COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 The form in which the Comedie Humaine was left by its author, 
 with the exceptions of Le Depute dArcis (incomplete) and Les 
 Petits Bourgeois, both of which were added, some years later, by 
 the Edition Definitive. 
 
 [On the right hand side is given the original French titles; on 
 the left, their English equivalents. Literal translations have 
 been followed, excepting a few instances where preference is 
 shown for a clearer or more comprehensive English title.] 
 
 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 SCENES FROM PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 (Scenes de la Vie Privce) 
 
 BOOK 1. 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND 
 
 RACKET, La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote. 
 
 The Ball at Sgeaux, Le Bal de Sqeaux. 
 
 The Purse, La Bourse. 
 
 The Vendetta, La Vendetta. 
 
 Madame Firmiani, Mme. Firmiani. 
 
 A Second Home, Une Double Famille. 
 
 BOOK 2. 
 
 DOMESTIC PEACE, La Paix du Menage 
 
 The Imaginary Mistress, La Fausse Maitresse. 
 
 A Study of Woman, Etude de Femme. 
 
 (403)
 
 404 
 
 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 Another Study of Woman, 
 La Grande Bret^che, 
 Albert Savarus, 
 
 Autre Etude de Femme. 
 La Grande Breteche. 
 Albert Savarus. 
 
 LETTERS OF Two BRIDES, 
 A Daughter of Eve, 
 
 BOOK 3. 
 
 Mcmoires de Deaux Jeunes. 
 
 Marices. 
 Une Fille d'Eve. 
 
 A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 
 The Deserted Woman, 
 La Grenadiere, 
 The Message, 
 Gobseck, 
 
 BOOK 4. 
 
 La Femme de Trente Ans. 
 La Femme Abandonee. 
 La Grenadiere. 
 Le Message. 
 Gobseck. 
 
 BOOK 5. 
 
 A MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT, Le Contrat de Mariage. 
 
 A Start in Life, Un Debut dans la Vie. 
 
 MODESTE MlGNON, 
 
 BOOK 6. 
 
 Modeste Mignon. 
 
 BEATRIX. 
 
 BOOK 7. 
 
 Beatrix. 
 
 HONORINE, 
 
 Colonel Chabert, 
 
 The Atheist's Mass, 
 
 The Commission In Lunacy, 
 
 Pierre Grassou, 
 
 BOOK 8. 
 
 Honorine. 
 
 Le Colonel Chabert. 
 La Messe de TAthee. 
 L 'Inter diction. 
 Pierre Grassou.
 
 INDEX 405 
 
 SCENES FROM PROVINCIAL LIFE 
 (Scenes de la Vie Province) 
 
 BOOK 9. 
 URSULE MIROUET, Ursule Mirouet. 
 
 BOOK 10. 
 EUGENIE GBANDET, Eugenie Grandet. 
 
 BOOK 11. 
 
 THE CELIBATES: Lea Celibataires: 
 
 1. Pierrette, Pierrette, 
 
 2. The Vicar of Tours, Le Cure de Tours. 
 
 BOOK 12. 
 
 3. A BACHELOR'S ESTABLISH- 
 
 MENT, Un Menage de Gar^on. 
 
 BOOK 13. 
 
 PARISIANS IN THE COUNTRY: Les Parisiens en Province: 
 
 Gaudissart the Great, Ulllustre Gaudissart. 
 
 The Muse of the Department, La Muse du Departement. 
 
 BOOK 14. 
 THE JEALOUSIES OF A COUNTRY 
 
 TOWN: Les Rivalites: 
 
 The Old Maid, La Vieille Fille, 
 
 The Collection of Antiquities, Le Cabinet des Antiques. 
 
 BOOK 15. 
 TIIK LILY or THE VALLEY, Le Lys dans la Yallee.
 
 406 
 
 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 LOST ILLUSIONS: I., 
 
 The Two Poets, 
 
 A Distinguished Provincial at 
 Paris. Part 1, 
 
 BOOK 16. 
 
 Illusions Per dues: /., 
 Les Deux Poetes, 
 Un Grand Homme de Pro- 
 vince a Paris, Ire Partie. 
 
 BOOK 17. 
 
 LOST ILLUSIONS: II., Illusions Perdues: . 
 
 A Distinguished Provincial at Un Grand Homme de Pro- 
 Paris. Part 2, vince 2e p., 
 Eve and David 4 Eve et David. 
 
 SCENES FROM PARISIAN LIFE 
 (Scenes de la Vie Parisienne) 
 
 BOOK 18. 
 SCENES FROM A COURTESAN'S Splendeurs et Miscres des 
 
 LIFE : Courtisanes : 
 
 Esther Happy, Esther Heureuse, 
 
 What Love Costs an Old Man, A Combien V Amour Revient 
 
 aux Vieillards, 
 
 The End of Evil Ways, Ou M$nent les Mauvais 
 
 Chemins. 
 
 VAUTRIN'S LAST AVATAR,* 
 
 A Prince of Bohemia, 
 
 A Man of Business, 
 
 Gaudissart II., 
 
 The Unconscious Humorists, 
 
 BOOK 19. 
 
 Le Derniere Incarnation de 
 
 Vautrin. 
 
 Un Prince de la BoTicme. 
 Vn Homme d'Affaires. 
 Gaudissart II. 
 Les Comcdiens sans le Savoir, 
 
 * The fourth and final part of Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.
 
 INDEX 407 
 
 BOOK 20. 
 
 THE THIRTEEN: Histoire des Treize: 
 
 Ferragus, Ferragus, 
 
 The Duchesse de Langeais, La Duchesse de Langeais, 
 
 The Girl with the Golden Eyes, La Fille aux Yeux d'Or. 
 
 BOOK 21. 
 FATHER GORIOT, Le Pere Ooriot. 
 
 BOOK 22. 
 
 THE RISE AND FALL OF CESAR Grandeur et Decadence de 
 BIROTTEAU, Cesar Birotteau. 
 
 BOOK 23. 
 
 THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN, La Maison Nucingen. 
 
 The Secrets of a Princess, Les Secrets de la Princesse 
 
 de Cadignan. 
 
 The Government Clerks, Les Employes. 
 
 Sarrasine, Sarrasine. 
 
 Facino Cane, Facino Cane. 
 
 BOOK 24. 
 
 POOR RELATIONS: I., Les Parents Pauvres: I., 
 
 Cousin Betty, La Cousine Bette. 
 
 BOOK 25. 
 
 POOR RELATIONS: II., Les Parents Pauvres: II., 
 
 Cousin Pons, Le Cousin Pons. 
 
 BOOK*. 
 
 The Middle Classes, Les Petits Bourgeois. 
 
 * This book is not numbered, inasmuch as it was included after Balznc's death
 
 408 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 SCENES FROM POLITICAL LIFE 
 (Scenes de la Vie Politique) 
 
 BOOK 26. 
 
 THE GONDREVILLE MYSTERY, Une Tenebreuse Affaire. 
 
 An Episode Under the Terror, Un Episode sous la Terreur. 
 
 BOOK 27. 
 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, L'Envers de THistoire Con- 
 
 temporaine : 
 
 Madame de la Chanterie, Mme. de la Chanterie, 
 
 Initiated, L'Initic. 
 
 Z. Marcas, Z. Marcas. 
 
 BOOK 28. 
 THE MEMBER FOR ARCIS,* Le Depute d'Arcis. 
 
 SCENES FROM MILITARY LIFE 
 (Scenes de la Vie Militaire) 
 
 BOOK 29. 
 
 THE CHOUANS, Les Chouans. 
 
 A Passion in the Desert, Une Passion dans le Desert. 
 
 SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE 
 {Scenes de la Vie de Champagne) 
 
 BOOK 30. 
 THE COUNTRY DOCTOR, Le Medecin de Campagne. 
 
 BOOK 31. 
 THE COUNTRY PARSON. Le Cure de Village. 
 
 * Though not included until after the author's death, its exact position bad been pre- 
 viously indicated.
 
 INDEX 
 
 40ft 
 
 THE PEASANTRY, 
 
 BOOK 32. 
 
 Les Paysans. 
 
 THE MAGIC SKIN, 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 
 (Etudes Philosophiques) 
 
 BOOK 33. 
 
 La Peau de Chagrin. 
 
 BOOK 34. 
 
 THE 'QUEST OF THE ABSOLUTE. La Recherche de VAbsolu. 
 Christ in Flanders, Jesus-Christ en Flandre. 
 
 Melmoth Reconciled, Melmoth Reconcilie. 
 
 The Unknown Masterpiece, Le Chef-d'oeuvre Iv^onnu. 
 
 THE HATED SON, 
 Gambara, 
 Massimilla Doni, 
 
 THE MABANAS, 
 Farewell, 
 The Conscript, 
 El Verdugo, 
 A Seaside Tragedy, 
 The Red Inn, 
 The Elixir of Life, 
 Maitre Cornelius, 
 
 BOOK 35. 
 
 L'Enfant Maudit. 
 Gambara. 
 Massimilla Doni. 
 
 BOOK 36. 
 
 Les Marana. 
 
 Adieu. 
 
 Le Rcguisitionnaire. 
 
 El Verdugo. 
 
 Un Drame au Bord de la Mer. 
 
 L'Auberge Rouge. 
 
 L'Elixir de Longue Vie. 
 
 Maitre Cornelius. 
 
 BOOK 37. 
 
 ABOUT CATHERINE DE MEDICI: Sur Catherine de Mcdicis: 
 
 The Calvinist Martyr, Le Martyr Calviniste,
 
 410 COMEDIE HUMAINE 
 
 The Ruggieri's Secret, La Confidence des Ruggieri. 
 
 The Two Dreams, Les Delta: Reves. 
 
 BOOK 38. 
 
 Louis LAMBERT, Louis Lambert. 
 
 The Exiles, Les Proscrits. 
 
 Seraphita, Seraphita. 
 
 ANALYTICAL STUDIES. 
 
 BOOK 39. 
 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE, Physiologic du Mariage. 
 
 BOOK 40. 
 
 PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED Petite Miseres de la, Vie 
 LIFE, Conjugate. 
 
 The above list comprises the entire Human Comedy, but in addi- 
 tion to the same there are included in this New Saintsbury Balzac: 
 
 I. THE DRAMAS (2 volumes). 
 
 VAUTRIIT, Vautrin. 
 
 QUINOLA'S RESOURCES, Les Ressources de Quinola. 
 
 THE STEP-MOTHER, La Maratre. 
 
 MERCADET, Mercadet. 
 
 PAMELA GIRAUD, Pamela Giraud. 
 
 II. A REPERTORY OF THE HUMAN COMEDY (1 volume). 
 
 In which the various appearances of the personages in the novels 
 are reduced to a biographical dictionary.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 095 278 8