LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. Kil iani
 
 LIBKAKY
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE


 
 MME. DE LANGEAIS RANG THE BELL.
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE THIRTEEN 
 
 (HISTOIRE DES TREIZE) 
 
 AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ELLEN MARRIAGE 
 
 WTTH A PREFACE BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 1899
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE ........... 
 
 THE THIRTEEN 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE ........ ' 
 
 I. FERRACUS ......... 
 
 II. THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS ..... *39 
 
 MAITRE CORNELIUS ........ 298 
 
 GAMBARA .......... 3^7
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 MMK. I)K l.ANGKAIS RANG THK HF.I.I. (]'. 235) . . 
 
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 " YOl' AKK MISTAKEN, MADKMUISKI.I.K, MY \\IKK OU'I.I) NOT 
 
 POSSllU.Y " ... 7S 
 
 A GIKI.'S BODY STRANDKH THAT MORNING ON THK HANK . . 132 
 
 "SOUND YOl KSKLI ; IK YOU HAVK NOT COI'RACK KNOKGH, IIKRK 
 
 IS MY liAGGKR" l8S 
 
 HI. vrooll I'NIU -K THK WAI. 1. TO IIKAR THK MI'SIC OK THK 
 
 ORGAN 2Q> 
 
 I>> J7<. tv H'. I'ju.htr.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN its original form the " Histoire des Treize " consists 
 or, rather, it was originally built up of three stories: " Fer- 
 ragus" or the " Rue Soly," "La Duchesse de Langeais " or 
 " Ne touchez-pas a la hache," and " La Filleaux Yeuxd'Or." 
 The last, in some respects one of Balzac's most brilliant 
 effects, does not appear here, as it contains things that are 
 inconvenient. It may be noted that he had at one time the 
 audacity to think of calling it " La Femme aux Yeux 
 Rouges." 
 
 To tell the truth, there is more power than taste throughout 
 the "Histoire des Treize," and perhaps not very much less 
 unreality than power. Balzac is very much better than Eugene 
 Sue, though Eugene Sue also is better than it is the fashion to 
 think him just now. But he is here, to a certain extent, com- 
 peting with Sue on the latter's own ground. The notion of 
 the " Devorants " of a secret society of men devoted to each 
 other's interests, entirely free from any moral or legal scruple, 
 possessed of considerable means in wealth, ability, and posi- 
 tion, all working together, by fair means or foul, for good 
 ends or bad is, no doubt, rather seducing to the imagination 
 at all times ; and it so happened that it was particularly se- 
 ducing to the imagination of that time. And its example has 
 been powerful since; it gave us Mr. Stevenson's "New Arabian 
 Nights" only, as it were, the other day. 
 
 But there is something a little schoolboyish in it ; and I do 
 not know that Balzac has succeeded entirely in eliminating 
 this something. The pathos of the death, under persecution, 
 of the innocent Clemence does not entirely make up for the 
 unreasonableness of the whole situation. Nobody can say 
 that the abominable misconduct of Maulincour who is a 
 hopeless "cad" is too much punished, though an English- 
 
 (ixj
 
 x PREFACE. 
 
 man may think that Dr. Johnson's receipt of three or four 
 footmen with cudgels, applied repeatedly and unsparingly, 
 would have been better than elaborately prepared accidents 
 and duels, which were too honorable for a Peeping Tom of 
 this kind ; and poisonings, which reduced the avengers to the 
 level of their victim. But the imbroglio is of itself stupid ; 
 these fathers who cannot be made known to husbands are mere 
 stage properties, and should never be fetched out of the the- 
 atrical lumber-room by literature. 
 
 " La Duchessede Langeais " is, I think, a better story, with 
 more romantic attraction, free from the objections just made 
 to "Ferragus," and furnished with a powerful, if slightly the- 
 atrical catastrophe. It is as good as anything that its author 
 has done of the kind, subject to those general considerations 
 of probability and otherwise which have been already hinted 
 at. For those who are not troubled by any such critical 
 reflections, both, no doubt, will be highly satisfactory. And, 
 indeed, I must confess that I should not think much of any 
 boy who, beginning Balzac with the ''Histoire des Treize," 
 failed to go rather mad over it. I know there was a time when 
 I used to like it best of all, and thought not merely " Eugenie 
 Grandet," but " Le Pere Goriot " (though not the " Peau de 
 Chagrin"), dull in comparison. Some attention, however, 
 must be paid to two remarkable characters, on whom it is quite 
 clear that Balzac expended a great deal of pains, and one of 
 whom he seems to have "caressed," as the French say, with a 
 curious admixture of dislike and admiration. 
 
 The first, Bourignard or Ferragus, is, of course, another, 
 though a somewhat minor example Collin or Vautrin being 
 the chief of that strange tendency to take intense interest 
 in criminals, which seems to be a pretty constant eccentricity 
 of many human minds, and which laid an extraordinary 
 grasp on the great French writers of Balzac's time. I must 
 confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that 
 I have never been able fully to appreciate the attractions
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 of crime and criminals, fictitious or real. Certain pleasant 
 and profitable things, no doubt, retain their pleasure and 
 their profit, to some extent, when they are done in the manner 
 which is technically called criminal ; but they seem to me to 
 acquire no additional interest by being so. As the criminal 
 of fact is, in the vast majority of cases, an exceedingly com- 
 monplace and dull person, the criminal of fiction seems to me 
 only, or usually, to escape these curses by being absolutely 
 improbable and unreal. But I know this is a terrible heresy. 
 Henri de Marsay is a much more ambitious and a much more 
 interesting figure. In him are combined the attractions of 
 criminality, beauty, brains, success, and, last of all, dandyism. 
 It is a well-known and delightful fact that the most Anglo- 
 phobe Frenchman and Balzac might fairly be classed amongst 
 them have always regarded the English dandy with half- 
 jealous, half-awful admiration. Indeed, our novelist, it will 
 be seen, found it necessary to give Marsay English blood. 
 But there is a tradition that this young Don Juan not such a 
 good fellow as Byron's, nor such a grand seigneur as Moliere's 
 was partly intended to represent Charles de Remusat, who 
 is best known to this generation by very sober and serious 
 philosophical works, and by his part in his mother's corre- 
 spondence. I do not know that there ever were any imputa- 
 tions on M. de Remusat's morals ; but in memoirs of the 
 time he is, I think, accused of a certain selfishness and hauteur, 
 and he certainly made his way. partly by journalism, partly 
 by society, to power very much as Marsay did. But Marsay 
 would certainly not have written "Abelard " and the rest, or 
 have returned to Ministerial rank in our time. Marsay, in 
 fact, more fortunate than Rubempre, and of a higher stamp and 
 flight than Rastignac, makes with them Balzac's trinity of 
 sketches of the kind of personage whose part, in his day and 
 since, every young Frenchman has aspired to play, and some 
 have played. It cannot be said that '' a moral man is Marsay : '' 
 it cannot be said that he has the element of good-nature which
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 redeems Rastignac. But he bears a blame and a burden for 
 which we Britons are responsible in part the Byronic ideal 
 of the guilty hero coming to cross and blacken the old French 
 model of unscrupulous good humor. It is not a very pretty 
 mixture or a very worthy ideal ; but I am not so lure that it is 
 not still a pretty common one. 
 
 The association of the three stories forming the " Histoire 
 des Treize " is, in book form, original, inasmuch as they 
 filled three out of the four volumes of " Etudes des Mceurs" 
 published in 1834-35, and themselves forming part of the first 
 collection of Scenes de la Vie Parisienne. But " Ferragus " 
 had appeared in parts (with titles to each) in the "Revue de 
 Paris" for March and April 1833, and part of "La Duchesse 
 de Langeais " in the " Echo de la Jeune France " almost con- 
 temporaneously. There were divisions in this also. " Ferra- 
 gus " and "La Duchesse" also appeared without "La Fille 
 aux Yeux d'Or " in 1839, published in one volume by Char- 
 pentier, before their absorption at the usual time in the 
 Comedie. G. S.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 IN the Paris of the Empire there were banded together 
 Thirteen men equally impressed with the same thought, 
 equally endowed with energy enough to keep them true to 
 it, while among themselves they were loyal to keep faith even 
 when their interests chanced to clash. They were sufficiently 
 strong to set themselves above all laws ; bold enough to shrink 
 from no enterprise ; and so fortunate as to succeed in nearly 
 everything that they undertook. So profoundly politic were 
 they that they could dissemble the tie which bound them 
 together. They ran the greatest risks and kept their failures 
 to themselves. Fear never entered into their calculations ; 
 not one of them had trembled before princes, before the ex- 
 ecutioner's axe, before innocence. They had taken each other 
 as they were, regardless of social prejudices. Criminals they 
 doubtless were, yet none the less were they all remarkable for 
 some one of the virtues which go to the making of great men, 
 and their numbers were filled up only from among picked re- 
 cruits. Finally, that nothing should be lacking to complete 
 the dark, mysterious romance of their history, nobody to this 
 day knows whom they were. The Thirteen once realized all 
 the wildest ideas conjured up by tales of the occult powers of 
 a Manfred, a Faust, or a Melmoth ; and to-day the band is 
 broken up or, at any rate, dispersed. Its members have 
 quietly returned beneath the yoke of the civil law ; much as 
 Morgan, the Achilles of piracy, gave up buccaneering to be a 
 peaceable planter; and, untroubled by qualms of conscience, 
 sat himself down by the fireside to dispose of blood-stained 
 booty acquired by the red light of blazing towns and slaugh- 
 ter. 
 
 (1)
 
 2 THE THIRTEEN, 
 
 After Napoleon's death, the band was dissolved by a chance 
 event which the author is bound for the present to pass over 
 in silence, and its mysterious existence, as curious, it may be, 
 as the darkest novel by Mrs. Radcliffe, came to an end. 
 
 It was only lately that the present writer, detecting, as he 
 fancied, a faint desire for celebrity in one of the anonymous 
 heroes to whom the whole band once owed an occult alle- 
 giance, received the somewhat singular permission to make 
 public certain of the adventures which befell that band, pro- 
 vided that, while telling the story in his own fashion, he ob- 
 served certain limits. 
 
 The aforesaid leader was still an apparently young man 
 with fair hair and blue eyes, and a soft, thin voice which 
 might seem to indicate a feminine temperament. His face 
 was pale, his ways mysterious. He chatted pleasantly, and 
 told me that he was only just turned of forty. He might 
 have belonged to the very upper class. The name which he 
 gave was probably assumed, and no one answering to his 
 description was known in society. Who is he, do you ask ? 
 No one knows. 
 
 Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the 
 present writer, he wished to see them in some sort reproduced ; 
 to enjoy the effect of the sensation on the multitude ; to feel 
 as Macpherson might have felt when the name of Ossian, his 
 creation, passed into all languages. And, in truth, that Scot- 
 tish advocate knew one of the keenest, or, at any rate, one of 
 the rarest sensations in human experience. What was this but 
 the incognito of genius? To write an "Itinerary from Paris 
 to Jerusalem " is to take one's share in the glory of a century, 
 but to give a Homer to one's country this surely is a usurpa- 
 tion of the rights of God. 
 
 The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration 
 to be unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief 
 preface ; but, at the same time, he knows enough of the his- 
 tory of the Thirteen to feel confident that he will not disap-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 3 
 
 point any expectations raised by the programme. Tragedies 
 dripping with gore, comedies piled up with horrors, tales of 
 heads taken off in secret have been confided to him. If any 
 reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to 
 the public for some time past, he has only to express his wish ; 
 the author is in a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities 
 and family secrets of a gloomy and astonishing nature. But 
 in preference he has chosen those pleasanter stories in which 
 stormy passions are succeeded by purer scenes, where the 
 beauty and goodness of woman shine out the brighter for the 
 darkness. And, to the honor of the Thirteen, such episodes 
 as these are not wanting. Some day, perhaps, it may be 
 thought worth while to give their whole history to the world ; 
 in which case it might form a pendant to the history of the 
 buccaneers that race apart so curiously energetic, so attrac- 
 tive in spite of their crimes. 
 
 When a writer has a true story to tell, he should scorn to 
 turn it into a sort of puzzle-toy, after the manner of those 
 novelists who take their reader for a walk through one cavern 
 after another to show him a dried-up corpse at the end of the 
 fourth volume, and inform him, by way of conclusion, that he 
 has been frightened all along by a door hidden somewhere or 
 other behind some tapestry ; or a dead body, left by inadvert- 
 ence, under the floor. So the present chronicler, in spite of 
 his objection to prefaces, felt bound to introduce his fragment 
 by a few remarks. 
 
 FERRAGUS, the first episode, is connected by invisible links 
 with the history of the Thirteen, for the power which they 
 acquired in a natural manner provides the apparently super- 
 natural machinery. 
 
 Again, although a certain literary coquetry may be permis- 
 sible to retailers of the marvelous, the sober chronicler is 
 bound to forego such advantage as he may reap from an odd- 
 sounding name, on which many ephemeral successes are 
 founded in these days. Wherefore the present writer gives
 
 4 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 the following succinct statement of the reasons which induced 
 him to adopt the unlikely sounding title and sub-title. 
 
 In accordance with old-established custom, FERRAGUS is a 
 name taken by the head of a guild of Devorants, or journey- 
 men. Every chief on the day of his election chooses a pseu- 
 donym and continues a dynasty of Devorants precisely as a 
 pope changes his name on his accession to the triple tiara ; 
 and as the church has its Clement XIV., Gregory XII., Julius 
 II., or Alexander VI., so the workmen have their "Trempe- 
 la-Soupe IX., Ferragus XXII., Tutanus XIII., or Masche-Fer 
 IV." Who are the Devorants, do you ask? 
 
 The Devorants are one among many tribes of companions 
 whose origin can be traced to a great mystical association 
 formed among the workmen of Christendom for the rebuilding 
 of the Temple at Jerusalem. Companionism, to coin a word, 
 is still a popular institution in France. Its traditions still 
 exert a power over little-enlightened minds, over men so un- 
 educated that they have not learned to break their oaths ; 
 and the various organizations might be turned to formidable 
 account even yet if any rough-hewn man of genius arose to 
 make use of them, for his instruments would be, for the most 
 part, almost blind. 
 
 Wherever journeymen travel, they find a. hostel for com- 
 panions which has been in existence in the town from time 
 immemorial. The obade, as they call it, is a kind of lodge 
 with a "mother " in charge, an old. half-gypsy wife who has 
 nothing to lose. She hears all that goes on in the country- 
 side ; and, either from fear or from long habit, is devoted to 
 the interests of the tribe boarded and lodged by her. And as 
 a result, this shifting population, subject as it is to an unalter- 
 able law of custom, has eyes in every place, and will carry put 
 an order anywhere without asking questions ; for the oldest 
 journeyman is still at an age when a man has some beliefs left. 
 What is more, the whole fraternity professes doctrines which, 
 if unfolded never so little- are both true enough and mysterious
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 5 
 
 enough to electrify all the adepts with patriotism ; and the 
 brothers of the league are so attached to their rules that there 
 have been bloody battles between different fraternities on a 
 question of principle. Fortunately, however, for peace and 
 public order, if a Devorant is ambitious, he takes to building 
 houses, makes a fortune, and leaves the guild. 
 
 A great many curious things might be told of their rivals, 
 the Compagnons du Devoir (of the duty), of all the different 
 sects of workmen, their manners and customs and brother- 
 hoods, and of the resemblances between them and the Free- 
 masons ; but here, these particulars would be out of place. 
 The author will merely add, that before the Revolution a 
 Trempe-la-Soupe had been known in the King's service, which 
 is to say, that he had the tenure of a place in his majesty's 
 galleys for one hundred and one years ; but even thence he 
 ruled his guild, and was religiously consulted on all matters, 
 and if he escaped from the hulks he met with help, succor, 
 and respect wherever he went. To have a chief in the hulks 
 is one of those misfortunes for which Providence is responsible ; 
 but a faithful lodge of Devorants is bound, as before, to obey 
 a power created by and set above themselves. Their lawful 
 sovereign is in exile for the time being, but none the less is 
 he their king. And now any romantic mystery hanging about 
 the names Fcrragus and the Devorants is completely dispelled. 
 As for the Thirteen, the author feels that, on the strength 
 of the details of this almost fantastic story, he can afford to 
 give away yet another prerogative, though it is one of the 
 greatest on record, and would possibly fetch a high price if 
 brought into a literary auction mart ; for the owner might in- 
 flict as many volumes on the public as La Contemporaine.* 
 % The Thirteen were all of them men tempered like Byron's 
 friend Trelawney, the original (so it is said) of " The Cor- 
 sair." All of them were fatalists, men of spirit and poetic 
 temperament: all of them were tired of the commonplace life 
 
 * A long series of so-called Memoirs, which appeared ''bout 1830.
 
 6 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 which they led ; all felt attracted toward Asiatic pleasures by 
 all the vehement strength of newly awakened and long dor- 
 mant forces. One of these, chancing to take up " Venice Pre- 
 served " for the second time, admired the sublime friendship 
 between Pier and Jaffier, and fell to musing on the virtues of 
 outlaws, the loyalty of the hulks, the honor of thieves, and 
 the immense power that a few men can wield if they bring 
 their whole minds to bear upon the carrying out of a single 
 will. It struck him that the individual man rose higher than 
 men. Then he began to think that if a few picked men 
 should band themselves together ; and if, to natural wit, and 
 education, and money, they could join a fanaticism hot 
 enough to fuse, as it were, all these separate forces into a 
 single one, then the whole world would be at their feet. 
 From that time forth, with a tremendous power of concentra- 
 tion, they could wield an occult power against which the 
 organization of society would be helpless ; a power which 
 would push obstacles aside and defeat the will of others ; and 
 the diabolical power of all would be at the service of each. 
 A hostile world apart within the world, admitting none of the 
 ideas, recognizing none of the laws of the world ; submitting 
 only to the sense of necessity, obedient only from devotion ; 
 acting all as one man in the interests of the comrade who 
 should claim the aid of the rest ; a band of buccaneers with 
 carriages and yellow kid gloves ; a close confederacy of men 
 of extraordinary power, of amused and cool spectators of an 
 artificial and pretty world which they cursed with smiling 
 lips ; conscious as they were that they could make all things 
 bend to their caprice, weave ingenious schemes of revenge, 
 and live with one life in thirteen hearts, to say nothing of the 
 unfailing pleasure of facing the world of men with a hidden, 
 misanthropy, a sense that they were armed against their kind, 
 and could retire into themselves with one idea which the most 
 remarkable men had not all this constituted a religion of 
 pleasure and egoism which made fanatics of the Thirteen.
 
 THF. THIRTFF.K. 7 
 
 The history of the Society of Jesus was repeated for the devil's 
 benefit. It was hideous and sublime. 
 
 The pact was made; and it lasted, precisely because it 
 seemed impossible. And so it came to pass that in Paris 
 there was a fraternity of thirteen men, each one bound, body 
 and soul, to the rest, and all of them strangers to each other 
 in the sight of the world. But evening found them gathered 
 together like conspirators, and then they had no thoughts 
 apart ; riches, like the wealth of the Old Man of the Moun- 
 tain, they possessed in common ; they had their feet in every 
 salon, their hands in every strong box, their elbows in the 
 streets, their heads upon all pillows, they did not scruple to 
 help themselves at their pleasure. No chief commanded 
 them, nobody was strong enough. The liveliest passion, the 
 most urgent need took precedence that was all. They were 
 thirteen unknown kings : unknown, but with all the power and 
 more than the power of kings ; for they were both judges and 
 executioners, they had taken wings that they might traverse 
 the heights and depths of society, scorning to take any place 
 in it, since all was theirs. If the author learns the reason of 
 their abdication of this power he will communicate it. 
 
 And now the author is free to give those episodes in the 
 History of the Thirteen which, by reason of the Parisian flavor 
 of the details or the strangeness of the contrasts, possessed a 
 peculiar attraction for him. 
 
 PARIS, 1831.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 
 I. 
 
 FERRAGUS, 
 
 CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS. 
 
 To Hector Berlioz. 
 
 THERE are streets in Paris which have lost their character as 
 hopelessly as a man guilty of some shameful action ; there are 
 likewise noble streets, streets that are simply honest and nothing 
 more, young streets as to whose morality the public has as yet 
 formed no opinion, and streets older than the oldest dowager. 
 Then there are deadly streets, respectable streets, streets that 
 are always clean, and streets that are invariably filthy ; artisan, 
 industrial, and commercial streets. The streets of Paris, in 
 short, possess human qualities, so that you cannot help form- 
 ing certain ideas of them on a first impression. There are 
 low streets where you would not care to linger, and streets in 
 which you would like to live. Some, like the Rue Montmartre, 
 for instance, turn a fair face on you at the first and end in a 
 fish's tail. The Rue de la Paix is a wide and imposing street, 
 but it arouses none of the nobly gracious thoughts which take 
 a susceptible nature at unawares in the Rue Royale, while 
 it certainly lacks the majesty which pervades the Place Ven- 
 dome. 
 
 If you walk through the He Saint-Louis the loneliness of the 
 spot, the dreary look of the houses and great empty mansions 
 is enough to account for the melancholy which settles on your 
 nerves. The He Saint-Louis, a corpse no longer tenanted by 
 farmers-general, is the Venice of Paris. The Place de la 
 Bourse is garrulous, bustling, common ; it is only beautiful by 
 (8)
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 9 
 
 moonlight; an epitomized Paris in broad day, by night a 
 dreamlike vision of ancient Greece. 
 
 Is not the Rue Traversiere Saint-Honore plainly a shameless 
 street, with its villainous little houses for mistresses, a couple 
 of windows in width, and vice, and crime, and misery on 
 every floor? And there are thoroughfares with a North aspect, 
 visited by the sun only three or four times in the year ; deadly 
 streets are they, where life is taken with impunity, and the 
 law looks on and never interferes. In olden days the Parlia- 
 ment would probably have summoned the lieutenant of police 
 to hear a little plain speaking, or at least they would have 
 passed a vote of censure on the street, just as on another occa- 
 sion they recorded their dissatisfaction with the wigs worn by 
 the Chapter of Beauvais. Yet, M. Benoiston de Chateauneuf 
 has shown conclusively that the mortality in certain streets is 
 twice as high as the normal death-rate ! And to sum up the 
 matter in a single example : what is the Rue Fromenteau but 
 a haunt of vice and murder? 
 
 These observations may be dark sayings for those who live 
 beyond the bounds of Paris ; but they will be apprehended at 
 once by those students, thinkers, poets, and men of pleasure, 
 who know the art of walking the streets of Paris, and reap a 
 harvest of delights borne in on the tides of life that ebb and 
 flow within her walls with every hour. For these, Paris is the 
 most fascinating of monsters ; here she is a pretty woman, there 
 a decrepit pauper ; some quarters are spick and span as the 
 coins of a new reign, and a nook here and there is elegant as 
 a woman of fashion. 
 
 A monster, indeed, is the great city, in every sense of the 
 word ! In the garrets you find, as it were, its brain full of 
 knowledge and genius; the second floor is a digestive appa- 
 ratus, and the stores below are unmistakable feet, whence all 
 the busy foot-traffic issues. 
 
 Oh! what a life of incessant activity the monster leads! 
 The final vibration of the last carriage returning from the ball
 
 30 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 has scarcely died away before Its arms begin to stir a little at 
 the barriers, and the City gives itself a gradual shake. All 
 the gates begin to yawn, turning on their hinges like the 
 membranes of some gigantic lobster invisibly controlled by 
 some thirty thousand men and women. Each one of these 
 thirty thousand must live in the alloted six square feet of space 
 which serves as kitchen, workshop, nursery, bedroom, and 
 garden ; each one is bound to see everything, while there is 
 scarce light enough to see anything. Imperceptibly the mon- 
 ster's joints creak, the stir of life spreads, the street finds a 
 tongue, and by noon it is alive everywhere, the chimneys 
 smoke, the monster feeds, and with a roar It stretches out its 
 myraid paws. 'Tis a wonderful sight ! And yet, oh Paris ! 
 who has not marveled at thy dark passages, thy fitful gleams 
 of light, thy deep, soundless blind alleys ? They who have 
 not heard thy murmurs between midnight and two o'clock in 
 the morning know nothing as yet of thy real poetry, of thy 
 fantastic, broad contrast. 
 
 There are a very few amateurs, amateurs are they that can 
 keep a steady head and take their Paris with gusto ; and these 
 know the physiognomy of the city so well that they know 
 "even her spots, her blemishes, and her warts." Others 
 may think of Paris as the monstrous marvel, as an astounding 
 assemblage of brains and machinery in motion, as the City 
 of a Hundred Thousand Romances, the head of the world. 
 But for these who know her, Paris wears a dull or a gay face, 
 she is ugly or fair, alive or dead ; for them she is a living 
 creature. Every room in a house is a lobe of the cellular 
 tissue of the great courtesan, whose heart, and brain, and 
 fantastic life they know to the uttermost. Therefore they are 
 her lovers. They look up at a street corner, knowing that 
 they shall see a clock face; they tell a friend with an empty 
 snuff-box to " take such and such a turning, and you will find 
 a tobacconist's store to the left, next-door to a confectioner 
 that has a pretty wife."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 11 
 
 For poets of this order, a walk through Paris is an expen- 
 sive luxury. How refuse to spend a few minutes in watching 
 the dramas, the accidents, the faces, the picturesque chance 
 effects which importune you in the streets of the restless Queen 
 of Cities that goes clad in placards, yet can boast not one 
 clean corner, so complacent is she to the vices of the French 
 nation. Who has not left home in the morning for the 
 uttermost ends of Paris, and recognized by dinner-time the 
 futility of his efforts to get away from the centre ? Such as 
 these will pardon these vagrant beginnings, which, after all, 
 may be summed up by one eminently profitable and novel 
 observation (so far as any observation can be novel in Paris 
 where there is nothing new, not even the statue set up yes- 
 terday, on which the street urchin has left his mark already;. 
 
 Well, then there are certain streets, unknown for the most 
 part by fashionable people, there are certain districts and 
 certain houses to which a woman of fashion cannot go, unless 
 she wishes that the most cruelly injurious constructions shall 
 be put upon her errand. If she is a wealthy woman with a 
 carriage of her own, and if she chooses to go on foot or dis- 
 guised through one of these slums, her reputation as an 
 honest woman is compromised. If, furthermore, it should 
 so happen that she is seen about nine o'clock in the evening, 
 the conjectures which an observer may permit himself are 
 like to have appalling consequences. And, finally, if the 
 woman is young and pretty : if she is seen to enter a house 
 in one of these neighborhoods ; if the house has a long, dark, 
 damp, and reeking passage entry; if, at the end of the pa-s- 
 age, a feeble, flickering lamp lights up the features of a 
 hideous crone with bony fingers then, to tell the truth in 
 the interests of young and pretty women, that woman is lost. 
 She is at the mercy of the first man of her acquaintance 
 who chances to meet her in these foul ways. 
 
 And there is a street in Paris where such an encounter may 
 end in a most dreadful and ghastly tragedy, a tragedy of
 
 12 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 blood, a tragedy in the modern vein. Unluckily, the con- 
 vincingness of the situation and the dramatic element in it 
 will be lost, like the modern drama, upon all save the very 
 few ; and a sad pity it is that the tale must be told to a public 
 that cannot fully appreciate the truth of the local color. Still, 
 who can flatter himself that he will ever be understood ? We 
 all die unappreciated. It is the lot of women and of men of 
 letters. 
 
 At half-past eight one February evening, thirteen years ago, 
 a young man chanced to turn the corner of the Rue Pagevin 
 into the Rue des Vieux-Augustins precisely at the point where 
 the Rue Soly enters it. Now, at that time there was not a 
 wall in the Rue Pagevin but echoed a foul word ; the Rue 
 Soly was one of the narrowest and least practicable thorough- 
 fares in Paris, not excepting the least frequented nooks in the 
 most deserted streets of the city ; and the young man came 
 there by one of those chances that do not come twice in a 
 lifetime. Arrived at this point, he was walking carelessly 
 along when he saw a woman a few paces ahead of him, and 
 fancied that he saw in her a vague resemblance to one of the 
 prettiest women in Paris, a beautiful and modest woman whom 
 he secretly and passionately loved ; loved, too, without hope. 
 She was married. In a moment his heart gave a bound. An 
 intolerable heat, kindled in his diaphragm, spread through 
 every vein. He felt a cold chill along his spine, a tingling 
 sensation on the surface of his face. 
 
 He was young, he was in love, he knew Paris. His per- 
 spicacity would not allow him to shut his eyes to ail the 
 vile possibilities of the situation a young, fair, and wealthy 
 woman of fashion stealing along the street with a guilty, fur- 
 tive step ! That She should be in that filthy neighborhood at 
 that hour of night ! 
 
 His love seems romantic, no doubt, and the more so because 
 he was an officer in the Guards. Of a man in an infantry
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 13 
 
 regiment the thing is not inconceivable ; but as a cavalry 
 officer high in the service, he belonged to a division of the 
 army that most desires rapid conquests. The cavalry are vain 
 of their uniform, but they are vainer still of their success with 
 women. Nevertheless, the officer's love was a genuine pas- 
 sion that will seem great to many a young heart. He loved 
 the woman because she was virtuous. Her virtues, her re- 
 served grace, the saintliness that awed him these were the 
 most precious treasures of his hidden passion. And she, in 
 truth, was worthy of a Platonic love such as you sometimes 
 find like a rare flower on the chronicler's page among the ruin 
 and bloodshed of the Middle Ages. She was worthy to be 
 the secret spring of all a young man's actions ; the source of 
 a love as high and pure as the blue heavens, a love without 
 hope, to which a man clings because it never disappoints him, 
 a love prodigal of uncontrolled delight, especially at an age 
 when hearts are hot and imaginations poignant, and a man's 
 eyes see very clearly. 
 
 There are strange, grotesque, inconceivable night effects to 
 be seen in Paris; you cannot think, unless you have amused 
 yourself with watching these, how fantastic a woman's shape 
 can grow in the dusk. Sometimes the creature whom you 
 follow by accident or design seems graceful and slender ; 
 sometimes a glimpse of a stocking, if it is very white, leads 
 you to think that the outlines beneath are dainty and fine ; 
 a figure, muffled up, it may be, in a shawl or a pelisse, de- 
 velops young luxuriant curves in the shadows ; and as a last 
 touch, the uncertain light from a store-window or a street 
 lamp lends the stranger a fleeting halo, an illusion which stirs 
 and kindles imagination to go beyond the truth. And then, 
 the senses are stirred, color and life are put into everything, the 
 woman is transfigured ; her outward form grows fairer ; there 
 are moments when she is a woman no longer, she is an evil 
 spirit, a will-of-the-wisp. drawing you farther and farther by 
 a glowing magnetism until you reach some decent dwelling,
 
 14 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 and the poor housewife, terrified by your menacing approach, 
 and quaking at the sound of a man's boots, promptly shuts 
 the door in your face without giving you so much as a glance. 
 
 Suddenly the flickering light from a shoemaker's window 
 fell across the woman in front ; it struck just across the hollow 
 of the back. Ah ! surely those curves belonged to Her only 
 among women ! Who else knew that secret of chaste move- 
 ment which all innocently brings the beauty of the most at- 
 tractive shape into relief. 
 
 It was the same shawl and velvet bonnet that she wore in 
 the morning. Not a speck on her gray stockings ; not a trace 
 of mud on her shoes. The shawl clung tightly about the out- 
 lines of her bust, vaguely moulding its exquisite contours ; 
 but the young man had seen those white shoulders in the ball- 
 room, and he knew what a wealth of beauty was hidden be- 
 neath the shawl. 
 
 An intelligent observer can guess by the way in which a 
 Parisienne wraps her shawl about her shoulders, by her man- 
 ner of lifting her.foot, on what mysterious errand she is bent. 
 There is*an indescribable tremor and lightness about her and 
 her movements ; she seems to weigh less, she walks on and on, 
 or rather she threads her way like a spinning star, flitting, 
 borne along by a thought, which the folds of her dress, the 
 flutter of her skirts, betray. 
 
 The young man quickened his pace, passed, and turned his 
 head to look at her Presto ! She had disappeared down 
 an entry, a wicket with a bell attached slammed and tinkled 
 after her. He turned back and caught sight of her as she 
 climbed the staircase at the end of the passage, not without 
 obsequious greetings on the part of an old portress below. It 
 was a crooked staircase, the lamplight fell full on the lowe* 
 steps, up which the lady sprang lightly and briskly, as an 
 impatient woman might do. 
 
 "Why impatient?" he asked himself, as he went back to 
 plant himself against the opposite wall. He gazed up, luck-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 15 
 
 less wight, watching every story as narrowly as if he were a 
 detective on the track of a conspirator. 
 
 It was a house like thousands of others in Paris, mean, com- 
 monplace, narrow, dingy, with three windows on each of the 
 four floors. The store and the entresol belonged to the shoe- 
 maker. The second floor blinds were closed. Whither had 
 the lady gone? He fancied that he heard the jingling of a 
 door bell on the third floor. And, in fact, a light began to 
 move in a room above, with two brightly illuminated windows, 
 and presently appeared in a third window, hitherto in dark- 
 ness, which seemed to belong to the parlor or dining-room. 
 In a moment the vague shadow of a woman's bonnet appeared 
 on the ceiling, the door was closed, the first room relegated 
 to darkness, and the two farther windows shone red as before. 
 Just then a voice cried : " Look out ! " and something struck 
 against the young man's shoulder. 
 
 " You don't seem to mind in the least what you are about," 
 said the gruff voice. It was a workman, carrying a long plank 
 on his shoulder. He went by. The man might have been 
 sent as a warning by Providence to ask the prying inquirer: 
 "What are you meddling for? Mind your own business, 
 and leave Parisiennes to their own little affairs." 
 
 The officer folded his arms ; and being out of sight of every 
 one, he allowed two tears of rage to roll down his cheeks. 
 The sight of these shadows moving across the windows was 
 painful to him ; he looked away up the Rue des Vieux-Augus- 
 tins, and saw a hackney-coach drawn up under a blind wall, at 
 a distance from any house-door or store-window. 
 
 Is it she? Or is it not? Life or death for a lover. And 
 the lover waited in suspense for an age of twenty minutes. 
 Then she came downstairs, and he knew past mistake that this 
 was the woman whom he loved in his secret soul. \Vt even 
 now he tried to doubt. The fair stranger went to the cab and 
 stepped into it. 
 
 " Tiie house is alwavs there," though: he ; " I can search
 
 16 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 it at any time ; " so he ran after the cab to make quite certain 
 of the lady. Any remaining doubt was soon removed. 
 
 The vehicle stopped before an artificial flower store in the 
 Rue de Richelieu, close to the Rue de Menars. The lady 
 alighted, entered the store, sent out the fare to the cabman, 
 and chose some marabouts. Feather plumes for that black 
 hair of hers, with her dark beauty ! She brought the feathers 
 close to her face to judge of the effect. The officer fancied he 
 could hear the store woman speaking. 
 
 " Nothing more becoming, madame, to a dark complexion ; 
 there is something rather too hard about the contours of a 
 brunette ; the marabouts impart just the fluffy touch which is 
 wanting. Her grace the Duchesse de Langeais says that the 
 feathers lend something vague and Ossianic, and a great dis- 
 tinction to the face." 
 
 " Well, send them to me at once." 
 
 With that the lady tripped away round the corner into the 
 Rue de Menars and entered her own house. The door closed 
 upon her, and the young lover, his hopes lost, and double mis- 
 fortune, his cherished beliefs lost too, went through Paris like 
 a drunken man, till before long he found himself at his own 
 door, with no very clear knowledge how he came there. He 
 flung himself into an easy-chair, rested his feet on the fire- 
 dogs, and sat, with his head in his hands, while his soaked 
 boots first dried and then scorched on the bars. It was a 
 dreadful hour for him ; he had come to one of those crises in 
 a man's life when character is modified ; and the course of 
 action of the best of men depends upon the first lucky or un- 
 lucky step that he chances to take; upon Providence or Fate, 
 whichever you choose. 
 
 He came of a good family, not that their nobility was of 
 very ancient date ; but there are so few old houses left in these 
 days that any young man comes of an old family. One of his 
 ancestors had purchased the post of councilor to the Parliament 
 of Paris, and in course of time became president. His sons,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 17 
 
 with a fine fortune apiece, had entered the King's service, 
 made good marriages, and arrived at Court. Then came the 
 Revolution and swept them all away. One of them, however, 
 an old and stubborn dowager, who had no mind to emigrate, 
 remained in Paris, was put in prison, and lay there in danger 
 of her life till the 9th Thermidor saved her, and finally she 
 recovered her property. Afterward, at an auspicious moment 
 in 1804, she sent for her grandson, Auguste de Maulincour, 
 sole surviving scion of the Carbonnons de Maulincour, and 
 in the characters of mother, noble, and self-willed dowager, 
 brought him up with treble care. 
 
 At a later day, after the Restoration, Auguste de Maulincour, 
 aged eighteen, entered the Maison Rouge, followed the Princes 
 to Ghent, received a commission in the Guards, and at three- 
 and-twenty was a major in a cavalry regiment a superb posi- 
 tion which he owed to his grandmother. And indeed, in 
 spite of her age, the old lady knew her way at Court re- 
 markably well. 
 
 This twofold biography, with some variations, is substan- 
 tially the history of every family of emigrants, when blessed 
 with debts and possessions, dowagers and tact. 
 
 Mme. la Baronne de Maulincour had a friend, the elderly 
 Vidame de Pamiers, a sometime commander of the Knights 
 of Malta. It was an eternal friendship of the kind that grows 
 out of other ties formed sixty years ago. a friendship which 
 nothing can destroy, because down in the depths of it lie 
 secrets of the hearts of man and woman. These, if one had 
 the time, would be well worth guessing ; but such secrets, con- 
 densed into a score of lines, lose their savor ; they should 
 furnish forth instead some four volumes that might prove as 
 interesting as " Le Doyen de Killerine " a work which 
 young men are wont to discuss and criticise and leave unread. 
 
 Auguste de Maulincour was connected, therefore, with the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain through his grandmother jnd the 
 vidame ; and with a name that dated two centuries back, he 
 2
 
 18 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 could assume the airs and opinions of others who traced their 
 descent from Clovis. Tall, pale, slender, and delicate-looking, 
 a man of honor, whose courage, moreover, was undoubted 
 (for he had fought duels without hesitation for the least thing 
 in life) he had never yet been on a field of battle, yet wore 
 the cross of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole. He 
 represented, as you see, one of the mistakes of the Restoration, 
 perhaps one of its more pardonable mistakes. 
 
 The young manhood of the Restoration period was unlike 
 the youth of any other epoch, in that it was placed between 
 memories of the Empire on the one hand, and of exile on the 
 other ; between the old traditions of the Court and the con- 
 scientious bourgeois system of training for appointments ; 
 between bigotry and fancy dress-balls ; between a Louis 
 XVIII., who saw nothing but the present moment, and a 
 Charles X.. who looked too far ahead. The young genera- 
 tion was always halting between two political creeds; blind 
 and yet clairvoyant, bound to accept the will of the King, 
 knowing the while that the Crown was entering on a mistaken 
 policy. The older men counted the younger as naught, and 
 jealously kept the reins of government in their enfeebled hands 
 at a time when the M6narchy might have been saved by their 
 withdrawal and the accession of that young France at whom 
 the old-fashioned doctrinaires and emigres of the Restoration 
 are still pleased to laugh. 
 
 Auguste de Maulincour was one victim of the ideas that 
 weighed upon the youth of those days. It was in this wise: 
 The Vidamc de Pamiers, even at the age of sixty-seven, was 
 still a very lively personage, who had both seen and lived a 
 great deal. He told a story well, he was a man of honor and 
 gallantry, but so far as women were concerned he held the 
 most detestable opinions. He fell in love, but he did not re- 
 spect women. Women's honor, 'Women's sentiments ? Fiddle- 
 de-dee ! folly and make-believe. In the company of women 
 he believed in them, did this ci-devant "monster;" he
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 19 
 
 brought out their merits, ht never contradicted a lady. But 
 among friends, when women were the topic, the vid.ime laid 
 it down as an axiom that the whole duty of a young man was 
 to deceive women and to carry on several intrigues at once ; 
 and that when a young man attempted to meddle with affairs 
 of State, he made a gross mistake. 
 
 It is sad to be obliged to sketch such a hackneyed character. 
 Where has he not appeared ? Is he not literally almost as 
 worn out as the Imperial Grenadier? But over M. de Maulin- 
 cour the vidame exercised an influence which must be re- 
 corded ; he was a moralist after his own fashion, and he used 
 to try to convert the young man to the doctrines of the great 
 age of gallantry. 
 
 As for the dowager, she was a tender, pious woman, placed 
 between her vidame and God ; a pattern of grace and sweet- 
 ness, but none the less endowed with a persistence which 
 never went beyond the bounds of good taste, and always 
 triumphed in the end. She had tried to preserve her grand- 
 son in all the fair illusions of life ; she had brought him up on 
 the best principles ; she had given him all her own delicacy 
 of feeling, and had made a diffident man of him, and to all 
 appearance an absolute fool. His boyish sensibility, un- 
 touched by contact with the world, had met with no rubs 
 without ; so modest, so keenly sensitive was it, that actions 
 and maxims to which the world attaches no importance 
 grieved him sorely. He felt ashamed of his sensitiveness, hid 
 it beneath a show of assurance, and suffered in silence, laugh- 
 ing in company at things which he reverenced in his secret 
 heart. And therefore he was mistaken in his choice ; for by 
 a common freak of Fate he, the man of mild melancholy, 
 who saw love in its spiritual aspects, must needs fall in love 
 with a woman who detested German sentimentalism. He be- 
 gan to distrust himself. He grew moodv, hugged himself on 
 
 P o - ' O o 
 
 his troubles, and made moan because he was not understood. 
 And then since we always desire a thing more vehemently
 
 20 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 because it is hard to win he continued to worship women 
 with the ingenuous tenderness and feline delicacy of which 
 they possess the secret ; perhaps, too, they prefer to keep the 
 monopoly of it. And, indeed, though women complain that 
 men love amiss, they have very little taste for the semi-femi- 
 nine nature in man. Their whole superiority consists in mak- 
 ing the man believe that he is their inferior in love ; for which 
 reason they are quite ready to discard a lover when he is ex- 
 perienced enough to rob them of the fears in which they 
 choose to deck themselves, to relieve them of the delicious 
 torments of feigned jealousy, the troubles of disappointed 
 hopes and vain suspense, and the whole train of dear feminine 
 miseries, in short. Women hold Grandisons in abhorrence. 
 What is more contrary to their nature than a tranquil, perfect 
 love ? They must have emotions. Bliss without storms for 
 them is not bliss at all. A soul great enough to bring the In- 
 finite into love is as uncommon among women as genius 
 among men. A great passion is as rare as a masterpiece. 
 Outside this love there lies nothing but arrangements and 
 passing excitations, contemptible, like all petty things. 
 
 In the midst of the secret disasters of his heart, while he 
 was seeking some one who should understand him (that quest, 
 by the way, is the lover's folly of our time), Auguste found a 
 perfect woman a woman with that indescribable touch of 
 sacredness and holiness which inspires such reverence that 
 love needs all the support of a long intimacy to declare itself. 
 He found her in a circle as far as possible from his own, in the 
 second sphere of that financial world in which great capital- 
 ists take the first place. 
 
 Then Auguste gave himself up wholly to the bliss of the 
 most moving and profound of passions ; a purely contempla- 
 tive love a love made up of uncounted repressed longings, 
 of shades of passion so vague, so deep, so fugitive, so vivid, 
 that it is hard to find a comparison for them ; they are like 
 sweet scents, or sunlight, or cloud shadows, like all things
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 21 
 
 that shine forth for a moment in the outer world to vanish, 
 revive, and die, and leave a long wake of emotion in the 
 heart. When a man is young enough to conceive melancholy 
 and far-off hopes, to see in woman something more than a 
 woman, can any greater happiness befall him than this of 
 loving so well that the mere contact of a white gloved hand, 
 the light touch of a woman's hair, the sound of a voice, the 
 chance of one look, fills him with a joy outpassing a fortunate 
 lover's ecstasy of possession? And for this reason, none but 
 slighted, shy, unattractive, unhappy men and women, un- 
 known lovers, know all that there is in the sound of the voice 
 of the one whom they love. It is because those fire-laden vibra- 
 tions of the air have their source and origin in the soul itself 
 that they bring hearts into communion with such violence, 
 such lucid thought transferrence. So little misleading are they 
 that a single modulation is often a revelation in itself. What 
 enchantment is poured forth upon a poet's heart by the 
 musical resonance of a low voice ! What freshness it spreads 
 through his soul, what visions it summons up ! Love is in 
 the voice before the eyes make confession. 
 
 Auguste, a poet after the manner of lovers for there are 
 poets who feel and poets who express, and the former are the 
 happier Auguste had known the sweetness of all those early 
 joys, so far-reaching, so abundant. SHE was the possessor of 
 such an entrancing voice as the most guileful of women might 
 covet, that she might deceive others at her pleasure ; hers were 
 those silver notes, low only to the ear, that peal aloud through 
 the heart, soothing the tumult and unrest that they stir. 
 
 And this was the woman who had gone at night to the Rue 
 Soly in the neighborhood of the Rue Pagevin ! He had seen 
 her stealing into a house of ill-fame ; and that most magnificent 
 of passions had been brought low. The vidame's reasoning 
 triumphed. 
 
 " If she is false to her husband, we will both avenge our- 
 selves," said Auguste. And there was still love left in that
 
 22 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 "if." The suspended judgment of Cartesian philosophy is a 
 homage always due to virtue. The clocks struck ten ; and 
 Auguste de Maulincour bethought himself that the woman he 
 loved must surely be going to a dance at a house that he 
 knew. He dressed, went thither, and made a furtive survey 
 of the rooms. Mme. de Nucingen, seeing him thus intent, 
 came to speak to him. 
 
 "You are looking for Madame Jules; she has not yet 
 come." 
 
 " Good-evening, dear," said a voice. 
 
 Mme. de Nucingen and Auguste both turned. There stood 
 Mme. Jules dressed in white, simple and noble, wearing those 
 very feathers which the baron had watched her choose in the 
 store. That voice of Love went to his heart. If he had only 
 known how to assert the slightest claim to be jealous of the 
 woman before him, he would have turned her to stone then 
 and there with the exclamation: "Rue Soly ! " But he, a 
 stranger, might have repeated those words a hundred times in 
 Mme. Jules' ear, and she in astonishment would merely ask 
 him what he meant. He stared at her with dazed eyes. 
 
 Ill-natured men who scoff at everything may, perhaps, find 
 it highly amusing to discover a woman's secret, to know that 
 her chastity is a lie, that there are strange thoughts in the 
 depths beneath the quiet surface, and an ugly tragedy behind 
 the pure forehead. But there are others, no doubt, who are 
 saddened at heart by it ; and many of the scoffers, when at 
 home and alone with themselves, curse the world, and despise 
 such a woman. This was how Auguste de Maulincour felt as 
 he confronted Mme. Jules. It was a strange position. He 
 and this woman exchanged a few words seven or eight times 
 in a season that was all ; yet he was charging her with stolen 
 pleasure of which she knew nothing, and pronouncing judg- 
 ment without telling her of the accusation. 
 
 Many a young man has done the same and gone home 
 broken-hearted because all is over between him and some
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 23 
 
 woman whom he once worshiped in his heart, and now scorns 
 in his inmost soul. Then follow soliloquies heard of none, 
 spoken to the walls of some lonely refuge ; storms raised and 
 quieted in the heart's depths, wonderful scenes of man's inner 
 life which still await their painter. 
 
 M. Jules Desmarets made the round of the rooms, while his 
 wife took a seat. But she seemed embarrassed in some way ; 
 and, as she chatted with her neighbor, she stole a glance now 
 and again at her husband. M. Jules Desmarets was the Baron 
 de Nucingen's stockbroker. And now for the history of the 
 husband and wife. 
 
 M. Desmarets, five years before his marriage, was a clerk in 
 a stockbroker's office ; he had nothing in the world but his 
 slender salary. But he was one of those men whom misfor- 
 tune teaches to know life in a very few lessons, men who strike 
 out their line and keep to it persistently as an insect ; like 
 other obstinate creatures he could sham death if anything 
 stopped him, and weary out the patience of opponents by the 
 perseverance of the woodlouse. Young as he was, he pos- 
 sessed all the republican virtues of the poor ; he was sober, he 
 never wasted his time, he set his face against pleasure. He 
 was waiting. Nature, bedde, had given him the immense 
 advantage of a prepossessing exterior. His calm, pure fore- 
 head, the outlines of his placid yet expressive features, the 
 simplicity of his manners, and everything about him, told of 
 a hard-working, uncomplaining existence, of the high personal 
 dignity which inspires awe in others, and of that quiet nobleness 
 of spirit which is equal to all situations. His modesty im- 
 pressed those who knew him with a certain respect. It was a 
 solitary life, however, that he led in the midst of Paris. 
 Society he saw only by glimpses during the few minutes spent 
 on holidays in his employer's drawing-room. 
 
 In him, as in most men who lead such a life, there were 
 astonishing depths of passion, inward forces too great to be 
 brought into play by small occasions. His narrow means
 
 24 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 compelled him to live like an ascetic, and he subdued his 
 fancies with hard work. After growing pale over figures, he 
 sought relaxation in a dogged effort to acquire the wider 
 knowledge so necessary to any man that would make his mark 
 in these days, whether in business, at the bar, in politics or 
 letters. The one reef in the careers of these finer natures is 
 their very honesty. They come across some penniless girl, 
 fall in love, and marry her, and afterward wear out their lives 
 in the struggle for existence, with want on the one hand, love 
 on the other. Housekeeping bills will extinguish the loftiest 
 ambition. Jules Desmarets went straight ahead upon that 
 reef. 
 
 One evening, at his employer's house, he met a young lady 
 of the rarest beauty. Love rapidly made such havoc as a 
 passion can make in a lonely and slighted heart, when an un- 
 happy creature's affections have been starved, and the fair 
 hours of youth consumed by continual work. So certain are 
 they to love in earnest, so swiftly does their whole being 
 centre itself upon the woman to whom they are attracted, 
 that when she is present they are conscious of exquisite sensa- 
 tions, in none of which she shares. This is the most flattering 
 form of egoism for the woman who can see, beneath the ap- 
 parent immobility of passion, the feeling stirred in depths so 
 remote that it is long before it reappears at the human surface. 
 Such unfortunates as these arc anchorites in the heart of Paris; 
 they know all the joys of anchorites ; sometimes, too, they 
 may yield to their temptations ; but it still more frequently 
 happens that they are thwarted, betrayed, and misinterpreted ; 
 and only very seldom are they permitted to gather the sweet 
 fruits of the love that seems to them like a power dropped 
 down from heaven. 
 
 - A smile from his wife, a mere modulation of her voice, was 
 enough to gives Jules Desmarets a conception of the infinite 
 of love. Happily the concentrated fire of passion within re- 
 vealed itself artlessly to the woman for whom it burned.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 25 
 
 And these two human creatures loved each other devoutly. 
 To sum up all in a few words, they took each other by the 
 hand without a blush, and went through the world together as 
 two children, brother and sister, might pass through a crowd 
 that makes way admiringly for them. 
 
 The young lady was in the odious position in which selfish- 
 ness places some children at their birth. She had no recog- 
 nized status; her name, Clemence, and her age were attested, 
 not by a certificate of birth, but by a declaration made before 
 a notary. As to her fortune, it was trifling. Jules Desmarets, 
 hearing these bad tidings, was the happiest of men. If 
 Cle'mence had belonged to some wealthy family, he would 
 have despaired ; but she was a poor love-child, the offspring of 
 a dark, illicit passion. They were married. This was the 
 beginning of a series of pieces of good fortune for Jules. 
 Everybody envied him his luck ; jealous tongues alleged that 
 he succeeded by sheer good fortune, and left his merits and 
 ability out of account. 
 
 Clemence's mother, nominally her godmother, bade Jules 
 purchase a stockbroker's connection a few days after the 
 wedding, promising to secure all the necessary capital. Such 
 connections were still to be bought at moderate prices. On 
 the great lady's recommendation, a wealthy capitalist made 
 proposals on the most favorable terms to Jules Desmarets 
 that evening in the stockbroker's own drawing-room, lent 
 him money enough to exploit his business, and by the next 
 day the fortunate clerk had bought his employer's connection. 
 
 In four years Jules Desmarets was one of the wealthiest 
 members of his fraternity. Important clients had been added 
 to the number of those left him by his predecessor. He 
 inspired unbounded confidence ; and from the manner in 
 which business came to him, it was impossible but that he 
 should recognize some occult influence due to his wife's mother, 
 or, as he believed, to the mysterious protection of Providence. 
 
 Three years after the marriage Clemence lost her godmother.
 
 26 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 By that time M. Jules, so called to distinguish him from his 
 elder brother, whom he had established in Paris as a notary, 
 was in receipt of an income of two hundred thousand livres. 
 There was not such another happy couple in Paris. A five 
 years' course of such unwonted love had been troubled but 
 once by a slander, for which M. Jules took a single vengeance. 
 One of his old associates said that M. Jules owed his success 
 to his wife, and that influence in high places had been dearly 
 bought. The inventor of the slander was killed in the duel 
 that ensued. A passionate love so deeply rooted that it stood 
 the test of marriage was much admired in society, though 
 some women were displeased by it. It was pretty to see them 
 together : they were respected, and made much of on all 
 sides. M. and Mme. Jules were really popular, perhaps 
 because there is no pleasanter sight than happy love ; but they 
 never stayed long in crowded rooms, and escaped to their 
 nest as soon as they could, like two strayed doves. 
 
 The nest, however, was a fine large house in the Rue de 
 Menars, in which artistic feeling tempered the luxury which 
 the city man is always supposed to display. Here, also, M. 
 and Mme. Jules entertained splendidly. Social duties were 
 somewhat irksome to them ; but, nevertheless, Jules Desmarets 
 submitted to such exactions, knowing that sooner or later a 
 family will need acquaintances. He and his wife lived like 
 plants in a hothouse in a stormy world. With very natural 
 delicacy, Jules carefully kept the slander from his wife's 
 knowledge as well as the death of the man that had almost 
 troubled their felicity. 
 
 Mme. Jules, with her artistic temper and refinement, had 
 inclinations toward luxury. In spite of the terrible lesson of 
 the duel, there were incautious women to hint in whispers that 
 Mme. Jules must often be pinched for money. Her husband 
 allowed her twenty thousand francs for her dress and pocket- 
 money, but this could not possibly be enough, they said, for 
 her expenses. And, indeed, she was often more daintly dressed
 
 7Y/A THIRTEEN. 27 
 
 in her own home than in other people's houses. She only 
 cared to adorn herself for her husband's eyes, trying in this way 
 to prove to him that for her he was all the world. This was love 
 indeed, pure love, and more than this, it was happy as clandes- 
 tine love sanctioned by the world can be. M. Jules was 
 still his wife's lover, and more in love every day. Every- 
 thing in his wife, even her caprices, made him happy. When 
 she had no new fancy to gratify, he felt as much disturbed as 
 if this had been a symptom 'of bad health. 
 
 It was against this passion that Auguste de Maulincour, for 
 his misfortune, had dashed himself. He loved Madame (Jlem- 
 ence Jules to distraction. And yet even with a supreme 
 passion in his heart he was not ridiculous, and he lived the 
 regular garrison life, yet even with a glass of champagne in 
 his hand he wore an abstracted air. His was the quiet scorn 
 of existence, the clouded countenance worn alike on various 
 pretexts by jaded spirits, by men but little satisfied with the 
 hollowness of their lives, and by the victims of pulmonary 
 disease or heart troubles. A hopeless love or a distaste for 
 existence constitutes a sort of social position nowadays. 
 
 To take a queen's heart by storm were perhaps a more hope- 
 ful enterprise than a madly conceived passion for a woman 
 happily married. Auguste de Maulincour had sufficient ex- 
 cuse for his gravity and dejection. A queen has always the 
 vanity of her power ; her height above her lover places her 
 at a disadvantage ; but a well-principled bourgeoise, like a 
 hedgehog or an oyster, is encompassed about with awkward 
 defenses. 
 
 At this particular moment Auguste stood near his unde- 
 clared lady. She. certainly, was incapable of carrying on a 
 double intrigue. There sat Mme. Jules in childlike com- 
 posure, the least guileful of women, gentle, full of queenly 
 serenity. What depths can there be in human nature? The 
 baron, before addressing her, kept his eyes on husband and 
 wife in turn. What reflections did he not make ! In a minute's
 
 28 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 space he recomposed a second version of Young's " Night 
 Thoughts." And yet the rooms were filled with dance 
 music, and the light of hundreds of wax-tapers streamed down 
 upon them. It was a banker's ball, one of those insolent 
 fetes by which the world of dull gold attempted to rival that 
 other world of gilded rank and ormolu, the world where the 
 high-born Faubourg Saint-Germain was laughing yet, all un- 
 conscious that a day was approaching when capitalists would 
 invade the Luxembourg and seat a king on the throne. Con- 
 spiracy used to dance in those days, giving as little thought to 
 future bankruptcies of Power as to failures ahead in the finan- 
 cial world. M. le Baron de Nucingen's gilded salons wore 
 that look of animation which a fete in Paris is wont to wear ; 
 there is gayety, at any rate, on the surface. The wit of the 
 cleverer men infects the fools, while the beaming expression 
 characteristic of the latter spreads over the countenances of 
 their superiors in intellect ; and the whole room is brightened 
 by the exchange. But gayety in Paris is always a little like a 
 display of'fireworks ; pleasure, coquetry, and wit all coruscate, 
 and then die out like spent rockets. To-morrow morning, 
 wit, coquetry, and pleasure are put off and forgotten. 
 
 " Heigho ! " thought Auguste, as he came to a conclusion, 
 "are women really after all as the vidame sees them? Cer- 
 tain it is -that of all the women dancing here to-night, not one 
 seems so irreproachable as Madame Jules. And Madame Jules 
 goes to the Rue Soly ! " 
 
 The Rue Soly was like a disease, the mere word made his 
 heart contract. 
 
 " Do you never dance, madame ? " he began. 
 
 " This is the third time that you have asked me that ques- 
 tion this winter," she answered, smiling. 
 
 "But perhaps you have never given me an answer." 
 
 "That is true." 
 
 " I knew quite well that you were false, like all women 
 
 Mme. Jules laughed again.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 29 
 
 " Listen to me, monsieur. If I told you my real reason for 
 not dancing, it would seem ridiculous to you. There is no 
 insincerity, I think, in declining to give private reasons at 
 which people usually laugh." 
 
 "Any confidence, madame, implies a degree of friendship 
 of which I, no doubt, am unworthy. But it is impossible that 
 you should have any but noble secrets, and can you think me 
 capable of irreverent jesting?" 
 
 "Yes," she said. "You, like the rest of men, laugh at 
 our purest feelings and misconstrue them. Beside, I have no 
 secrets. I have a right to love my husband before all the 
 world ; I am proud of it, I tell you ; and if you laugh at me 
 when I say that I never dance with any one else, I shall have 
 the worst opinion of your heart." 
 
 " Have you never danced with any one but your husband 
 since your marriage?" 
 
 " No, monsieur. I have leaned on no other arm, no one 
 else has come very close to me." 
 
 11 Has not your doctor so much as felt your pulse?" 
 
 "Ah, well, now you are laughing." 
 
 " No, madame, I admire you because I can understand. 
 But you suffer others to hear your voice, to see you, to 
 In short, you permit our eyes to rest admiringly on you 
 
 "Ah, these things trouble me," she broke in. " If it were 
 possible for husband and wife to live like lover and mistress, 
 I would have it so ; for in that case " 
 
 " In that case, how came you to be out, on foot and dis- 
 guised, a few hours ago, in the Rue Soly ? " 
 
 " Where is the Rue Soly?" asked she, not a trace of emo- 
 tion in her clear voice, not the faintest quiver in her features. 
 She did not redden, she was quite composed. 
 
 '' What ! You did not go up the stairs to the third floor in 
 a house at the corner of the Rue des Vieux-Augustins and the 
 Rue Soly? You had not a cab waiting for you ten paces 
 away? and you did not return to a store in the Rue de Rich-
 
 30 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 elieu, where you chose the feathers in your hair at this mo- 
 ment?" 
 
 "I did not leave my house this evening." She told the 
 lie with an imperturbable laughing face ; she fanned herself as 
 she spoke ; but any one who could have laid a hand on her 
 girdle at the back, might perhaps have felt that it was damp. 
 Auguste bethought himself of the vidame's teaching. 
 
 "Then it was some one extraordinarily like you," he re- 
 joined with an air of .belief. 
 
 " Sir," said she, " if you are capable of following a woman 
 about to detect her secrets, you will permit me to tell you that 
 such a thing is wrong, very wrong, and I do you the honor 
 of declining to believe it of you." 
 
 The baron turned away, took up his position before the 
 hearth, and seemed thoughtful. He bent his head, but his 
 eyes were fixed stealthily upon Mme. Jules. She had forgotten 
 the mirrors on the walls, and glanced toward him two or three 
 times with an evident dread in her eyes. Then she beckoned 
 to her husband, laid a hand upon his arm, and rose to go 
 through the rooms. As she passed M. de Maulincour, who 
 was talking with a friend, he said aloud, as if in answer to a 
 question 
 
 " A woman that certainly will not sleep quietly to- 
 night " 
 
 Mme. Jules stopped, flung him a crushing, disdainful glance, 
 and walked away, all unaware that one more such glance, if 
 her husband chanced to see it, would imperil the happiness 
 and the lives of two men. 
 
 Auguste, consumed with rage smouldering in the depths of 
 his squl, soon afterward left the room, vowing to get to the 
 bottom of this intrigue. He looked around for Mme. Jules 
 before he went, but she had disappeared. 
 
 Here were the elements of a tragedy suddenly put into a 
 young head, an eminently romantic head, as is generally the 
 case with those who have not realized their dreamed-of love
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 31 
 
 to the full. He adored Mme. Jules in a hew aspect ; he loved 
 her with the fury of jealousy, with the agoni/ed frenzy of de- 
 spair. The woman was false to her husband ; she had come 
 down to the ordinary level. Auguste might give himself up 
 to all the felicity of success, imagination opened out for him 
 the vast field of the transports of possession. In short, if he 
 had lost an angel, ho had found the most tantalizing of devils. 
 He lay down to build castles in the air, and to justify Mine. 
 Jules. Some errand of charity had brought her there, he told 
 himself, but he did not believe it. He made up his mind to 
 devote himself entirely to the investigation of the causes and 
 motives involved in this mysteriously hidden knot. It was a 
 romance to read ; or better, it was a drama to act, and he was 
 cast for a part in it. 
 
 It is a very fine thing to play the detective for one's own 
 ends and for passion's sake. Is it not an honest man's chance 
 of enjoying the amusements of the thief? Still, you must be 
 prepared to boil with helpless rage, to growl with impatience, 
 to stand in mud till your feet are frozen, to shiver and burn 
 and choke down false hopes. You must follow up any indi- 
 cation to an end unknown ; and miss your chance, storm, 
 improvise lamentations and dithyrambs for your own benefit, 
 and utter insensate exclamations before some harmless passer- 
 by, who stares back at you in amazement. You take to your 
 heels and overturn good souls with their apple-baskets, you 
 wait and hang about under a window, you make guesses by 
 the running hundred. Still it is sport, and Parisian sport ; 
 sport with all its accessories save dogs, and guns, and tally-ho. 
 Nothing, except some moments in the gambler's life, can 
 compare with it. A man's heart must needs be swelling with 
 love and revenge before he will lie in ambush ready to spring 
 like a tiger on his prey : before he can find enjoyment in 
 watching all that goes on in the quarter ; for interest of many 
 kinds abounds in Paris without the added pleasure of stalking 
 srame. How should one soul suffice a man for all this? What
 
 32 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 is it but a life made up of a thousand passions, a thousand 
 feelings, and thoughts? 
 
 Auguste de Maulincour flung himself heart and soul into 
 this feverish life, because he felt all its troubles and joys. He 
 went about Paris in disguise ; he watched every corner of the 
 Rue Pagevin and the Rue des Vieux-Augustins. He ran like 
 a lamplighter from the Rue de Menars to the Rue Soly, and 
 back again from the Rue Soly to the Rue de Menars, all 
 unconscious of the punishment or the reward in store for so 
 many pains, such measures, such shifts ! And even so, he had 
 not yet reached the degree of impatience which gnaws the 
 vitals and brings the sweat to a man's brow ; he hung about 
 in hope. It occurred to him that Mme. Jules would scarcely 
 risk another visit for some few days after detection. So he 
 devoted those first few days to an initiation into the mysteries 
 of the street. Being but a novice in the craft, he did not 
 dare to go to the house itself and question the janitor and the 
 shoemaker ; but he had hopes of securing a post of observation 
 in rooms exactly opposite those inscrutable apartments. He 
 made a careful survey of the ground ; he was trying to recon- 
 cile caution with impatience, his great love, and the inscruta- 
 ble secret. 
 
 By the beginning of March he was in the midst of his pre- 
 parations for making a great decisive move, when official 
 duties summoned him from his chessboard one afternoon about 
 four o'clock, after an assiduous course of sentry-duty, for 
 which he was not a whit the wiser. In the Rue Coquilliere 
 he was caught by one of the heavy showers which swell the 
 stream in the gutters in a moment, while every drop falling 
 into the roadside puddles raises a bell-shaped splash. A foot- 
 passenger in such a predicament is driven to take refuge in a 
 store or cafe if he can afford to pay for shelter ; or, at urgent 
 need, to hurry into some entry, the asylum of the poor and 
 shabbily dressed. How is it that as yet no French painter 
 has tried to give us that characteristic group, a crowd of Par-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 33 
 
 isians weather-bound under an archway ? Where will you find 
 better material fora picture? 
 
 To begin with, is there not the pensive or philosophical 
 pedestrian who finds a pleasure in watching the slantwise 
 streaks of rain in the air against the gray background of sky a 
 fine chased work something like the whimsical shapes taken by 
 spun glass? Or he looks up at the whirlpools of white water, 
 blown by the wind like a luminous dust over the house-roofs, 
 or at the fitful discharges of the wet, foaming gutter-pipes. 
 There are, in fact, a thousand nothings to wonder at, and the 
 idlers are studying them with keen relish, although the owner 
 of the premises treats them to occasional thumps from the 
 broom-handle while pretending to be sweeping out the gate- 
 way. 
 
 There is the chatty person who grumbles and talks with the 
 porter's wife, while she rests on her broom as a grenadier 
 leans on his gun ; there is the poverty-stricken individual 
 glued fantastically to the wall he has nothing to dread from 
 such contact; for his rags, they are already so well acquainted 
 with the street ; there is the man of education who studies, 
 spells out, or even reads the advertisements, and never gets 
 to the end of them ; there is the humorous person who laughs 
 at the mud-bedraggled women, and makes eyes at the people 
 in the windows opposite ; there is the mute refugee that scans 
 every casement on every floor, and the working man or woman 
 with a mallet or a bundle, as the case may be, translating the 
 shower into probable losses or gains. Then there is the 
 amiable man, who bounces in like a bombshell with an "Oh! 
 what weather, gentlemen ! " and raises his h:it to the com- 
 pany; and, finally, there is your true Parisian bourgeois, a 
 weatherwise citizen who never comes out without his umbrella; 
 he knew beforehand that it was going to rain, but he came 
 out in spite of his wife's advice, and now he is sitting in the 
 porter's chair. 
 
 Each member of this chance assembled group watches the 
 3
 
 34 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 sky in his own characteristic fashion, and then skips away for 
 fear of splashing his boots, or goes because he is in a hurry 
 and sees other citizens walking past in spite of wind and 
 weather, or because the courtyard is damp and like to give 
 you your death of cold the selvedge, as the saying goes, 
 being worse than the cloth. Every one has his own reasons 
 for going, until no one is left but the prudent pedestrian, who 
 waits to see a few blue chinks among the clouds before he 
 goes on his way. 
 
 M. de Maulincour, therefore, took refuge with a tribe of 
 foot-passengers under the porch of an old-fashioned house 
 with a courtyard not unlike a gigantic chimney-shaft. There 
 were so many stories rising to a height on all sides, and the 
 four plastered walls, covered with greenish stains and saltpetre 
 ooze, were traversed by such a multitude of gutters and spouts, 
 that they would have put you in mind of the cascades of St. 
 Cloud. From every direction came the sound of falling 
 water ; it foamed, splashed, and gurgled ; it gushed forth in 
 streams, or black, or white, or blue, or green ; it hissed and 
 gathered volume under the broom wielded by the janitor's 
 wife, a toothless crone of great experience in storms, who 
 seemed to bless the waters as she swept down a host of odds and 
 ends into the street. A curious inventory of the rubbish would 
 have told you a good deal about the lives and habits of the 
 lodgers on every floor. There were tea-leaves, cuttings of 
 chintz, discolored and spoilt petals of artificial flowers, vege- 
 table refuse, paper, and scraps of metal. Every stroke of the 
 old woman's broom laid bare the heart of the gutter, that 
 black channel paved with chessboard squares, on which every 
 janitor wages desperate war. The luckless lover gazed in- 
 tently at this picture, one of the many thousands which bust- 
 ling Paris composes every day ; but he saw it all with unseeing 
 eyes, until he looked up and found himself face to face with a 
 man that had just come in. 
 
 This man, was, at any rate to all appearance, a beggar.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 3d 
 
 Not a Parisian beggar, that human creature for which human 
 speech has found no name as yet ; but a novel type, a beggar 
 cast in some different mould, and apart from .ill the associa- 
 tions called up by that word. The stranger was not by any 
 means remarkable for that peculiarly Parisian character, which 
 frequently startles us in those unfortunates whom Charlct drew, 
 and often enough with a rare felicity ; the Paris beggar with 
 the coarse face plastered with mud, the red bulbous nose, the 
 toothless but menacing mouth, the eyes lighted up by a pro- 
 found intelligence which seems out of place a servile terrific 
 figure. Some of the impudent vagabonds have mottled, 
 chapped, and veined countenances, rugged foreheads, and 
 thin, dirty locks that put you in mind of a worn-out wig lying 
 in the gutter. Jolly in their degradation and degraded amid 
 their jollity, debauchery has set its unmistakable mark on 
 them, they hurl their silence at you like a reproach, their atti- 
 tude expresses appalling thoughts. They are ruthless, are 
 these dwellers between beggary and crime ; they circle at a 
 safe distance round the gallows, steering clear of the law in the 
 midst of vice, and vicious within the bounds of law. While 
 they often provoke a smile, they set you thinking. 
 
 One, for instance, represents stunted civilization ; he com- 
 prehends it all, thieves' honor, patriotism, and manhood, with 
 the perverse ingenuity of the common criminal and the sub- 
 tlety of kid-gloved rascality. Another is resigned to his lot ; 
 he is pastmaster in mimicry, but a dull creature. None of 
 them are exempt from passing fancies for work and thrift ; 
 but the social machinery thrusts them down into their filth, 
 without caring to discover whether there may not be poets, 
 or great men, or brave men, or a whole wonderful organiza- 
 tion among the beggars in the streets, those gypsies of Paris. 
 Like all masses of men who have suffered, the beggar tribes 
 are supremely good and superlatively wicked ; they are ac- 
 customed to endure nameless ills, and a fatal power keeps 
 them on a level with the mud of the streets. And every one
 
 36 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 of them has a dream, a hope, a happiness of his own, which 
 takes the shape of gambling, or the lottery, or drink. 
 
 There was nothing of this strange life about the man who 
 was propping himself, very much at his ease, against the wall 
 opposite M. de Maulincour ; he looked like a fancy portrait 
 sketched by an ingenious artist on the back of some canvas 
 returned to the studio. 
 
 He was lank and lean ; his leaden-hued visage revealed 
 glacial depths of thought ; his ironical bearing, and a dark 
 look, which plainly conveyed his claim to treat every man as his 
 equal, dried up any feeling of compassion in the hearts of the 
 curious. His complexion was a dingy white ; his wrinkled, 
 hairless head bore a vague resemblance to a block of granite. 
 A few grizzled, lank locks on either side of his face straggled 
 over the collar of a filthy overcoat buttoned up to the chin. 
 There was something of a Voltaire about him, something, too, 
 of a Don Quixote ; melancholy, scornful, sarcastic, full of 
 philosophical ideas, but half insane. Apparently he wore no 
 shirt. His beard was long. His shabby black cravat was so 
 slit and worn that it left his neck on exhibition, and a pro- 
 tuberant, deeply furrowed throat, on which the thick veins 
 stood out like cords. There were wide, dark bruised circles 
 about his eyes. He must have been at least sixty years old. 
 His hands were white and clean. His shoes were full of holes, 
 and trodden down at the heels. A pair of much-mended blue 
 trousers, covered with a kind of pale fluff, added to the squalor 
 of his appearance. 
 
 Perhaps the man's wet clothes exhaled a nauseous stench ; 
 perhaps at any time he had about him that odor of poverty 
 peculiar to Paris slums for slums, like offices, vestries, and 
 hospitals, have a special smell, and a stale, rancid, fetid, un- 
 imaginable reek it is. At any rate, the man's neighbors 
 edged away and left him alone. He glanced round at them, and 
 then at the officer; it was an unmoved, expressionless look; 
 the look for which M. de Talleyrand was so famous, a survey
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 37 
 
 made by lack-lustre eyes with no warmth in them. Such a 
 look is an inscrutable veil beneath which a strong mind can 
 hide deep feeling, and the most accurate calculations as to 
 men, affairs, and events. Not a wrinkle deepened in his coun- 
 tenance. Mouth and forehead were alike impassive, but his 
 eyes fell, and there was something noble, almost tragic, in 
 their slow movement. A whole drama lay in that droop of the 
 withered eyelids. 
 
 The sight of this stoical face started M. de Maulincour upon 
 those musings that begin with some commonplace question 
 and wander off into a whole world of ideas before they end. 
 The storm was over and gone. M. de Maulincour saw no 
 more of the man than the skirts of his overcoat trailing on the 
 curb-stone ; but as he turned to go he saw that a letter had 
 just dropped at his feet, and guessed that it belonged to the 
 stranger, for he had noticed that he put a bandana hand- 
 kerchief back into his pocket. M. de Maulincour picked up 
 the letter to return it to its owner, and unthinkingly read the 
 address 
 
 MOSIEUR FERRAGUSSE, 
 
 Rue des Grands-Augustins, at the corner of the 
 Rue Soly. 
 
 PARIS. 
 To MOSIEUR. 
 
 There was no postmark on the letter, and at sight of the 
 address M. de Maulincour hesitated to return it ; for there are 
 few passions which will not turn base in the long length. 
 Some presentiment of the opportuneness of the treasure-trove 
 crossed the baron's mind. He would keep the letter, and so 
 acquire a right to enter the mysterious house, never doubting 
 but that the man lived therein. Even now a suspicion, vague 
 as the beginning of daylight, connected the. stranger with 
 Mme. Jules. Jealous lovers will suppose anything; and it is 
 by this very process of supposing everything and selecting the
 
 38 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 more probable conjectures that examining magistrates, spies, 
 lovers, and observers get at the truth which they have an in- 
 terest in discovering. 
 
 " Does the letter belong to him? Is it from Mme. Jules?" 
 His restless imagination flung a host of questions to him at 
 once, but at the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it 
 follows word for word in the glory of its artless phrases; it 
 was impossible to add anything to it, and short of omitting 
 the letter itself, nothing could be taken away. It has been 
 necessary, however, to revise the orthography and the punc- 
 tuation ; for in the original there are neither commas nor 
 stops, nor so much as a note of exclamation, a fact that strikes 
 at the root of the system by which modern authors endeavor 
 to render the effect of the great disasters of every kind of 
 passion : 
 
 " HENRY " (so it ran), " of all the sacrifices that I have had 
 to make for your sake, this is the hardest, that I mayn't give 
 you news of myself. There is a voice that I must obey, 
 which tells me I ought to let you know all the wrong you've 
 done me. I know beforehand that you are that hardened by 
 vice that you will not stoop to pity me. Your heart must be 
 deaf to all feeling ; is it not deaf to the cry of nature ? Not 
 that it matters much. I am bound to let you know the 
 degree to which you are to blame, and the horror of the 
 position in which you have put me. You knew how I suf- 
 fered for my first fall, Henry, yet you could bring me to the 
 same pass again, and leave me in my pain and despair. Yes, 
 I own I used to think you loved and respected me, and that 
 helped me to bear up. And now what is left to me ? I have 
 lost all that I cared most about, all that I lived for, parents, 
 friends, and relations, and character, and all through you. I 
 have given up everything for you, and now I have nothing 
 before me but shame and disgrace and, I don't blush to say 
 it, want. It only needed your scorn and hatred to make my
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 39 
 
 misery complete ; and now I have that as well, I shall have 
 courage to carry out my plans. I have made up my mind 
 it's for the credit of my family I shall put an end to my 
 troubles. You must not think hardly of the thing that I am 
 going to do, Henry. It is wicked, I know, but I can't help 
 myself. No help, no money, no sweetheart to comfort me 
 can I live? No, I can't. What must be, must. So in two 
 days, Henry, two days from now, your Ida will not be worthy 
 of your respect ; but take back the solemn promise I made 
 you, so as I may have an easy conscience, for I shall not be 
 unworthy of your regard. Oh, Henry, my friend, for I 
 shall never change to you, promise to forgive me for the life 
 I'm going to lead. It is love that gives me courage, and it 
 is love that will keep me right. My heart will be so full of 
 your image that I shall still be true to you. I pray heaven 
 on my bended knees not to punish you for all the wrong you 
 have done, for I feel that there is only one thing wanting 
 among my troubles, and that is the pain of knowing that you 
 are unhappy. In spite of my plight, I will not take any help 
 from you. If you had cared about me, I might have taken 
 anything as coming from friendship ; but my soul rises up 
 against a kindness as comes from pity, and I should demean 
 myself more by taking it than him that offered it. I have 
 one favor to ask. I don't know how long I shall have to 
 stop with Mrre. Meynardie, but be generous enough to keep 
 out of my sight there. Your last two visits hurt me so that it 
 was a long time before I got over it ; but I don't mean to go 
 into any particulars of your behavior in that respect. You 
 hate me you said so ; the words are written on my heart, 
 and freeze it with cold. Alas ! just when I want all my cour- 
 age, my wits desert me. Henry dear, before I put this bar 
 between us, let me know for the last time that you respect me 
 still ; write me, send me an answer, say that you respect me 
 if you don't love me any more. I shall always be able to 
 look you in the face, but I don't ask for a sight of you ; I am
 
 40 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 so weak, and I love you so, that I don't know what I might 
 do. But, for pity's sake, write me a line at once ; it will give 
 me courage to bear my misery. Farewell, you have brought 
 all my troubles upon me, but you are the one friend that my 
 heart has chosen, and will never forget. IDA." 
 
 This young girl's life, her disappointed love, her ill-starred 
 joys, her grief, her dreadful resignation to her lot, the humble 
 poem summed up in so few words, produced a moment's effect 
 upon M. de Maulincour. He asked himself, as he read the 
 obscure but essentially Parisian tragedy written upon the soiled 
 sheet, whether this Ida might not be connected in some way 
 with Mme. Jules ; whether the assignation that he chanced to 
 witness that evening was not some charitable effort on her 
 part. Could that aged, poverty-stricken man be Ida's be- 
 trayer ? The thing bordered on the marvelous. Amusing 
 himself in a maze of involved and incompatible ideas, the 
 baron reached the neighborhood of the Rue Pagevin just in 
 time to see a hack stop at the end of the Rue des Vieux- 
 Augustins nearest the Rue Montmartre. Every driver on the 
 stand had something to say to the new arrival. 
 
 " Can she be in it ?" he thought. 
 
 His heart beat with hot, feverish throbs. He pushed open 
 the wicket with the tinkling bell, but he lowered his head as 
 he entered ; he felt ashamed of himself, a voice in his inmost 
 soul cried : 
 
 " Why meddle in this mystery?" 
 
 At the top of a short flight of steps he confronted the old 
 woman. 
 
 " Monsieur Ferragus? " 
 
 "Don't know the name " 
 
 " What ! Doesn't Monsieur Ferragus live here?" 
 
 " No name of the sort in the house." 
 
 " But my good woman " 
 
 " I'm not a 'good woman,' sir; I am the portress."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 41 
 
 " But, madame, I have a letter here for Monsieur Ferra- 
 gus." 
 
 " Oh ! if you have a letter, sir," said she, with a change of 
 tone, " that is quite another thing. Will you just let me see 
 it that letter? " 
 
 Auguste produced the folded sheet. The old woman shook 
 her head dubiously over it, hesitated, and seemed on the 
 point of leaving her lodge to acquaint the mysterious Ferra- 
 gus with this unexpected incident. At last she said : " Very 
 well, go upstairs, sir. You ought to know your way up 
 
 Without staying to answer a remark winch the cunning 
 crone possibly meant as a trap, the young officer bounded up 
 the stairs and rang loudly at the third-floor door. His lover's 
 instinct told him : "She is here." 
 
 The stranger of the archway, the "orther" of Ida's 
 troubles, answered the door himself, and showed a clean 
 countenance, a flowered gown, a pair of white flannel trousers, 
 and a neat pair of carpet-slippers. Mme. Jules' face appeared 
 behind him in the doorway of the inner room ; she grew 
 white, and dropped into a chair. 
 
 "What is the matter, madame?" exclaimed Auguste, as 
 he sprang toward her. 
 
 But Ferragus stretched out an arm and stopped the young 
 man short with such a well-delivered blow that Auguste 
 reeled as if an iron bar had struck him on the chest. 
 
 "Stand back, sir! What do you want with us? You 
 have been prowling about the quarter these five or six days. 
 Perhaps you are a spy ? ' ' 
 
 " Are you Monsieur Ferragus? " retorted the baron. 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "At any rate, it is my duty to return this paper which you 
 dropped under an archway where we both took shelter from 
 the rain." 
 
 As he spoke and held out the letter, he glanced round the 
 room in spite of himself. Ferragus' room was well but
 
 42 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 plainly furnished. There was a fire in the grate. A table 
 was set, more sumptuously than the man's apparent position 
 and the low rent of the house seemed to warrant. And lastly, 
 he caught a glimpse of a heap of gold coins on a console just 
 inside the next room, and heard a sound from thence which 
 could only be a woman's sobbing. 
 
 "The letter is mine, thank you," said the stranger, turning 
 round in a way intended to convey the hint that the baron 
 had better go, and that at once. 
 
 Too inquisitive to notice that he himself was being sub- 
 mitted to a thorough scrutiny, Auguste did not see the semi- 
 magnetic glances, the devouring gaze which the stranger 
 turned upon him. If he had met those basilisk eyes, he 
 would have seen his danger, but he was too violently in love 
 to think of himself. He raised his hat, went downstairs, and 
 back to his own home. What could a meeting of three such 
 persons as Ida, Ferragus, and Mme. Jules mean ? He might 
 as well have taken up a Chinese puzzle, and tried to fit the 
 odd-shaped bits of wood together without a clue. 
 
 But Mme. Jules had seen him ; Mme. Jules went to the 
 house ; Mme. Jules had lied to him. Next day he would call 
 upon her ; she would not dare to refuse to see him ; he was 
 now her accomplice ; he was hand and foot in this shady 
 intrigue. Already he began to play the sultan, and thought 
 how he would summon Mme. Jules to deliver up all her secrets. 
 
 Paris was afflicted in those days with a rage for building. 
 If Paris is a monster, it is assuredly of all monsters the most 
 subject to sudden rage. The city takes up with a thousand 
 whimsies. Sometimes Paris begins to build like some great 
 lord with a passion for bricks and mortar ; then the trowel is 
 dropped in an attack of military fever, every one turns out in 
 a National Guard's uniform, and goes through the drill and 
 smokes cigars, but the fit does not last ; martial exercises are 
 suddenly abandoned, and the cigar is thrown away. Then 
 Paris begins to feel low, becomes insolvent, sells its effects in
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 43 
 
 the Place du Chatelet, and files its petition ; but in a few 
 days all is straight again, and the city puts on festival array 
 and dances. One day the city fills hands and mouth with 
 barley-sugar, yesterday it bought " Papier Weynen ;" to-day 
 the monster has the toothache, and plasters every wall with 
 advertisements of Alexipharmaqucs, and to-morrow it will lay 
 in a store of cough lozenges. Paris has the craze of the 
 season or of the month as well as the rage of the day ; and at 
 this particular time everybody was building or pulling down 
 something. What they built or pulled down no one knows to 
 this day, but there was scarce a street in which you did not see 
 erections of scaffolding, poles, planks, and cross-bars lashed 
 together at every story. The fragile structures, covered with 
 white plaster dust, quivered under the tread of the Limousin 
 bricklayers and shook with the vibrations of every passing 
 carriage in spite of the protection of wooden hoardings, which 
 people are bound to erect around the monumental buildings 
 that never rise above their foundations. There is a nautical 
 suggestion about the mast-like poles and ladders and rigging 
 and the shouts of the bricklayers. 
 
 One of these temporary erections stood not a dozen paces 
 away from the Hotel Maulincour, in front of a house that was 
 being built of blocks of free-stone. Next day, just as the 
 Baron de Maulincour's cab passed by the scaffolding on the 
 way to Mine. Jules, a block two feet square slipped from its 
 rope-cradle at the top of the pole, turned a somersault, fell, 
 and killed the manservant at the back of the vehicle. A cry 
 of terror shook the scaffolding and the bricklayers. One of 
 the two, in peril of his neck, could scarcely cling to the pole ; 
 it seemed that the block struck him in passing. A crowd 
 quickly gathered. The men came down in a body, with 
 shouts and oaths, declaring that M. de Maulincour's cab had 
 shaken their crane. Two inches more, and the stone would 
 have fallen on the baron's head. It was an event in the 
 quarter. It got into the newspapers.
 
 44 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 M. de Maulincour, sure that he had touched nothing, 
 brought an action for damages. The law stepped in. It 
 turned out upon inquiry that a boy with a wooden lath had 
 mounted guard to warn passengers to give the building a wide 
 berth, and with that the affair came to an end. M. de Maulin- 
 cour must even put up with the loss of his manservant and the 
 fright that he had had. He kept his bed for several days, for 
 he had been bruised by the breakage of the cab, and he was 
 feverish after the shock to his nerves. So there was no visit 
 paid to Mme. Jules. 
 
 Ten days later, when he went out of doors for the first time, 
 he drove to the Bois de Boulogne in the now repaired cab. 
 He turned down the Rue de Bourgogne, and had reached the 
 sewer just opposite the Chamber of Deputies, when the axle 
 snapped in the middle. The baron was driving so fast that 
 the two wheels swerved and met with a shock that must have 
 fractured his skull if it had not been for the hood of the 
 vehicle, and, as it was, he sustained serious injury to the ribs. 
 So for the second time in ten days he was brought home more 
 dead than alive to the weeping dowager. 
 
 This second accident aroused his suspicions. He thought, 
 vaguely however, of Mme. Jules and Ferragus ; and by way 
 of clearing up his suspicions, he had the broken axle brought 
 into his bedroom, and sent for his coach-builder. The man in- 
 spected the fracture, and proved two things to M. Maulincour' s 
 mind. First, that the axle never came from his establishment, 
 for he made a practice of cutting his initials roughly on every 
 one that he supplied. How this axle had been exchanged 
 for the previous one he was at a loss to explain. And sec- 
 ondly, he found that there was a very ingeniously contrived 
 flaw in the iron bar, a kind of cavity made by a blowpipe 
 while the metal was hot. 
 
 "Eh! Monsieur le Baron, a man had need to be pretty 
 clever to turn out an axle-tree on that pattern ; you could 
 swear it was natural "
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 45 
 
 M. de Maulincour asked the man to keep his own counsel, 
 and considered that he had had a sufficient warning. The 
 two attempts on his life had been plotted with a skill which 
 showed that his were no common enemies. 
 
 "It is a war of extermination," said he, turning restlessly 
 on his bed, "a warfare of savages, ambushes, and treachery, 
 a war declared in the name of Madame Jules. J;i whose hands 
 is she ? And what power can this Ferragus wield ? " 
 
 M. de Maulincour, brave man and soldier though he was, 
 could not help shivering when all was done and said. Among 
 the thoughts that beset him, there was one which found him 
 defenseless and afraid. How if these mysterious enemies of 
 his should resort next to poison ? Terror, exaggerated by 
 fever and low diet, got the better of him in his weak condi- 
 tion. He sent for an old attached servant of his grand- 
 mother's, a woman who loved him with that almost motherly 
 affection through which an ordinary nature reaches the sub- 
 lime. Without telling her all that was in his mind, he bade 
 her buy all necessary articles of food for him, secretly, and 
 every day at a fresh place ; and at the same time, he warned 
 her to keep everything under lock and key, and to allow no 
 one whatsoever to be present while she prepared his meals. 
 In short, he took the most minute precautions against this 
 kind of death. He was lying ill in bed ; he had therefore 
 full leisure to consider his best way of defending himself, and 
 love of life is the only craving sufficiently clairvoyant to allow 
 human egoism to forget nothing. But the luckless patient 
 had himself poisoned his own life with dread. Every hour 
 was overshadowed by a gloomy suspicion that he could not 
 throw off. Still, the two lessons in murder had taught him 
 one qualification indispensable to a politic man; he under- 
 stood how greatly dissimulation is needed in the complex ac- 
 tion of the great interests of life. To keep a secret is nothing ; 
 but" to be silent beforehand, to forget, if necessary, for thirty 
 years, like Ali Pasha, the better to ensure a revenge pondered
 
 46 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 during those thirty years this is a fine study in a country 
 where few men can dissemble for thirty days together. 
 
 By this time Mme. Jules was Auguste de Maulincour's whole 
 life. His mind was always intently examining the means by 
 which he might win a triumph in his mysterious duel with un- 
 known antagonists. His desire for this woman grew the 
 greater by every obstacle. Amid all his thoughts Mme. Jules 
 was always present in his heart of hearts ; there she stood 
 more irresistible now in her imputed sin than she used to be 
 with all the undoubted virtues for which he had once wor- 
 shiped her. 
 
 The sick man, wishing to reconnoitre the enemy's position, 
 thought there could be no danger in letting the old com- 
 mander into the secret. The commander loved Auguste as a 
 father loves his wife's children ; he was shrewd and adroit, he 
 was of a diplomatic turn of mind. So the commander came, 
 heard the baron's story, and shook his head, and the two held 
 counsel. Auguste maintained that in the days in which they 
 lived the detective force and the powers that be were equal 
 to finding out any mysteries, and that if there was absolutely 
 no other way the police would prove powerful auxiliaries. 
 The commander, the vidame, did not share his young friend's 
 confidence or his convictions. 
 
 "The police are the biggest bunglers on earth, dear boy, 
 and the powers that be are the feeblest of all things where 
 individuals are concerned. Neither the authorities nor the 
 police can get to the bottom of people's minds. If they dis- 
 cover the causes of a fact that is all that can reasonably be 
 expected of them. Now the authorities and the police are 
 eminently unsuited to a business of this kind ; the personal 
 interest which is not satisfied till everything is found out is 
 essentially lacking in them. No human power can prevent a 
 murderer or a poisoner from reaching a prince's heart or an 
 honest man's stomach. It is passion that makes the complete 
 detective."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 47 
 
 With that the vidame strongly advised his young friend the 
 baron to travel. Let him go to Italy, and from Italy to 
 Greece, and from Greece to Syria and Asia, and come back 
 only when his mysterious enemies should be convinced of his 
 repentance. In his way he would conclude a tacit peace 
 with them. Or, if he stayed, he had better keep to his house, 
 and even to his room, since there he could secure himself 
 against the attacks of this Ferragus, and never leave it except 
 to crush the enemy once for all. 
 
 "A man should never touch his enemy except to smite off 
 his head," the vidame said gravely. 
 
 Nevertheless, the old man promised his favorite that he 
 would bring all the astuteness with which heaven had gifted 
 him to bear on the case, and that, without committing any 
 one, he would send a reconnoitring party into the enemy's 
 camp, know all that went on there, and prepare a victory. 
 
 The vidame had in his service a retired Figaro, as mis- 
 chievous a monkey as ever took human shape. In former 
 times the man had been diabolically clever, and a convict's 
 physical frame could not have responded better to all demands 
 made upon it ; he was agile as a thief and subtle as a woman, 
 but he had fallen into the decadence of genius for want of 
 practice. New social conditions in Paris have reformed the 
 old valets of comedy. The emeritus Scapin was attached to 
 his master as to a being of superior order ; but the crafty 
 vidame used to increase the annual wage of his sometime 
 provost of gallantry by a tolerably substantial sum, in such 
 sort that the natural ties of good-will were strengthened by 
 the bond of interest, and the old vidame received in return 
 such watchful attention as the tcnderest of mistresses could 
 scarcely devise in a lover's illness. In this relic of the 
 eighteenth century, this peril of old-world stage-servants, this 
 minister incorruptible (since all his desires were gratified) 
 the vidame and M. de Maulincour both put their trust. 
 
 "Monsieur Ic Baron would spoil it all," said the great man
 
 48 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 in livery, summoned by the vidame to the council. "Let 
 monsieur eat and drink and sleep in peace. I will take it all 
 upon myself." 
 
 And indeed, a week afterward, when M. de Maulincour, 
 now perfectly recovered, was breakfasting with his grand- 
 mother and the vidame, Justin appeared to make his report. 
 The dowager went back to her rooms, and he began with that 
 false modesty which men of genius affect 
 
 " Ferragus is not the real name of the enemy in pursuit of 
 Monsieur le Baron. The man, the devil rather, is called 
 Gratien, Henri, Victor, Jean-Joseph Bourignard. The said 
 Gratien Bourignard used to be a builder and contractor; he 
 was a very rich man at one time ; and most of all, he was one 
 of the prettiest fellows in Paris, a Lovelace that might have led 
 Grandison himself astray. My information goes no further. 
 He once was a common workman ; the journeymen of the 
 order of Devorants elected him as their head, with the name 
 of Ferragus XXIII. The police should know that, if they are 
 there to know anything. The man has moved, and at present 
 is lodging in the Rue Joquelet. Madame Jules Desmarets 
 often goes to see him. Her husband pretty often sets her 
 down in the Rue Vivienne on his way to the Bourse ; or she 
 leaves her husband at the Bourse, and comes back that way. 
 Monsieur le Vidame knows so much in these matters that he 
 will not expect me to tell him whether the husband rules the 
 wife or the wife rules her husband, but Madame Jules is so pretty 
 that I should bet on her. All this is absolutely certain. My 
 Bourignard often goes to gamble at number 129. He is a gay 
 dog, with a liking for women, saving your presence, and has 
 his amours like a man of condition. As for the rest, he is 
 frequently in luck, he makes up like an actor and can take 
 on any face he likes ; he just leads the queerest life you ever 
 heard of. He has several addresses, I have no doubt, for he 
 nearly always escapes what Monsieur le Vidame calls ' parlia- 
 mentary investigation.' If monsieur wishes, however, the
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 49 
 
 man can be got rid of decently, leading such a life as he does. 
 It is always easy to get rid of a man with a weakness for 
 women. Still, the capitalist is talking of moving again. Now, 
 have Monsieur le Vidame and Monsieur le Baron any orders to 
 give?" 
 
 " I am pleased with you, Justin. Go no further in the 
 affair without instructions, but keep an eye on everything here, 
 so that Monsieur le Baron shall have nothing to fear." He 
 turned to Maulincour. " Live as before, dear boy," he said, 
 "and forget Madame Jules." 
 
 " No, no," said Auguste, " I will not give her up to Gratien 
 Bourignard ; I mean to have him bound hand and foot and 
 Madame Jules as well." 
 
 That evening Auguste de Maulincour, recently promoted to 
 a higher rank in the Guards, went to a ball in Mme. la Durh- 
 esse de Berri's apartments at the Elysee-Bourbon. There, 
 surely, was no fear of the slightest danger ; and yet the Baron 
 de Maulincour came away with an affair of honor on his 
 hands, and no hope of arranging it. His antagonist, the Mar- 
 quis de Ronquerolles, had the strongest reasons for complain- 
 ing of him ; the quarrel arose out of an old flirtation with M. 
 de Ronquerolle's sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. This lady, 
 who could not endure high-flown German sentiment, was all 
 the more particular with regard to every detail of the prude's 
 costume in which she appeared in public. Some fatal inex- 
 plicable prompting moved Auguste to make a harmless joke, 
 Mme. de Serizy took it in very bad part, and her brother took 
 offense. Explanations took place in whispers in a corner of 
 the room. Both behaved like men of the world, there was no 
 fuss of any kind ; and not till next day did the Faubourg 
 Saint-Honore, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and the chateau 
 hear what had happened. Mme. de Serizy was warmly de- 
 fended ; all the blame was thrown on Maulincour. August 
 persons intervened. Seconds of the highest rank were im- 
 posed on M. de Maulincour and M. de Ronquerolles ; every 
 4
 
 50 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 precaution was taken on the ground to prevent a fatal termi- 
 nation. 
 
 Auguste's antagonist was a man of pleasure, not wanting, as 
 every one admitted, in a sense of honor ; it was impossible to 
 think of the marquis as a tool in the hands of Ferragus, Chief 
 of Devorants ; and yet, as Auguste de Maulincour stood up 
 before his man, in his own mind he felt a wish to obey an un- 
 accountable instinct, and to put a question to him. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, addressing his seconds, " I emphati- 
 cally do not refuse to stand Monsieur de Ronquerolles' fire ; 
 but, first, I own that I was in fault, I will make the apology 
 which he is sure to require, and even in public if he wishes it; 
 for, when a lady is in the case, there is nothing, I think, dis- 
 honoring to a gentleman in such an apology. So I appeal to 
 his commonsense and generosity, isn't there something rather 
 senseless in fighting a duel when the better cause may happen 
 to get the worst of it ? " 
 
 But M. de Ronquerolles would not hear of such a way out 
 of the affair. The baron's suspicions were confirmed. He 
 went across to his opponent. 
 
 "Well, Monsieur le Marquis," he said, "will you pledge 
 me your word as a noble, before these gentlemen, that you 
 bear me no grudge save the one for which ostensibly we are 
 to fight?" 
 
 " Monsieur, that is a question which ought not to be put 
 to me." 
 
 M. de Ronquerolles returned to his place. It was agreed 
 beforehand that only one shot should be fired on either side. 
 The antagonists were so far apart that a fatal end for M. de 
 Maulincour seemed problematical, not to say impossible ; but 
 Auguste dropped. The bullet had passed through his ribs, 
 missing the heart by two finger-breadths. Luckily, the extent 
 of the injury was not great. 
 
 " This was no question of revenge for a dead passion ; you 
 aimed too well, monsieur, for that," said the baron.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 51 
 
 M. de Ronquerolles, thinking that he had killed his man, 
 could not keep back a sardonic smile. 
 
 "Julius Caesar's sister, monsieur, must be above suspicion." 
 
 " Madame Jules again ! " exclaimed Auguste, and he fainted 
 away before he could finish the caustic sarcasm that died on 
 his lips. He had lost a good deal of blood, but his wound 
 was not dangerous. For a fortnight his grandmother and the 
 vidame nursed him with the lavish care which none but the 
 old, wise with the experience of a lifetime, can give. Then 
 one morning he received a rude shock. It came from his 
 grandmother. She told him that her old age, the last days 
 of her life, were filled with deadly anxiety. A letter addressed 
 to her and signed " F." gave her the history of the espionage 
 to which her grandson had stooped ; it was given in full from 
 point to point. M. de Maulincour was accused of conduct 
 unworthy a man of honor. He had posted an old woman 
 (so it was stated) near the hack-stand in the Rue de Menars. 
 Nominally his wrinkled spy supplied water to the cabmen, but 
 really she was stationed there to watch Mme. Jules Desmarets. 
 He had deliberately set himself to play the detective on one 
 of the most harmless men in the world, and tried to find out 
 all about him when secrets which concerned the lives of three 
 persons were involved. Of his own accord he had entered 
 upon a pitiless struggle, in which he had been wounded three 
 times already, and must inevitably succumb at last ; for his 
 death had been sworn ; every human power would be exerted 
 to compass it. It was too late for M. de Maulincour to escape 
 his doom by a promise to respect the mysterious life of these 
 three persons ; for it was impossible to believe the word of a 
 gentleman who could sink so low as the level of a police spy. 
 And for what reason ? To disturb, without cause, the exist- 
 ence of an innocent woman and a respectable old man. 
 
 The letter was as nothing to Auguste compared with the 
 Baronne de Manlincour's loving reproaches. How could he 
 fail to trust and respect a woman ? How could he play the
 
 52 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 spy on her when he had no right to do so ? Had any man a 
 right to spy on the woman whom he loved ? There followed 
 a torrent of excellent reasoning which never proves anything. 
 It put the young man for the first time of his life into one of 
 those towering passions from which the most decisive actions 
 of life are apt to spring. 
 
 " If this is to be a duel to the death " (so he concluded), 
 " I am justified in using every means in my power to kill my 
 enemy." 
 
 Forthwith the vidame, on behalf of M. de Maulincour, 
 waited on the superintendent of the detective force in Paris, 
 and gave him a full account of the adventure, without bring- 
 ing Mme. Jules' name into the story, although she was the 
 secret knot of all the threads. He told him, in confidence, 
 of the fears of the Maulincour family, thus threatened by some 
 unknown person, an enemy daring enough to vow such ven- 
 geance on an officer in the Guards, in the teeth of the law 
 and the police. He of the police was so much surprised that 
 he raised his green spectacles, blew his nose two or three 
 times, and offered his mull to the vidame, who said, to save 
 his dignity, that he never took snuff, though his countenance 
 was bedabbled with rappee. The head of the department 
 took his notes, and promised that, with the help of Vidocq 
 and his sleuth hounds, the enemy of the Maulincour family 
 should be accounted for in a very short time ; there were no 
 mysteries, so he was pleased to say, for the Paris police. 
 
 A few days afterward, the superintendent came to the Hotel 
 Maulincour to see M. le Vidame, and found the baron per- 
 fectly recovered from his last injuries. He thanked the family 
 in formal style for the particulars which they had been so good 
 as to communicate, and informed them that the man Bourig- 
 nard was a convict sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude, 
 and that in some miraculous way he made his escape from the 
 gang on the way from Bic&tre-to Toulon. The police had 
 made fruitless efforts to catch him for the past fifteen years ;
 
 THE TH IK TEEN. 53 
 
 they learned that lie had very recklessly come back to live in 
 Paris; and there, though he was constantly implicated in all 
 sorts of shady affairs, hitherto he had eluded the most active 
 search. To cut it short, the man, whose life presented a great 
 many most curious details, was certain to be seized at one of 
 his numerous addresses and given up to justice. This red- 
 tape personage concluded his official report with the remark 
 that, if M. de Maulincour attached sufficient importance to 
 the affair to care to be present at Bourignard's capture, he 
 might repair to such and such a number in the Rue Saintc- 
 Foi at eight o'clock next morning. M. de Maulincour, how- 
 ever, felt that he could dispense with this method of making 
 certain ; he shared the feeling of awe which the police inspires 
 in Paris ; he felt every confidence in the diligence of the local 
 authorities. 
 
 Three days afterward, as he saw nothing in the newspapers 
 about an arrest which surely would have supplied material 
 for an interesting article, M. de Maulincour was beginning 
 to feel uncomfortable, when the following letter relieved his 
 mind: 
 
 "MONSIEUR LE BARON: I have the honor to announce 
 that you need no longer entertain any fears whatsoever with 
 regard to the matter in hand. The man Gratien Bourignanl, 
 alias Ferragus, died yesterday at his address, number 7 Rue 
 Joquelet. The suspicions which we were bound to raise as to 
 his identity were completely set at rest by facts. The doctor 
 of the prefecture was specially sent by us to act in concert 
 with the doctor of the mayor's office, and the superintendent 
 of the preventive police made all the necessary verifications, 
 so that the identity of the body might be established beyond 
 question. The personal character, moreover, of the witnesses 
 who signed the certificate of death, and the confirmatory evi- 
 dence of those who were present at the time of the said 
 Bourignard's death including that of the cure of the Bonne-
 
 54 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Nouvelle, to whom he made a last confession (for he made a 
 Christian end) all these things taken together do not permit 
 us to retain the slightest doubt. 
 
 "Permit me, M. le Baron, to remain, etc." 
 
 M. de Maulincour, the dowager, and the commander drew 
 a breath of unspeakable relief. She, good woman, kissed her 
 grandson while a tear stole down her cheeks, and then crept 
 away to give thanks to God. The dear dowager had made a 
 nine days' prayer for Auguste's safety, and believed that she 
 had been heard. 
 
 "Well," said the vidame, "now you can go to that ball 
 that you were speaking about ; I have no more objections to 
 make." 
 
 M. de Maulincour was the more eager to go to this ball 
 since Mme. Jules was sure to be there. It was an entertain- 
 ment given by the prefect of the Seine in whose house the 
 two worlds of Paris society met as on a neutral ground. 
 Auguste de Maulincour went quickly through the rooms, but 
 the woman who exerted so great an influence on his life was 
 not to be seen. He went into a still empty card-room, where 
 the tables awaited players, sat himself down on a sofa, and 
 gave himself up to the most contradictory thoughts of Mme. 
 Jules, when some one grasped him by the arm ; and, to his 
 utter amazement, he beheld the beggar of the Rue Coquilliere, 
 Ida's Ferragus, the man who lived in the Rue Soly, Justin's 
 Bourignard, the convict that had died the day before. 
 
 "Not a sound, not a word, sir!" said Bourignard. Au- 
 guste knew that voice, though to any other it would surely 
 have seemed unrecognizable. 
 
 The man was very well dressed ; he wore the insignia of 
 the Golden Fleece and the star of the Legion of Honor. 
 
 "Sir," he hissed out like a hyena, " you warrant all my 
 attempts on your life by allying yourself with the police. You 
 shall die, sir. There is no help for it. Are you in love with
 
 77/A THIRTEEN. V, 
 
 Madame Jules? Did she once love you? What right have 
 you to trouble her peace and smirch her reputation?" 
 
 Somebody else came up. Fcrragus rose to go. 
 
 " Do you know this man ?" asked M. dc Mauhncour, wit- 
 ing Ferragus by the collar. 
 
 But Ferragus slipped briskly out of his grasp, caught M. de 
 Maulincour by the hair, and shook him playfully several times. 
 
 "Is there absolutely nothing but a dose of lead that will 
 bring you to your senses ? " he replied. 
 
 "I am not personally acquainted with him," said de Mar- 
 say, who had witnessed this scene, " but I know that this 
 gentleman is Monsieur de Funcal, a very rich Portuguese." 
 
 M. de Funcal had vanished. The baron went off in pur- 
 suit, he could not overtake him, but he reached the peristyle 
 in time to see a splendid equipage and the sneer on Ferragus' 
 face, before he was whirled away out of sight. 
 
 " For pity's sake, tell me where Monsieur de Funcal lives," 
 said Auguste, betaking himself to de Marsay, who happened 
 to be an acquaintance. 
 
 "I do not know, but somebody here no doubt can tell 
 you." 
 
 In answer to a question put to the prefect, Auguste learned 
 that the Comte de Funcal's address was at the Portuguese 
 embassy. At that moment, while he fancied that he could 
 still feel those ice-cold ringers in his hair, he saw Mine. Jules, 
 in all the splendor of that beauty, fresh, graceful, unaffected, 
 radiant with the sanctity of womanhood, which drew him to 
 her at the first. For him this creature was infernal ; Auguste 
 felt nothing for her now but hate hate that overflowed in 
 murderous, terrible glances. He watched for an opportunity 
 of speaking to her alone. 
 
 "Madame," he said, "three times already your bravos 
 have missed me 
 
 "What do you mean, sir?" she answered, reddening. 
 heard with much concern that several bad accidents had
 
 56 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 befallen you ; but how can I have had anything to do with 
 them?" 
 
 "You knew that the man in the Rue Soly has hired ruf- 
 fians on my track? " 
 
 "Sir! " 
 
 " Madame, henceforth I must call you to account not only 
 for my happiness, but also for my life-blood " 
 
 Jules Desmarets came up at that moment. 
 
 " What are you saying to my wife, sir ? " 
 
 " Come to my house to inquire if you are curious to know." 
 And Maulincour went. Mme. Jules looked white and ready 
 to faint. 
 
 There are very few women who have not been called upon, 
 once in their lives, to face a definite, pointed, trenchant 
 question with regard to some undeniable fact, one of those 
 questions which a husband puts in a pitiless way. The bare 
 thought of it sends a cold shiver through a woman ; the first 
 word pierces her heart like a steel blade. Hence the axiom, 
 "All women are liars." They tell lies to spare the feelings 
 of others, white lies, heroic lies, hideous lies ; but falsehood 
 is incumbent upon them. Once admit this, does it not follow 
 of necessity that the lies ought to be well told ? Women tell 
 lies to admiration in France. Our manners are an excellent 
 school for dissimulation. And, after all, women are so art- 
 lessly insohnt, so charming, so graceful, so true amid false- 
 hood, so perfectly well aware of the value of insincerity as a 
 means of avoiding the rude shocks which put happiness in 
 peril, that falsehood is as indispensable to them as cotton- 
 batting for their jewelry. Insincerity furnishes forth the 
 staple of their talk, and truth is only brought out occasionally. 
 They speak truth, as they are virtuous, from caprice or specu- 
 lation. The methods vary with the individual character. 
 Some women laugh and lie, others weep, or grow grave, or 
 put themselves in a passion. 
 
 They begin life with a feigned indifference to the homage
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 57 
 
 which gratifies them most ; they often end by insincerity with 
 themselves. Who has not admired their seeming loftine 
 when they are trembling the while for the mysterious treasure 
 of love? Who has not studied the ea.se, the ready wit, the 
 mental disengagement with which they confront the greatest 
 embarrassments of life ? Everything is quite natural ; deceit 
 flows out as snowflakes fall from the sky. 
 
 And yet what skill women have to discover the truth in 
 another ! How subtly they can use the hardest logic, in 
 answer to the passionately uttered question that never fails to 
 yield up some heart secret belonging to their interlocutor, if 
 a man is so guileless as to begin with questioning a woman. 
 If a man begins to question a woman, he delivers himself into 
 her hand. Will she not find out anything that he means to 
 hide, while she talks and says nothing ? And yet there arc 
 men that have the audacity to enter upon a contest of wits 
 with a Parisienne a woman who can put herself out of reach 
 of a thrust with "You are very inquisitive! " ' What docs 
 it matter to you?" "Oh! you are jealous!" "And how 
 if I do not choose to answer you ? " A Parisienne, in short, 
 has a hundred and thirty-seven thousand ways of saying No, 
 while her variations on the word YES surpass computation. 
 Surely one of the finest diplomatic, philosophic, logographic, 
 and moral performances which remain to be made would be 
 a treatise on No and YES. But who save an androgynous 
 being could accomplish the diabolical feat? For which rea- 
 son it will never be attempted. Yet of all unpublished works, 
 is there one better known or more constantly in use among 
 women ? 
 
 Have you ever studied the conduct, the pose, the Jisinrtl- 
 tura of a lie? Look at it now. Mine. Jules was sitting in 
 the right-hand corner of her carriage, and her husband to her 
 left. She had contrived to repress her emotion as she left the 
 ballroom, and by this time her face was quite composed. 
 Her husband had said nothing to her then ; he said nothing
 
 58 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 now. Jules was staring out of the window at the dark walls 
 of the silent houses as they drove past ; but suddenly, just as 
 they turned the corner of a street, he seemed to come to some 
 determination, he looked intently at his wife. She seemed to 
 feel cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was 
 wrapped ; she looked pensive, he thought, and perhaps she 
 really was pensive. Of all subtly communicable moods, 
 gravity and reflection are the most contagious. 
 
 " What can Monsieur de Maulincour have said to move you 
 so deeply?" began Jules. "And what is this that he wishes 
 me to hear at his house? " 
 
 " Why, he can tell you nothing at his house that I cannot 
 tell you now," she replied. 
 
 And with that woman's subtlety, which is always slightly 
 dishonoring to virtue, Mme. Jules waited for another question. 
 But her husband turned his head away and resumed his study 
 of arched gateways. Would it not mean suspicion and dis- 
 trust if he asked any more ? It is a crime in love to suspect 
 a woman ; and Jules had already killed a man, without a doubt 
 of his wife. Clemence did not know how much deep passion 
 and reflection lay beneath her husband's silence; and little 
 did Jules imagine the extraordinary drama which locked his 
 wife's heart from him. And the carriage went on and on 
 through silent Paris, and the husband and wife, two lovers 
 who idolized each other, nestled softly and closely together 
 among the silken cushions, a deep gulf yawning between 
 them all the while. 
 
 How many strange scenes take place in the elegant coupes 
 which pass through the streets between midnight and one 
 o'clock in the morning after a ball ! The carriages alluded 
 to, be it understood, are fitted with transparent panes of glass, 
 and lamps that not merely light up the brougham itself, but 
 the whole street as well on either side ; they belong to law- 
 sanctioned love, and the law gives a man a right to sulk and 
 fall out with his wife, and kiss and make it up again, in a
 
 THE THIRTEEN. .',9 
 
 coup or anywhere else. So married couples are at liberty to 
 quarrel without fear of being seen by passcrvby. And how 
 many secrets are revealed to foot-passrngcrs in the dark streets, 
 to the young bachelors wiio drove to the ball and, tor some 
 reason or other, are walking home afterward ! For the first 
 time in their lives, Jules and Clcmence leaned back in their 
 respective corners; usually Dcsmarets pressed close to his 
 wife's side. 
 
 "It is very cold," said Mine. Jules. But her hu.band 
 heard nothing ; he was intent on reading all the dark signs 
 above the stores. 
 
 "Clemence," he began at last, " forgive me for this ques- 
 tion that I am about to ask?" 
 
 He came nearer, put his arm about her waist, and drew her 
 toward him. 
 
 "Oh, dear ! here it comes ! " thought poor Clemence. 
 
 "Well," she said aloud, anticipating the question, "you 
 wish to know what Monsieur dc Maulincour was saying to 
 me? I will tell you, Jules; but, I am afraid. Ah, God ! can 
 we have secrets from each other? A moment ago I knew that 
 you were struggling between the consciousness that we love 
 each other and a vague dread ; but that consciousness that we 
 love each other is unclouded, is it not? and do not your 
 doubts seem very shadowy to you? Why not stay in the 
 light that you love? When I have told you everything, you 
 will wish to know more; and, after all, I myself do not know 
 what is lurking under that man's strange words. And then, 
 perhaps, there would be a duel, ending in a death. I would 
 far rather that we both put that unpleasant moment out of our 
 minds. But, in any case, give me your word to wait till thi 
 most extraordinary adventure is entirely cleared up in some 
 natural way. 
 
 " Monsieur de Maulincour declared that those three acci- 
 dents of which you heard the bloc k of stone that k 
 servant, the carriage accident, and the duel ab-.ni! Madame de
 
 60 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Serizy were all brought upon him by a plot which I had 
 woven against him. And he threatened to explain my reasons 
 for wishing to murder him to you. 
 
 " Can you make anything out of all this ? It was his face 
 that disturbed me ; there was madness in it ; his eyes were 
 haggard ; he was so excited that he could not bring out his 
 words. I felt sure that he was mad. That was all. Now, I 
 should not be a woman if I did not know that, for a year past, 
 Monsieur de Maulincour has been, as they say, quite wild 
 about me. He has never met me except at dances ; we have 
 never exchanged any words but ballroom small-talk. Perhaps 
 he wants to separate us, so that I may be left defenseless and 
 alone some day. You see how it is ! You are frowning 
 already. Oh, I detest the world with all my heart ! We are 
 so happy without it, why should we go in search of society ? 
 Jules, I beg of you, promise me that you will forget all this ! 
 I expect we shall hear to-morrow that Monsieur de Maulincour 
 has gone out of his mind." 
 
 " What an extraordinary thing ! " said Jules to himself, as 
 he stepped out into the peristyle of his own abode. 
 
 And here, if this story is to be developed by giving it in all 
 its truth of detail, by following its course through all its in- 
 tricacies, there must be a revelation of some of the secrets of 
 love secrets learned by slipping under the canopy of a bed- 
 chamber, not brazenly, but after the manner of Puck, without 
 startling either Jeanie or Dougal, or anybody else. For this 
 venture, one had need be chaste as our noble French language 
 consents to be, and daring as Gerard's brush in his picture of 
 Daphnis and Chloe. 
 
 Mme. Jules' bedroom was a sacred place. No one but her 
 husband and her maid was allowed to enter it. Wealth has 
 great privileges, and the most enviable of them all is the 
 power of carrying out thoughts and feelings to the uttermost; 
 of quickening sensibility by fulfilling its myriad caprices ; of 
 encompassing that inner life with a splendor that exalts it,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 1 
 
 elegance that refines, and the subtle shades of expression that 
 enhance the charm of love. 
 
 If you particularly detest picnic dinner* and meals badly 
 served ; if you feel a certain pleasure at the sight of dazzling 
 white damask, plate, exquisite porcelain, and nrhly carved 
 and gilded tables lit up by translucent tapers ; if you have a 
 taste for miracles of the most re-fined culinary art Ixrnrath 
 silver coverings with armorial bearings ; then, if you have a 
 mind to be consistent, you must come down from the heights 
 of your garret, and you must leave the griscttes in the street. 
 Garrets and grisettes, like umbrellas and hinged clogs, must 
 be left to people who bring tickets to the doors of restaurants 
 to pay for their dinners ; and you must think of love as some- 
 thing rudimentary, only to be developed in all its charm by a 
 gilded fireside, in a room made deaf to all sound from without 
 by drawn blinds and closed shutters and thick curtain folds, 
 while the opal light of a Parian lamp falls over soft carets 
 from the Savonncrie and the silken hangings on the walls. 
 You must have mirrors to reflect each other, to give you an 
 infinite series of pictures of the woman in whom you would 
 fain find many women, of her to whom Love gives so many 
 forms. There should be long, low sofas, and a bed like a 
 secret which you guess before it is revealed ; and soft furs 
 spread for bare feet on the floor of the dainty chamber, and 
 wax tapers tinder glass shades, and white gauze draperies, ?o 
 that you can see to read at any hour of the night ; and flowers 
 without too heavy-sweet a scent, and linen fine enough to 
 satisfy Anne of Austria.* 
 
 This delicious scheme had been carried out by Mrne. Jules. 
 But that is nothing ; any woman of taste might do as much ; 
 though, nevertheless, there is a certain touch of personality in 
 the arrangement of these things, a something which stamps 
 this ornament or that detail with a character of its own. The 
 fanatical cult of individuality is more prevalent than ever in 
 * Her chemise couM be tu^sct! thro;i-h .1 finger-rin^.
 
 62 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 these days. Rich people in France are beginning to grow 
 more and more exclusive in their tastes and belongings than 
 they have been for the past thirty years. Mme. Jules knew 
 that her programme must be carried out consistently; that 
 everything about her must be part of a harmonious whole of 
 luxury which make a fit setting for love. 
 
 "Fifteen hundred francs and my Sophie," or "Love in a 
 Cottage," is the sort of talk to expect from famished creatures, 
 and brown bread does very well at first ; but if the pair are 
 really in love, their palates grow nicer, and in the end they 
 sigh for the riches of the kitchen. Love holds toil and want 
 in abhorrence, and would rather die at once than live a miser- 
 able life of hand to mouth. 
 
 Most women after a ball are impatient for sleep. Their 
 rooms are strewn with limp flowers, scentless bouquets, and 
 ball-gowns. Their little thick shoes are left under an arm- 
 chair, they totter across the floor in their high-heeled slippers, 
 take the combs out of their hair, and shake down their tresses 
 without a thought of their appearance. Little do they care if 
 they disclose to their husbands' eyes the clasps and pins and 
 cunning contrivances which maintained the dainty fabric in 
 erection. All mystery is laid aside, all pretense dropped for 
 the husband there is no make-up for him. The corset of the 
 reparative kind, fearfully and wonderfully made, is left lying 
 about if the sleepy waiting-woman forgets to put it away. 
 Whalebone stiffening, sleeves encased in buckram, delusive 
 finery, hair supplied by the coiffeur, the whole factitious 
 woman, in fact, lies scattered about. Disjecta membra poetce, 
 the artificial poetry so much admired by those for whose bene- 
 fit the whole was conceived and elaborated, the remains of 
 the pretty woman of an hour ago, encumber every corner, 
 while the genuine woman in slatternly disorder, and the 
 crumpled nightcap of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, pre- 
 sents herself yawning to the arms of a husband who yawns 
 likewise.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 63 
 
 " For, really, monsieur, if you want a pretty nightcap to 
 rumple every night, you must increase my allowance." 
 
 Such is life as it is. A woman is always old and unattrac- 
 tive to her husband ; always smart, dainty, and dressed in her 
 best for that Other, every husband's rival, the world that 
 slanders women or picks them to pieces. 
 
 Mme. Jules did quite otherwise. I^ove, like all other 
 beings, has its own instinct of self-preservation. Inspired by 
 love, constantly rewarded by happiness, she never failed in 
 the scrupulous performance of little duties in which no one 
 can grow slack, for by such means love is krrpt unimpaired by 
 time. Are not these pains, these tasks imposed by a self- 
 respect which becomes her passing well ? What are they but 
 sweet flatteries, a way of reverencing the beloved in one's own 
 person ? 
 
 So Mme. Jules had closed the door of her dressing-room 
 on her husband ; there she changed her ball-gown and came 
 out dressed for the night, mysteriously adorned for the mys- 
 terious festival of her heart. The chamber was always ex- 
 quisite and dainty ; Jules, when he entered it, found a woman 
 coquettishly wrapped in a graceful, loose gown, with her thick 
 hair twisted simply about her head. She had nothing to fear 
 from dishevelment ; she robbed Love's sight and touch of 
 nothing. This woman was always simpler and more beautiful 
 for him than for the world a woman revived by her toilet, a 
 woman whose whole art consisted in being whiter than the 
 cambrics that she wore, fresher than the freshest srcnt. more 
 irresistible than the wiliest courtesan. In a word, she was 
 always loving, and therefore always beloved. In this admir- 
 able skill in It metitr de ftmme in the art and mystery of 
 being a woman lay the great secret of Josephine's charm for 
 Napoleon, of Cesonia's influence over Caligula in older times, 
 of the ascendency. of Diane de Poitiers over Hrrri II. And 
 if this secret is so potent in the hands of women who have 
 counted seven or eight lustres, what a weapon i> it for a
 
 64 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 young wife ! The prescribed happiness of fidelity becomes 
 rapture. 
 
 Mme. Jules had been particularly careful of her toilet for 
 the night. After that conversation which froze the blood in 
 her veins with terror, and still caused her the liveliest anxiety, 
 she meant to be exquisitely charming, and she succeeded. 
 She fastened her cambric dressing-gown, leaving it loose at 
 the throat, and let her dark hair fall loosely over her shoulders. 
 An intoxicating fragrance clung about her after her scented 
 bath, her bare feet were thrust into velvet slippers. Jules, in 
 his dressing-gown, was standing meditatively by the fire, with 
 his elbow on the mantelpiece, and one foot on the fender. 
 Feeling strong on her vantage-ground, she tripped across to 
 him and laid a hand over his eyes. Then she whispered, close 
 to his ear, so closely that he could feel her warm breath on 
 him and the tips of her teeth : " What are you thinking about, 
 monsieur? " 
 
 With quick tact, she held him closely to her and put her 
 arms about him to snatch him away from his gloomy thoughts. 
 A woman who loves knows well how to use her power ; and 
 the better the woman, the more irresistible is her coquetry. 
 
 " Of you," said he. 
 
 "Only of me?" 
 
 "Yes! " 
 
 " Oh ! that was a very doubtful ' Yes ! ' " 
 
 They went to bed. As Mme. Jules fell asleep she thought : 
 " Decidedly, de Maulincour will bring about some misfortune. 
 Jules is preoccupied and absent-minded ; he has thoughts 
 which he does not tell me." 
 
 Toward three o'clock in the morning Mme. Jules was 
 awakened by a foreboding that knocked at her heart while she 
 slept. She felt, physically and mentally, that her husband was 
 not beside her. She missed Jules' arm, on which her head 
 had lain nightly for five years, while she slept happily and 
 peacefully, an arm that never wearied of the weight. A voice
 
 THE THIKTEEX. 6.', 
 
 cried : " Jules is in pain ! Jules is weeping ! " She lifted her 
 head, sat upright, felt that her husband's place was cold, and 
 saw him sitting by the fire, his feet on the fender, hit head 
 leaning back in the great armchair. There were tears on his 
 cheeks. Poor Clemence was out of bed in a moment, and 
 sprang to her husband's knee. 
 
 " Jules, what is it ? Are you not feeling well ? S[>eak, tell 
 me; oh, speak to me, if you love me." 
 
 She poured out a hundred words of the deepest tenderness. 
 Jules, at his wife's feet, kissed her knees, her hands. The 
 tears flowed afresh as he answered 
 
 " Clemence, dear, I am very wretched. It is not love if 
 you cannot trust your mistress, and you are my mistress. I 
 worship you, Clemence, even while I doubt you. The things 
 that man said last night went to my heart ; and, in spite of 
 me, they stay there to trouble me. There is some mystery 
 underneath this. Indeed, I blush to say it, but your explana- 
 tion did not satisfy me. Commonsense sheds a light on it 
 which love bids me reject. It is a dreadful struggle. How 
 could I lie there with your head on my shoulder and think 
 that there were thoughts in your mind that I did not know? 
 Oh, I believe you, I believe in you," he exclaimed, as she 
 smiled sadly and seemed about to speak ''Say not a word, 
 reproach me with nothing. The least little word from you 
 would break my heart. And, beside, could you say a single 
 thing that I have not said to myself for the last three hours? 
 Yes, for three hours I lay, watching you as you slept, so beau- 
 tiful you were, your forehead looked so quiet and pure. Ah ! 
 yes, you have always told me all your thoughts, have you not ? 
 I am alone in your inmost heart. When I look into the depths 
 of your eyes, I read all that lies there. Your life is always as 
 pure as those clear eyes. Ah ! no, there is no secret beneath 
 their transparent gaze." 
 
 He rose and kissed her eyelids. 
 
 " Let me confess it to you, beloved ; all through these five 
 5
 
 66 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 years one thing has made me happier day by day, I have been 
 glad that you should have none of the natural affections 
 which always encroach a little upon love. You had neither 
 sister nor father nor mother nor friend ; I was neither above 
 nor below any other in thy heart ; I was there alone. Clem- 
 ence, say over again for me all the intimate sweet words that 
 you have spoken so often ; do not scold me ; comfort me, I 
 am very wretched. I have a hateful suspicion to reproach 
 myself with, while you have nothing burning in your heart. 
 Tell me, my darling, may I stay by your side ? How should 
 two that are so truly one rest their heads on the same pillow, 
 when one is at peace and the other in pain ? What can you 
 be thinking of?" he cried abruptly, as Clemence looked 
 meditative and confused, and could not keep back the tears. 
 
 "I am thinking of my mother," she said gravely. "You 
 could not know, Jules, how it hurt your Clemence to recall 
 her mother's last farewells, while your voice, the sweetest of 
 all music, was sounding in her ears ; to remember the solemn 
 pressure of the chill hand of a dying woman, while I felt your 
 caresses, and the overpowering sense of the sweetness of your 
 love." 
 
 She made him rise, and held him tightly, with far more 
 than man's strength, in her" arms ; she kissed his hair, her 
 tears fell over him. 
 
 " Oh ! I could be hacked into pieces for you ! Tell me, 
 beyond doubt, that I make you happy, that for you I am the 
 fairest of women, that I am a thousand women for you. But 
 you are loved as no other man can ever be loved. I do not 
 know what the words 'duty,' 'virtue' mean. Jules, I love 
 you for your own sake ; it makes me happy to love you ; I 
 shall always love you ; better and better, till my last sigh. I 
 take a kind of pride in my love. I am sure that I am fated 
 to know but the one great love in my life. Perhaps this that 
 I am going to say is wicked, but I am glad to have no chil- 
 dren, I wish for none. I feel that I am more a wife than a
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 67 
 
 mother. Have you any fears ? Listen to me, my love ; 
 promise me to forget, not this hour of mingled love and 
 doubt, but that madman's words. I ask it, Jules. Promise 
 me not to see him again, to keep away from his house. I 
 have a feeling that if you go a single step further in that laby- 
 rinth, we shall both sink into depths where I shall die, with 
 your name still on my lips, your heart in my heart. Why do 
 you put me so high in your inmost life, and so low in the 
 outer? You can take so many men's fortunes on trust, and 
 you cannot give me the alms of one doubt? And when, for 
 the first time in your life, you can prove that your faith in me 
 is unbounded, would you dethrone me in your heart ? Be- 
 tween a lunatic and your wife, you believe the lunatic's word? 
 Oh! Jules " 
 
 She broke off, flung back the hair that fell over her fore- 
 head and throat, and in heart-rending tones she added, " I 
 have said too much. A word should be enough. If there is 
 still a shadow across your mind and your forehead, however 
 faint it may be, mind, it will kill me." 
 
 She shivered in spite of herself, and her face grew white. 
 
 "Oh ! I will kill that man," said Jules to himself, as he 
 caught up his wife and carried her to the bed. " Let us sleep 
 in peace, dear angel," he said aloud ; " I have put it all out 
 of mind, I give you my word." 
 
 The loving words were repeated more lovingly, and Clem- 
 ence slept. Jules, watching his sleeping wife, told himself, 
 "She is right. When love is so pure, a suspicion is like a 
 blight. Yes, and a blight on so innocent a soul, so delicate a 
 flower, is certain death." 
 
 If between two human creatures, each full of love for the 
 other, with a common life at every moment, there should arise 
 a cloud, the cloud will vanish away, but not without leaving 
 some trace of its passage behind. Perhaps their love grows 
 deeper, as earth is fairer after the rain ; or perhaps the shock 
 reverberates like distant thunder in a blue sky ; but, at any
 
 68 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 rate, they cannot take up life where it was before, love must 
 increase or diminish. At breakfast, M. and Mme. Jules 
 showed each other an exaggerated attention. In their glances 
 there was an almost forced gayety which might have been ex- 
 pected of people eager to be deceived. Jules had involuntary 
 suspicions ; his wife, a definite dread. And yet, feeling sure 
 of each other, they had slept. Was the embarrassment due to 
 want of trust ? to the recollection of the scene in the night ? 
 They themselves could not tell. But they loved each other, 
 and were loved so sincerely, that the bitter-sweet impression 
 could not fail to leave its traces; and each, beside, was so 
 anxious to be the first to efface them, to be the first to return, 
 that they could not but remember the original cause of a first 
 discord. For those who love, vexation is out of the question, 
 and pain is still afar off, but the feeling is still a kind of mourn- 
 ing, difficult to describe. If there is a parallel between colors 
 and the moods of the mind ; if, as Locke's blind man said, 
 scarlet produces the same effect on the eyes as the blast of a 
 trumpet on the ears, then this melancholy reaction may be 
 compared with sober gray tints. Yet saddened love, love 
 conscious of its real happiness beneath the momentary trouble, 
 knows a wholly new luxurious blending of pain and pleasure. 
 'Jules dwelt on the tones of his wife's voice, and watched for 
 her glances with the young passion that stirred him in the 
 early days of their love ; and memories of five perfectly happy 
 years, Clemence's beauty, her artless love, soon effaced (for 
 the time) the last pangs of an intolerable ache. 
 
 It was Sunday. There was no Bourse and no business. 
 Husband and wife could spend the whole day together, and 
 each made more progress in the other's heart than ever before, 
 as two children in a moment's terror cling closely and tightly 
 together, instinctively united against danger. Where two 
 have but one life, they know such hours of perfect happiness 
 sent by chance, flowers of a day, which have nothing to do 
 with yesterday or to-morrow.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 69 
 
 To Jules and Clemence it was a day of exquisite enjoyment. 
 They might almost have felt a dim foreboding that this was 
 to be the last day of their life as lovers. What name can be 
 given to the mysterious impulse which hastens the traveler's 
 steps before the storm has given warning? it fills the dying 
 with a glow of life and beauty a few days before the end, and 
 sets them making the most joyous plans ; it counsels the 
 learned man to raise the flame of the midnight lamp when it 
 burns most brightly ; it wakens a mother's fears when some 
 keen-sighted observer looks too intently at her child. We all 
 feel this influence in great crises in our lives, yet we have 
 neither studied it nor found a name for it. It is something 
 more than a presentiment, something less than vision. 
 
 All went well till the next day. It was Monday, Jules 
 Desmarets was obliged to be at the Bourse at the usual time ; 
 and, according to his custom, he asked his wife before he 
 went if she would take the opportunity of driving with him. 
 
 " No," she said ; " the weather is too bad." 
 
 And, indeed, it was pouring with rain. It was about half- 
 past two o'clock. M. Desmarets went on the market, and 
 thence to the Treasury. At four o'clock, when he came out, 
 he confronted M. de Maulincour, who was waiting for him 
 with the pertinacity bred of hate and revenge. 
 
 " I have some important information to give you, sir," he 
 said, taking Desmarets by the arm. " Listen to me. I am 
 an honorable man ; I do not wish to send anonymous letters 
 which would trouble your peace of mind : I prefer to speak 
 directly. In short, you may believe that if my life were not 
 at stake, I should never interfere between husband and wife/ 
 even if I believed that I had a right so to do." 
 
 " If you are going to say anything that concerns Madame 
 Desmarets," answered Jules, " I beg you to be silent, sir." 
 
 " If I keep silence, sir, you may see Madame Jules in the 
 dock beside a convict before very long. Now, am I to be 
 silent?"
 
 70 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Jules' handsome face grew white, but seemingly he was 
 calm again in a moment. He drew Maulincour under one 
 of the porches of the temporary building then frequented by 
 stockbrokers, and spoke, his voice unsteady with deep emo- 
 tion 
 
 " I am listening, sir, but there will be a duel to the death 
 
 between us if " 
 
 "Oh! I am quite willing," exclaimed M. de Maulincour. 
 " I have the greatest respect for you. Do you speak of death, 
 sir ? You are not aware, I expect, that your wife probably 
 employed somebody to poison me on Saturday evening? Yes, 
 sir, since the day before yesterday, some extraordinary change 
 has taken place in me. All the hairs of my head distill a fever 
 and mortal languor that pierces through the bone ; and I know 
 perfectly well what man it was that touched my head at the 
 dance.'' 
 
 M. de Maulincour told the whole story of his Platonic love 
 for Mme. Jules and the details of the adventure with which 
 this Scene opens. Anybody would have listened to him as 
 attentively as Desmarets, but Mme. Jules' husband might be 
 expected to be more astonished than anybody else in the 
 world. And here his character showed itself he was more 
 surprised than overwhelmed. Thus constituted the judge, and 
 the judge of an adored wife, in his inmost mind he assumed a 
 judicial directness and inflexibility of mind. He was a lover 
 still ; he thought less of his own broken life than of the woman ; 
 he heard, not his own grief, but a far-off voice crying to him : 
 " Clemence could not lie ! Why should she be false to 
 you?" 
 
 " I felt certain that in Monsieur de Funcal I recognized this 
 Ferragus, whom the police believe to be dead," concluded M. 
 de Maulincour, "so I put an intelligent man on his track 
 at once. As I went home, I fortunately chanced to call to 
 mind a Madame Meynardie, mentioned in this Ida's letter, 
 Ida being apparently my persecutor's mistress. With this one
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 71 
 
 bit of information, my emissary speedily cleared up this 
 ghastly adventure, for he is more skilled at finding out the 
 truth than the police themselves." 
 
 "I am unable to thank you, sir, for your confidence," said 
 Desmarets. " You speak of proof and witnesses ; I am waiting 
 for them. I shall not flinch from tracking down the truth in 
 this extraordinary business ; but you will permit me to sus- 
 pend my judgment until the case is proved by circumstantial 
 evidence. In any case, you shall have satisfaction, for you 
 must understand that we both require it." 
 
 Jules went home. 
 
 "What is it?" asked his wife. "You look so pale you 
 frighten me ! " 
 
 " It is a cold day," he said, as he walked slowly away to 
 the bedroom, where everything spoke of happiness and love, 
 the so quiet chamber where a deadly storm was brewing. 
 
 "Have you been out to-day?" he asked, with seeming 
 carelessness. The question, no doubt, was prompted by the 
 last of a thousand thoughts, which had gathered unconsciously 
 in his mind, till they took the shape of a single lucid reflec- 
 tion, which his jealousy brought out on the spur of the 
 moment. 
 
 " No," she answered, and her voice sounded frank. 
 
 Even as she spoke, Jules, glancing through the dressing- 
 room door, noticed drops of rain on the bonnet which his 
 wife used to wear in the morning. Jules was a violent- 
 tempered man, but he was likewise extremely sensitive; he 
 shrank from confronting his wife with a lie. And yet those 
 drops of water shed, as it were, a gleam of light which tor- 
 tured his brain. He went downstairs to the porter's room. 
 
 " Fouquereau," he said, when he had made sure that they 
 were alone, " three hundred francs per annum to you if you 
 tell me the truth ; if you deceive me, out you go ; and if you 
 mention my question and your answer to any one else, you 
 will get nothing: at all."
 
 72 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 He stopped, looked steadily at the man, and then drawing 
 him to the light of the window, he asked 
 
 " Did your mistress go out this morning?" 
 
 " Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw 
 her come in again half-an-hour ago." 
 
 " Is that true, upon your honor?" 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 "You shall have the annual sum I promised you. But if 
 you mention it, remember what I said ; for if you do, you lose 
 it all." 
 
 Jules went back to his wife. 
 
 "Clemence," he said, "I want to put my house accounts 
 a bit straight, so do not be vexed if I ask you something. I 
 have let you have forty thousand francs this year, have I not? " 
 
 "More than that," she answered. "Forty-seven." 
 
 " Could you tell me exactly how it was spent? " 
 
 " Why, yes. First of all, there were several outstanding 
 bills from last year " 
 
 "I shall find out nothing in this way," thought Jules. " I 
 have gone the wrong way to work." 
 
 Just at that moment the man brought in a note. Jules 
 opened it for the sake of appearances, but seeing the signature 
 at the foot, he read it eagerly : 
 
 " MONSIEUR: To set your mind and our minds at rest, I 
 take the step of writing you, although I have not the privi- 
 lege of being known to you; but my position, my age, and 
 the fear that some misfortune may befall, compels me to be- 
 seech your forbearance in the distressing situation in which 
 our afflicted family is placed. For some days past, M. Auguste 
 de Maulincour has shown unmistakable symptoms of mental 
 derangement ; and we are afraid that he may disturb your 
 happiness with the wild fancies of which he spoke to M. le 
 Commandeur de Pamiers and to me, in the first fit of fever. 
 We desire to give you warning of a malady which is still
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 73 
 
 curable, no doubt ; and as it might have very serious conse- 
 quences for the honor of the family and my grandson's future, 
 I count upon your discretion. If M. le Commandcur or I, 
 monsieur, had been able to make the journey to your house, 
 we should have dispensed with a written communication ; but 
 you will comply, I do not doubt, with the request of a mother 
 who beseeches you to burn this letter. 
 
 "Permit me to add that I am with the highest regard, 
 "BARONNE DE MAULINCOUR nee DE RIEUX." 
 
 "What tortures! " exclaimed Jules. 
 
 "What can be passing in your thoughts?" asked his wife, 
 with intense anxiety in her face. 
 
 " I have come to this ! " cried Jules ; " I ask myself whether 
 you have had this note sent to me to dispel my suspicions. 
 So judge what I am suffering," he added, tossing the letter to 
 her. 
 
 "The unhappy man," said Mme. Jules, letting the sheet 
 fall ; " I am sorry for him, though he has given me a great 
 deal of pain." 
 
 " You know that he spoke to me ? " 
 
 "Oh! Did you go to see him when you had given your 
 word ?" was her terror-stricken answer. 
 
 " Clemence, our love is in danger; we are outside all the 
 ordinary laws of life, so let us leave minor considerations in 
 great perils. Now, tell me, why did you go out this morn- 
 ing? Women think they are privileged to tell us fibs now 
 and again. You often amuse yourselves with preparing pleas- 
 ant surprises for us, do you not ? Just now you said one 
 thing and meant another no doubt ; you said a ' No ' for a 
 'Yes.'" 
 
 He brought her bonnet out of the dressing-room. 
 
 " Look here ! Without meaning to play the Bartholo here, 
 your bonnet has betrayed you. Are these not rain-drops? 
 Then you must have gone out and caught the drops of rain as
 
 74 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 you looked about for a cab, or in coming in or out of the 
 house to which you drove. Still, a woman can go out even 
 if she has told her husband that she means to stay indoors ; 
 there is no harm in that. There are so many reasons for 
 changing one's mind. A whim, a woman has a right to be 
 whimsical, is that not so ? You are not bound to be consist- 
 ent with yourselves. Perhaps you forgot something ; some- 
 thing to be done for somebody else, or a call, or a charitable 
 errand ? But there can be nothing to prevent a wife from 
 telling her husband what she has done. How should one ever 
 blush on a friend's breast ? And it is not a jealous husband 
 who speaks, my Clemence ; it is the friend, the lover, the 
 comrade." 
 
 He flung himself passionately at her feet. 
 
 " Speak, not to justify yourself, but to soothe an intolerable 
 pain. I know for certain that you left the house. Well, 
 what did you do ? Where did you go ? " 
 
 "Yes, Jules, I left the house," she said, and though her 
 voice shook, her face was composed. " But do not ask me 
 anything more. Wait and trust me, or you may lay up life- 
 long regrets for yourself. Jules, my Jules, trust is love's 
 great virtue. I confess it, I am too much troubled to answer 
 you at this moment ; I am a woman inept at lying, and I 
 love you, you know I love you." 
 
 "With all that shakes a man's belief and rouses his jealousy 
 for I am not the first in your heart, Clemence, it seems ; I 
 am not your very self! well, with it all, I would still rather 
 trust you, Clemence, trust your voice and those eyes of yours. 
 If you are deceiving me, you would deserve " 
 
 " Oh ! a thousand deaths," she broke in. 
 
 " And I have not one thought hidden from you, while " 
 
 "Hush," she cried, "our happiness depends upon silence 
 between us." 
 
 "Ah ! I will know all ! " he shouted, with a burst of vio- 
 lent anger.
 
 THK THIRTEEN. 75 
 
 As he spoke a sound reached them, a shrill-tongued woman's 
 voice raised to a scream in the antechamber. 
 
 " I will come in, I tell you ! Yes, I will come in, I want 
 to see her, I will see her ! " somebody cried. 
 
 Jules and Clemencc hurried into the drawing-room, and in 
 another moment the door was flung open. A young woman 
 suddenly appeared with two servants behind her. 
 
 "This woman would come in, sir, in spite of us. We told 
 her once before that madame was not at home. She said she 
 knew quite well that madame had gone out, but she had just 
 seen her come in. She threatens to stop at the house-door 
 until she has spoken to madame." 
 
 "You can go," said M. Desmarets, addressing the ser- 
 vants. 
 
 "What do you want, mademoiselle?" he added, turning 
 to the visitor. 
 
 The "young lady" was a feminine type known only in 
 Paris ; a type as much a product of the city as the mud or the 
 curb-stones in the streets, or the Seine water which is filtered 
 through half a score of great reservoirs before it sparkles clear 
 and pure in cut-glass decanters, all its muddy sediment left 
 behind. She is, moreover, a truly characteristic product. 
 Pencil and pen and charcoal, painter and caricaturist and 
 draughtsman, have caught her likeness repeatedly; yet she 
 eludes analysis, because you can no more grasp her in all her 
 moods than you can grasp Nature, or the fantastic city herself. 
 Her circle has but one point of contact with vice, from which 
 the rest of its circumference is far removed. Yet the one 
 flaw in her character is the only trait that reveals her ; all her 
 fine qualities lie out of sight while she flaunts her ingenuous 
 shamelessness. The plays and books that bring her before 
 the public, with all the illusion that clings about her, give but 
 a very inadequate idea of her ; she never is, and never will 
 be, herself except in her garret ; elsewhere she is either worse 
 or better than she really is. Give her wealth, she degenerates ;
 
 76 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 in poverty she is misconstrued. How should it be otherwise? 
 She has so many faults and so many virtues ; she lives too 
 close to a tragic end in the river on the one hand, and a 
 branding laugh upon the other ; she is too fair and too foul ; 
 too much like a personification of that Paris which she 
 provides with toothless old portresses, washerwomen, street- 
 sweepers, and beggars ; sometimes too with insolent coun- 
 tesses and admired and applauded actresses and opera singers. 
 Twice in former times she even gave two queens, in all but 
 name, to the Monarchy. Who could seize such a Protean 
 woman-shape? 
 
 She is a very woman, less than a woman, and more than a 
 woman. The painter of contemporary life can only give a 
 few details, the general effect of so vast a subject, and some 
 idea of its boundlessness. 
 
 This was a Paris grisette a grisette, however, in her glory. 
 She was the grisette that drives about in a cab; a happy, 
 handsome, and fresh young person, but still a grisette, a 
 grisette with claws and scissors; bold as a Spaniard, quarrel- 
 some as an English prude instituting a suit for restitution of 
 conjugal rights, coquettish as a great lady, and more out- 
 spoken ; equal to all occasions, a typical "lioness," issuing 
 from her little apartment. 
 
 Many and many a time she had dreamed of that establish- 
 ment with its red cotton curtains and its furniture covered 
 with Utrecht velvet, of the tea-table and the hand-painted 
 china tea-service and the settee ; the small square of velvet- 
 pile carpet, the alabaster timepiece and vases under glass 
 shades, the yellow bedroom, the soft eiderdown quilt of all 
 the joys of a grisette's life, in short. Now she had a servant, 
 a superannuated member of her own profession, a veteran 
 grisette with mustaches and good-conduct stripes. Now she 
 went to the theatres and had as many sweetmeats as she liked ; 
 she had silk dresses and finery to soil and draggle, and all the 
 joys of life from the point of view of the milliner's assistant,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 77 
 
 except a carriage of her own, a carriage being to the milliner's 
 assistant's dreams what the marshal's baton is for the private 
 soldier. Yes, all these things this particular grisette possessed 
 in return for a real affection, or perhaps in spite of a real 
 affection on her part ; for others of her class will often exact 
 as much for one hour in the day, a sort of toll carelessly paid 
 for by a brief space in some old man's clutches, whom she 
 utili2es as her banker. 
 
 The young person now confronting M. and Mme. Jules 
 wore shoes, which displayed so much white stocking that they 
 looked like an almost invisible black boundary line against 
 the carpet. The kind of foot-gear, very neatly rendered by 
 French comic drawings, is one of the Parisian grisette's pecu- 
 liar charms of dress ; but a still more unmistakable sign for 
 observant eyes is the precision with which her gown is moulded 
 to her figure, which is very clearly outlined. Moreover, the 
 visitor was " turned out " in a green dress, to use the pictur- 
 esque expression coined by the French soldier, a dress with a 
 chemisette, which revealed a fine figure, fully displayed, for 
 her Ternaux shawl would have slipped down to the floor if she 
 had not held the two loosely knotted ends in her grasp. She 
 had a delicate face, a white skin and color in her cheeks, 
 sparkling gray eyes, a very prominent rounded forehead, and 
 carefully waved hair, which escaped from under a little bonnet, 
 and fell in large curls about her neck. 
 
 " My name is Ida, sir. And if that is Madame Jules whom 
 I have the privilege of addressing, I have come to tell her all 
 that I have against her on my mind. It is a shame, when she 
 has made her bargain, and has such furniture as you have here, 
 to try to take away the man to whom a poor girl is' as good as 
 married, and him talking of making it all right by marrying 
 me at the registry office. There's quite plenty nice young 
 men in the world isn't there, sir? for her to fancy without 
 her coming and taking a man well on in years away from me 
 when I am happy with him. Yah ! I haven't a fine house, I
 
 78 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 haven't, I have only my love ! I distcst your fine-looking 
 men and money; I am all heart and " 
 
 Mme. Jules turned to her husband 
 
 "You will permit me, sir, to hear no more of this," said 
 she, and went back to her room. 
 
 "If the lady is living with you, I have made a hash of it, 
 so far as I can see; but so much the worser," continued Ida. 
 "What business has she to come and see Monsieur Ferragus 
 every day?" 
 
 "You are mistaken, mademoiselle," said Jules, in dull 
 amazement ; " my wife could not possibly " 
 
 " Oh ! so you are married, are you, the two of you?" said 
 the grisette, evidently rather surprised. " Then it's far worse, 
 sir, is it not, when a woman has a lawful husband of her own 
 to have anything to do with a man like Henri " 
 
 "But what Henri?" said Jules, taking Ida aside into 
 another room lest his wife should overhear anything further. 
 
 "Well, then, Monsieur Ferragus." 
 
 "But he is dead," protested Jules. 
 
 "What stuff! I went to Franconi's yesterday evening, 
 and he brought me home again, as he ought to do. Your 
 lady too can give you news of him. Didn't she go to see 
 him at three o'clock? That she did, I know, for I was wait- 
 ing for her in the street ; being as a very nice man, Monsieur 
 Justin perhaps you know him? a little old fogey that wears 
 stays and has seals on his watchchain it was he that told me 
 that I had a Madame Jules for my rival. That name, sir, is 
 well known among fancy names ; asking your pardon, since 
 it's your own, but Madame Jules might be a duchess at Court, 
 Henri is so rich he can afford all his whims. It is my busi- 
 ness to look after my own, as I have a right to do ; for I love 
 Henri, I do. Ke was my first fancy, and my love and the 
 rest of my life is at stake. I am afraid of nothing, sir; I am 
 honest, and I never told a lie yet, nor took a thing belonging 
 to anybody whatever. If I had an empress for my rival I
 
 "YOU ARE MISTAKEN, MADEMOISELLE, MY WIFE 
 COULD A'OT POSSIBLY "
 
 TIfE THIRTEEN 79 
 
 should go right straight to her, and if she took my husband 
 that is to be from me, I feel that I could kill her, was she 
 never so much an empress, for one fine woman is as good as 
 another, sir " 
 
 " That will do, that will do ! " interrupted Jules. " Where 
 do you live? " 
 
 "Number 14 Rue de la Corderie du Temple, sir. Ida 
 Gruget, corset-maker, at your service, sir ; for we make a good 
 many corsets for gentlemen." 
 
 " And this man Ferragus, as you call him, where docs he 
 live?" 
 
 " Why, sir " (tightening her lips), " in the first place, he is 
 not just 'a man ' he is a gentleman, and better off than you 
 are, maybe. But what makes you ask me for his address, 
 when your wife knows where he lives? He told me I was not 
 to give it to nobody. Am I bound to give you an answer? 
 I am not in the police court nor the confessional, the Lord 
 be thanked, and I am not beholden to any one." 
 
 "And how if I offer you twenty, thirty, forty thousand 
 francs to tell me his address?" 
 
 "Oh, not quite, my little dear; it's no go," said she, with 
 a gesture learned in the streets, as accompaniment to her 
 singular answer. " No amount of money would get that out 
 of me. I have the honor to wish you good-evening. Which 
 way do you get out of this?" 
 
 Jules allowed her to go. He was stricken to earth. The 
 whole world seemed to be crumbling away under him, the 
 sky above had fallen with a crash. 
 
 " Dinner is ready, sir," said the footman. 
 
 For fifteen minutes the footman and Desmarets* manservant 
 waited in the dining-room, but no one appeared. The maid 
 came in to say that "the mistress would not take dinner." 
 
 " Why, what is the matter, Josephine?" asked the footman. 
 
 " I don't know. The mistress is crying, and she is going 
 to bed. The master has a fancy somewhere else, I expect,
 
 8t THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 and it has been found out at an awkward time ; do you un- 
 derstand ? I would not answer for the mistress" life. Men 
 are^all so clumsy, always making scenes without thinking in 
 the least." 
 
 " Not a bit of it," said the man, lowering his voice ; " on 
 the contrary, it is the mistress who in short, you understand. 
 What time could the master have for gadding about, when he 
 hasn't spent a night out these five years, and goes down to his 
 office at ten o'clock, and only comes up to lunch at twelve ? 
 In fact, his life is open and regular, while the mistress goes off 
 pretty nearly every day at three o'clock, no one knows where." 
 
 "So does the master," said the maid, taking her mistress' 
 part. 
 
 " But he goes to the Bourse, the master does. This is the 
 third time I have told him that dinner is ready," he added, 
 after a pause ; " you might as well talk to a statute" 
 
 Jules came in. 
 
 "Where is your mistress?" asked he. 
 
 " Madame has gone to bed, she has a sick headache," said 
 the maid, assuming an important air. 
 
 ''You can take the dinner away," said Jules, with much 
 cool self-possession. "I shall keep madame company. " And 
 he went to his wife. She was crying, and stifling her sobs 
 with her handkerchief. 
 
 "Why do you cry?" said Jules, using the formal vous. 
 "You have no violence, no reproaches, to expect from me. 
 Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been faithful 
 to my love, it is because you were not worthy of it " 
 
 "Not worthy! " 
 
 The words repeated amid her sobs, and the tone in which 
 they were spoken, would have softened any man but Jules. 
 
 "To kill you, a man must love more, perhaps, than I," he 
 resumed; "but I have not the heart to do it, I would sooner 
 make away with myself and leave you to your your happiness 
 and to whom ?"
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 81 
 
 He broke off. 
 
 " Make away with yourself! " cried Climence. She flung 
 herself at Jules' feet and clung about them; but he tried to 
 shake her off, and dragged her to the bed. 
 
 " Leave me alone," said he. 
 
 "No, no, Jules ! If you love me no longer, I shall die. 
 Do you wish to know all?" 
 
 "Yes." Retook her, held her forcibly in his grasp, sat 
 down on the bedside, and held her between his knees ; then 
 he gazed dry-eyed at the fair face, now red as fire and seamed 
 with tear-stains. "Now, tell me," he said for the second 
 time. 
 
 Clemence began to sob afresh. 
 
 " I cannot. It is a secret of life and death. If I told 
 you, I No, I cannot. Have pity, Jules ! " 
 
 "You are deceiving me still," he said, but he replaced the 
 formal vous by tu (you by thou). 
 
 "Ah ! " she cried, at this sign of relenting. "Yes, Jules, 
 you may believe that I am deceiving you, now you shall know 
 everything very soon." 
 
 " But this Ferragus, this convict that you go to see, this 
 man enriched by crime, if he is not your lover, if you are 
 not his " 
 
 "Oh, Jules ! " 
 
 " Well, is he your unknown benefactor, the man to whom 
 we owe our success, as people have said before this? " 
 
 " Who said so ! " 
 
 "A man whom I killed in a duel." 
 
 " Oh, God ! one man dead already." 
 
 " If he is not your protector, if he does not give you 
 money, and you take money to him, is he your brother?" 
 
 " Well," she said, " and if he were? " 
 
 M. Desmarets folded his arms. 
 
 " Why should this have been kept from my knowledge?" 
 returned he. " Did you both deceive me you and your 
 6
 
 82 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 mother ? And do people go to see their brothers every day, 
 or nearly every day, eh ? " 
 
 But his wife fell swooning at his feet. 
 
 He pulled the bell-rope, summoned Josephine, and laid 
 Clemence on the bed. 
 
 " She is dead," he thought, " and how if I am wrong? " 
 
 "This will kill me," murmured Mme. Jules, as she came to 
 herself. 
 
 "Josephine," exclaimed M. Desmarets, "go for Monsieur 
 Desplein ; and then go to my brother's house and ask him to 
 come as soon as possible." 
 
 "Why your brother?" asked Clemence. 
 
 But Jules had already left the room. 
 
 For the first time in five years Mme. Jules slept alone in 
 her bed, and was obliged to allow a doctor to enter the sanc- 
 tuary, two troubles that she felt keenly. 
 
 Desplein found Mme. Jules very ill ; never had violent 
 emotion been worse timed. He postponed his decision on 
 the case till the morrow, and left diverse prescriptions which 
 were not carried out, all physical suffering was forgotten in 
 heart distress. Daylight was at hand, and still Clemence lay 
 awake. Her thoughts were busy with the murmur of conver- 
 sation, which lasted for several hours, between the others, but 
 no single word reached her through the thickness of the walls 
 to give a clue to the meaning of the prolonged conference. 
 M. Desmarets, the notary, went at length ; and then, in the 
 stillness of the night, with a strange stimulation of the senses 
 that comes with passion, Clemence could hear the squeaking 
 of a pen and the unconscious movements made by some one 
 busily writing. Those who are accustomed to sit up through 
 the night, and have noticed the effect of deep silence on the 
 laws of acoustics, know that a faint sound at intervals is easily 
 heard, when a continuous and even murmur is scarcely dis- 
 tinguishable.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 83 
 
 Clemence rose, anxious and trembling. She forgot her 
 condition, forgot that she was damp with perspiration, and, 
 barefooted and without a dressing-gown, went across and 
 opened the door. Luckily it turned noiselessly on its hinges. 
 She saw her husband, pen in hand, sitting fast asleep in his 
 easy-chair. The candles were burning low in the sockets. 
 She crept forward, and on an envelope that lay sealed already 
 she saw the words: " My Will." 
 
 She knelt down, as if at a graveside, and kissed her hus- 
 band's hand. He woke at once. 
 
 "Jules, dear, even criminals condemned to death are given 
 a few days' respite," she said, looking at him with eyes 
 shining with love and fever. "Your innocent wife asks for 
 two days only two days. Leave me, then, free for two days, 
 and wait. After that I shall die happy ; at any rate, you will 
 be sorry." 
 
 " You shall have the delay, Clemence." 
 
 And while she kissed her husband's hands in a pathetic 
 outpouring of her heart, Jules, fascinated by that cry of inno- 
 cence, took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead, 
 utterly ashamed that he should still submit to the power of 
 that noble beauty. 
 
 Next morning, after a few hours of sleep, Jules went to his 
 wife's room, mechanically obedient to his custom of never 
 leaving home without first seeing her. Clemence was asleep. 
 A ray of light from a chink in the highest window fell on the 
 face of a woman worn out with grief. Sorrow had left traces 
 on her brow already, and faded the fresh red of her lips. A 
 lover's eyes could not mistake the significance of the dark 
 marbled streaks and the pallor of illness, which took the place 
 of the even color in her cheeks and the white velvet of her 
 skin, the transparent surface over which all the feelings that 
 stirred that fair soul so unconsciously flitted. 
 
 "She is not well," thought Jules. "Poor Clemence, may 
 God protect us ! "
 
 84 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 He kissed her very gently on the forehead ; she awoke, 
 looked into her husband's face, and understood. She could 
 not speak, but she took his hand, and her eyes grew soft with 
 tears. 
 
 "I am innocent," she said, finishing her dream. 
 
 "You will not go out to-day, will you? " said Jules. 
 
 " No ; I feel too weak to get up." 
 
 "If you change your mind, wait till I come home," said 
 Jules, and he went down to the porter's lodge. 
 
 " Fouquereau, you must keep a strict watch to-day," he 
 said. " I wish to know every one who comes in or out.." 
 
 With that, Jules sprang into a cab, bade the man drive to 
 the Hotel de Maulincour, and asked for the baron. 
 
 "Monsieur is ill," was the reply. 
 
 Jules insisted, and sent in his name. If he could not see 
 M. de Maulincour, he would see the vidame or the dowager. 
 He waited for some time in the old baroness' drawing-room ; 
 she came at last, however, to say that her grandson was far 
 too ill to see him. 
 
 "I know the nature of his illness, madame," said Jules, 
 " from the letter which you did me the honor to send, and I 
 entreat you to believe " 
 
 "A letter, monsieur? A letter that I sent to you?" broke 
 in the baroness. "I have not written a word. And what 
 am I supposed to say, monsieur, in this letter?" 
 
 "Madame, as I meant to call on Monsieur de Maulincour 
 this very day, and to return the note to you, I thought I need 
 not destroy it in spite of the request at the end. Here it is." 
 
 The dowager rang for her double-strength spectacles, and 
 glanced down the sheet with every sign of the greatest aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 " The handwriting is so exactly like mine, monsieur, that 
 if we were not speaking of a quite recent event, I should be 
 deceived by it myself. My grandson certainly is ill, mon- 
 sieur, but his mind has not been affected the least bit in the
 
 THE Tit IK TEEN. 85 
 
 world. We are puppets in the hands of wicked people ; still, 
 I cannot guess the object of this piece of impertinence. You 
 shall see my grandson, monsieur, and you will admit that he 
 is perfectly sane." 
 
 She rang the bell again to ask if it were possible for the 
 baron to receive a visit from M. Desmarets. The footman 
 brought an answer in the affirmative. Jules went up to 
 Auguste de Maulincour's room, and found that young officer 
 seated in an armchair by the fireside. He was too weak to 
 rise, and greeted his visitor with a melancholy inclination 
 of the head. The Vidame de Pamiers was keeping him com- 
 pany. 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron," began Jules, "I have something to 
 say of so private a nature that I should wish to speak with you 
 alone." 
 
 " Monsieur," said Auguste, " Monsieur le Commandeur 
 knows all about this affair ; you need not fear to speak before 
 him." 
 
 " Monsieur le 'Baron, you have disturbed and almost de- 
 stroyed my happiness ; and you had no right to do so. Until 
 we know which of us must ask or give satisfaction to the 
 other, you are bound to give me your assistance in the dark 
 ways to which you have suddenly brought me. So I have 
 come to inquire the present address of this mysterious being 
 who exercises such an unlucky influence on our lives, and seems 
 to have some supernatural power at his orders. I received this 
 letter yesterday, just as I came in after hearing your account 
 of yourself." 
 
 Jules handed the forged letter. 
 
 "This Ferragus or Bourignard or Monsieur de Funcal is a 
 fiend incarnate!" shouted Maulincour. "In what hideous 
 labyrinth have I set foot? Whither am I going? I was 
 wrong, monsieur," he added, looking full at Jules, " but death 
 surely is the greatest expiation of all, and I am dying. So 
 you can ask me anything you wish ; I am at your service."
 
 86 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 ''You should know where this strange man lives; I abso- 
 lutely must get to the bottom of this mystery, if it costs me 
 all that I have ; and with such a cruelly ingenious enemy every 
 moment is precious." 
 
 "Justin will tell us all about it directly," replied the 
 baron. The vidame fidgeted upon his chair. Auguste rang 
 the bell. 
 
 "Justin is not in the house," exclaimed the vidame in a 
 hasty fashion, which said a good deal more than the words. 
 
 " Well," Auguste said quickly, "and if he is not, our ser- 
 vants here know where he is. A man on horseback shall go at 
 once to find him. Your servant is in Paris, is he not ? They 
 will find him somewhere." 
 
 The old Vidame de Pamiers was visibly troubled. 
 
 "Justin will not come, dear fellow," he said. "I wanted 
 to keep the accident from your knowledge, but " 
 
 "Is he dead?" exclaimed M. de Maulincour. "And 
 when? and how? " 
 
 " It happened yesterday night. He went out to supper 
 with some old friends, and got drunk, no doubt ; his friends, 
 being also the worse for wine, must have left him to lie in the 
 street ; a heavy carriage drove right over him ' 
 
 "The convict did not fail that time; he killed his man at 
 the first attempt," said Auguste. " He was not so lucky with 
 me ; he had to try four times." 
 
 Jules grew moody and thoughtful. 
 
 " So I shall find out nothing, it seems," he exclaimed, after 
 a long pause. "Perhaps your man was rightly served; he 
 went beyond your orders when he slandered Madame Des- 
 marets to one ' Ida,' to stir up the girl's jealousy and let her 
 loose upon us." 
 
 ""'Ah, monsieur, in my fury I gave over Madame Jules to 
 him." 
 
 " Sir ! " exclaimed Mme. Jules' husband, stung to the quick; 
 but Maulincour silenced him with a wave of the hand.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 87 
 
 " Oh ! now I am prepared for all that may happen. What 
 is done is done, and you will do no better ; nor can you say 
 anything that my own conscience has not told me already. 
 I am expecting the most famous specialist in toxicology to 
 learn my fate. If the pain is likely to be intolerable, I have 
 made up my mind ; I shall blow my brains out." 
 
 " You are talking like a boy," cried the old vidame, aghast 
 at the baron's coolness. " Your g-andmother would die of 
 grief!" 
 
 "And so, monsieur, there is no way of finding out in what 
 part of Paris this extraordinary man lives?" asked Monsieur 
 Jules. 
 
 " I think, monsieur, that I heard this poor Justin say that 
 Monsieur de Funcal was to be found at the Portuguese or 
 else the Brazilian embassy," said the vidame. "Monsieur 
 de Funcal is of a good family ; he belongs to both countries. 
 As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your persecutor, 
 whoever he may be, is so powerful, it seems to me, that you 
 had better accept him in his new metamorphosis until you are 
 in a position to overwhelm him with confusion and crush 
 him ; but set about it prudently, my dear sir. If Monsieur 
 de Maulincour had taken my advice, nothing of all this would 
 have happened." 
 
 Jules withdrew, coolly but politely. He was at his wits' end 
 to find Ferragus. As he came in, the porter came out to in- 
 form him that madame had gone out to put a letter into the 
 box opposite the Rue de Menars. J^es felt humiliated by the 
 profound intelligence with which the man aided and abetted 
 his scheme, and by the very skill with which he found means 
 to serve him. The zeal and peculiar ingenuity which in- 
 feriors will show to compromise their betters, when their bet- 
 ters compromise themselves, were well known to Jules, and 
 he appreciated the danger of having such accomplices in any 
 affair whatsoever ; but he had forgotten his personal dignity 
 till he suddenly saw how far he had fallen. What a triumph
 
 88 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 for a serf, unable to rise to his master, to bring that master 
 down to his own level ! 
 
 Jules was stern and abrupt with the man. Another blunder. 
 But he was so wretched ! His life, till then so straight and 
 clean, had grown crooked ; and now there was nothing for it 
 but to use craft and lies. And Clemence, too, was using lies 
 and craft with him. It was a sickening moment. Lost in 
 depths of bitter thought, he stood forgetful of himself and 
 motionless on the door-step. Sometimes he gave way to de- 
 spair which counseled flight ; he would leave France and 
 carry with him his love and all the illusions of unproved 
 guilt; and then again, never doubting but that Clemence's 
 letter was addressed to Ferragus, he cast about for ways of in- 
 tercepting the reply sent by that mysterious being. Again, 
 examining into his singular success since his marriage, he 
 asked himself whether that slander which he had avenged was 
 not after all a truth. At length, returning to Ferragus' 
 answer, he reasoned with himself on this wise : 
 
 "But will this Ferragus, so profoundly astute as he is, so 
 consequent in the least things that he does ; this man who 
 sees, and foresees, and calculates, and even guesses our 
 thoughts, will he send an answer? Is he not sure to em- 
 ploy some means in keeping with his power? Can he not 
 send a reply by some ingenious scoundrel, or, more likely 
 still, in a jewel case brought by some unsuspecting, honest 
 creature, or in a parcel with a pair of shoes which some work- 
 ing-girl, in all innocence, brings home for my wife? Sup- 
 pose that there should be an understanding between him and 
 Clemence?" 
 
 He could trust nothing and nobody. He made a hurried 
 survey of the boundless field, the shoreless sea of conjecture ; 
 and after drifting hither and thither, and in every possible 
 direction, it occurred to him that he was stronger in his own 
 house than anywhere else ; so he resolved to stay at home and 
 watch like an ant-lion at the bottom of its funnel in the sand.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 89 
 
 " Fouquereau," he said, " if any one asks for me, I am not 
 at home. But if any one wishes to speak with madame, or 
 brings anything for her, ring twice. And you must let me 
 see every letter left here, no matter to whom it is addressed. 
 And so," he thought within himself, as he went into his office 
 on the entresol, " and so I shall outwit Master Ferragus. 
 And if his messenger is cunning enough to ask for me, so as 
 to find out whether madame is alone, at any rate I shall not 
 be gulled like a fool." 
 
 His office windows looked into the street. As he stood 
 with his face pressed against the panes, jealousy inspired him 
 with a final stratagem. He determined to send his head-clerk 
 to the Bourse in his carriage ; the clerk should take a letter 
 to a friend of his, another stockbroker, to whom he would 
 explain his business transactions he would beg his friend to 
 take his place. His most difficult business he put off till the 
 morrow, regardless of the rise and fall of stocks, and all the 
 funds of Europe. Fair prerogative of love ! Love eclipses 
 all things else. The rest of the world fades away before it ; 
 and altar, throne, and government securities are as though 
 they were not. At half-past three o'clock, just when the 
 Bourse is all agog with rates and premiums, rises and falls, 
 current accounts, and the rest of it, Jules looked up and saw 
 Fouquereau with a beaming countenance. 
 
 "An old woman has just been here, sir ; she is as sharp as 
 they make them. Oh ! she is an artful one, I can tell you. 
 She asked for you, and seemed put out to find you were not 
 at home ; then she gave me this letter here for madame." 
 
 Jules broke the seal with fevered anguish, but he dropped 
 exhausted into his chair. The letter was a string of meaning- 
 less words, and quite unintelligible without a key. It was 
 written in cipher. 
 
 "You can go, Fouquereau." 
 
 The man went. 
 
 "This mystery is deeper than the unplumbed sea. Oh,
 
 90 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 this is love beyond a doubt. Love, and love only, could be 
 as sagacious, as ingenious as the writer of this letter. Oh, 
 God ! I will kill Clemence." 
 
 Even at that moment a bright idea burst upon his brain, 
 and struck him so forcibly, that it seemed almost like the 
 breaking out of light. In the old days of poverty and hard 
 work before his marriage, Jules had made a real friend. The 
 excessive delicacy with which Jules spared the susceptibilities 
 of a poor and shy comrade, the respect that he paid his friend, 
 the tactful ingenuity with which he made that friend accept a. 
 share of his good fortune without a blush all these things 
 had increased their friendship since those days. In spite of 
 Desmarets' prosperity, Jacquet was faithful to him. 
 
 Jacquet, an honest man, and a toiler of austere life, had 
 slowly made his way in that department which of all others 
 employs most rascality and most honesty. He was in the 
 Foreign Office ; the most delicate part of its archives was in 
 his charge. He was a kind of departmental glow-worm, 
 shedding light during his working hours on secret correspond- 
 ence, deciphering and classifying dispatches. Rather above 
 the rank and file of the middle-classes, he held the highest 
 (subaltern) post at the Foreign Office, and lived unrecognized ; 
 rejoicing in an obscurity which put him beyond reverses of 
 fortune, and content to pay his debt to his fatherland in small 
 coin. A born assistant-registrar, he enjoyed the respect that 
 was due to him, in newspaper language. And, as an unknown 
 patriot in a Government Department, he resigned himself to 
 groan, by his fireside, over the aberrations of the Government 
 that he served. His position, thanks to Jules, had been im- 
 proved by a suitable marriage. In his own home, Jacquet 
 was a debonair king, a " man with an umbrella," as they say, 
 who hired a carriage for his wife which he never entered him- 
 self; and as a final touch to this portrait of an unconscious 
 philosopher, it should be added that he had never yet sus- 
 pected, and never would suspect, how much he might make
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 91 
 
 out of his position, with a stockbroker for his intimate friend, 
 and a knowledge of State secrets. A hero after the manner 
 of that unknown private soldier who died to save Napoleon 
 with a cry of "Who goes there?" he was faithful to his De- 
 partment. 
 
 In another ten minutes Jules stood in Jacquct's private 
 office. His friend brought forward a chair, laid his green silk 
 eye-shade down methodically upon the table, rubbed his 
 hands, took out his snuff-box, rose to his feet, threw out his 
 chest with a crack of the shoulder-blades, and said 
 
 "What chance brings you here, Mo'sieur Desmarets? 
 What do you want with me?" 
 
 " I want you to find out a secret for me, Jacquet ; it is a 
 matter of life and death." 
 
 " It is not about politics?" 
 
 "You are not the man I should come to if I wanted to 
 know anything of that kind," said Jules. " No, it is a private 
 affair, and I must ask you to keep it as secret as possible." 
 
 "Claude-Joseph Jacquet, professional mute. Why, don't 
 you know me?" laughed he. "My line of business is dis- 
 cretion." 
 
 Jules put the letter before him. 
 
 " This is addressed to my wife ; I must have it read to me," 
 he said. 
 
 "The devil! the devil! a bad business," said Jacquet, 
 scrutinizing the document as a money-lender examines a 
 negotiable bill. " Aha ! a stencil cipher. Wait ! " 
 
 He left Jules alone in the office, but came back pretty soon. 
 
 "Tomfoolery, my friend. It is written with an old stencil 
 cipher which the Portuguese ambassador used in Monsieur de 
 Choiseul's time after the expulsion of the Jesuits. Stay, look 
 here." 
 
 Jacquet took up a sheet of paper with holes cut in it at 
 regular intervals ; it looked rather like the lace paper which 
 confectioners put over their sugar-plums. When this was se<
 
 92 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 over the sheet below, Jules could easily make sense of the 
 words left uncovered : 
 
 " MY DEAR CLEMENCE : Do not trouble yourself any more ; 
 no one shall trouble our happiness again, and your husband 
 will put his suspicions aside. I cannot go to see you. How- 
 ever ill you may be, you must gather up your courage to come 
 to me ; summon up your strength, love will give it to you. 
 I have been through a most cruel operation for your sake, and 
 I cannot stir out of bed. Moxas were applied yesterday even- 
 ing to the nape of the neck and across the shoulders ; it was 
 necessary to cauterize pretty deeply. Do you understand ? 
 But I thought of you, and found the pain not intolerable. I 
 have left the sheltering roof of the Embassy to baffle Maulin- 
 cour, who shall not persecute us much longer ; and here I am 
 safe from all search at Number 12 Rue des Enfants-Rouges, 
 with an old woman, one Mme. Etienne Gruget, mother of 
 that Ida, who shall shortly pay dear for her silly prank. Come 
 to-morrow at nine o'clock. My room can only be reached by 
 an inner staircase. Ask for M. Camuset. Adieu till to- 
 morrow. I kiss thy forehead, my darling." 
 
 Jacquet gazed at Jules with a kind of shocked expression 
 with a very real sympathy in it, and brought out his favorite 
 invocation: "The devil! the devil!" in two distinct into- 
 nations. 
 
 "It seems clear to you, doesn't it?" said Jules. "Well, 
 and yet, in the bottom of my heart a voice pleads for my wife, 
 and that voice rises above all the pangs of jealousy. I shall 
 endure the most horrid torture until to-morrow ; but at last, 
 to-morrow between nine and ten, I shall know all. I shall 
 either be wretched or happy for life. Think of me, Jacquet." 
 
 " I will be at your house at eight o'clock. We will go 
 yonder together. I will wait outside in the street for you, if 
 you like. There may be risks to run ; you ought to have
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 93 
 
 some one you can trust within call, a sure hand that can take 
 a hint. Count upon me." 
 
 " Even to help me to kill a man ? " 
 
 "The devil! the devil!" Jacquet said quickly, repeating, 
 so to speak, the same musical note. " I have two children and 
 a wife " 
 
 Jules squeezed Claude Jacquet's hand and went out. But 
 he came back in haste. 
 
 "I am forgetting the letter," said he. "And that is not 
 all ; it must be sealed again." 
 
 " The devil ! the devil ! you opened it without taking an 
 impression ; but, luckily, the edge of the fracture is pretty 
 clean. There, let me have it, I will give it you back again 
 sfcum/um scnpturam (according to the Scriptures)." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " By half-past five " 
 
 " If I am not in, simply give it to the porter, and tell him 
 to send it up to madame." 
 
 " Do you want me to-morrow?" 
 
 "No. Farewell." 
 
 Jules soon reached the Place de la Rotonde du Temple, dis- 
 missed his cabriolet, and walked down to the Rue des Enfants- 
 Rouges, to take a look at Mme. Etienne Gruget's abode. The 
 mystery on which so many lives hung was to be cleared up 
 there. Ferragus was there, and Ferragus held all the ends of 
 the threads in this obscure business. Was not the connection 
 between Mme. Jules, her husband, and this man the Gordian 
 knot of a tragedy stained even now with blood ? Nor should 
 the blade be wanting to cut asunder the tightest of all bonds. 
 
 The house belonged to the class commonly known as caba- 
 joutis an expressive name given by working people in Paris 
 to patchwork buildings, as they may be called. Several 
 houses, originally separate, have some time been run into one, 
 according to the fancy of the various proprietors who succes- 
 sively enlarged them ; or they were begun and left unfinished
 
 94 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 for a time, and afterward resumed and completed. Unlucky 
 dwellings are they that have passed, like sundry nations, under 
 the rule of several dynasties of capricious rulers. The various 
 stories and the windows do not belong to each other, to borrow 
 one of the most picturesque of painter's words ; every detail, 
 even the decorations outside, clashes with the rest of the build- 
 ing. The cabajoutis is to Parisian street architecture what the 
 capharnaiim, or lumber-room, is to the house a regular rub- 
 bish-heap, where the most unlikely things are shot down to- 
 gether pell-mell. 
 
 " Mme. Etienne ? " Jules asked of the portress. 
 
 That functionary was installed in the great centre doorway 
 in a sort of hencoop, a little wooden house on wheels, not 
 unlike the cabins which the police authorities put up at every 
 cabstand. 
 
 "Eh?" said the portress, laying down the stocking which 
 she was knitting. The living accessories which contribute to 
 the general effect of any portion of the great monster, Paris, fit 
 in, as a rule, remarkably well with the character of their sur- 
 roundings. The porter, janitor, concierge, Swiss, or what- 
 ever you may choose to call this indispensable muscle in the 
 monster's economy, is always in keeping with the quarter of 
 which he is an integral part ; very often he is the Quarter in- 
 carnate. The concierge of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, an 
 idle being embroidered at every seam, speculates in stocks and 
 shares; in the Chaussee d'Antin, the porter is a comfortable 
 personage ; in the neighborhood of the Bourse, he reads the 
 newspaper ; in the Faubourg Montmartre, he carries on some 
 industry or other. In low neighborhoods the portress is a 
 worn-out prostitute ; in the Marais she keeps herself respect- 
 able, she is apt to be peevish and cross-grained, she has her 
 "ways." 
 
 At sight of Jules, the portress of the Rue des Enfants- 
 Rouges stirred up the dying embers of block fuel in her foot- 
 warmer, taking a knife for the purpose. Then she said :
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 95 
 
 "You want Madame Etienne; do you mean Madame fitiennc 
 Gruget?" 
 
 "Yes," said Jules Desmarcts, with a touch of vexation. 
 
 " She that works at trimmings? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Very well, sir," and, emerging from her cage, she laid a 
 hand on Jules' arm and drew him to the farther end of a long 
 narrow passage, vaulted like a cellar ; " you go up the second 
 staircase opposite, just across the yard. Do you see the win- 
 dows with the wallflowers ? That's where Madame Etienne 
 lives." 
 
 ''Thank you, madame. Is she alone, do you think?" 
 
 " Why shouldn't she be alone when she is a lone woman ? " 
 
 Jules sprang noiselessly up a very dark staircase, every step 
 incrusted with dried lumps of mud deposited by the lodgers' 
 boots. He found three doors on the second floor, but no sign 
 of wallflowers. Luckily for him, some words were written 
 in chalk on the grimiest and greasiest of the three Ida will 
 be back at nine o 1 clock to-night. 
 
 " Here it is," said Jules to himself. 
 
 He tugged at an old blackened bell-pull, with a fawn's foot 
 attached, and heard the smothered tinkle of a little cracked 
 bell, and the yapping of an asthmatic little dog. He could 
 tell by the sound that the bell made inside that the room was 
 so lumbered up with things that there was no room for an 
 echo a characteristic trait of workmen's lodgings and little 
 households generally,' where there is neither space nor air. 
 Jules looked about involuntarily for the wallflowers, and found 
 them at last on the window-sill, between two pestiferous sinks. 
 Here were flowers, a garden two feet long and six inches wide, 
 and a sprouting grain of wheat all life condensed into that 
 narrow space, and not one of life's miseries lacking ! A ray 
 of sunlight shone down, as if in pity on the sickly blossoms 
 and the superb green column of wheat-stalk, bringing out the 
 indescribable color peculiar to Paris slums ; dust, grease, and
 
 96 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 inconceivable filth incrusted and corroded the rubbed, dis- 
 colored damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the gaping 
 window-sashes, the doors that once had been painted red. 
 In another moment he heard an old woman's cough and the 
 sound of heavy feet dragging painfully along in list slippers. 
 This must be Ida Gruget's mother. She opened the door, 
 came out upon the landing, raised her face to his, and said 
 
 "Ah! it'sM'sieur Bocquillon ! Why, no it isn't. My word ! 
 how like you are to M'sieur Bocquillon ! You are a brother of 
 his perhaps? What can I do for you, sir? Just step inside." 
 
 Jules followed her into the first room, and caught a general 
 impression of bird-cages, pots and pans, stoves, furniture, 
 little earthenware dishes full of broken meat, or milk for the 
 dog and the cats ; a wooden clock-case, blankets, Eisen's en- 
 gravings, and a heap of old ironware piled up with the most 
 curiously grotesque effect. It was a genuine Parisian caphar- 
 naum ; nothing was lacking, not even a few odd numbers of 
 the " Constitutional." 
 
 "Just come in here and warm yourself," said the Widow 
 Gruget, but prudence prevailed. Jules was afraid that 
 Ferragus might overhear, and wondered whether the bargain 
 which he proposed to make had not better be concluded in 
 the outer room; just then, however, a hen came cackling 
 down a staircase and cut short his inward conference. He 
 made up his mind and followed Ida's mother into the next 
 room, where a fire was burning. A wheezy little pug-dog, a 
 dumb spectator, followed them, and scrambled up on an old 
 stool. Mme. Gruget's request to come in and get warm was 
 prompted by the very coxcombry of poverty on the brink of 
 destitution. Her stock-pot completely hid a couple of 
 smouldering sticks which ostentatiously shunned each other. 
 A skimmer lay on the floor, with the handle among the ashes. 
 On the wooden ledge above the fireplace, amid a litter of 
 wools, cotton-reels, and odds and ends, needed for the manu- 
 facture of trimmings, stood a little waxen crucifix under a
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 97 
 
 shade made of pieces of glass joined together with strips 
 of bluish paper. Jules looked round at the furniture with a 
 curiosity in which self-interest was blended, and in spite of 
 himself he showed his secret satisfaction. 
 
 "Well, sir, do you think you can buy any of my furni- 
 ture ? " inquired the widow, sitting down in a yellow cane- 
 seated armchair, her headquarters apparently ; for it contained 
 her pocket-handkerchief, her snuff-box, some half-peeled vege- 
 tables, her spectacles,' an almanack, a length of galoon on 
 which she was at work, a pack of greasy playing-cards, and a 
 couple of novels. All this sounded hollow. The piece of 
 furniture on which the widow was " descending the river of 
 life" was something like the comprehensive bag which women 
 take on a journey, a sort of house in miniature, containing 
 everything from the husband's portrait to the drop of balm 
 tea in case she feels faint, from the sugar-plums for the little 
 ones to English court-plaster for cut fingers. 
 
 Jules made a careful survey of it all. He looked very 
 closely at Mme. Gruget herself, with her gray eyes, denuded 
 of lashes and eyebrows, at her toothless mouth, at the dark 
 shades in her wrinkles, at her rusty net cap, with its yet more 
 rusty frill, at her tattered cotton petticoats, her worn slippers, 
 and charred foot-warmer, and then at the table covered with 
 crockery, silks, and patterns of work in worsted and cotton, 
 with the neck of a wine-bottle rising out of the middle of the 
 litter, and said within himself: "This woman has some pas- 
 sion, some failing that she keeps quiet : she is in my power." 
 Aloud he said with a significant gesture: "I have come to 
 order some galoon of you, madame ; " then lowered his voice 
 to add : " I know that yon have a lodger here, a man that goes 
 by the name of Camuset." 
 
 The old woman looked up at once, but there was not a sign 
 of surprise in her countenance. 
 
 "Look here, can he overhear us? There is a fortune in- 
 volved for you, mind you." 
 7
 
 98 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " You can speak, sir, there is nothing to be afraid of; there 
 is nobody here. There is somebody upstairs, but it is quite 
 impossible that he should hear you." 
 
 "Ah! cunning old thing ! She can give you a Norman's 
 answer," thought Jules. "We may come to terms. You 
 need not trouble yourself to tell a lie, madame. To begin 
 with, bear in mind that I mean no harm whatever to you, nor 
 your invalid lodger with his blisters, nor to your daughter Ida 
 the stay-maker, Ferragus' sweetheart. You see, I know all 
 about it. Never mind, I have nothing to do with the police, 
 and I want nothing that is likely to hurt your conscience. 
 
 "A young lady will come here to-morrow between nine and 
 ten to have some talk with your daughter's sweetheart. I 
 want to be somewhere near, so that I can hear and see every- 
 thing without being heard or seen. You must arrange this 
 for me, and I will give you two thousand francs down, and an 
 annuity of six hundred francs. My notary shall draw up the 
 agreement this evening in your presence, and I will give the 
 money into his hands to pay over to you to-morrow after this 
 meeting at which I wish to be present, when I shall have 
 proof of your good faith." 
 
 " It will not do any harm to my daughter, will it, my dear 
 gentleman?" she returned, on the watch like a suspicious cat. 
 
 " None whatever, rnadame. But, at the same time, your 
 daughter is behaving very badly to you, it seems to me. 
 When a man as rich and powerful as Ferragus is fond of her, 
 it ought to be easy to make you more comfortable than you 
 appear to be." 
 
 "Ah, my dear gentleman, not so much as a miserable ticket 
 for the Ambigu or the Gaiete, where she can go whenever she 
 likes. It is shameful. And I that sold my silver spoons, and 
 am eating now off German silver in my old age, all to appren- 
 tice that girl, and give her a business where she could coin 
 gold if she chose. For as to that, she takes after her mother ; 
 she is as neat-fingered as a fairy, it must be said in justice to
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 99 
 
 her. At any rate, she might as well hand over her old silk 
 dresses to me, so fond as I am of wearing silk ; but no, sir. 
 She goes to the Cadran Bleu, to dine at fifty francs a head, 
 and rolls in her carriage like a princess, and doesn't care a rap 
 for her mother. God Almighty ! we bring these scatter- 
 brained girls into the world, and it is not the best that could 
 be said for us. A mother, sir, and a good mother, too, for 
 I have hidden her giddiness, and cosseted her to that degree 
 that I took the bread out of my mouth to stuff her with all 
 that I had ! Well, and that is not enough, but she must come 
 and coax you, and then wish you 'Good-day, mother ! ' That 
 is the way they do their duty to them that brought them into 
 the world ! Just let them go their ways. But she will have 
 children some day or other, and then she will know what it 
 is for herself; bad bargains they are, but one loves them, all 
 the same." 
 
 "What, does she do nothing for you?" 
 
 "Nothing? Oh, no, sir, I don't say that. If she did 
 nothing at all for me, it would be rather too bad. She pays 
 the rent, and she gives me firewood and thirty-six francs a 
 month. But is it right, sir, that I should have to go on work- 
 ing at my age ; I am fifty-two, and my eyes arc weak of an 
 evening? And what is more, why won't she have me with 
 her? If she is ashamed of me, she may as well say so at once. 
 You had need to bury yourself, and that is the truth, for 
 these beastly children that forget all about you before they 
 have so much as shut the door.' 
 
 She drew her handkerchief from her pocket, and a lottery 
 ticket fell out, but she picked it up in a moment. 
 
 "Hi? that is the tax-collector's receipt." 
 
 Jules suddenly guessed the reason of the prudent parsimony 
 of which the mother complained, and felt the more sure that 
 the Widow Gruget would agree to his proposal. 
 
 "Very well, madame," he said, "in that case you will 
 accept my offer "
 
 100 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " Two thousand francs down, did you say, sir? and six hun- 
 dred francs a year? " 
 
 " I have changed my mind, madame. I will promise you 
 only three hundred francs of annuity. The arrangement suits 
 me better. But I will pay you five thousand francs down. 
 You would rather have it so, would you not? " 
 
 '' Lord, yes, sir." 
 
 "You will be more comfortable, you can go to the Ambigu 
 Comique, or Franconi's, or anywhere else, and go comfortably 
 in a hackney-coach." 
 
 "Oh, I do not care about Franconi's at all, being as you 
 don't hear talk there. And if I agree to take the money, sir, 
 it is because it will be a fine thing for my child. And I shall 
 not be living on her. Poor little thing, after all, I don't 
 grudge her such pleasure as she gets. Young things must 
 have amusement, sir. And so, if you will assure me that I 
 shall be doing nobody any harm " 
 
 "Nobody," repeated Jules. "But see now, how are you 
 going to set about it ? " 
 
 " Oh, well, sir, if Monsieur Ferragus has just a little drink 
 of poppy water to-night, he will sleep sound, the dear man ! 
 And much he stands in need of sleep, in such pain as he is, 
 for he suffers so that it makes you sorry to see it. And by- 
 the-by, just tell me what sort of a notion it is for a healthy 
 man to have his back burnt to cure the neuralgia that does 
 not trouble him once in two years ? But to go back to our 
 business, sir. My neighbor that lives just above has left her 
 key with me ; her room is next door to Monsieur Ferragus' 
 bedroom. She has gone to the country for ten days. So if 
 you have a hole made to-night in the partition wall, you can 
 look in and hear at your ease. There is a locksmith, a great 
 friend of mine, a very nice man, that talks like an angel ; he 
 will do that for me, and nobody any the wiser." 
 
 " Here are a hundred francs for him. You must come this 
 evening to Monsieur Desmarets' ; he is a notary ; here is his
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 101 
 
 address. The paper will be ready at nine o'clock, but 
 mum ! " 
 
 " Right ; mum as you say. Good-day, sir." 
 
 Jules went home again, almost soothed by the certainty of 
 knowing everything to-morrow. He found the letter, sealed 
 flawlessly again, in the porter's room. 
 
 " How are you?" he asked his wife, in spite of the cool- 
 ness between them, so difficult is it to break from the old 
 habits of affection. 
 
 "Rather better, Jules," she answered in winning tones; 
 " will you dine here with me? " 
 
 " Yes. Stay, here is something that Fouquereau gave me 
 for you," and he handed her the letter. At the sight of it 
 Clemence's white face flushed a deep red ; the sudden crim- 
 son sent an intolerable pang through her husband. 
 
 "Is that joy?" laughed he, "or relief from suspense?" 
 
 "Oh ! many things," she said, as she looked at the seal. 
 
 " I will leave you, madame." 
 
 He went down to his office and wrote to his brother about 
 the annuity for the Widow Gruget. When he came back 
 again dinner was ready on a little table by Clemence's bed- 
 side, and Josephine waited upon them. 
 
 " If I were not lying in bed, what a pleasure it would be to 
 me to serve you ! " she said, when Josephine had gone. 
 "Oh, and even on my knees," she went on, passing her 
 white fingers through Jules' hair. " Dear noble heart ! you 
 were very merciful and good to me just now. You have 
 done me more good by your trust in me than all the doctors 
 in the world could do with their prescriptions. Your woman's 
 delicacy for you can love as a woman can shed balm in my 
 soul ; I feel almost well again. There is a truce. Jules, come 
 closer, let me kiss you." 
 
 Jules could not forego the joy of Clemence's kiss, and yet it 
 was not without something like remorse in his heart. He felt 
 small before this woman, in whose innocence he was alwavs
 
 102 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 tempted to believe. There was a sort of sorrowful gladness 
 about Clemence. A chastened hope shone through the 
 troubled expression of her face. They seemed both alike un- 
 happy that the deceit must be kept up; another kiss, and 
 they must tell each other all ; they could endure their pain 
 no longer. 
 
 " To-morrow evening, Clemence?" 
 
 "No, monsieur, to-morrow at noon you shall know every- 
 thing, and you will kneel before your wife. Ah ! no, you 
 shall not humble yourself. No, all is forgiven you. No, you 
 have done no wrong. Listen. Yesterday you shattered me 
 very ruthlessly, but life perhaps might not have been complete 
 if I had not known that anguish ; it is a dark shadow to bring 
 out the brightness of days like heaven." 
 
 "You are bewitching me," Jules exclaimed, "and you 
 would give me remorse." 
 
 " Poor love, fate overrules us, and I cannot help my des- 
 tiny. I am going out to-morrow." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "At half-past nine." 
 
 " Clemence, you must be very careful. You must consult 
 Dr. Desplein and old Haudry." 
 
 " I shall consult my own heart and courage only." 
 
 " I will leave you free. I shall not come to see you till 
 noon." 
 
 "Will you not stay with me a little while to-night? I am 
 not ill now 
 
 Jules finished his work and came back to sit with her. He 
 could not keep away. Love was stronger in him than all his 
 griefs. 
 
 Next morning, at nine o'clock, Jules slipped out of the 
 house, hurried to the Rue des Enfants-Ronges, climbed the 
 stairs, and rang the bell at the Widow Gruget's door. 
 
 "Ah ! You are a man of your word, punctual as sunrise," 
 was old Mme. Gruget's greeting. " Come in, sir. I have a
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 103 
 
 cup of coffee and cream ready for you in case " she added, 
 
 when the door was closed. " Oh ! and genuine cream, a little 
 jar that I saw them fill with my own eyes at the cowkeeper's 
 near by in the Enfants-Rouges market." 
 
 "Thank you, no, madame, nothing. Show me up- 
 stairs " 
 
 ' Very good, my dear gentleman. Step this way." 
 
 She showed Jules into a room just above her own, and 
 pointed triumphantly to a hole about as large as a two-franc 
 piece, cut during the night so as to correspond with a rose in 
 the pattern of the paper in Ferragus' room. The opening had 
 been made above a cupboard on either side the wall ; the 
 locksmith had left no trace of his handiwork; and from below 
 it was very difficult to see this improvised loophole in a dark 
 corner. If Jules meant to see or hear anything, he was obliged 
 to stay there in a tolerably cramped position, perched on the 
 top of a step which the Widow Gruget had thoughtfully placed 
 for him. 
 
 "There's a gentleman with him," she said, as she went. 
 And, in fact, Jules saw that some one was busy dressing a line 
 of blisters raised on Ferragus' shoulders. He recognized Fer- 
 ragus from M. de Maulincour's description of the man. 
 
 "When shall I be all right, do you think?" asked the 
 patient. 
 
 "I do not know," said the other; "but, from what the 
 doctors say, seven or eight more dressings will be needed at 
 least." 
 
 "Very well, see you again this evening," returned Fer- 
 ragus. holding out a hand to the man as he adjusted the last 
 bandage. 
 
 "This evening," returned the other, shaking Ferragus cor- 
 dially by the hand. " I should be glad to see you out of your 
 pain." 
 
 "At last Monsieur de Funcal's papers are to be handed over 
 to-morrow, and Henry Bourignard is really dead," continued
 
 104 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Ferragus. " Those two unlucky letters that cost us so dear have 
 been destroyed, so I shall be somebody, socially speaking ; a. 
 man among men again, and I am quite as good as the sailor 
 whom the fishes have eaten. God knows whether it is for my 
 own sake that I have taken a count's title." 
 
 "Poor Gratien ! you are the best head among us, our be- 
 loved brother, the Benjamin of the band. You know that." 
 
 " Farewell ; take good care of my Maulincour." 
 
 "You can set your mind at rest on that score." 
 
 " Ho ! stay, marquis ! " cried the convict. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Ida is capable of anything after the scene yesterday even- 
 ing. If she flings herself into the river, I certainly shall not 
 fish her out ; she will the better keep the secret of my name, 
 the only secret she knows ; but look after her, for, after all, she 
 is a kind creature." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 The stranger went. Ten minutes afterward Jules heard the 
 unmistakable rustle of silk, and almost knew the sound of his 
 wife's footsteps, not without a fevered shiver. 
 
 "Well, father, poor father, how are you? How brave you 
 are ! " It was Clemence who spoke. 
 
 " Come here, child," said Ferragus, holding out his hand. 
 
 And Clemence bent her forehead for his kiss. 
 
 "Let us see you, what is it, poor little girl? What new 
 troubles ? ' ' 
 
 "Troubles, father? It is killing me, killing the daughter 
 who loves you so. As I wrote telling you yesterday, you 
 absolutely must use that fertile brain of yours to find some 
 way of seeing poor Jules this very day. If you only knew 
 how good he has been to me in spite of suspicions that seemed 
 so well founded ! Love is my life, father. Do you wish to 
 see me die ? Oh ! I have been through so much as it is, and 
 my life is in danger, I feel it." 
 
 " To lose you, my child ! to lose you for a miserable Paris-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 100 
 
 ian's curiosity ! I would set Paris on fire. Ah ! you know 
 what a lover is, but what a father is you do not, you cannot, 
 know." 
 
 "You frighten me, father, when you look like that. Do 
 not put two such different sentiments in the balance. I had 
 my husband before I knew that my father was living " 
 
 " If your husband was the first to set a kiss upon your fore- 
 head, I was the first to let tears fall there," said Fcrragus. 
 "Reassure yourself, Clemence ; open your heart to me. I 
 love you well enough to be happy in the knowledge that you 
 are happy ; although your father is almost nothing in your 
 heart, while you fill his." 
 
 'Ah, God ! such words make me too happy. You make 
 me love you more than ever, and it seems to me that I am 
 robbing something from my Jules. But just think that he is 
 in despair, my good father. What shall I tell him in two 
 hours' time? " 
 
 '' Child, do you think that I waited for your letter to save 
 you from this threatened unhappiness? What came to those 
 who took it into their heads to meddle with your happy life, 
 or to come between us ? Why, have you never recognized a 
 second Providence watching over you ? And you do not 
 know twelve men, full of vigor in mind and body, are like an 
 escort about your love and your life, always ready to do any 
 deed to save you ? And the father who used to risk his life 
 to see you as you took your walks ; or came at night to see 
 you in your little cot in your mother's room ; that father 
 who, from the memory of your childish kisses, and from these 
 alone, drew strength to live when a man of honor must take 
 his own life to escape a shameful fate ; how should not he 
 how should not /, in short, that draw breath only through 
 your lips see only with your eyes, feel through your heart, 
 how should I not defend you with a lion's claws and a father's 
 soul, when you are all that I have, my only blessing, my life, 
 my daughter? Why, since that an:?el died, that was your
 
 106 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 mother, I have dreamed only one dream of the joy of calling 
 you my daughter openly, of clasping you in my arms before 
 
 heaven and earth, of killing the convict " (he paused for 
 
 a moment) "of giving you a father," he continued; "I 
 saw a time when I could grasp your husband's hand without a 
 blush, and live fearlessly in both your hearts, and say to the 
 world : ' This is my child ! ' in short, I had visions of being 
 a father at my ease." 
 
 "Oh! father, father ! " 
 
 "After many efforts, after searching the world over, my 
 friends have found me a man's shape to fill," continued Fer- 
 ragus. "In a few days' time I shall be Monsieur de Funcal, a 
 Portuguese count. There, dear child, there are few men of 
 my age that would have patience to learn Portuguese and 
 English, with which that confounded naval officer was per- 
 fectly acquainted." 
 
 "My dear father! " 
 
 " Every contingency is provided for. In a few days his 
 majesty, John VI., King of Portugal, will be my accomplice. 
 So you only need a little patience when your father has had so 
 much. But for me it was quite natural. What would I not 
 do to reward your devotion during these three years ? To 
 come so dutifully to see your old father, risking your happiness 
 as you did." 
 
 "Father!" Clemence took Ferragus' hands and kissed 
 them. 
 
 " Come ! a little more courage, Clemence; let us keep the 
 fatal secret to the end. Jules is not an ordinary man ; and 
 yet, do we know whether with his lofty character and 
 great love he will not feel something like disrespect for the 
 daughter of " 
 
 "Ah! you have read your child's soul," cried Clemence; 
 " I have no fear but that," she added, in a heart-rending tone. 
 "The thought freezes my blood. But remember, father, I 
 have promised him the truth in two hours."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 107 
 
 " Well, my child, tell him to go to the Portuguese embassy to 
 see the Comte de Funcal, your father ; I will be there." 
 
 "And how about Monsieur de Maulincour who talked about 
 Ferragus? Ah, dear! to tell lie upon lie, what torture, 
 father!" 
 
 "To whom are you speaking? Yet a few days, and no 
 man alive can give me the lie. And beside, Monsieur de 
 Maulincour is in no condition to remember anything by this 
 
 time There, there, silly child, dry your tears, and bear 
 
 in mind that 
 
 A dreadful cry rang from the next room, where Jules Des- 
 marets was hiding. 
 
 "My girl, my poor girl!" The wail came through the 
 loophole above the cupboard ; Ferragus and Mme. Jules were 
 terror-stricken by it. 
 
 "Go and see what it is, Clemence." 
 
 Clemence fled down the narrow staircase, found the door of 
 Mme. Gruget's room standing wide open, and heard her voice 
 ring out overhead. The sound of sobbing attracted her to 
 the fatal room, and these words reached her ears as she 
 entered 
 
 "It is you, sir, with your notions, that have been the death 
 of her!"' 
 
 "Hush, wretched woman!" exclaimed Jules, trying to 
 stop her cries with his pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 "Murder! Help!" cried the Widow Gruget. At that 
 moment Clemence came in, saw her husband, shrieked aloud, 
 and fled. 
 
 There was a long pause. " Who will sa% r e my daughter ? " 
 asked Mme. Gruget. "You have murdered her." 
 
 "And how?" asked Jules mechanically, stupefied by the 
 thought that his wife had recognized him. 
 
 O O 
 
 "Read that, sir," said she, bursting into tears. "Will 
 any money comfort me for this?" and she held out a letter:
 
 108 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " Farewell, mother. I leave you all I have. I ask your 
 pardon for my faults, and for this last grief I am bringing on 
 you by making away with myself. Henry, that I love better 
 than myself, said that I had done him harm, and he would 
 have no more to do with me afterward ; I have lost all hopes 
 of establishing myself, and I shall go and throw myself into 
 the river. I am going down below Neuilly, so as they shall 
 never put me in the Morgue. If Henry doesn't hate me after 
 I've punished myself with death, ask him to bury a poor girl 
 whose heart only beat for him, and to forgive me, for I did 
 wrong to meddle with what was no concern of mine. Dress 
 his blisters carefully. 1 He has suffered a deal, the poor dear. 
 But I shall have as much courage to drown myself as he had 
 to have himself burnt. There are some corsets ready; see 
 that they are sent home. And pray God for your daughter. 
 
 "IDA." 
 
 " Take the letter to Monsieur de Funcal, in the next room. 
 He is the only man that can save your daughter, if it is not 
 too late." And Jules vanished, flying like a criminal when 
 the deed is done. His legs shook under him. His swelling 
 heart was sending a hotter and fuller tide through his veins, 
 with a mightier pulse than he had ever known before. The 
 most conflicting thoughts filled his mind, and yet one idea 
 prevailed above them all. He had been disloyal to the one 
 whom he loved best in the world ; he could not compound 
 with his conscience, its voice grew in proportion to the extent 
 of the wrong that he had done, till the clamor filled him. as 
 passion had filled his inmost being during the bitterest hours 
 of the suspense which had shaken him but a short while ago. 
 He dared not go home, and spent most of the day in wander- 
 ing about Paris. Upright as he was, he shrank from con- 
 fronting the blameless brow of the wife he had not rightly 
 valued. The sin is in proportion to the purity of the con- 
 science ; and an act which for some is scarcely a mistake will
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 109 
 
 weigh like a crime upon a few white souls. Is there not, 
 indeed, a divine significance in that word white? and does 
 not the slightest spot on a virgin's garments degrade them at 
 once to the level of the beggar's rags? Between the two 
 there is but the difference between misfortune and error. 
 Repentance is not proportioned to the sin ; God makes no 
 distinctions; it is as hard to wipe out one stain as to wash 
 away the sins of a lifetime. 
 
 These thoughts lay heavily on Jules' soul. Justice is not 
 more inexorable than passion, nor more ruthless in its reason- 
 ing; for passion has a conscience of its own, infallible 
 as instinct. He went home again in despair, overwhelmed 
 with a sense of the wrong he had done ; but, in spite of him- 
 self, joy in his wife's innocence was visible in his pale face. 
 He went to her room with a fast-throbbing heart, and found 
 her lying in bed. She was in a high fever. He sat down by 
 the bedside, took her hand, and kissed it and covered it with 
 tears. 
 
 "Dear angel, they are the tears of repentance," he said, 
 when they were alone. 
 
 "And for what? " she asked. 
 
 She bent her head down on the pillow as she spoke, and 
 shut her eyes, and lay quite still, fearing, with a mother's, an 
 angel's delicacy, to betray her pain and alarm her husband. 
 The whole woman was summed up in those words. There 
 was a long silence. Jules, fancying that Clemence was asleep, 
 stole out to ask Josephine about her mistress. 
 
 "Madame came in half-dead, sir. We sent for Monsieur 
 Haudry." 
 
 " Has he been ? What did he say ? " 
 
 " Nothing, sir. He did not seem satisfied ; he said that no 
 one was to be allowed in the room except the nurse, and he 
 would come again in the course of the evening." 
 
 Jules stole softly back to his wife, and sat down in an arm- 
 chair by the bedside. He did not move ; his eyes never left
 
 lit THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 hers. Whenever Clemence looked up she met their gaze, and 
 from under her lashes there escaped a tender, sorrowful, im- 
 passioned glance a glance that fell like a fiery dart in the 
 inmost soul of the man thus generously absolved, and loved 
 through everything by her whom he had done to death. Fore- 
 bodings of death lay between them ; death was a presence felt 
 alike by both. Their looks were blended in the same agony, 
 as their two hearts had been made one through love equally 
 felt and shared. There were no questions now, but a dreadful 
 certainty. In the wife, a perfect generosity; in the husband, 
 a~_hideous remorse; and in both their souls one vision of the 
 end, and the same consciousness of the inevitable. 
 
 There was a moment when Jules, thinking that his wife was 
 asleep, kissed her softly on the forehead, gazed long at her, 
 and said to himself: "Ah, God ! leave this angel with me yet 
 a while longer, that I may expiate my sins by long adoration. 
 Heroic as a daughter ; what word could describe her as a 
 wife?" 
 
 Clemence opened her eyes ; they were full of tears. 
 
 " You hurt me," she said in a weak voice. 
 
 It was growing late. Dr. Haudry came and asked Jules to 
 leave the room while he saw his patient ; and when he came 
 out afterward there was no need to ask any questions a ges- 
 ture told all. 
 
 " Send for any of my colleagues in whom you have most 
 confidence," said the doctor; "I may be mistaken." 
 
 "But, doctor, tell me the truth. I am not a child, I can 
 hear it ; and beside, I have the strongest reasons for wishing 
 to know it, there are accounts to settle 
 
 "Madame Jules is death-stricken," said the doctor. 
 " There is something on her mind which complicates the 
 physical illness ; the situation was dangerous as it was, and 
 repeated imprudence has made it worse. Getting out of bed 
 in the night with barefeet ; going out on foot yesterday, and 
 in the carriage to-day, when I forbade it, she must have meant
 
 THE THIRTEEN. Ill 
 
 to kill herself. Still my verdict is not final ; there is youth, 
 and astonishing nervous strength it might be worth while to 
 risk all to save all by some violent reagent ; but I could not 
 take it upon myself to prescribe the treatment, I should not 
 even advise it. I should oppose it in consultation." 
 
 Jules went back to the room again. For eleven days he 
 stayed night and day by his wife's bedside, sleeping only in 
 the daytime, with his head on the bedfoot. Never did any 
 man carry the ambition of devotion so far as Jules Desmarets. 
 In a jealous anxiety to do everything himself, he would not 
 allow any one else to perform the least service for his wife ; he 
 sat with her hand in his, as if in this way he could give of his 
 own vitality to her. There were times of doubt and fallacious 
 jy> good days, and an improvement, and crises, and the 
 dreadful reverberations of the coming death, that hesitates 
 while life hangs in the balance, but strikes at last. Mme. 
 Jules was never too weak to smile; she was sorry for her 
 husband, knowing that very soon he would be left alone. It 
 was the twofold agony of life and love ; but as life ebbed, 
 love grew stronger. 
 
 Then came a dreadful night, when Clemence suffered from 
 the delirium that always comes before death in young crea- 
 tures. She talked aloud of her happy love, of her father, of 
 her mother's death-bed revelations, and the charge she had 
 laid upon her daughter. Clemence was struggling, not for 
 life, but for the passionate love that she could not let go. 
 
 "God in heaven ! " she cried out, "do not let him know 
 how I want to have him die with me." 
 
 Jules, unable to bear the sight, happened to be in the next 
 room, and so did not hear the wish that he would have ful- 
 filled. 
 
 When the crisis was over, Mme. Jules found strength. 
 Next day she looked lovely and peaceful once more ; she 
 talked, she began to hope, and made a prettv invalid's toilet. 
 She wanted to be alone all day, and entreated her husband to
 
 112 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 leave her so earnestly, that he was fain to grant her wish, as a 
 child's pleading is always granted. Jules, moreover, had need 
 of the day. He went to M. de Maulincour to claim the duel 
 to which both had agreed. He obtained an interview with 
 the cause of his troubles, not without great difficulty; but the 
 vidame, informed that it was an affair of honor, gave way in 
 obedience to the chivalrous prejudices which had always ruled 
 his life, and brought Monsieur Jules up to the Baron de 
 Maulincour. 
 
 Monsieur Desmarets looked about him in a vain search for 
 his antagonist. 
 
 "Oh, it really is he," said the commander, indicating the 
 figure in the armchair by the fireside. 
 
 "He? who? Jules?" asked the dying man, in a broken 
 voice. 
 
 Auguste had lost the one central faculty by which we live 
 memory. At sight of him M. Desmarets shrank back in 
 horror. He could not recognize the youthful, fine gentleman 
 in this Thing, for which there was no name in any language, 
 to quote Bossuet's saying. It was, in truth, a white-haired 
 corpse, a skeleton scarcely covered by the wrinkled, shriveled, 
 withered skin. The eyes were pale and fixed, the mouth 
 gaped hideously, like the mouth of an imbecile, or of some 
 debauchee dying of excess. Not the faintest spark of intel- 
 ligence was left to the forehead, nor indeed to any other 
 feature ; nor was there any appearance of color or of circula- 
 ting blood in the flabby flesh. These were the shrunken, 
 dissolving remains of what had been a human being, a man 
 reduced to the condition of the monstrosities preserved in 
 spirits at the Museum. Jules fancied he could see Ferragus' 
 terrible head rising above that visage, and his hate shrank 
 appalled at the completeness of the vengeance. Clemence's 
 husband could find it in his heart to pity the unrecognizable 
 wreck of what had been so lately a young man. 
 
 "The duel has taken place," said the vidame.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 113 
 
 " Monsieur dc Maulincour has taken many lives," Jules 
 exclaimed in distress. 
 
 "And the lives of his nearest and dearest," added the old 
 noble. " His grandmother is dying of grief, and I, perhaps, 
 shall follow her to the tomb." 
 
 Mme. Jules grew worse from hour to hour on the day after 
 the visit. She took advantage of a momentary strength to 
 draw a letter from her pillow, and gave it quickly to Jules 
 with a sign which no one could mistake ; she wished to spend 
 her last breath of life in a kiss. He took it, and she died. 
 
 Jules dropped down half-dead, and was taken away to his 
 brother's house. There, as in the midst of tears and ravings 
 he bewailed his absence of the day before, his brother told 
 him how anxious Clemence had been that he should not be 
 present during the church's administration of the last sacra- 
 ment to the dying, that rite so terribly impressive for a sensi- 
 tive imagination. 
 
 " You could not have borne it," said his brother. " I my- 
 self could scarcely endure to see it, and every one broke out 
 into weeping. Clemence looked like a saint. She summoned 
 up her strength to bid us farewell ; it was heart-rending to 
 hear that voice for the last time. And when she asked par- 
 don for any involuntary unkindness to those who had served 
 her, a wail went up among the sobs, a wail 
 
 "Enough, that will do." 
 
 He wanted to be alone to read his wife's last thoughts, now 
 that she, the woman whom the world had admired, had faded 
 away like a flower : 
 
 "This is my will, my dearest. Why should not people 
 dispose of their heart's treasures, as of everything else that is 
 theirs? The love in my heart was it not all that I had? 
 And here I want to think of nothing but love; it was all that 
 your Clemence brought you, it is all that she can leave you 
 when she dies. Jules, I am loved again, I can die a happy 
 8
 
 114 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 woman. The doctors will have their theories of my death ; 
 but no one knows the real cause but myself. I will tell you 
 about it, in spite of the pain it may give you. I am dying 
 because I kept a secret that could not be told, but I will not 
 carry away a secret unsaid in the heart that is wholly yours. 
 
 "I was nurtured and brought up in complete solitude, far 
 away from the vices and deceits of the world, by the amiable 
 woman whom you knew, Jules. Society did justice to the 
 conventional qualities by which a woman gains social popu- 
 larity ; but I, in secret, enjoyed communion with an angel's 
 soul ; I could love the mother who gave me a childhood of joy 
 without bitterness, knowing well why I loved her. Which 
 means, does it not, that she was twice loved ? Yes. I loved 
 and feared and respected her, yet neither the fear nor the re- 
 spect oppressed my heart. I was all in all to her ; she was all 
 in all to me. Through nineteen years of happiness known to 
 the full, nineteen years without a care, my soul, lonely amid 
 the world which murmured about me, mirrored nothing but 
 the one most pure vision of my mother, and my heart beat 
 for her alone. I was conscientiously devout. I was glad to 
 lead a pure life in the sight of God. My mother cultivated 
 all noble and lofty feelings and thoughts in me. Ah ! it glad- 
 dens me to own it, Jules. I know now that my girlhood was 
 complete, that I came to you with a maiden heart. 
 
 " When I came out of the profound solitude ; when for the 
 first time I smoothed my hair beneath a wreath of almond 
 blossom, and added a few knots of satin ribbon to my white 
 gown, thinking how pretty they looked, and wondering about 
 this world that I was to see, and felt curious about ; well, Jules, 
 even then, that simple girlish coquetry was for you ; at my 
 
 first entrance into that new world I saw you I saw your 
 
 face ; it stood out from all the others ; you were handsome, I 
 thought ; your voice and your manner prepossessed me in your 
 favor ; and when you came up and spoke to me, and your fore- 
 head flushed and your voice was tremulous the memory of
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 115 
 
 that moment sets my heart throbbing even now as I write 
 you to-day, when I think of it for the last time. Our love has 
 been from the first the keenest of sympathies, and it was not 
 long before we divined each other, and began to share, as we 
 have shared ever since, the uncounted joys of love. 
 
 " From that day my mother had but the second place in 
 my heart. I told her so, and she smiled, my adorable mother ! 
 And since then I have been yours yours wholly. That is my 
 life, my whole life, my dear husband. 
 
 "And this is what remains to be said : 
 
 " One evening, a few days before my mother died, she told 
 me the secret of her life, not without hot tears. I loved her 
 more, far more, when I heard in the presence of the priest who 
 absolved her that there was such a thing as passion condemned 
 by the world and the church. Yet, surely, God must be mer- 
 ciful when love is the sin of souls as loving as hers, even 
 though that angel could not bring herself to repent of it. She 
 loved with all her heart, Jules, for all her heart was love. 
 And so I prayed for her every day, without judging her. 
 From that time I knew why her mother's love had been so 
 deep and tender ; from that time I knew, too, that in Paris 
 there was some one living for whom I was everything life 
 and love. I knew, beside, that your success was due to him, 
 and that he liked you, and that he was an outlaw with a 
 blighted name, and that these things troubled him less for his 
 own sake than for mine for both our sakes. My mother had 
 been his one comfort ; I promised to take her place now that 
 she was dead. With all the enthusiasm of an unsophisticated 
 nature, I thought of nothing but the joy of sweetening the 
 bitterness of her last moments, so I pledged myself to continue 
 her work of secret charity the charity of the heart. 
 
 " I saw my father for the first time by the bed on which my 
 mother had just drawn her last breath. When he raised his 
 tear-filled eyes, it was to find all his dead hopes once more in 
 me. I vowed, not to lie, but to keep silence ; and what woman
 
 116 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 could have broken that silence ? Therein lay my mistake a 
 mistake expiated by death I could not trust you, Jules. But 
 fear is so natural to a woman, especially to a wife who knows 
 all that she has to lose. I was afraid for my love. It seemed 
 to me that my father's secret might cost me my happiness ; 
 and the more I loved, the more I dreaded the loss of love. I 
 dared not confess this to my father ; it would have hurt him, 
 and in his position any wound smarts keenly. But while he 
 said not a word to me, he felt my fears. The true father's 
 heart trembled for my happiness, and I trembled for myself, 
 and shrank from speaking of it with the same delicacy which 
 kept me mute. 
 
 "Yes, Jules, I thought that some day you might not love 
 Gratien's daughter as you loved your Clemence. But for that 
 dread in the depths of my heart, could I have hidden anything 
 from you from you that filled even this inmost recess ? 
 
 "When that odious, miserable officer spoke to you, I was 
 forced to tell a lie. That day I knew sorrov/ for the second 
 time in my life, and that sorrow has grown day by day till 
 this last moment of converse with you. What does my father's 
 position matter now ? You know everything. With love to 
 aid me, I might have wrestled with disease and borne any 
 pain ; but I cannot smother the voice of doubt. Is it not 
 possible that the knowledge of my origin may take something 
 from your love, Jules, and weaken it, and spoil its purity? 
 And this fear nothing can extinguish in me. This is the 
 cause of my death. 
 
 " I could not live in continual dread of a word or a look, 
 one word which might never be uttered, one glance that would 
 never be given ; but, I cannot help it I am afraid 7 I have 
 your love till I die, that comforts me. I have known for four 
 years past that my father and his friends have all but turned 
 the world upside down to act a lie to the world. They have 
 bought a dead man, a reputation, and a fortune, and all to 
 give a new life to a living man, and a social position to me
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 117 
 
 all this for your sake, for our sakes ! We were to know noth- 
 ing about it. Well, my death will probably save my father 
 from the necessity of further falsehood, for he will die when I 
 am dead. 
 
 " So, farewell, Jules. I have put my whole heart here in 
 this letter. When I show you my love in the innocence of its 
 dread, do I not leave you my very soul ? I should not have 
 had strength to tell you this, but I could write it for you. 
 
 " I have just made confession of the sins of my lifetime to 
 God ; I have promised, it is true, to think of nothing now 
 but the Father in heaven ; but I could not resist the pleasure 
 of confession to you, that are all to me upon earth. Alas ! 
 who would not forgive me this last sigh between the life that 
 is no more and the life to come? So, farewell, Jules, my 
 beloved ; I am going to God, with whom there is love un- 
 clouded for evermore, to whom you also will one day come. 
 There, at the foot of the Throne of God, together for ever- 
 more, we shall love through all the ages. That hope alone 
 can comfort me. If I am worthy to go first, I shall follow 
 you through your life, my spirit will be with you and around 
 you, for you must live on here below awhile. Lead a holy 
 life, to rejoin me the more surely. You can do so much good 
 here on this earth ! Is it not an angel's mission for a stricken 
 soul to spread happiness around, to give that which he has 
 not? 
 
 " I leave the unhappy to your care ; how should I be jeal- 
 ous of their smiles, their tears ? We shall find a great charm 
 in these sweet charities. Cannot we be together still, if you 
 will associate my name, your Clemence's name, with every 
 kindly deed ? When two have loved as we have loved, Jules, 
 there is nothing left but God ; God does not lie, God does 
 not fail. Give all your love to Him, I ask it of you. Culti- 
 vate good in those who suffer, comfort the afflicted among the 
 church on earth. 
 
 " Adieu, dear heart that I have filled. I know you, I know
 
 118 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 that you will not love twice ; and I can die happy in a 
 thought that would make any wife glad. Yes, I shall lie 
 buried in your heart. Now that I have told you the story of 
 my childhood, is not my whole life poured into your heart ? 
 I shall never be driven from it after I am dead. You have 
 only known me in the flower of my youth ; I shall leave 
 nothing but regrets behind, and no disenchantment. Jules, 
 that is a very happy death. 
 
 " May I ask one thing of you that have understood me so 
 well, one thing needless to ask, no doubt the fulfillment of a 
 woman's fancy, of a wish prompted by a jealousy to which all 
 women are subject. I beg of you to burn all that belonged 
 to us, to destroy our room, and everything that may recall our 
 love. 
 
 "Once again, farewell, a last farewell full of love, as my 
 last thought will be, and my latest breath." 
 
 Jules finished the letter, and a frantic grief came upon his 
 heart in terrible paroxysms which cannot be described. Every 
 agony takes its own course, and obeys no fixed rule ; some 
 men stop their ears to hear no sound, women sometimes close 
 their eyes to shut out all sights ; and here and there a great 
 and powerful soul plunges into sorrow as into an abyss. De- 
 spair makes an end of all insincerities. Jules escaped from his 
 brother's house, and returned to the Rue de Menars, meaning 
 to spend the night at his wife's side, and to keep that divine 
 creature in sight till the last. As he went, with the reckless- 
 ness of a man brought to the lowest depths of misery, he 
 began to understand why Asiatic laws forbid widows to sur- 
 vive their husbands. He wanted to die. He was in the 
 fever of sorrow ; the collapse had not yet set in. 
 
 He reached the sacred chamber without hindrance, saw 
 Clemence lying on her death-bed, fair as a saint, her hair 
 smoothed over her brows, her hands folded. She had been 
 laid already in her shroud. The light of the tall candles fell
 
 THE 1 HI R TEEN. 119 
 
 upon a priest at his prayers, on Josephine, who was crying \\\ 
 a corner, and on two men by the bed. One of these was 
 Fcrragus. He stood erect and motionless, gazing dry-eyed 
 at his daughter, you might have taken his face for a bronze 
 statue ; he did not see Jules. The other was Jacquct 
 Jacquet, to whom Mine. Jules had always been kind. He had 
 felt for her the respectful friendship that brings warmth to the 
 heart without troubling it, a softened passion, love without its 
 longings and its tumult, and now he had come religiously to 
 pay his debt of tears, to bid a long adieu to his friend's wife, 
 and set a first and last kiss on the forehead of the woman of 
 whom he had tacitly made his sister. 
 
 All was silent there. This was not the terrible death of the 
 church, nor the pageantry of death that passes through the 
 streets ; it was death that glides in under the roof, death in 
 his pathetic aspects ; this was a lying in state for the heart 
 amid tears shed in secret. 
 
 Jules sat down beside Jacquet, squeezed his friend's hand, 
 and thus without a word they stayed till the morning. When 
 the candles burnt faintly in the dawn, Jacquet thought of the 
 painful scenes to come, and led Jules away into the next room. 
 For a moment Clemence's husband looked full at her father, 
 and Ferragus looked at Jules. Anguish questioned and 
 sounded the depths of anguish, and both understood at a 
 glance. A flash of rage glittered fo- an instant in Ferragus' 
 eyes. 
 
 " It is your doing ! " he thought. 
 
 "Why not have trusted me?" the other one seemed to 
 retort. 
 
 So might two tigers have seen the uselessness of a conflict, 
 after eyeing each other during a moment of hesitation, with- 
 out so much as a growl. 
 
 "Jacquet, did you see to everything?" asked Jules. 
 
 "Yes, to everything; and everywhere someone else had 
 been before me and given orders and paid."
 
 120 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 i: He is snatching his daughter from me ! " shouted Jules, 
 in a paroxsym of despair. 
 
 He dashed into the bedroom. The father had gone. Clem- 
 ence had been laid in her leaden coffin. One or two work- 
 men were preparing to solder down the lid, and Jules retreated 
 aghast. At the sound of the hammer he broke out into dull 
 weeping. 
 
 "Jacquet," he said at length, "one idea stays with me 
 after this dreadful night, just one thought, but I must realize 
 it, cost what it may. Clemence shall not lie in a Paris ceme- 
 tery. She shall be cremated, and I will keep her ashes be- 
 side me. Do not say a word about it to me, but just arrange 
 to have it done. I shall shut myself up in her room and stay 
 there till I am ready to go. No one shall come in but you to 
 tell me what you have done. There, spare for nothing." 
 
 That morning Mme. Jules' coffin lay under the archway 
 with lighted candles round it, and was afterward removed to 
 St. Roch. The whole church was hung with black. The 
 kind of display made for the funeral service had attracted a 
 great many people. Everything, even the most heartfelt 
 anguish, is a theatrical spectacle in Paris. There are people 
 who will stand at the windows to watch curiously while a son 
 weeps in his mother's funeral procession, just as there are 
 others who want good seats to see an execution. No people 
 in the world have such voracious eyes. But the curious in St. 
 Roch were particularly astonished to find the six side-chapels 
 in the church likewise draped with black, and two men in 
 mourning attending a mass for the dead in each. In the 
 choir there were but two persons present at the funeral M. 
 Desmarets the notary and Jacquet the servants were beyond 
 the screen. The hangers-on of the church were puzzled by 
 the splendor of the funeral and the insignificant number of 
 mourners. Jules would have no indifferent persons. 
 
 High mass was celebrated with all the sombre grandeur of 
 the funeral service. Thirteen priests from various parishes
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 121 
 
 were there beside the officiating clergy of St. Roch. The 
 sound of blended voices rose as the eight chanters, the priests, 
 and the boy-choristers sang antiphonally ; and never, perhaps, 
 was the Dies tra: more deeply impressive than at that moment, 
 never did it strike an icier chill to the nerves of Christians by 
 accident of birth, assembled there by chance, curiosity, and 
 greed of sensation. From the side-chapels twelve other child- 
 ish voices, shrill with grief, rose wailing in the chorus. A 
 dull note of dismay reverberated through the church ; cries of 
 anguish answered wails of terror on every side. That awful 
 music spoke of agony unknown on earth, of secret friendship 
 weeping for the dead. Never has any known religion given 
 so powerful a rendering of the terrors of the soul, stripped 
 violently of the body, and tossed as by tempest into the pres- 
 ence of the intolerable Majesty of God. Before that clamor 
 of clamors, artists and their most impassioned work must 
 shrink abashed. No, nothing can stand beside that music 
 which gathers up all human passions, galvanizing them into a 
 life beyond the grave, bringing them, yet palpitating, into the 
 presence of the living God, the Avenger. Man's life, with 
 all its developments, is embraced by that Canticle of Death ; 
 for the cries of children, mingled with the notes of deeper 
 voices, recall the pains of cradled infancy, swelled by the sum 
 of all the pain of life's later stages, by the full-toned bass, 
 and the quavering notes of old men and of priests. Does not 
 the volume of strident melody, full of thunder and lightnings, 
 speak to the most undaunted imagination, to the ice-bound 
 heart, nay, to philosophers themselves? As you hear it, it 
 seems that God thunders. The vaults of every chapel are 
 cold no longer ; they quiver, and find a voice, and pour forth 
 fear with all the might of their echoes. You seem to see 
 visions of the uncounted dead rising and holding up their 
 hands. It is not a father, a wife or child, that lies beneath 
 the black drapery; it is Humanity emerging from the dust. 
 It is impossible to be just to the Apostolic and Roman Catholic
 
 122 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Church until you have passed through a supreme sorrow, and 
 wept for the beloved dead lying beneath the cenotaph ; until 
 you have heard all the emotion which fills your heart, inter- 
 preted by that Hymn of Despair, by those cries that over- 
 whelm the soul, by the religious awe that rises from strophe to 
 strophe, eddying up to heaven, appalling, diminishing, exalt- 
 ing the soul, till as the last verse comes to an end you are left 
 with the sense of Eternity. You have been wrestling with 
 the vast idea of the Infinite; and now all is hushed in the 
 church. Not a word is uttered there. Unbelievers them- 
 selves "know not what ails them." Spanish genius alone 
 could invest unspeakable sorrow with such transcendent maj- 
 esty. 
 
 When the solemn ceremony was over, twelve men in mourn- 
 ing emerged from the chapels, and stood grouped around the 
 coffin to hear the chant of hope which the church raises for 
 the Christian's soul before the human form is committed to 
 earth. Then each of them entered a mourning coach, Jacquet 
 and M. Desmarets took the thirteenth, and the servants fol- 
 lowed on foot. 
 
 An hour afterward the twelve strangers were gathered about 
 a grave, dug at the highest point of the cemetery familiarly 
 known as Pere-Lachaise ; the coffin had just been lowered ; a 
 curious crowd had gathered from all parts of that public gar- 
 den. The priest recited a short prayer, and flung a handful 
 of earth over the mortal remains ; and the sexton and his men, 
 having claimed their fee, hastily began to fill up the grave 
 before going to another. 
 
 And here this story would seem to finish. Yet perhaps it 
 would be incomplete if the practical effects of death should 
 be forgotten at the close of a slight sketch of Parisian life, and 
 its capricious undulations. Death in Paris is unlike death in 
 any other great city; few people know what it is to bring a 
 heartfelt sorrow into conflict with civilization in the shape of 
 the municipal authorities of Paris. Perhaps, too, the reader
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 123 
 
 may feel sufficient interest in Ferragus XXIII. and Jules 
 Desmarcts to care to know what became of them. And in 
 any case, there are plenty of people who like to know all 
 about everything ; and, as the most ingenious of French critics 
 once said, would find out the chemistry of the combustion of 
 the oil of Aladdin's lamp if they could. 
 
 Jacquct, being a civil servant, naturally applied to the 
 authorities for permission to exhume and cremate Mme. Jules' 
 body. The dead sleep under the protection of the prefect of 
 police ; to the prefect of police, therefore, Jacquet betook 
 himself. That functionary required a formal application. A 
 sheet of stamped paper must be purchased, sorrow must appear 
 in the regulation form ; and when a man is so overwhelmed 
 with grief that words fail him, he must express himself in the 
 peculiar idiom of red-tape, and translate his wishes into 
 business-like phrases with a marginal note : 
 
 " The petitioner prays permission to cremate 
 the body of his wife." 
 
 The head of the department, whose duty it was to draw up a 
 report for the prefect of police, a member of the Council of 
 State, glanced over the marginal note, in which the object of 
 the request was clearly stated by his own instruction, and 
 said 
 
 "But this is a serious question. It is impossible to draw 
 up a report in less than a week." 
 
 Jacquet was obliged to explain the delay, and Jules thought 
 of the words he had heard Ferragus utter: "Set Paris on 
 fire ! " Nothing seemed more natural than a thorough destruc- 
 tion of that receptacle of monstrous things. 
 
 " Why, there is nothing for it but to apply to the Secretary 
 of the Interior and set your Minister on to him," he told 
 Jacquet. 
 
 Jacquet accordingly applied to the Home Office, and asked 
 for an audience, which he obtained for that dav two weeks.
 
 124 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Jacquet was naturally persistent. He went, therefore, from 
 department to department, and succeeded in reaching the 
 private secretary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. With 
 such influence he received a promise of a private interview 
 with the pasha of the Home Office, and a few lines written by 
 the autocrat of Foreign Affairs by way of passport. Jacquet 
 now had hopes of carrying his point by storm. He was ready 
 for every emergency with arguments and categorical answers. 
 All ended in failure. 
 
 "This is'no affair of mine," said the Minister. "The 
 thing concerns the prefect of police. And what is more : no 
 law gives a husband the custody of his wife's body, nor has a 
 father a right to a child's corpse. It is a serious matter. It 
 ought to be looked into, beside, in the interests of the public. 
 The city of Paris might suffer. In short, if the matter were 
 referred directly to me, I could not give a decision hie et 
 nunc ; a report would be required." 
 
 In the administrative system a "report " answers much the 
 same end as limbo or paradise does in theology. Jacquet 
 had met with the "report" craze before; nor had he neg- 
 lected previous opportunities of groaning over the absurdities 
 of red tape. He knew that since the administrative Revolu- 
 tion of 1804, when the report had carried all before it in 
 Government departments, the minister had not yet been 
 found that would take it upon himself to have an opinion, or 
 give a decision on any matter, however small, until the thing 
 had been winnowed, sifted, and thoroughly scrutinized by the 
 scribblers and scratchers and sublime official intelligences of 
 his department. 
 
 Jacquet the man deserved to have a Plutarch for his biog- 
 rapher Jacquet saw that he had set off on the wrong tack, 
 and defeated his own ends by trying to proceed by the proper 
 forms. He should simply have removed Mine. Jules' coffin 
 after the service to one of the Desmarets' houses in the coun- 
 try. There the mayor of the village would have made no
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 12o 
 
 difficulty about gratifying the sorrowing widower's request. 
 Constitutional and administrative legalism is sterile; it is a 
 barren monster for nations and kings and the interests of 
 private individuals ; but the nations as yet have only learned 
 to spell those principles that are written in blood; and as the 
 evils of ruling by the letter of the law are never accompanied 
 by strife and bloodshed, legalism reduces a nation to a dead 
 level, and there is an end of it. 
 
 Jacquet, being a stickler for liberty, returned home, medi- 
 tating by the way on the blessings of arbitrary government ; 
 for a man only criticises the law of the land by the light of 
 his own passions. But when he came to talk to Jules, there 
 was nothing for it but to deceive his friend; the unhappy man 
 was in a high fever, and for a couple of days he stayed in bed. 
 
 That evening at dinner the minister chanced to mention 
 that the fancy had taken some one in Paris to have his wife's 
 body cremated in the Roman fashion. And for a moment 
 classical funeral rites were the talk of the clubs. As things 
 ancient were coming into fashion, several people were of the 
 opinion that it would be a fine thing to revive the funeral pyre 
 for distinguished personages. Some were for, and others 
 against, the idea. Some held that there were so many great 
 men that the practice would raise the price of fuel ; they 
 opined that with a nation so fond of the mental exercise of 
 changing its opinions, it would be a ridiculous thing to see a 
 whole Longchamp of ancestors trotted out in their urns at 
 the expiration of a lease ; while, if the urns happened to be 
 valuable, creditors (a race that never respects anything) would 
 seize upon them, and they, with their contents of honorable 
 dust, would be put up to public auction. Others retorted that 
 it was scarcely possible for a man to insure a permanent resi- 
 dence for his grandparents in Pere-Lachaise ; for that in time 
 the city of Paris would be compelled to order a St. Barthol- 
 omew of its dead. The cemeteries were invading the open 
 country, and threatened to encroach upon the grain land of
 
 126 THE THIRTEEN, 
 
 le Brie. In short, the question raised one of the futile and in- 
 genious discussions which, in Paris, too often aggravates deep- 
 seated evils. Happily for Jules, he knew nothing of the con- 
 versation, jokes, and epigrams with which his sorrow supplied 
 the town. 
 
 The prefect of police took offense because M. Jacquet had 
 gone straight to the minister to avoid the delays and matured 
 wisdom of the Board of Works. The exhumation of Mme. Jules' 
 body was a question within the jurisdiction of the municipal 
 police. Wherefore the police department was elaborating a 
 sharp answer to the petition. A single demand is enough, the 
 administration has a tight hold, and a thing once in its grasp 
 is like to go a long way. Any matter, moreover, may be re- 
 ferred to the Council of State, another piece of machinery 
 very hard to set in motion. Another day went by, and Jac- 
 quet made his friend understand that the idea must be given 
 up ; that in a city where the number of " tears " embroidered 
 on the black trappings are prescribed, where the law recog- 
 nizes seven classes of funerals, where land in which to bury 
 the dead is sold by its weight in silver, where grief is exploited 
 on a system of double entry, and the prayers of the church are 
 sold dear, or the vestry puts in a claim for a few extra voices 
 in the Dies ires any deviation from the beaten rut traced out 
 for grief by the authorities was impossible. 
 
 " It would have been one joy in my misery," said Jules ; " I 
 meant to go somewhere, a long way off, to die, and I wished 
 when I lay in the grave to have Clemence in my arms. I did 
 not know that officialdom could put out its claws to reach us 
 even in our coffins." 
 
 He would go to see whether there was a little room for him 
 beside his wife. So the friends went together to Pere-Lachaise. 
 At the gateway they found a crowd of ciceroni waiting to guide 
 sight-seers through the labyrinth, as if Pere-Lachaise were a 
 museum or the Cour des Diligences or some other sight. It 
 was impossible that Jules or Jacquet should find Clemence's
 
 THE THIKTEEN. 127 
 
 tomb. Terrible agony ! They went to consult the gate- 
 keeper. 
 
 The dead have a gatekeeper, and there are hours at which 
 the dead cannot receive visitors. Only by shaking all the 
 rules and regulations from top to bottom can any one obtain 
 the right to go thither in the darkness to weep in silence and 
 solitude over the grave which holds his beloved dead. There 
 are summer regulations and winter regulations. Of all the 
 concierges of Paris, the gatekeeper of Pere-Lachaise is the best 
 off. There is no cord to pull, to begin with. Instead of a 
 single room, he has a house, an establishment that cannot ex- 
 actly be described as a government department, although there 
 is a considerable staff attached, and the jurisdiction is wide, 
 and the governor of the dead draws a salary and wields an im- 
 mense power over a population who cannot possibly complain 
 of him ; he plays the despot at his ease. Neither is his abode 
 exactly a place of business, albeit there are offices and books 
 to be kept, and clerks to keep them, and receipts and expen- 
 diture and profits. And the gatekeeper himself is neither a 
 Swiss nor a concierge nor a porter, for the door is always 
 yawning wide for the dead ; and though there certainly are 
 monuments to be kept in order, he is not there to look after 
 them. He is, in short, an anomaly which cannot be defined ; 
 his office is akin in one way or another to every power in ex- 
 istence, and yet he is a nobody, for his authority, like Death, 
 by which it lives, lies completely beyond the pale. Never- 
 theless, exception as he is, he holds his tenure from the City 
 of Paris, a creature as chimerical as the emblematical vessel on 
 her coat of arms ; an imaginary being swayed by hundreds of 
 paws and claws which seldom move in concert ; and, as a re- 
 sult, her public servants are, to all intents and purposes, 
 fixtures. The cemetery-keeper, therefore, is the concierge 
 promoted to the rank of a public servant, a permanent element 
 amid dissolution. 
 
 His place, for that matter, is no sinecure. No one can be
 
 128 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 buried till the gatekeeper has seen the permit ; and he is bound 
 to give account of his dead. He can lay his finger on a spot 
 in that huge burying ground to point out the six feet of earth 
 in which some day you will lay all that you love, or hate, as 
 the case may be the mistress you love or your unloved 
 cousin. For, mind you, to this lodge all loves and hates must 
 come at the last, and are duly docketed and passed through 
 the office. The man keeps a register of sleeping-places for 
 the dead ; they go down on his list when they go down into 
 the grave. 
 
 The gatekeeper has custodians under him, and gardeners 
 and grave-diggers and assistants. He is a personage. Mourn- 
 ers are not brought into direct contact with him as a rule ; 
 he only comes forward if something serious occurs, if one 
 dead man is mistaken for another, or if a body is exhumed 
 for a murder case, or a corpse comes to life again. The bust 
 of the reigning sovereign presides in his room. Possibly he 
 keeps other busts of departed monarchs, with various royal, 
 imperial, or semi-royal persons, in a cupboard somewhere, a 
 sort of miniature Pere-Lachaise for changes in the Govern- 
 ment. In other respects, he is a public servant ; an excellent 
 man, a good husband and father, epitaphs apart ; but so much 
 varied emotion has passed under his eyes in the shape of 
 hearses ! he has seen so many tears shed, both sham and real, 
 and been acquainted with grief in so many shapes and in so 
 many faces with six millions of eternal sorrows, in short ! 
 For him, grief means a stone slab an inch thick, four feet 
 high by twenty-two inches wide. As for regrets, they are one 
 of the things to be put up with in his profession, and he never 
 dines but he has witnessed torrents of tears shed by inconsol- 
 able affliction. Every other emotion finds him kindly and 
 sympathetic ; he, too, can shed tears over the tragic end of a 
 stage hero like M. Germeuil in L'Auberge des Adrets, he is 
 moved when the man in the butter-colored breeches is mur- 
 dered by Robert Macaire ; but when it comes to a real genuine
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 129 
 
 death, his heart is ossified. Deaths mean rows of figures for 
 him ; it is his business to tabulate statistics of the dead. And, 
 as a last word, twice, or perhaps thrice in a century, it may 
 happen that he has a sublime part to play, and then he is a hero 
 at every hour in time of pestilence. 
 
 When Jacquet went in search of this absolute monarch, his 
 majesty's temper had suffered somewhat. 
 
 " I told you," he cried, " to water all the flowers from the 
 Rue Massena to the Place Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely ! 
 You fellows simply took not the least notice of what I told 
 you. My patience ! if the relatives take it into their heads 
 to come, as it is a fine day, they will be throwing all the 
 blame on me. They will call out as if they had been burnt, 
 and say frightful things about us up here, and our characters 
 will be taken away " 
 
 "Sir," put in Jacquet, "we should like to know where 
 Madame Jules was buried." 
 
 " Madame Jules who? We have had three Jules this week. 
 Ah ! " (interrupting himself as he glanced at the gate), " here 
 comes Colonel de Maulincour's funeral, go out for the per- 
 mit. My word ! it is a fine funeral," he added. " He has 
 not been long about following his grandmother. Some fam- 
 ilies seem to drop off for a wager. They have such bad blood, 
 have those Parisians ! " 
 
 Jacquet tapped him on the arm. 
 
 " Sir, the person of whom I am speaking was Madame Jules 
 Desmarets, the stockbroker's wife." 
 
 "Oh, I know ! " returned he, looking at Jacquet. "Thir- 
 teen mourning coaches at the funeral, weren't there? and only 
 one relation apiece in the first dozen. It was so queer that 
 we noticed it " 
 
 " Take care, sir ; Monsieur Jules is with me, he might over- 
 hear you ; and you ought not to talk like that." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir, you are right. Excuse me, I took 
 you for the next-of-kin. Madame Jules is in the Rue du 
 9
 
 130 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 Marechal Lefebvre, side-walk Number 4," he continued, after 
 consulting a plan of the ground; "she lies between Made- 
 moiselle Raucourt of the Comedie Francaise and Monsieur 
 Moreau-Malvin, a butcher in a big way of business. There is 
 a white marble monument on order for him ; it will be one of 
 the finest things to be seen in the cemetery here, and that's 
 a fact." 
 
 " We are no nearer, sir," Jacquet broke in. 
 
 "And that is true," said the other, looking round. 
 
 " Jean ! " he called, as a man came in sight. " Show these 
 gentlemen the way to Madame Jules' grave, the stockbroker's 
 wife. You know ! Next to Mademoiselle Raucourt's where 
 there is a bust." 
 
 And the friends set out with their conductor ; but before 
 they reached the steep path which leads to the higher part of 
 the cemetery they must run the gantlet of a score or more 
 of stone-cutters, carvers, and makers of wrought-iron work, 
 who came up to insinuate in honeyed accents that, " if mon- 
 sieur would like to have something put up, we could do it for 
 him very reasonably " 
 
 Jacquet was glad enough to be there to stand between his 
 friend and words intolerable for bleeding hearts. They 
 reached the spot where she lay. At the sight of the rough 
 sods and the row of pegs driven in by the laborers to mark 
 out the space for the iron railings. Jules leaned upon Jac- 
 quet's shoulder, raising his head at intervals to give a long 
 look at the little patch of clay where he must leave all that 
 remained of her for whom and through whom he still lived. 
 
 " How hard for her to lie there ! " 
 
 " But she is not there ! " protested Jacquet ; " she lives in 
 your memory. Come away ; let us leave this horrid place, 
 where the dead are tricked out like women at a ball," he con- 
 tinued. . 
 
 " How if we took her out of it ? " 
 
 "Is it possible?"
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 181 
 
 "All things are possible!" cried Jules. Then, after a 
 pause: " So I shall come here some day; there is room for 
 roe." 
 
 Jacquet succeeded in getting him out of the inclosure. 
 The tombs inclosed in those sprucely kept chessboard com- 
 partments marked out by iron railings are covered with in- 
 scriptions and sculptured palms, and tears as cold as the 
 marble on which survivors record their regrets and their coats- 
 of-arms. You may read jests there, carved in black letters, 
 epigrams at the expense of the curious, pompous biographies, 
 and ingeniously worded farewells. Here some one bides tryst, 
 and, as usual in such cases, bides alone. Here you behold a 
 floriated thyrsus, there a lance-head railing ; farther on there 
 are Egyptian vases and now and again cannon ; while spangles, 
 tinsel, and trash meet your eyes wherever you turn them. 
 You see trade-signs in every direction. Every style Moorish, 
 Grecian, and Gothic is represented, together with every 
 variety of decoration friezes, egg-mouldings, paintings, urns, 
 genii, and temples, among any quantity of dead rose-bushes 
 and faded immortelles. It is a scandalous comedy ! Here is 
 Paris over again streets, trade-signs, industries, houses and 
 all complete ; but it is a Paris seen through the wrong end of 
 the perspective glass, a microscopic city, a Paris diminished 
 to a shadow of itself, and shrunk to the measure of these 
 chrysalides of the dead, this human species that has dwindled 
 so much in everything save vanity. 
 
 Jules caught a glimpse of the view. At his feet, in the 
 long valley of the Seine, between the low ridges of Vaugirard 
 and Meudon, Belleville and Montmartre, lay the real Paris, 
 in a blue haze of its own smoke, now sunlit and transparent. 
 He glanced from under his eyelids over the forty thousand 
 houses of the city, and waved his hand toward the space be- 
 tween the column of the Place Vendome and the cupola of 
 the Invalides. 
 
 " There she was taken from me," he cried, " by the fatal
 
 132 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 curiosity of a world which seeks bustle and excitement for the 
 sake of excitement and bustle." 
 
 Eight or nine miles farther away down the Seine valley, in 
 a little village on one of the lower slopes of those ridges of 
 hill, between which the great, restless city lies, like a child in 
 its cradle, another sad death scene was taking place ; but 
 here there was none of the funeral pomp of Paris there were 
 no torches, no tall candle, no mourning-coaches hung with 
 black, no prayers of the church ; this was death reduced to 
 the bare fact. And this was the fact. A girl's body stranded 
 that morning on the bank, among the reeds that grow in the 
 Seine mud. Some sand-dredgers on their way to work caught 
 sight of it as they went up the river in their crazy boat. 
 
 " Halloo ! fifty francs for us ! " cried one. 
 
 " Right you are ! " said the other. 
 
 They came close up to the dead body. 
 
 " She is a very fine girl." 
 
 " Let us go and give notice." 
 
 And the two dredgers, first covering the corpse with their 
 jackets, went off to the mayor; and that worthy was not a 
 little puzzled to know how to draw up an official report of the 
 discovery. 
 
 The rumor spread with the telegraphic speed peculiar to 
 neighborhoods where communications are uninterrupted ; the 
 gossip on which the world battens, and scandal, tittle-tattle, 
 and slander, rush in to fill the vacuum between any given 
 points. In a very short time people came to the mayor's 
 office to relieve that gentleman of any difficulty, and among 
 them they converted the official report into an ordinary cer- 
 tificate of death. Through their assiduity the girl's body was 
 identified ; it was proven to be that of Mile. Ida Gruget, stay- 
 maker, of No. 14 Rue de la Corderie du Temple. At this 
 stage of the proceedings the police intervened, and the Widow 
 Gruget, the girl's mother, appeared with her daughter's fare-
 
 A GIRL'S BODY STRANDED THAT MORNING ON THE BANK
 
 -.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 133 
 
 well letter. While the mother sighed and groaned, a medical 
 man ascertained that death had ensued from asphyxia and an 
 access of venous blood to the pulmonary organs. That was 
 all. 
 
 The inquest being over, and particulars filled in, the au- 
 thorities gave permission for the burial of the body. The 
 cure of the place declined to allow the procession to enter the 
 church or to pray for the repose of the dead.* So an old 
 peasant-woman sewed Ida Gruget in her shroud, she was laid 
 in a rough coffin made of pine-boards, and carried to the 
 churchyard on four men's shoulders. Some few country- 
 women had the curiosity to follow, telling the story of the 
 death with comments of pitying surprise. An old lady chari- 
 tably kept the widow, and would not allow her to join the sad 
 little procession. A man, who fulfilled the threefold office of 
 sexton, beadle, and bell-ringer, dug a grave in the churchyard, 
 a half acre of ground at the back of the well-known church, 
 a classical building with a square tower buttressed at the cor- 
 ners, and a slate-covered spire. The churchyard, bounded 
 by crumbling walls, lies behind the round apse ; there are no 
 marble headstones there, and no visitors ; but not one, surely, 
 of all the mounds that furrow the space, lacked the tears and 
 heartfelt regrets which no one gave to Ida Gruget. They put 
 her down out of sight in a corner among the nettles and tall 
 grasses; the bier was lowered into its place- in that field so 
 idyllic in its simplicity, and in another moment the grave- 
 digger was left alone to fill in the grave in the gathering dusk. 
 He stopped now and again to look over into the road below 
 the wall ; once, with his hand on his pickaxe, he gazed in- 
 tently at the Seine which had brought this body for him to 
 bury. 
 
 " Poor girl ! " exclaimed a voice ; and suddenly a man 
 came up. 
 
 " How you startled me, sir ! " said the sexton. 
 
 * Interment in consecrated ground i* denied the body of a suicide.
 
 134 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " Was there any service for this woman that you are 
 burying? " 
 
 "No, sir. Monsieur the Cure would not allow it. She is 
 the first person buried here that is not of this parish. Every- 
 body knows everybody else hereabout. Does monsieur ? 
 
 Halloo ! he is gone ! " 
 
 Several days slipped by. A man in black came to the 
 house in the Rue de Menars ; the stranger did not wish to 
 speak to Jules ; he went to Mme. Jules' room and left a large 
 porphyry vase there, bearing the inscription 
 
 INVITA LEGE, 
 
 CONJUGI MOERENTI 
 
 FILIOL^E CINERES 
 
 RESTITUIT 
 AMICIS XII JUVANTIBUS 
 
 MORIBUNDUS PATER. 
 
 "What a man ! " exclaimed Jules, bursting into tears. 
 
 In one week Jules had carried out all his wife's wishes, and set 
 his own affairs in order. He sold his professional connection 
 to a brother of Martin Falleix, and left Paris behind him, 
 while the municipality was still debating whether or not a 
 citizen had any legal claim to his wife's dead body. 
 
 Who has not met on the Paris boulevards, at a street corner, 
 under the arcades of the Palais Royal anywhere, in short, as 
 chance may determine some stranger, man or woman, whose 
 face sets a host of confused thoughts springing up in his brain ? 
 It grows suddenly interesting at sight, perhaps because some 
 personal singularity suggests a stormy life ; perhaps gestures, 
 gait, air, and costume all combine to present a curious whole ; 
 perhaps because a searching glance or an indescribable some- 
 thing makes a sudden, strong impression before you can ex-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 135 
 
 plain the cause very clearly to yourself. On the morrow, 
 other thoughts, other pictures of Paris life sweep away the 
 passing dream. But if you happen to meet the same person 
 again ; if he is always passing along the street at the same 
 hour (like a clerk at the registrar's office, for instance, whose 
 presence is required at marriages eight hours daily) ; if he is 
 one of those wandering mortals who seem to be a part of the 
 furniture of the streets of Paris, and you see him again and 
 again in public places, on first nights, or in those restaurants 
 of which he is the fairest ornament then that figure be- 
 comes a tenant in your memory, and stays there like an odd 
 volume of a novel without a conclusion. 
 
 You are tempted to go up to the stranger and ask : " Who 
 are you? Why are you sauntering about the streets? What 
 right have you to wear a crumpled collar, a cane with an 
 ivory knob, and a seedy vest ? Why those blue spectacles 
 with double glasses?" or "What makes you cling to that 
 old-style cravat? " 
 
 Some among these errant creatures belong to the progeny 
 of Terminus, god of boundaries ; they say nothing to your 
 soul. There they are; that is all. Why are they there? 
 Nobody knows. They are conventional signs, like the hack- 
 neyed figures used by sculptors to represent the Four Seasons, 
 or Commerce, or Plenty. Others, again, retired attorneys, 
 or storekeepers, or antique generals, walk about, and always 
 appear to be much the same. They never seem to be a part 
 of the torrent of Paris, with its throng of young bustling men ; 
 rather, they remind you of half-uprooted trees by a river-side. 
 It is impossible to say whether other people forgot to bury 
 them, or whether they escaped out of their coffins. They 
 have reached a semi-fossil condition. 
 
 One of these Paris Melmoths had come for several days 
 past to make one of a sedate, self-contained little crowd which 
 never fails to fill the space between the Southern gate of the 
 Luxembourg Gardens and the North gate of the Observatory,
 
 136 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 whenever the weather is bright. It is a place by itself, a neutral 
 space in Paris. It lies out of the city, as it were, and yet the 
 city is all about it. It partakes of the nature of a square, a 
 thoroughfare, a boulevard, a fortification, a garden, an avenue, 
 and a highway; it is provincial and Parisian; it is every one 
 of these things, and not one of them ; it is a desert. All 
 about that nameless spot rise the walls of the Foundling Hos- 
 pital, the Hopital Cochin, the Capuchins, La Bourbe, the 
 Hospice de la Rochefoucauld, the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 
 and the hospital of the Val-de-Grace. All the sin and suffer- 
 ing of Paris, in fact, finds a refuge in its neighborhood ; and 
 that nothing may be wanting in so philanthropic a quarter, 
 students of science repair thither to study the ebb and flow of 
 the tides and latitude and longitude. M. de Chateaubriand 
 too established the Marie- Therese Infirmary not very far away, 
 and the Carmelites founded a convent near by. In that de- 
 sert the sound of bells never ceases, every stroke represents 
 one of the solemn moments in man's life ; the mother in 
 travail, the newborn babe, the dying laborer, the nun at 
 prayer, perishing vice, shivering age, disappointed genius. 
 Only a few paces away lies the Mont-Parnasse Cemetery, 
 whither shabby funerals go all day long from the crowded 
 Faubourg Saint-Marceau. 
 
 Players at bowls have monopolized this esplanade with its 
 view of Paris gray-headed, homely, good-natured worthies 
 are they, who continue the line of our ancestors, and can 
 only be compared as to externals with their public, the moving 
 gallery which follows them about. The man before alluded 
 to as new to this deserted quarter was an assiduous spectator 
 of the game, and certainly might be said to be the most 
 striking figure in these groups ; for if it is permissible to 
 classify Parisians zoologically, the other bystanders unmistak- 
 ably belonged to the mollusc species. The new-comer would 
 walk sympathetically with the jack, the smaU ball the 
 cochonnct, at which the other balls are aimed, the centre of
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 137 
 
 interest in the game ; and when it came to a stand, he would 
 lean against a tree, and watch as a dog watches his master, 
 while the bowls flew or rolled past. You might have taken 
 him for the fantastic tutelar spirit of the jack. He never 
 uttered a word. The players themselves, as zealous fanatics 
 as could be found in any religious sect, had never taken him 
 to task for his persistent silence, though some free-thinkers 
 among them held that the man was deaf and dumb. When- 
 ever there was occasion to measure the distance between the 
 bowls and the jack, the stranger's cane was taken as the 
 standard of measurement. The players used to take it from 
 his ice-cold fingers without a word, or even a friendly nod. 
 The loan of the cane was a kind of "easement" which he 
 tacitly permitted. If a shower came on he stayed beside the 
 jack the slave of the bowls, the guardian of the unfinished 
 game. He took rain and fine weather equally as a matter of 
 course ; like the players, he was a sort of intermediate species 
 between the stupidest Parisian and the most intelligent of 
 brutes. In other respects he was pale and withered-looking, 
 absent-minded, and careless of his dress. He often came 
 without his hat. His square-shaped head and bald, sallow 
 cranium showed through his white hair, like a beggar's 
 knee thrust througli a hole in his breeches. He shambled 
 uncertainly about with his mouth open ; his vacant eyes 
 were never turned to the sky, he never raised them indeed, 
 and always seemed to be looking for something on the 
 ground. At four o'clock an old woman would come for him 
 and take him away somewhere or other, towing him after her 
 as a girl tugs a capricious goat which insists on browsing when 
 it is time to go back to the shed. It was something dreadful 
 to see the old man. 
 
 It was afternoon. Jules, sitting alone in his traveling car- 
 riage, was driven rapidly along the Rue de 1'Est, and came 
 out upon the Carrefour de 1'Observatoire, just as the old man, 
 leaning against a tree, allowed himself to be despoiled of his
 
 138 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 cane amid the vociferous clamor of the players, in pacific dis- 
 pute over their game. Jules, fancying that he knew the face, 
 called to the postillion to stop, and the carriage came to a 
 stand there and then. As a matter of fact, the postillion, 
 wedged in among heavy carts, was in nowise anxious to ask 
 the insurgent players at bowls to allow him to pass ; he had 
 too much respect for uproars, had that postillion. 
 
 "It is he !" Jules exclaimed, finally recognizing Ferragus 
 XXIII., Chef des Devorants, in that human wreck. "How 
 he loved her ! " he added after a pause. " Go on, postillion ! " 
 he shouted. 
 
 PARIS, February, 1833.
 
 II. 
 
 THE DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS. 
 To Franz Liszt. 
 
 In a Spanish city on an island in the Mediterranean there 
 stands a convent of the order of Barefooted Carmelites, where 
 the rule instituted by St. Theresa is still preserved with all the 
 first rigor of the reformation brought about by that illustrious 
 woman. Extraordinary as this may seem, it is none the less 
 true. Almost every religious house in the peninsula, or in 
 Europe for that matter, was either destroyed or disorganized 
 by the outbreak of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic 
 wars ; but as this island was protected through those times by 
 the English fleet, its wealthy convent and peaceable inhabitants 
 were secure from the general trouble and spoliation. The 
 storms of many kinds which shook the first fifteen years of the 
 nineteenth century spent their force before they reached those 
 cliffs at so short a distance from the coast of Andalusia. 
 
 If the Emperor's name so much as reached the shore of the 
 island, it is doubtful whether the holy women kneeling in the 
 cloisters grasped the reality of his dream-like progress of glory, 
 or the majesty that blazed in flame across kingdom after king- 
 dom during his meteor life. 
 
 In the minds of the Roman Catholic world, the convent 
 stood out preeminent for a stern discipline which nothing had 
 changed ; the purity of its rule had attracted unhappy women 
 from the farthest parts of Europe, women deprived of all 
 human ties, sighing after the long suicide accomplished in the 
 breast of God. No convent, indeed, was so well fitted for 
 that complete detachment of the soul from all earthly things, 
 which is demanded by the religious life, albeit on the conti- 
 nent of Europe there are many convents magnificently adapted 
 
 (139)
 
 140 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 to the purpose of their existence. Buried away in the loneliest 
 valleys, hanging in mid-air on the steepest mountain-sides, 
 set down on the brink of precipices, in every place man has 
 sought for the poetry of the Infinite, the solemn awe of Silence ; 
 in every place man has striven to draw closer to God, seeking 
 Him on mountain-peaks, in the depths below the crags, at the 
 cliff's edge ; and everywhere man has found God. But no- 
 where, save on this half-European, half-African ledge of rock 
 could you find so many different harmonies, combining so to 
 raise the soul, that the sharpest pain comes to be like other 
 memories ; the strongest impressions are dulied, till the sor- 
 rows of life are laid to rest in the depths. 
 
 The convent stands on the highest point of the crags at the 
 uttermost end of the island. On the side toward the sea the 
 rock was once rent sheer away in some globe-cataclysm ; it 
 rises up a straight wall from the base where the waves gnaw at 
 the stone below high-water mark. Any assault is made im- 
 possible by the dangerous reefs that stretch far out to sea, with 
 the sparkling waves of the Mediterranean playing over them. 
 So, only from the sea can you discern the square mass of the 
 convent built conformably to the minute rules laid down as to 
 the shape, height, doors, and windows of monastic buildings. 
 From the side of the town, the church completely hides the 
 solid structure of the cloisters and their roofs, covered with 
 broad slabs of stone impervious to sun or storm or gales of 
 wind. 
 
 The church itself, built by the munificence of a Spanish 
 family, is the crowning edifice of the town. Its fine, bold 
 front gives an imposing and picturesque look to the little city 
 in the sea. The sight of such a city, with its close-huddled 
 roofs, arranged for the most part amphitheatre-wise above a 
 picturesque harbor, and crowned by a glorious cathedral front 
 with triple-arched Gothic doorways, belfry towers, and filigree 
 spires, is a spectacle surely in every way the sublimest on earth. 
 Religion towering above daily life, to put men continually in
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 141 
 
 mind of the end and the way, is in truth a thoroughly Spanish 
 conception. But now surround this picture by the Mediter- 
 ranean, and a burning sky, imagine a few palms here and 
 there, a few stunted evergreen trees mingling their waving 
 leaves with the motionless flowers and foliage of carved stone ; 
 look out over the reef with its white fringes of foam in con- 
 trast to the sapphire sea; and then turn to the city, with its 
 galleries and terraces whither the inhabitants come to take 
 the flower-scented air as it rises of an evening above the houses 
 and the tops of the trees in their little gardens; add a few 
 sails down in the harbor; and lastly, in the stillness of falling 
 night, listen to the organ music, the chanting of the services, 
 the wonderful sound of bells pealing out over the open sea. 
 There is sound and silence everywhere ; oftener still there is 
 silence over all. 
 
 Within the church is divided into a sombre, mysterious nave 
 and narrow aisles. For some reason, probably because the 
 winds are so high, the architect was unable to build the flying 
 buttresses and intervening chapels which adorn almost all 
 cathedrals, nor are there openings of any kind in the walls 
 which support the weight of the roof. Outside there is simply 
 the heavy wall structure, a solid mass of gray stone further 
 strengthened by huge piers placed at intervals. Inside, the 
 nave and its little side-galleries are lighted entirely by the 
 great stained-glass rose-window suspended by a miracle of art 
 above the centre doorway ; for upon that side the exposure 
 permits of the display of lacework in stone and of other 
 beauties peculiar to the style improperly called Gothic. 
 
 The larger part of the three naves was left for the townsfolk, 
 who came and went and heard mass there. The choir was 
 shut off from the rest of the church by a grating and thick 
 folds of brown curtain, left slightly apart in the middle in 
 such a way that nothing of the choir could be seen from the 
 church except the high altar and the officiating priest. The 
 grating itself was divided up by the pillars which supported
 
 142 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 the organ loft ; and this part of the structure, with its carved 
 wooden columns, completed the line of the arcading in the 
 gallery carried by the shafts in the nave. If any inquisitive 
 person, therefore, had been bold enough to climb upon the 
 narrow balustrade in the gallery to look down into the choir, 
 he could have seen nothing but the tall eight-sided windows 
 of stained glass beyond the high altar. 
 
 At the time of the French expedition into Spain to establish 
 Ferdinand VII. once more on the throne, a French general 
 came to the island after the taking of Cadiz, ostensibly to re- 
 quire the recognition of the King's government, really to see 
 the convent and to find some means of entering it. The 
 undertaking was certainly a delicate one ; but a man of pas- 
 sionate temper, whose life had been, as it were, but one series 
 of poems in action, a man who all his life long had lived ro- 
 mances instead of writing them, a man preeminently a Doer, 
 was sure to be tempted by a deed which seemed to be impos- 
 sible. 
 
 To open the doors of a convent of nuns by lawful means ! 
 The metropolitan or the Pope would scarcely have permitted 
 it ! And as for force or stratagem might not any indiscre- 
 tion cost him his position, his whole career as a soldier, and 
 the end in view to boot ? The Due d' Angoulgme was still in 
 Spain ; and of all the crimes which a man in favor with the 
 commander-in-chief might commit, this one alone was certain 
 to find him inexorable. The general had asked for the mis- 
 sion to gratify private motives of curiosity, though never was 
 curiosity more hopeless. This final attempt was a matter of 
 conscience. The Carmelite convent on the island was the 
 only nunnery in Spain which had baffled his search. 
 
 As he crossed from the mainland, scarcely an hour's dis- 
 tance, he felt a presentiment that his hopes were to be ful- 
 filled ; and afterward, when as yet he had seen nothing of 
 the convent but its walls, and of the nuns not so much as 
 their robes; while he had merely heard the chanting of the
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 143 
 
 service, there were dim auguries under the walls and in the 
 sound of the voices to justify his frail hope. And, indeed, 
 however faint those so unaccountable presentiments might be, 
 never was human passion more vehemently excited than the 
 general's curiosity at that moment. There are no small events 
 for the heart ; the heart exaggerates everything ; the heart 
 weighs the fall of a fourteen-year-old Empire and the drop- 
 ping of a woman's glove in the same scales, and the glove is 
 nearly always the heavier of the two. So here are the facts 
 in all their prosaic simplicity. The facts first, the emotions 
 will follow. 
 
 An hour after the general landed on the island, the royal 
 authority was reestablished there. Some few Constitutional 
 Spaniards who had found their way thither after the fall of 
 Cadiz were allowed to charter a vessel and sail for London. 
 So there was neither resistance nor reaction. But the change 
 of government could not be effected in the little town with- 
 out a mass, at which the two divisions under the general's 
 command were obliged to be present. Now, it was upon this 
 mass that the general had built his hopes of gaining some in- 
 formation as to the sisters in the convent ; he was quite una- 
 ware how absolutely the Carmelites were cut off from the 
 world ; but he knew that there might be among them one 
 whom he held dearer than life, dearer than honor. 
 
 His hopes were cruelly dashed at once. Mass, it is true, 
 was celebrated with great pomp. In honor of such a solem- 
 nity, the curtains which always hid the choir were drawn back 
 to display its riches, its valuable paintings and shrines so 
 bright with gems that they eclipsed the glories of the votive 
 offerings of gold and silver hung up by sailors of the port on 
 the columns in the naves. But all the nuns had sought seclu- 
 sion in the orgin-loft. And yet, in spite of this first check, 
 during this very mass of thanksgiving, the most intimately 
 thrilling drama that ever set a man's heart beating opened out 
 widely before him.
 
 144 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 The sister who played the organ aroused such intense en- 
 thusiasm, that not a single man regretted that he had come to 
 the service. Even the men in the ranks were delighted, and 
 the officers were in ecstasy. As for the general, he was seem- 
 ingly calm and indifferent. The sensations stirred in him as 
 the sister played one piece after another belong to the small 
 number of things which it is not lawful to utter ; words are 
 powerless to express them ; like Death, God, Eternity, they 
 can only be realized through their one point of contact with 
 humanity. Strangely enough, the organ music seemed to 
 belong to the school of Rossini, the musician who brings most 
 human passion into his art. Some day his works, by their 
 number and extent, will receive the reverence due to the 
 Homer of music. From among all the scores that we owe to 
 his great genius, the nun seemed to have chosen " Moses in 
 Egypt ' ' for special study, doubtless because the spirit of 
 sacred music finds therein its supreme expression. Perhaps 
 the soul of the great musician, so gloriously known to Europe, 
 and the soul of this unknown executant had met in the intui- 
 tive apprehension of the same poetry. So at least thought two 
 dilettanti officers who must have missed the Theatre Favart in 
 their Spanish exile. 
 
 At last in the Te Deum no one could fail to discern a 
 French soul in the sudden change that came over the music. 
 Joy for the victory of the Most Christian King evidently 
 stirred this nun's heart to the depths. She was a French- 
 woman beyond mistake. Soon the love of country shone out, 
 breaking forth like shafts of light from the fugue, as the sister 
 introduced variations with all a Parisienne's fastidious taste, 
 and blended vague suggestions of our grandest national airs 
 with her music. A Spaniard's fingers would not have brought 
 this warmth into a graceful tribute paid to the victorious arms 
 of France. The musician's nationality was revealed. 
 
 "We find France everywhere, it seems," said one of the 
 men.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 145 
 
 The general had left the church during the Te Deum ; he 
 could not listen any longer. The nun's music had been a 
 revelation of a woman loved to frenzy ; a woman so carefully 
 hidden from the world's eyes, so deeply buried in the bosom 
 of the church, that hitherto the most ingenious and persistent 
 efforts made by men who brought great influence and unusual 
 powers to bear upon the search had failed to find her. The 
 suspicion aroused in the general's heart became all but a cer- 
 tainty with the vague reminiscence of a sad, delicious melody, 
 the air of " Fleuve du Tage."* The woman he loved had 
 played the prelude to the ballet in a boudoir in Paris, how 
 often ! and now this nun had chosen the song to express an 
 exile's longing, amid the joy of those that triumphed. Terri- 
 ble sensation ! To hope for the resurrection of a lost love, to 
 find her only to know that she was lost, to catch a mysterious 
 glimpse of h?r after five years five years, in which the pent- 
 up passion, chafing in an empty life, had grown the mightier 
 for every fruitless effort to satisfy it ! 
 
 Who has not known, at least once in his life, what it is to 
 lose some precious thing ; and after hunting through his 
 papers, ransacking his memory, and turning his house upside 
 down ; after one or two days spent in vain search, and hope, 
 and despair; after a prodigious expenditure of the liveliest 
 irritation of soul, who has not known the ineffable pleasure of 
 finding that all-important nothing which had come to be a 
 kind of monomania? Very good. Now, spread that fury of 
 search over five years ; put a woman, put a heart, put Love in 
 the place of the trifle ; transpose the monomania into the key 
 of high passion ; and, furthermore, let the seeker be a man of 
 ardent temper, with a lion's heart and a leonine head and 
 mane, a man to inspire awe and fear in those who come in 
 contact with him realize this, and you may, perhaps, under- 
 stand why the general walked abruptly out of the church when 
 the first notes of a ballad, which he used to hear with a rap- 
 
 * The Tagus River. 
 10
 
 146 THE THIRTEEN, 
 
 ture of delight in a gilt-paneled boudoir, began to vibrate 
 along the aisles of the church in the sea. 
 
 The general walked away down the steep street which led 
 to the port, and only stopped when he could not hear the 
 deep notes of the organ. Unable to think of anything but 
 the love which broke out in volcanic eruption, filling his heart 
 with fire, he only knew that the Te Deum was over when the 
 Spanish congregation came pouring out of the church. Feel- 
 ing that his behavior and attitude might seem ridiculous, he 
 went back to head the procession, telling the alcalde and the 
 governor that, feeling suddenly faint, he had gone out into 
 the air. Casting about for a plea for prolonging his stay, it 
 at once occurred to him to make the most of this excuse, 
 framed on the spur of the moment. He declined, on a plea 
 of increasing indisposition, to preside at the banquet given by 
 the town to the French officers, betook himself to his bed, and 
 sent a message to the major-general, to the effect that tem- 
 porary illness obliged him to leave the colonel in command 
 of the troops for the time being. This commonplace but very 
 plausible stratagem relieved him of all responsibility for the 
 time necessary to carry out his plans. The general, nothing 
 if not " Catholic and monarchical," took occasion to inform 
 himself of the hours of the services, and manifested the great- 
 est zeal for the performance of his religious duties, piety which 
 caused no remark in Spain. 
 
 The very next day, while the division was marching out of 
 the town, the general went to the convent to be present at 
 vespers. He found an empty church. The townsfolk, de- 
 vout though they were, had all gone down to the quay to 
 watch the embarkation of the troops. He felt glad to be the 
 only man there. He tramped noisily up the nave, clanking 
 his spurs till the vaulted roof rang with the sound ; he coughed, 
 he talked aloud to himself to let the nuns know, and more 
 particularly to let the organist know that if the troops were
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 147 
 
 gone, one Frenchman was left behind. Was this singular 
 warning heard and understood ? He thought so. It seemed 
 to him that in the Magnificat the organ made response which 
 was borne to him on the vibrating air. The nun's spirit 
 found wings in music and fled toward him, throbbing with 
 the rhythmical pulse of the sounds. Then, in all its might, 
 the music burst forth and filled the church with warmth. The 
 Song of Joy set apart in the sublime liturgy of Latin Christi- 
 anity to express the exaltation of the soul in the presence of 
 the glory of the Ever-living God became the utterance of a 
 heart almost terrified by its gladness in the presence of the 
 glory of a mortal love ; a love that yet lived, a love that had 
 risen to trouble her even beyond the grave in which the nun 
 is laid, that she may rise again the bride of Christ. 
 
 The organ is in truth the grandest, the most daring, the 
 most magnificent of all instruments invented by human genius. 
 It is a whole orchestra in itself. It can express anything 
 in response to a skilled touch. Surely it is in some sort a 
 pedestal on which the soul poises for a flight forth into space, 
 essaying on her course to draw picture after picture in an end- 
 less series, to paint human life, to cross the Infinite that sepa- 
 rates heaven from earth? And the longer a dreamer listens 
 to those giant harmonies, the better he realizes that nothing 
 save this hundred-voiced choir on earth can fill all the space 
 between kneeling men and a God hidden by the blinding 
 light of the sanctuary. The music is the one interpreter 
 strong enough to bear up the prayers of humanity to heaven, 
 prayer in its omnipotent moods, prayer tinged by the melan- 
 choly of many different natures, colored by meditative ecstasy, 
 upspringing with the impulse of repentance blended with 
 the myriad fancies of every creed. Yes. In those long 
 vaulted aisles the melodies inspired by the sense of things 
 divine are blent with a grandeur unknown before, are decked 
 with new glory and might. Out of the dim daylight, and 
 the deep silence broken by the chanting of the choir in re-
 
 148 THE THIRTEEN'. 
 
 sponse to the thunder of the organ, a veil is woven for God, 
 and the brightness of His attributes shines through it. 
 
 And this wealth of holy things seemed to be flung down 
 like a grain of incense upon the fragile altar raised to Love 
 beneath the eternal throne of a jealous and avenging God. 
 Indeed, in the joy of the nun there was little of that awe and 
 gravity which should harmonize with the solemnities of the 
 Magnificat. She had enriched the music with graceful varia- 
 tions, earthly gladness throbbing through the rhythm of each. 
 In such brilliant quivering cadences some great singer might 
 strive to find a voice for her love, her melodies fluttered as a 
 bird carols buoyantly about its mate. There were moments 
 when she seemed to leap back into the past, to dally there, 
 now with laughter, now with tears. Her changing moods, as 
 it were, ran riot. She was like a woman excited and happy 
 over her lover's return. 
 
 But at length, after the swaying fugues of delirium, after 
 the marvelous rendering of a vision of the past, a revulsion 
 swept over the soul that thus found utterance for itself. With 
 a swift transition from the major to the minor, the organist 
 told her hearer of her present lot. She gave the story of long 
 melancholy broodings, of the slow course of her moral malady. 
 How day by day she deadened the senses, how every night 
 cut off one more thought, how her heart was slowly reduced 
 to ashes. The sadness deepened shade after shade through 
 languid modulations, and in a little while the echoes were 
 pouring out a torrent of grief. Then, on a sudden, high notes 
 rang out like the voices of angels singing together, as if to tell 
 the lost but not forgotten lover that their spirits now could 
 only meet in heaven. Pathetic hope ! Then followed the 
 Amen. No more joy, no more tears in the air, no sadness, 
 no regrets. The Amen was the return to God. The final 
 chord was deep, solemn, even terrible ; for the last rumblings 
 of the bass sent a shiver through the audience that raised the 
 hair on their heads; the nun shook out her veiling of crepe,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 149 
 
 and seemed to sink again into the tomb from which she had 
 risen for a moment. Slowly the reverberations died away ; 
 it seemed as if the church, but now so full of musical light, 
 had returned to thick darkness. 
 
 The general had been caught up and borne swiftly away by 
 this strong-winged spirit ; he had followed the course of its 
 flight from beginning to end. He understood to the fullest 
 extent the imagery of that burning symphony; for him the 
 chords reached deep and far. For him, as for the sister, the 
 poem meant future, present, and past. Is not music, and 
 even opera music, a sort of text, which a susceptible or poetic 
 temper, or a sore and stricken heart, may expand as memories 
 shall determine? If a musician must needs have the heart of 
 a poet, must not the listener, too, be in a manner a poet and 
 a lover to hear all that lies in great music? Religion, love, 
 and music what are they but a threefold expression of the 
 same fact, of that craving for expansion which stirs in every 
 noble soul. And these three forms of poetry ascend to God, 
 in whom all passion on earth finds its end. Wherefore the 
 holy human trinity finds a place amid the infinite glories of 
 God ; of God, whom we always represent surrounded with the 
 fires of love and cymbals of gold music and light and har- 
 mony. Is not He the Cause and the End of all our strivings? 
 
 The French general guessed rightly that here in the desert, 
 on this bare rock in the sea, the nun had seized upon music 
 as an outpouring of the passion that still consumed her. Was 
 this her manner of offering up her love as a sacrifice to God ? 
 Or was it Love exultant in triumph over God? The ques- 
 tions were hard to answer. But one thing at least the general 
 could not mistake in this heart, dead to the world, the fire 
 of passion burned as fiercely as in his own. 
 
 Vespers over, he went back to the alcalde's house upon 
 whom he was quartered. In the all-absorbing joy which comes 
 in such full measure when a satisfaction sought long and pain- 
 fully is attained at last, he could see nothing beyond this
 
 150 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 he was still loved ! In her heart love had grown in loneliness, 
 even as his love had grown stronger as he surmounted one 
 barrier after another which this woman had set between them ! 
 The glow of soul came to its natural end. There followed 
 a longing to see her again, to contend with God for her, to 
 snatch her away a rash scheme, which appealed to a daring 
 nature. He went to bed, when the meal was over, to avoid 
 questions ; to be alone and think at his ease ; and he lay 
 absorbed by deep thought till day broke. 
 
 He rose early to go to mass. He went to the church and 
 knelt close to the screen, with his forehead touching the 
 curtain ; he would have torn a hole in it if he had been alone, 
 but his host had come with him out of politeness, and the 
 least imprudence might compromise the whole future of his 
 love and ruin the new-found hopes. 
 
 The organ sounded, but it was another player, and not the 
 nun of the last two days whose hands touched the keys. It 
 was all colorless and cold for the general. Was the woman 
 he loved prostrated by emotion which well-nigh overcame a 
 strong man's heart ? Had she so fully realized and shared an 
 unchanged, longed-for love, that now she lay dying on her bed 
 in her cell? While innumerable thoughts of this kind per- 
 plexed his mind, the voice of the woman he worshiped rang 
 out close beside him ; he knew its clear resonant soprano. It 
 was her voice, with that faint tremor in it which gave it all the 
 charm that shyness and diffidence give to a young girl ; her 
 voice, distinct from the mass of singing as a prima donna's in 
 the chorus of a finale. It was like a golden or silver thread 
 in dark frieze. 
 
 It was she ! There could be no mistake. Parisienne now 
 as ever, she had not laid coquetry aside when she threw off 
 worldly adornments for the veil and the Carmelite's coarse 
 serge. She who had affirmed her love last evening in the 
 praise sent up to God seemed now to say to her lover: *' Yes, 
 it is I. I am here. My love is unchanged, but I am beyond
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 151 
 
 the reach of love. You will hear my voice, my soul shall 
 enfold you, and I shall abide here under the brown shroud in 
 the choir from which no power on earth can tear me. Thou 
 canst never see me more ! " 
 
 " It is she indeed ! " the general said to himself, raising his 
 head. He had leant his face on his hands, unable at first to 
 bear the intolerable emotion that surged like a whirlpool in 
 his heart, when that well-known voice vibrated under the 
 arcading, with the sound of the sea for accompaniment. 
 
 Storm was without, and calm within the sanctuary. Still 
 that rich voice poured out all its caressing notes ; it fell like 
 balm on the lover's burning heart ; it blossomed upon the 
 air the air that a man would fain breathe more deeply to 
 receive the affluence of a soul breathed forth with love in the 
 words of the prayer. The alcalde coming to join his guest 
 found him in tears during the elevation, while the nun was 
 singing, and brought him back to his house. Surprised to 
 find so much piety in a French military officer, the worthy 
 magistrate invited the confessor of the convent to meet his 
 guest. Never had news given the general more pleasure ; he 
 paid the ecclesiastic a good deal of attention at supper, and 
 confirmed his Spanish hosts in the high opinion they had 
 formed of his piety by a not wholly disinterested respect. 
 He inquired with gravity how many sisters there were in the 
 convent, and asked for particulars of its endowment and 
 revenues, as if from courtesy he wished to hear the good priest 
 discourse on the subject most interesting to him. He in- 
 formed himself as to the manner of life led by the holy 
 women. Were they allowed to go out of the convent, or to 
 see visitors? 
 
 "Senor," replied the venerable churchman, "the rule is 
 strict. A woman cannot enter a monastery of the order of 
 St. Bruno without a special permission from his holiness, and 
 the rule here is equally stringent. No man may enter a con- 
 vent of Barefooted Carmelites unless he is a priest specially
 
 152 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 attached to the services of the house by the archbishop. None 
 of the nuns may leave the convent ; though the great saint, 
 Mother Theresa, often left her cell. The visitor or the 
 mothers superior can alone give permission, subject to an 
 authorization from the archbishop, for a nun to see a visitor, 
 and then especially in a case of illness. Now we are one of 
 the principal houses, and consequently we have a mother supe- 
 rior here. Among other foreign sisters there is one French- 
 woman, Sister Theresa ; she it is who directs the music in the 
 chapel." 
 
 "Oh!" said the general, with feigned surprise. "She 
 must have rejoiced over the victory of the House of Bourbon." 
 
 "I told them the reason of the mass; they are always a 
 little bit inquisitive." 
 
 " But Sister Theresa may have interests in France. Per- 
 haps she would like to send some message or to hear news." 
 
 "I do not think so. She would have spoken to me." 
 
 "As a fellow-countryman, I should be quite curious to see 
 her," said the general. " If it is possible, if the lady superior 
 consents, if " 
 
 "Even at the grating, and in the reverend mother's pres- 
 ence, an interview would be quite impossible for anybody 
 whatsoever ; but strict as the mother is, for a deliverer of our 
 holy religion and the throne of his Catholic majesty, the rule 
 might be relaxed for a moment," said the confessor, blinking. 
 " I will speak about it." 
 
 "How old is Sister Theresa?" inquired the lover. He 
 dared not ask any questions of the priest as to the nun's 
 beauty. 
 
 " She does not reckon years now," the good man answered, 
 with a simplicity that made the general shudder. 
 
 Next day before siesta, the confessor came to inform the 
 French general that Sister Theresa and the mother con- 
 sented to receive him at the grating in the parlor before ves-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 153 
 
 pers. The general spent the siesta in pacing to and fro along 
 the quay in the noonday heat. Thither the priest came to 
 find him, and brought him to the convent by way of the gal- 
 lery round the cemetery. Fountains, green trees, and rows 
 of arcading maintained a cool freshness in keeping with the 
 place. 
 
 At the farther end of the long gallery the priest led the way 
 into a large room divided in two by a grating covered with a 
 brown curtain. In the first, and in some sort public half of 
 the apartment, where the confessor left the new-comer, a 
 wooden bench ran round the wall, and two or three chairs, 
 also of wood, were placed near the grating. The ceiling con- 
 sisted of bare unornamented joists and cross-beams of ilex 
 wood. As the two windows were both on the inner side of 
 the grating, and the dark surface of the wood was a bad re- 
 flector, the light in the place was so dim that you could 
 scarcely see the great black crucifix, the portrait of Sainte- 
 Theresa, and a picture of the Madonna which adorned the 
 gray parlor walls. Tumultuous as the general's feelings were, 
 they took something of the melancholy of the place. He grew 
 calm in that homely quiet. A sense of something vast as the 
 tomb took possession of him beneath the chill unceiled roof. 
 Here, as in the grave, was there not eternal silence, deep 
 peace the sense of the Infinite ? And beside this there was 
 the quiet and the fixed thought of the cloister a thought 
 which you felt like a subtle presence in the air, and in the 
 dim dusk of the room ; an all-pervasive thought nowhere defi- 
 nitely expressed, and looming the larger in the imagination ; 
 for in the cloister the great saying : " Peace in the Lord," 
 enters the least religious soul as a living force. 
 
 The monk's life is scarcely comprehensible. A man seems 
 confessed a weakling in a monastery ; he was born to act, to 
 live out a life of work; he is evading a man's destiny in his 
 cell. But what man's strength, blended with pathetic weak- 
 ness, is implied by a woman's choice of the convent life ! A
 
 154 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 man may have any number of motives for burying himself in 
 a monastery ; for him it is the leap over the precipice. A 
 woman has but one motive she does not unsex herself; she 
 betroths herself to a heavenly bridegroom. Of the monk 
 you may ask: "Why did you not fight your battle?" But 
 if a woman immures herself in the cloister, is there not always 
 a sublime battle fought first ? 
 
 At length it seemed to the general that that still room and 
 the lonely convent in the sea were full of thoughts of him. 
 Love seldom attains to solemnity ; yet surely a love still faith- 
 ful in the breast of God was something solemn, something 
 more than a man had a right to look for as things are in this 
 nineteenth century? The infinite grandeur of the situation 
 might well produce an effect upon the general's mind ; he had 
 precisely enough elevation of soul to forget politics, honors, 
 Spain, and society in Paris, and to rise to the height of this 
 lofty climax. And what in truth could be more tragic? 
 How much must pass in the souls of these two lovers, brought 
 together in a place of strangers, on a ledge of granite in the 
 sea ; yet held apart by an intangible, unsurmountable barrier ! 
 Try to imagine the man saying within himself: " Shall I 
 triumph over God in her heart? " when a faint rustling sound 
 made him quiver, and the curtain was drawn aside. 
 
 Between him and the light stood a woman. Her face was 
 hidden by the veil that drooped from the folds upon her head ; 
 she was dressed according to the rule of the order in a gown 
 of the color become proverbial. Her bare feet were hidden ; 
 if the general could have seen them, he would have known 
 how appallingly thin she had grown ; and yet in spite of the 
 thick folds of her coarse gown, a mere covering and no orna- 
 ment, he could guess how tears, and prayer, and passion, and 
 loneliness had wasted the woman before him. 
 
 An ice-cold hand, belonging, no doubt, to the mother 
 superior, held back the curtain. The general gave the en- 
 forced witness of their interview a searching glance, and met
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 155 
 
 the dark, inscrutable gaze of an aged recluse. The mother 
 might have been a century old, but the bright, youthful eyes 
 belied the wrinkles that furrowed her pale face. 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse," he began, his voice shaken with 
 emotion, "does your companion understand French?" The 
 veiled figure bowed her head at the sound of his voice. 
 
 "There is no duchess here," she replied. "It is Sister 
 Theresa whom you see before you. She whom you lightly 
 call my companion is my mother in God, my superior here on 
 earth." 
 
 The words were so meekly spoken by the voice that sounded 
 in other years amid harmonious surroundings of refined lux- 
 ury, the voice of a queen of fashion in Paris. Such words 
 from the lips that once spoke so lightly and flippantly struck 
 the general dumb with amazement. 
 
 "The holy mother only speaks Latin and Spanish," she 
 added. 
 
 " I understand neither. Dear Antoinette, make my excuses 
 to her." 
 
 The light fell full upon the nun's figure; a thrill of deep 
 emotion betrayed itself in a faint quiver of her veil as she 
 heard her name softly spoken by the man who had been so 
 hard in the past. 
 
 " My brother," she said, drawing her sleeve under her veil, 
 perhaps to brush tears away, " I am Sister Theresa." 
 
 Then, turning to the superior, she spoke in Spanish ; the 
 general knew enough of the language to understand what she 
 said perfectly well; possibly he could have spoken it had he 
 chosen to do so. 
 
 " Dear mother, the gentleman presents his respects to you, 
 and begs you to pardon him if he cannot pay them himself, 
 but he knows neither of the languages which you speak 
 
 The aged nun bent her head slowly, with an expression of 
 angelic sweetness, enhanced at the same time by the con- 
 sciousness of her power and dignity.
 
 156 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 ''You know this gentleman?" she asked, with a keen 
 glance. 
 
 "Yes, mother." 
 
 "Go back to your cell, my daughter!" said the mother 
 imperiously. 
 
 The general slipped aside behind the curtain lest the dread- 
 ful tumult within him should appear in his face ; even in the 
 shadow it seemed to him that he could still see the superior's 
 piercing eyes. He was afraid of her ; she held his little, frail, 
 hard-won happiness in her hands ; and he, who had never 
 quailed under a triple row of guns, now trembled before this 
 nun. The duchess went toward the door, but she turned 
 back. 
 
 "Mother," she said, with dreadful calmness, "the French- 
 man is one of my brothers." 
 
 "Then stay, my daughter," said the superior, after a pause. 
 
 The piece of admirable Jesuitry told of such love and regret, 
 that a man less strongly constituted might have broken down 
 under the keen delight in the midst of a great and, for him, 
 an entirely novel peril. Oh ! how precious words, looks, and 
 gestures became when love must baffle lynx eyes and tiger's 
 claws ! Sister Theresa came back. 
 
 "You see, my brother, what I have dared to do only to 
 speak to you for a moment of your salvation and of the 
 prayers that my soul puts up for your soul daily. I am com- 
 mitting mortal sin. I have told a lie. How many days of 
 penance must expiate that lie ! But I shall endure it for your 
 sake. My brother, you do not know what happiness it is to 
 love in heaven ; to feel that you can confess love purified by 
 religion, love transported into the highest heights of all, so 
 that we are permitted to lose sight of all but the soul. If the 
 doctrine and the spirit of the saint to whom we owe this refuge 
 had not raised me above earth's anguish, and caught me up 
 and set me, far indeed beneath the Sphere wherein she dwells, 
 yet truly above this world, I should not have seen you again.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 157 
 
 But now I can see you, and hear your voice, and remain 
 calm " 
 
 The general broke in: "But, Antoinette, let me see you, 
 you whom I love passionately, desperately, as you could have 
 wished me to love you." 
 
 " Do not call me Antoinette, I implore you. Memories of 
 the past hurt me. You must see no one here but Sister Theresa, 
 a creature who trusts in the Divine mercy." She paused for 
 a little, and then added : " You must control yourself, my 
 brother. Our mother would separate us without pity if there 
 is any worldly passion in your face, or if you allow the tears to 
 fall from your eyes." 
 
 The general bowed his head to regain self-control ; when he 
 looked up again he saw her face beyond the grating the thin, 
 white, but still impassioned face of the nun. All the magic 
 charm of youth that once bloomed there, all the fair contrast 
 of velvet whiteness and the color of the Bengal rose, had given 
 place to a burning glow as of a porcelain jar with a faint light 
 shining through it. The wonderful hair in which she took such 
 pride had been shaven ; there was a bandage round her fore- 
 head and about her face. An ascetic life had left dark traces 
 about the eyes, which still sometimes shot out fevered glances; 
 their ordinary calm expression was but a veil. In a few words, 
 she was but the ghost of her former self. 
 
 "Ah ! you that have come to be my life, you must come out 
 of this tomb! You were mine; you had no right to give 
 yourself, even to God. Did you not promise me to give up all 
 at the least command from me? You may, perhaps, think 
 me worthy of that promise now when you hear what I have 
 done for you. I have sought you all through the world. You 
 have been in my thoughts at every moment for five years; my 
 life has been given to you. My friends, very powerful friends, 
 as you know, have helped with all their might to search every 
 convent in France, Italy, Spain, Sicily, and America. Love 
 burned more brightly for every vain search. Again and again
 
 158 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 I made long journeys with a false hope ; I have wasted my 
 life and the heaviest throbbings of my heart in vain under 
 many a dark convent wall. I am not speaking of a faithfulness 
 that knows no bounds, for what is it ? nothing compared with 
 the infinite longings of my love. If your remorse long ago 
 was sincere, you certainly ought not to hesitate to follow me 
 to-day." 
 
 "You forget that I am not free." 
 
 " The duke is dead," he answered quickly. 
 
 Sister Theresa flushed red. 
 
 " May heaven be open to him ! " she cried with a quick 
 rush of feeling. " He was generous to me. But I did not 
 mean such ties ; it was one of my sins that I was ready to break 
 them all without scruple for you." 
 
 "Are you speaking of your vows?" the general asked, 
 frowning. " I did not think that anything weighed heavier 
 with your heart than love. But do not fear, Antoinette ; the 
 Holy Father himself sh'all absolve you of your oath. I will 
 surely go to Rome, I will entreat all the powers on earth ; if 
 God could come down from heaven, I would " 
 
 "Do not blaspheme." 
 
 " So do not fear the anger of God. Ah ! I would far rather 
 hear that you would leave your prison for me ; that this very 
 night you would let yourself down into a boat at the foot of 
 the cliffs. And we would go away to be happy somewhere at 
 the world's end, I know not where. And, with me at your 
 side, you should come back to life and health under the wings 
 of love." 
 
 "You must not talk like this," said Sister Theresa; "you 
 do not know what you are to me now. I love you far better 
 than I ever loved you before. Every day I pray for you ; I 
 see you with other eyes. Armand, if you but knew the hap- 
 piness of giving yourself up, without shame, to a pure friend- 
 ship which God watches over ! You do not know what joy it 
 is to me to pray for heaven's blessing on you. I never pray for
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 159 
 
 myself: God will do with me according to His will ; but, at the 
 price of my soul, I wish I could be sure that you are happy 
 here on earth, and that you will be happy hereafter throughout 
 all ages. My eternal life is all that trouble has left me to offer 
 up to you. I am old now with weeping ; I am neither young 
 nor fair; and in any case, you could not respect the nun who 
 became a wife ; no love, not even motherhood, could give me 
 absolution. What can you say to outweigh the uncounted 
 thoughts that have gathered in my heart during the past five 
 years, thoughts that have changed, and worn, and blighted it? 
 I ought to have given a heart less sorrowful to God." 
 
 " What can I say ? Dear Antoinette, I will say this, that I 
 love you; that affection, love, a great love, the joy of living 
 in another heart that is ours, utterly and wholly ours, is so 
 rare a thing and so hard to find, that I doubted you, and put 
 you to sharp proof; but now, to-day, I love you, Antoinette, 
 with all my soul's strength. If you will follow me into soli- 
 tude, I will hear no voice but yours. I will see no other 
 face." 
 
 " Hush, Armand ! You are shortening the little time that 
 we may be together here on earth." 
 
 " Antoinette, will you come with me ? " 
 
 "I am never away from you. My life is in your heart, 
 not through the selfish ties of earthly happiness, or vanity, 
 or enjoyment ; pale and withered as I am, I live here for 
 you, in the breast of God. As God is just, you shall be 
 happy " 
 
 " Words, words all of it ! Pale and withered ? How if I 
 want you ? How if I cannot be happy without you ? Do you 
 still think of nothing but duty with your lover before you ? Is 
 he never to come first and above all things else in your heart ? 
 In time past you put social success, yourself, heaven knows 
 what, before him ; now it is God, it is the welfare of my soul ! 
 In Sister Theresa I find the duchess over again, ignorant of 
 the happiness of love, insensible as ever, beneath the sem-
 
 160 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 blance of sensibility. You do not love me ; you have never 
 loved me " 
 
 "Oh, my brother !" 
 
 "You do not wish to leave this tomb. You love my soul, 
 do you say? Very well, through you it will be lost for ever. 
 I shall make away with myself " 
 
 "Mother!" Sister Theresa called aloud in Spanish, "I 
 have lied to you ; this man is my lover ! " 
 
 The curtain fell at once. The general, in his stupor, 
 scarcely heard the doors within as they clanged together with 
 violence. 
 
 "Ah! she loves me still!" he cried, understanding all 
 the sublimity of that cry of hers. " She loves me still. She 
 must be carried off." 
 
 The general left the island, returned to headquarters on 
 the peninsular, pleaded ill-health, asked for leave of absence, 
 and forthwith took his departure for France. 
 
 And now for the incidents which brought the two per- 
 sonages in this Scene into their present relation to each 
 other. 
 
 The thing known in France as the Faubourg Saint-Germain 
 is neither a quarter, nor a sect, nor an institution, nor any- 
 thing else that admits of a precise definition. There are great 
 houses in the Place Royale, the Faubourg Saint-Honore, and 
 the Chaussee d'Antin, in any one of which you may breathe 
 the atmosphere of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. So, to begin 
 with, the whole faubourg is not within the faubourg. There 
 are men and women born far enough away from its influences 
 who respond to them and take their place in the circle ; and 
 again there are others, born within its limits, who may yet be 
 driven forth for ever. For the last forty years the manners, 
 and customs, and speech, in a word, the tradition of the Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Germain, have been to Paris what the Court used 
 to be to it in other times; it is what the Hotel Saint-Paul was
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 161 
 
 to the fourteenth century ; the Louvre to the fifteenth ; the 
 Palais, the Hdtel Rambouillet, and the Place Royale to the 
 sixteenth ; and lastly, as Versailles was to the seventeenth and 
 the eighteenth. 
 
 Just as the ordinary work-a-day Paris will always centre 
 about some point ; so, through all periods of history, the Paris 
 of the nobles and the upper classes converges toward some 
 particular spot. It is a periodically recurrent phenomenon 
 which presents ample matter for reflection to those who are 
 fain to observe or describe the various social zones ; and pos- 
 sibly an inquiry into the causes that bring about this centrali- 
 zation may do more than merely justify the probability of this 
 episode ; it may be of service to serious interests which some 
 day will be more deeply rooted in the commonwealth, unless, 
 indeed, experience is as meaningless for political parties as 
 it is for youth. 
 
 In every age the great nobles, and the rich who always ape 
 the great nobles, build their houses as far as possible from 
 crowded streets. When the Due d'Uzes built his splendid 
 hotel in the Rue Montmartre in the reign of Louis XIV., and 
 set the fountain at his gates for which beneficent action, to 
 say nothing of his other virtues, he was held in such venera- 
 tion that the whole quarter turned out in a body to follow his 
 funeral when the duke, I say, chose this site for his house, 
 he did so because that part of Paris was almost deserted in 
 those days. But when the fortifications were pulled down, 
 and the market gardens beyond the line of the boulevards 
 began to fill with houses, then the d'Uzes family left their 
 fine mansion, and in our time it was occupied by a banker. 
 Later still, the noblesse began to find themselves out of their 
 element among storekeepers, left the Place Royale and the 
 centre of Paris for good, and crossed the river to breathe 
 freely in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where palaces were 
 reared already about the great hotel built by Louis XIV.* for 
 
 * Louis the Great. 
 11
 
 162 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 the Due de Maine the Benjamin of his legitimatized sons. 
 And indeed, for people accustomed to a stately life, can there 
 be more unseemly surroundings than the bustle, the mud, the 
 street cries, the bad smells, and narrow thoroughfares of. a 
 populous quarter? The very habits of life in a mercantile 
 or manufacturing district are' completely at variance with the 
 lives of nobles. The storekeeper and artisan are just going 
 to bed when the great world is thinking of dinner ; and the 
 noisy stir of life begins among the former when the latter have 
 gone to rest. Their day's calculations never coincide; the 
 one class represents the expenditure, the other the receipts. 
 Consequently their manners and customs are diametrically 
 opposed. 
 
 Nothing contemptuous is intended by this statement. An 
 aristocracy is in a manner the intellect of the social system, 
 as the middle classes and the proletariat may be said to be its 
 organizing and working power. It naturally follows that these 
 forces are differently situated ; and of their antagonism there 
 is bred a seeming antipathy produced by the performance of 
 different functions, all of them, however, existing for one com- 
 mon end. 
 
 Such social dissonances are so inevitably the outcome of 
 any charter of the Constitution, that however much a Liberal 
 may be disposed to complain of them, as of treason against 
 those sublime ideas with which the ambitious plebeian is apt 
 to cover his designs, he would none the less think it a prepos- 
 terous notion that M. le Prince de Montmorency, for instance, 
 should continue to live in the Rue Saint-Martin at the corner 
 of the street which bears that nobleman's name : or that M. 
 le Due de Fitz-James, descendant of the royal house of Scot- 
 land, should have his hotel at the angle of the Rue Marie 
 Stuart and the Rue Montorgueil. Sint nt sunt, aut non stnf, 
 the grand words of the Jesuit, might be taken as a motto by 
 the great in all countries. These social differences are patent 
 in all ages ; the fact is always accepted by the people ; its
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 163 
 
 "reasons of state" are self-evident; it is at once cause and 
 effect, a principle and a law. The commonsense of the masses 
 never deserts them until demagogues stir them up to gain ends 
 of their own ; that commonsense is based on the verities of 
 social order; and the social order is the same everywhere, in 
 Moscow as in London, in Geneva as in Calcutta. Given a 
 certain number of families of unequal fortune in any given 
 space, you will see an aristocracy forming under your eyes; 
 there will be the patricians, the upper classes, and yet other 
 ranks below them. Equality may be a right, but no power on 
 earth can convert it into fad. It would be a good thing for 
 France if this idea could be popularized. The benefits of 
 political harmony are obvious to the least intelligent classes. 
 Harmony is, as it were, the poetry of order, and order is a mat- 
 ter of vital importance to the working population. And what 
 is order, reduced to its simplest expression, but the agreement 
 of things among themselves unity, in short? Architecture, 
 music, and poetry, everything in France, and in France more 
 than in any other country, is based upon this principle ; it is 
 written upon the very foundations of her clear, accurate lan- 
 guage, and a language must always be the most infallible 
 index of national character. In the same way you may note 
 that the French popular airs are those most calculated to 
 strike the imagination, the best modulated melodies are taken 
 over by the people: clearness of thought, the intellectual sim- 
 plicity of an idea attracts them ; they like the incisive say- 
 ings that hold the greatest number of idens. France is the 
 one country in the world where a little phrase may bring 
 about a great revolution. Whenever the masses have risen. 
 it has been to bring men, affairs, and principles into agree- 
 ment. No nation has a clearer conception of that idea of 
 unity which should permeate the life of an aristocracy : pos- 
 sibly no other nation has so intelligent a comprehension of a 
 political necessity ; history will never find her behind the 
 time. France has been led astray many a time, but she is
 
 164 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 deluded, woman-like, by generous ideas, by a glow of enthu- 
 siasm which at first outstrips sober reason. 
 
 So, to begin with, the most striking characteristic of the 
 faubourg is the splendor of its great mansions, its great 
 gardens, and a surrounding quiet in keeping with princely 
 revenues drawn from great estates. And what is this distance 
 set between a class and a whole metropolis but the visible and 
 outward expression of the widely different attitude of mind 
 which must inevitably keep them apart ? The position of the 
 head is well defined in every organism. If by any chance a 
 nation allows its head to fall at its feet, it is pretty sure sooner 
 or later to discover that this is a suicidal measure ; and since 
 nations have no desire to perish, they set to work at once to 
 grow a new head. If they lack the strength for this, they 
 perish as Rome perished, and Venice, and so many other 
 states. 
 
 This distinction between the upper and lower spheres of 
 social activity, emphasized by differences in their manner of 
 living, necessarily implies that in the highest aristocracy there 
 is real worth and some distinguishing merit. In any State, 
 no matter what form of "government " is affected, so soon as 
 the patrician class fails to maintain that complete superiority 
 which is the condition of its existence, it ceases to be a force, 
 and is pulled down at once by the populace. The people 
 always wish to see money, power, and initiative in their lead- 
 ers, hands, hearts, and heads ; they must be the spokesmen, 
 they must represent the intelligence and the glory of the 
 nation. Nations, like women, love strength in those who 
 rule them ; they cannot give love without respect ; they refuse 
 utterly to obey those of whom they do not stand in awe. An 
 aristocracy fallen into contempt is a roi faineant* a husband 
 in petticoats; first it ceases to be itself, and then it ceases to be. 
 
 And in this way the isolation of the great, the sharply 
 marked distinction in their manner of life, or in a word, the 
 * Lit.; a lazy king.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 165 
 
 general custom of the patrician caste is at once the sign of a 
 real power, and their destruction so soon as that power is lost. 
 The Faubourg Saint-Germain failed to recognize the condi- 
 tions of its being, while it would still have been easy to per- 
 petuate its existence, and therefore was brought low for a time. 
 The faubourg should have looked the facts fairly in the face, 
 as the English aristocracy did before them ; they should have 
 seen that every institution has its climacteric periods, when 
 words lose their old meanings, and ideas reappear in a new 
 guise, and the whole condition of politics wears a changed 
 aspect, while the underlying realities undergo no essential 
 alteration. 
 
 These ideas demand further developments which form an 
 essential part of this episode ; they are given here both as a 
 succinct statement of the causes and an explanation of the 
 things which happen in the course of the story. 
 
 The stateliness of the castles and palaces where nobles 
 dwell ; the luxury of the details; the constantly maintained 
 sumptuousness of the furniture; the "atmosphere" in which 
 the fortunate owner of landed estates (a rich man before he 
 was born) lives and moves easily and without friction ; the 
 habit of mind which never descends to calculate the petty 
 work-a-day gains of existence ; the leisure ; the higher educa- 
 tion attainable at a much earlier age; and lastly, the aristo- 
 cratic tradition that makes of him a social force, for which his 
 opponents, by dint of study and a strong will and tenacity of 
 vocation, are scarcely a match nil these things should con- 
 tribute to form a lofty spirit in a man, possessed of such privi- 
 leges from his youth up ; they should stamp his character with 
 that high self-respect, of which the least consequence is a 
 nobleness of heart in harmony with the noble name that he 
 bears. And in some few fsmilies all this is realized. There 
 are noble characters here and there in the faubourg, but they 
 are marked exceptions to a general rule of egoism which has 
 been the ruin of this world within a world. The privileges
 
 166 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 above enumerated are the birthright of the French noblesse, 
 as of every patrician efflorescence ever formed on the surface 
 of a nation; and will continue to be theirs so long as their 
 existence is based upon real estate, or money ; domaine-sol (do- 
 main of the soil) and domainc-argent (domain of money) alike, 
 the only solid bases of an organized society ; but such privi- 
 leges are held upon the understanding that the patricians must 
 continue to justify their existence. There is a sort of moral 
 fief held on a tenure of service rendered to the sovereign, and 
 here in France the people are undoubtedly the sovereigns 
 nowadays. The times are changed, and so are the weapons. 
 The knight-banneret of old wore a coat of chain-armor and a 
 hauberk ; he could handle a lance well and display his pen- 
 non, and no more was required of him ; to-day he is bound 
 to give proof of his intelligence. A stout heart was enough 
 in the days of old ; in our days he is required to have a capa- 
 cious brain-pan. Skill and knowledge and capital these 
 three points mark out a social triangle on which the escutcheon 
 of power is blazoned ; our modern aristocracy must take its 
 stand on these. 
 
 A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Roths- 
 childs, the Fuggers of the nineteenth century, are princes de 
 facto. A great artist is in reality an oligarch ; he represents 
 a whole century, and almost always he is a law to others. 
 And the art of words, the high-pressure machinery of the 
 writer, the poet's genius, the merchant's steady endurance, 
 the strong will of the statesman who concentrates a thousand 
 dazzling qualities in himself, the general's sword all these 
 victories, in short, which a single individual will win, that he 
 may tower above the rest of the world, the patrician class is 
 now bound to win and keep exclusively. They must head 
 the new forces as they once headed the material forces ; how 
 should they keep the position unless they are worthy of it ? 
 How, unless they arc the soul and brain of a nation, shall 
 they set its hand moving? How lead a people without the
 
 THK THIRTEEN. 167 
 
 power of command? And what is the marshal's baton with- 
 out the innate power of the captain in the man who wields 
 it ? The Faubourg Saint-Germain took to playing with 
 batons, and fancied that all ihe power was in its hands. It 
 inverted the terms of the proposition which called it into ex- 
 istence. And instead of flinging away the insignia which 
 offended the people, and quietly grasping the power, it 
 allowed the bourgeoisie to seize the authority, clung with fatal 
 obstinacy to its shadow, and over and over again forgot the 
 laws which a minority must observe if it would live. When 
 an aristocracy is scarce a thousandth part of the body social, it 
 is bound to-day, as of old, to multiply its points of action, 
 so as to counterbalance the weight of the masses in a great 
 crisis. And in our days those means of action must be living 
 forces, and not historical memories. 
 
 In France, unluckily, the noblesse were still so puffed up 
 with the notion of their ancient and vanished power, that it 
 was difficult to contend against a kind of innate presumption 
 in themselves. Perhaps this is a national defect. The French- 
 man is less given than any one else to undervalue himself; it 
 comes natural to him to go from his degree to the one above 
 it ; and while it is a rare thing for him to pity the unfortunates 
 over whose heads he rises, he always groans in spirit to see so 
 many fortunate people above him. He is very far from heart- 
 less, but too often he prefers to listen to his intellect. The 
 national instinct which brings the Frenchman to the front, 
 the vanity that wastes his substance, is as much a dominant 
 passion as thrift in the Dutch. For three centuries it swayed 
 the noblesse, who, in this respect, were certainly preeminently 
 French. The scion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, behold- 
 ing his material superiority, was fully persuaded of his intel- 
 lectual superiority. And everything contributed to confirm 
 him in his belief; for ever since the Faubourg Saint-Germain 
 existed at all which is to say, ever since Versailles ceased to 
 be the royal residence the faubourg, with some few gaps in
 
 168 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 continuity, was always backed up by the central power, which 
 in France seldom fails to support that side. Thence its down- 
 fall in 1830. 
 
 At that time the party of the Faubourg Saint-Germain was 
 rather like an army without a base of operations. It had 
 utterly failed to take advantage of the peace to plant itself in 
 the heart of the nation. It sinned for want of learning its lesson, 
 and through an utter incapability of regarding its interests as 
 a whole. A future certainty was sacrificed to a doubtful pres- 
 ent gain. This blunder in policy may perhaps be attributed 
 to the following cause : 
 
 The class-isolation so strenuously kept up by the noblesse 
 brought about fatal results during the last forty years; even 
 caste-patriotism was extinguished by it, and rivalry fostered 
 among themselves. When the French noblesse of other 
 times were rich and powerful, the nobles (gcntilhommcs) could 
 choose their chiefs and obey them in the hour of danger. 
 As their power diminished, they grew less amenable to dis- 
 cipline ; and as in the last days of the Byzantine Empire, 
 everyone wished to be emperor. They mistook their uniform 
 weakness for uniform strength. 
 
 Each family ruined by the Revolution and the abolition of 
 the law of primogeniture thought only of itself, and not at all 
 of the great family of its caste. It seemed to them that as 
 each individual grew rich, the party as a whole would gain in 
 strength. And herein lay their mistake. Money, likewise, 
 is only the outward and visible sign of power. All these 
 families were made up of persons who preserved a high 
 tradition of courtesy, of true graciousness of life, of refined 
 speech, with a family pride, and a squeamish sense of noblesse 
 oblige* which suited well with the kind of life they led ; a life 
 wholly filled with occupations which become contemptible so 
 soon as they cease to be accessories and take the chief place 
 in existence. There was a certain intrinsic merit in all these 
 * The obligations of a noble's life.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 169 
 
 people, out the merit was on the surface, and none of them 
 were worth their face-value. 
 
 Not a single one among those families had courage to ask 
 itself the question, ' Are we strong enough for the responsi- 
 bility of power?" They were cast on the top, like the 
 lawyers of 1830; and instead of taking the patron's place, 
 like a great man, the Faubourg Saint-Germain showed itself 
 greedy as an upstart. The most intelligent nation in the world 
 perceived clearly that the restored nobles were organizing 
 everything for their own particular benefit. From that day 
 the noblesse was doomed. The Faubourg Saint-Germain tried 
 to be an aristocracy when it could only be an oligarchy two 
 very different systems, as any man may see for himself if he 
 gives an intelligent perusal to the list of the patronymics of 
 the House of Peers. 
 
 The King's Government certainly meant well ; but the 
 maxim that the people must be made to will everything, even 
 their own welfare, was pretty constantly forgotten, nor did 
 they bear in mind that La France is a woman and capricious, 
 and must be happy or chastised at her own good pleasure. If 
 there had been many dukes like the Due dc Laval, whose 
 modesty made him worthy of the name he bore, the elder 
 branch would have been as securely seated on the throne as 
 the House of Hanover at this day. 
 
 In 1814 the noblesse of France were called upon to assert 
 their superiority over the most aristocratic bourgeoisie in the 
 most feminine of all countries, to take the lead in the most 
 highly educated epoch the world had yet seen. And this was 
 even more notably the case in 1820. The Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain might very easily have led and amused the middle 
 classes in days when people's heads were turned with distinc- 
 tions, and art and science were all the rage. But the narrow- 
 minded leaders of a time of great intellectual progress all of 
 them detested art and science. They had not even the wit 
 to present religion in attractive colors, though they needed
 
 170 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 its support. While Lamartine, Lamennais, Montalembert, 
 and other writers were putting new life and elevation into 
 men's ideas of religion, and gilding it with poetry, these 
 bunglers in the Government chose to make the harshness of 
 their creed felt all over the country. Never was nation in a 
 more tractable humor ; La France, like a tired woman, was 
 ready to agree to anything ; never was mismanagement so 
 clumsy ; and La France, like a woman, would have forgiven 
 wrongs more easily than bungling. 
 
 If the noblesse meant to reinstate themselves, the better to 
 found a strong oligarchy, they should have honestly and dili- 
 gently searched their houses for men of the stamp that Na- 
 poleon used ; they should have turned themselves inside out 
 to see if peradventure there was a Constitutionalist Richelieu 
 lurking in the entrails of the faubourg ; and if that genius was 
 not forthcoming from among them, they should have set out 
 to find him, even in the fireless garret where he might happen 
 to be perishing of cold ; they should have assimilated him, as 
 the English House of Lords continually assimilates aristocrats 
 made by chance ; and finally ordered him to be ruthless, to 
 lop away the old wood, and cut the tree down to the living 
 shoots. But, in the first place, the great system of English 
 Toryism was far too large for narrow minds ; the importation 
 required time, and in France a -tardy success is no better than 
 a fiasco. So far, moreover, from adopting a policy of re- 
 demption, and looking for new forces where God puts them, 
 these petty great folk took a dislike to any capacity that did 
 not issue from their midst ; and, lastly, instead of growing 
 young again, the Faubourg Saint-Germain grew positively 
 older. 
 
 Etiquette, not an institution of primary necessity, might 
 have been maintained if it had appeared only on state occa- 
 sions, but as it was, there was a daily wrangle over precedence; 
 it ceased to be a matter of art or Court ceremonial, it became 
 a question of power. And if from the outset the Crown lacked
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 171 
 
 an adviser equal to so great a crisis, the aristocracy was still 
 more lacking in a sense of its wider interests, an instinct which 
 might have supplied the deficiency. They stood nice about 
 M. de Talleyrand's marriage, when M. de Talleyrand was the 
 one man among them with the steel-encompassed brains that 
 can forge a new political system and begin a new career of 
 glory for a nation. The faubourg scoffed at a minister if he 
 was not gentle born, and produced no one of gentle birth that 
 was fit to be a minister. There were plenty of nobles fitted to 
 serve their country by raising the dignity of justices of the 
 peace, by improving the land, by opening out roads and 
 canals, and taking an active and leading part as country gen- 
 tlemen ; but these had sold their estates to gamble on the 
 Stock Exchange. Again, the faubourg might have absorbed 
 the energetic men among the bourgeoise, and opened their 
 ranks to the ambition which was undermining authority ; they 
 preferred instead to fight, and to fight unarmed, for of all that 
 they once possessed there was nothing left but tradition. For 
 their misfortune there was just precisely enough of their former 
 wealth left them as a class to keep up their bitter pride. They 
 were content with their past. Not one of them seriously 
 thought of bidding the son of the house take up arms from the 
 pile of weapons which the nineteenth century flings down in 
 the market-place. Young men, shut out from office, were dan- 
 cing at MADAMK'S balls, while they should have been doing 
 the work done under the Republic and the Empire by young, 
 conscientious, harmlessly employed energies. It was their 
 place to carry out at Paris the programme which their seniors 
 should have been following in the country. The heads of 
 houses might have won back recognition of their titles by un- 
 remitting attention to local interests, by falling in with the 
 spirit of the age, by recasting their order to suit the taste of 
 the times. 
 
 But, pent up together in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where 
 the spirit of the ancient Court and traditions of bygone feuds
 
 172 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 between the nobles and the Crown still lingered on, the aris- 
 tocracy was not whole-hearted in its allegiance to the Tuileries, 
 and so much the more easily defeated because it was concen- 
 trated in the Chamber of Peers, and badly organized even 
 there. If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network 
 over the country, they could have held their own ; but cooped 
 up in their faubourg, with their backs against the chateau, or 
 spread at full length over the budget, a single blow cut the 
 thread of a fast-expiring life, and a petty, smug-faced lawyer 
 came forward with the axe. In spite of M. Royer-Collard's 
 admirable discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of entail 
 fell before the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he 
 had adroitly argued some few heads out of the executioner's 
 clutches, and now forsooth must clumsily proceed to the 
 slaying of old institutions. 
 
 There are examples and lessons for the future in all this. 
 For if there were not still a future before the French aristoc- 
 racy, there would be no need to do more than find a suitable 
 sarcophagus ; it were something pitilessly cruel to burn the 
 dead body of it with fire of Tophet. But though the sur- 
 geon's scalpel is ruthless, it sometimes gives back life to a 
 dying man ; and the Faubourg Saint-Germain may wax more 
 powerful under persecution than in its day of triumph, if it but 
 chooses to organize itself under a leader. 
 
 And now it is easy to give a summary of this semi-political 
 survey. The wish to reestablish a large fortune was upper- 
 most in every one's mind ; a lack of broad views, and a mass 
 of small defects, a real need of religion as a political factor, 
 combined with a thirst for pleasure which damaged the cause of 
 religion and necessitated a good deal of hypocrisy ; a certain 
 attitude of protest on the part of loftier and clearer-sighted 
 men who set their faces against Court jealousies ; and the dis- 
 affection of the provincial families, who often came of purer 
 descent than the nobles of the Court which alienated them 
 from itself all these things combined to bring about a most
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 173 
 
 discordant state of things in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It 
 was neither compact in its organization, nor consequent in its 
 action; neither completely moral, nor frankly dissolute; it 
 did not corrupt, nor was it corrupted ; it would neither wholly 
 abandon the disputed points which damaged its cause, nor yet 
 adopt the policy that might have saved it. In short, however 
 effete individuals might be, the party as a whole was none the 
 less armed with all the great principles which lie at the roots 
 of national existence. What was there in the faubourg that 
 it should perish in its strength? 
 
 It was very hard to please in the choice of candidates ; the 
 faubourg had good taste, it was scornfully fastidious, yet there 
 was nothing very glorious nor chivalrous truly about its fall. 
 
 In the Emigration of 1789 there were some traces of a 
 loftier feeling ; but in the Emigration of 1830 from Paris into 
 the country there was nothing discernible but self-interest. A 
 few famous men of letters, a few oratorical triumphs in the 
 Chambers, M. de Talleyrand's attitude in the Congress, 
 the taking of Algiers, and not a few names that found their 
 way from the battlefield into the pages of history all these 
 things were so many examples set before the French noblesse 
 to show that it was still open to them to take their part in the 
 national existence, and to win recognition of their claims, if, 
 indeed, they could condescend thus far. In every living or- 
 ganism the work of bringing the whole into harmony within 
 itself is always going on. If a man is indolent, the indolence 
 shows itself in everything that he does; and, in the same 
 manner, the general spirit of a class is pretty plainly mani- 
 fested in the face it turns on the world, and the soul informs 
 the body. 
 
 The women of the Restoration displayed neither the proud 
 disregard of public opinion shown by the Court ladies of olden 
 time in their wantonness nor yet the simple grandeur of the 
 tardy virtues by which they expiated their sins and shed so 
 bright a glory about their names. There was nothing either
 
 174 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 very frivolous or very serious about the woman of the Restora- 
 tion. She was hypocritical as a rule in her passion, and com- 
 pounded, so to speak, with its pleasures. Some few families 
 led the domestic life of the Duchesse d'Orleans, whose con- 
 nubial couch was exhibited so absurdly to visitors at the Palais 
 Royal. Two or three kept up the traditions of the Regency, 
 filling cleverer women with something like disgust. The 
 great lady of the new school exercised no influence at all over 
 the manners of the time; and yet she might have done much. 
 She might, at worst, have presented as dignified a spectacle as 
 Englishwomen of the same rank. But she hesitated feebly 
 among old precedents, became a bigot by force of circum- 
 stances, and allowed nothing of herself to appear, not even 
 her better qualities. 
 
 Not one among the Frenchwomen of that day had the abil- 
 ity to create a salon whither leaders of fashion might come to 
 take lessons in taste and elegance. Their voices, which once 
 laid down the law to literature, that living expression of a 
 time, now counted absolutely for naught. Now when a litera- 
 ture lacks a general system, it fails to shape a body for itself, 
 and dies out with its period. 
 
 When in a nation at any time there is a people apart thus 
 constituted, the historian is pretty certain to find some repre- 
 sentative figure, some central personage, who embodies the 
 qualities and the defects of the whole party to which he be- 
 longs ; there is Coligny, for instance, among the Huguenots, 
 the Coadjuteur in the time of the Fronde, the Marechal de 
 Richelieu under Louis XV., Danton during the Terror. It is 
 in the nature of things that the man should be identified with 
 the company in which history finds him. How is it possible 
 to lead a party without conforming to its ideas ? or to shine 
 in any epoch unless a man represents the ideas of 'his time? 
 The wise and prudent head of a party is continually obliged 
 to bow to the prejudices and follies of its rear; and this is the 
 cause of actions for which he is afterward criticised by this or
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 175 
 
 that historian sitting at a safer distance from terrific popular 
 explosions, coolly judging the passion and ferment without 
 which the great struggles of the world could not be carried on 
 at all. And if this is true of the Historical Comedy of the 
 centuries, it is equally true in a more restricted sphere in the 
 detached scenes of the national drama known as the "Manners 
 of the Age." 
 
 At the beginning of that ephemeral life led by the Faubourg 
 Saint-Germain under the Restoration, to which, if there is any 
 truth in the above reflections, they failed to give stability, the 
 most perfect type of the aristocratic caste in its weakness and 
 strength, its greatness and littleness, might have been found 
 for a brief space in a young married woman who belonged to 
 it. This was a woman artificially educated, but in reality 
 ignorant ; a woman whose instincts and feelings were lofty, 
 while the thought which should have controlled them was 
 wanting. She squandered the wealth of her nature in obedi- 
 ence to social conventions ; she was ready to brave society, 
 yet she hesitated till her scruples degenerated into artifice. 
 With more willfulness than real force of character, impression- 
 able rather than enthusiastic, gifted with more brain than 
 heart ; she was supremely a woman, supremely a coquette, 
 and above all things a Parisiennc, loving a brilliant life and 
 gayety. reflecting never, or too late ; imprudent to the verge 
 of poetry, and humble in the depths of her heart, in spite of 
 her charming insolence. Like some straight-growing reed, 
 she made a show of independence; yet, like the reed, she was 
 ready to bend to a strong hand. She talked much of religion, 
 and had it not at heart, though she was prepared to find in it 
 a solution of her life. How explain a creature so complex? 
 Capable of heroism, yet sinking unconsciously from heroic 
 heights to utter a spiteful word ; young and sweet-natured, 
 not so much old at heart as aged by the maxims of those about 
 her ; versed in a selfish philosophy in which she was all un-
 
 176 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 practiced, she had all the vices of a courtier, all the nobleness 
 of developing womanhood. She trusted nothing and no one, 
 yet there were times when she quitted her skeptical attitude 
 for a submissive credulity. 
 
 How should any portrait be anything but incomplete of 
 her, in whom the play of swiftly changing color made discord 
 only to produce a poetic confusion ? for in her there shone a 
 divine brightness, a radiance of youth that blended all her 
 bewildering characteristics in a certain completeness and unity 
 informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The passion 
 or semi-passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual 
 pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth of impulse, 
 were all spontaneous and unaffected, and as much the outcome 
 of her own position as of the position of the aristocracy to 
 which she belonged. She was wholly self-contained ; she held 
 herself proudly above the world and beneath the shelter of 
 her name. There was something of the egoism of Medea in 
 her life, as in the life of the aristocracy that lay a-dying, and 
 would not so much as raise itself or stretch out a hand to any 
 political physician ; so well aware of its feebleness, or so con- 
 scious that it was already dust, that it refused to touch or be 
 touched. 
 
 The Duchesse de Langeais (for that was her name) had 
 been married for about four years when the Restoration was 
 finally consummated, which is to say, in 1816. By that time 
 the revolution of the Hundred Days had let in the light on 
 the mind of Louis XVIII. In spite of his surroundings, he 
 comprehended the situation and the age in which he was 
 living; and it was only later, when this Louis XL, without 
 the axe, lay stricken down by disease, that those about him 
 got the upper hand. The Duchesse de Langeais, a Navarreins 
 by birth, came of a ducal house which had made a point of 
 never marrying below its rank since the reign of Louis XIV. 
 Every daughter of the house had the right and must sooner or 
 later take a tabouret (seat) at Court. So, Antoinette de Navar-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 177 
 
 reins, at the age of eighteen, came out of the profound solitude 
 in which her girlhood had been spent to marry the Due de 
 Langeais' eldest son. The two families at that time were 
 living quite out of the world ; but after the invasion of 
 France, the return of the Bourbons seemed to every Royalist 
 mind the only possible way of putting an end to the miseries 
 of the war. 
 
 The Dues de Navarreins and de Langeais had been faithful 
 throughout to the exiled princes, nobly resisting all the temp- 
 tations of glory under the Empire. Underthecircumstanc.es 
 they naturally followed out the old family policy ; and Mile. 
 Antoinette, a beautiful and portionless girl, was married to 
 M. le Marquis de Langeais only a few months before the 
 death of the duke his father. 
 
 After the return of the Bourbons, the families resumed their 
 rank, offices, and dignity at Court ; once more they entered 
 public life, from which hitherto they had held aloof, and took 
 their place high on the sun-lit summits of the new political 
 world. In that time of general baseness and sham political 
 conversions, the public conscience was glad to recognize the 
 unstained loyalty of the two houses, and a consistency in 
 political and private life for which all parties involuntarily 
 respected them. But, unfortunately, as so often happens in a 
 time of transition, the most disinterested persons, the men 
 whose loftiness of view and wise principles would have gained 
 the confidence of the French nation and led them to believe 
 in the generosity of a novel and spirited policy; these men, 
 to repeat, were taken out of affairs, and public business was 
 allowed to fall into the hands of others, who found it to their 
 interest to push principles to their extreme consequences by 
 way of proving their devotion. 
 
 The families of Langeais and Navarreins remained about 
 the Court, condemned to perform the duties required by 
 Court ceremonial amid the reproaches and sneers of the Lib- 
 eral party. They were accused of gorging themselves with 
 12
 
 178 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 riches and honors, and all the while their family estates were 
 no larger than before, and liberal allowances from the civil 
 list were wholly expended in keeping up the state necessary 
 for any European government, even if it be a republic. 
 
 In 1818, M. le Due de Langeais commanded a division of 
 the army, and the duchess held a post about one of the prin- 
 cesses, in virtue of which she was free to live in Paris and 
 apart from her husband without scandal. The duke, more- 
 over, beside his military duties, had a place at Court, to 
 which he came during his term of waiting, leaving his major- 
 general in command. The duke and duchess were leading 
 lives entirely apart, separated both in fact and feeling, the 
 world none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared 
 the fate of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two 
 more antipathetic dispositions could not well have been 
 found ; they were brought together ; they jarred upon each 
 other ; there was soreness on either side ; thus they were divided 
 once for all. Then they went their separate ways, with a due 
 regard for appearances. The Due de Langeais, by nature as 
 methodical as the Chevalier de Folard, gave himself up 
 methodically to his own tastes and amusements, and left his 
 wife at liberty to do as she pleased so soon as he felt sure of 
 her character. He recognized in her a spirit preeminently 
 proud, a cold heart, a profound submissiveness to the usages 
 of the world, and a youthful loyalty. Under the eyes of 
 great relations, with the light of a prudish and bigoted Court 
 turned full upon the duchess, his honor was safe. 
 
 So the duke calmly did as the great lords of the eighteenth 
 century did before him, and left a young wife of two-and- 
 twenty to her own devices. He had deeply offended that 
 wife, and in her nature there was one appalling characteristic 
 she would never forgive an offense when woman's vanity 
 and self-love, with all that was best in her nature, perhaps, 
 had been slighted, wounded in secret. Insult and injury in 
 the face of the world a woman loves to forget ; there is a way
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 179 
 
 open to her of showing herself great ; she is a woman in her 
 forgiveness; but a secret offense women never pardon; for 
 secret baseness, as for hidden virtues and hidden love, they 
 have no kindness. 
 
 This was Mme. la Duchesse de Langeais' real position, 
 unknown to the world. She herself did not reflect upon it. 
 It was the time of the rejoicings over the Due de Bern's 
 marriage. The Court and the faubourg roused itself from its 
 listlessness and reserve. This was the real beginning of that 
 unheard-of splendor which the Government of the Restoration 
 carried too far. At that time the duchess, whether for reasons 
 of her own, or from vanity, never appeared in public without 
 a following of women equally distinguished by name and for- 
 tune. As queen of fashion she had her dames <f ateurs, her 
 ladies, who modeled their manner and their wit on hers. 
 They had been cleverly chosen. None of her satellites be- 
 longed to the inmost Court circle, not to the highest level of 
 the Faubourg Saint-Germain ; but they had set their minds 
 upon admission to those inner sanctuaries. Being as yet 
 simple dominations, they wished to rise to the neighborhood 
 of the throne, and mingle with the seraphic powers in the 
 high sphere known as " le petit chateau." Thus surrounded, 
 the duchess' position was stronger and more commanding and 
 secure. Her "ladies" defended her character and helped 
 her to play her detestable part of a woman of fashion. She 
 could laugh at men at her ease, play with fire, receive the 
 homage on which the feminine nature is nourished, and 
 remain mistress of herself. 
 
 At Paris, in the highest society of all, a woman is a woman 
 still; she lives on incense, adulation, and honors. No beauty, 
 however undoubted, no face, however fair, is anything with- 
 out admiration. Flattery and a lover are proofs of power. 
 And what is power without recognition? Nothing. If the 
 prettiest of women were left alone in a corner of a drawing- 
 room, she would droop. Put her in the very centre and sum-
 
 ISO THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 mit of socia. grandeur, she will at once aspire to reign over 
 all hearts often because it is out of her power to be the 
 happy queen of one. Dress and manner and coquetry are all 
 meant to please one of the poorest creatures extant the brain- 
 less coxcomb, whose handsome face is his sole merit ; it was 
 for such as these that women threw themselves away. The 
 gilded wooden idols of the Restoration, for they were neither 
 more nor less, had neither the antecedents of the petits 
 maitres (little masters) of the time of the Fronde, nor the 
 rough sterling worth of Napoleon's heroes, not the wit and 
 fine manners of their grandsires ; but something of all three 
 they meant to be without any trouble to themselves. Brave 
 they were, like all young Frenchmen ; ability they possessed, 
 no doubt, if they had had a chance of proving it, but their 
 places were filled up by the old worn-out men, who kept them 
 in leading strings. It was a day of small things, a cold 
 prosaic era. Perhaps it takes a long time for a Restoration to 
 become a Monarchy. 
 
 For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had 
 been leading this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent 
 visits, objectless triumphs, and the transient loves that spring 
 up and die in an evening's space. All eyes were turned on 
 her when she entered a room ; she reaped her harvest of flat- 
 teries and some few words of warmer admiration, which she 
 encouraged by a gesture or a glance, but never suffered to pene- 
 trate deeper than the skin. Her tone and bearing and every- 
 thing else about her imposed her will upon others. Her life 
 was a sort of fever of vanity and perpetual enjoyment, which 
 turned her head. She was daring enough in conversation ; 
 she would listen to anything, corrupting the surface, as it were, 
 of her heart. Yet, when she returned home, she often blushed 
 at the story that had made her laugh ; at the scandalous tale 
 that supplied the details, on the strength of which she analyzed 
 the love that she had never known, and marked the subtle dis- 
 tinctions of modern passion, not without comment on the part
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 181 
 
 of complacent hypocrites. For women know how to say 
 everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined 
 by each other than corrupted by men. 
 
 There came a moment when she discerned that not until a 
 women is loved will the world fully recognize her beauty and 
 her wit. What does a husband prove ? Simply that a girl or 
 woman was endowed with wealth, or well brought up; that 
 her mother managed cleverly ; that in some way she satisfied 
 a man's ambitions. A lov^-r constantly bears witness to her 
 personal perfections. Then followed the discovery, still in 
 Mme. de Langcais 1 early womanhood, that it was possible to 
 be loved without committing herself, without permission, 
 without vouchsafing any satisfaction beyond the most meagre 
 dues. There was more than one demure feminine hypocrite 
 to instruct her in the art of playing such dangerous comedies. 
 
 So the duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers 
 and courtiers guaranteed her virtue. She was amiable and 
 fascinating; she flirted till the ball or the evening's gayety 
 was at an end. Then the curtain dropped. She was cold, 
 indifferent, self-contained again, till the next day brought its 
 renewed sensations, superficial as before. Two or three men 
 were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest. She 
 laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. "I am loved ! " 
 she told herself. "He loves me !" The certainty sufficed 
 her. It is enough for the miser to know that his every whim 
 might be fulfilled if he chose ; so it was with the duchess, and 
 perhaps she did not even go so far as to form a wish. 
 
 One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate 
 friend, Mine, la Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble 
 rivals who cordially detested her, and went with her everywhere. 
 In a " friendship" of this sort both sides are on their guard, 
 and never lay their armor aside ; confidences are ingeniously 
 indiscreet, and not infrequently treacherous. Mme. de Lan- 
 geais had distributed her little patronizing, friendly, or freezing 
 bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth
 
 182 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 of her smiles, when her eyes fell upon a total stranger. Some- 
 thing in the man's large gravity of aspect startled her, and, 
 with a feeling almost like dread, she turned to Mme. de Mau- 
 frigneuse with : " Who is the new-comer, dear? " 
 
 " Some one that you have heard of, no doubt. The Mar- 
 quis de Montriveau." 
 
 "Oh! is it he?" 
 
 She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very inso- 
 lent scrutiny, as if he had been a picture meant to receive 
 glances, not to return them. 
 
 " Do introduce him ; he ought to be interesting." 
 
 " Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear. But he is the 
 fashion." 
 
 M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly 
 the object of general curiosity, better deserved attention than 
 any of the idols that Paris needs must set up to worship for a 
 brief space, for the city is vexed by periodical fits of craving, 
 a passion for infatuation and sham enthusiasm, which must be 
 satisfied. The marquis was the only son of General de Mon- 
 triveau, one of the ci-devants who served the Republic nobly, 
 and fell by Joubert's side at Novi. Bonaparte had placed 
 his son at the school at Chalons, with the orphans of other 
 generals who fell on the battlefield, leaving their children 
 under the protection of the Republic. Armand de Montri- 
 veau left school with his way to make, entered the artillery, 
 and had only reached a major's rank at the time of the Fon- 
 tainebleau disaster. In his section of the service the chances 
 of advancement were not many. There are fewer officers, in 
 the first place, among the gunners than in any other corps ; 
 and in the second place, the feeling in the artillery was de- 
 cidedly Liberal, not to say Republican ; and the Emperor, 
 feeling little confidence in a body of highly educated men 
 who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion grudg- 
 ingly in the service. In the artillery, accordingly, the general
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 182 
 
 rule of the army did not apply ; the commanding officers were 
 not invariably the most remarkable men in their department, 
 because there was less to be feared from mediocrities. The 
 artillery was a separate corps in those days, and only came 
 under Napoleon in action. 
 
 Beside these general causes, other reasons, inherent in 
 Armand de Montriveau's character, were sufficient in them- 
 selves to account for his tardy promotion. He was alone in 
 the world. He had been thrown at the age of twenty into 
 the whirlwind of men directed by Napoleon ; his interests 
 were bounded by himself, any day he might lose his life; it 
 became a habit of mind with him to live by his own self- 
 respect and the consciousness that he had done his duty. 
 Like all shy men, he was habitually silent ; but his shyness 
 sprang by no means from timidity ; it was a kind of modesty 
 in him ; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable. 
 There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action ; 
 nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his 
 chums with unshaken coolness ; he could go under fire, and 
 dodge upon occasion to avoid bullets. He was kindly; but 
 his expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him 
 this character. In everything he was rigorous as arithmetic ; 
 he never permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any 
 plausible pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact. He 
 would lend himself to nothing of which he was ashamed ; he 
 never asked anything for himself; in short, Armand de Mon- 
 triveau was one of many great men unknown to fame, and 
 philosophical enough to despise it ; living without attaching 
 themselves to life, because they have not found their oppor- 
 tunity of developing to the full their power to do and feel. 
 
 People were afraid of Montriveau ; they respected him, but 
 he was not very popular. Men may indeed allow you to rise 
 above them, but to decline to descend as low as they is the 
 one unpardonable sin. In their feeling toward loftier natures, 
 there is a trace of hate and fear. Too much honor with them
 
 184 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the 
 living nor to the dead. 
 
 After the Emperor's farewell at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, 
 noble though he was, was put on half-pay. Perhaps the heads 
 of the War Office took fright at uncompromising uprightness 
 worthy of antiquity, or perhaps it was known that he felt 
 bound by his oath to the imperial eagle. During the Hun- 
 dred Days he was made a colonel of the Guard, and left on 
 the field of Waterloo. His wounds kept him in Belgium ; he 
 was not present at the disbanding of the Army of the Loire, 
 but the King's government declined to recognize promotion 
 made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de Montriveau 
 left France. 
 
 An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satis- 
 fied by the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedi- 
 tion through Upper Egypt ; his sanity of impulse directed his 
 enthusiasm to a project of great importance, he turned his 
 attention to that unexplored Central Africa which occupies 
 the learned of to-day. The scientific expedition was long 
 and unfortunate. He had made a valuable collection of notes 
 -bearing on various geographical and commercial problems, of 
 which solutions are still eagerly sought ; and succeeded, after 
 surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the con- 
 tinent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile native 
 tribe. Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years he led a 
 wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages, threatened 
 with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated than a 
 dumb animal in the power of pitiless children. Physical 
 strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to sur- 
 vive the horrors of that captivity ; but his miraculous escape 
 well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French 
 colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his 
 memories of his former life were dim and shapeless. The great 
 sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his studies 
 of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations. One
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 18G 
 
 story will give an idea of all that he passed through. Once 
 for several days the children of the sheikh of the tribe amused 
 themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging horses' 
 knuckle-bones at his head. 
 
 Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man. He 
 had no interest, and wished for none. He would have died 
 twenty times over sooner than ask a favor of any one ; he 
 would not even press the recognition of his claims. Adversity 
 and hardship had developed his energy even in trifles, while 
 the habit of preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self 
 which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the 
 most apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures 
 became known, however, through his acquaintances, among 
 the principal men of science in Paris, and some few well-read 
 military men. The incidents of his slavery and subsequent 
 escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence, and coolness 
 which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that 
 transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though the 
 artist that fain would keep it must make untold efforts. 
 
 Montriveau's position suddenly changed toward the end of 
 that year. He had been a poor man, he was now rich ; or, 
 externally at any rate, he had all the advantages of wealth. 
 The King's government, trying to attach capable men to itself 
 and to strengthen the army, made concessions about that time 
 to Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and character 
 offered guarantees of fidelity. M. de Montriveau's name once 
 more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel ; he 
 received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards. All 
 these favors, one after another, came to seek the Marquis 
 de Montriveau ; he had asked for nothing, however small. 
 Friends had taken the steps for him which he would have re- 
 fused to take for himself. 
 
 After this, his habits were modified all at once ; contrary to 
 his custom, he went into society. He was well received, 
 everywhere he met with great deference and respect. He
 
 186 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 seemed to have found some end in life ; but everything passed 
 within the man, there were no external signs ; in society he 
 was silent and cold, and wore a grave, reserved face. His 
 social success was great, precisely because he stood out in such 
 strong contrast to the conventional facts which line the walls 
 of Paris salons. He was, indeed, something quite new there. 
 Terse of speech, like a hermit or a savage, his shyness was 
 thought to be haughtiness, and people were greatly taken with 
 it. He was something strange and great. Women generally 
 were so much the more smitten with this original person be- 
 cause he was not to be caught by their flatteries, however 
 adroit, nor by the wiles with which they circumvent the 
 strongest men and corrode the steel temper. Their Parisian 
 grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau ; his nature only 
 responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and 
 feeling. And he would very promptly have been dropped 
 but for the romance that hung about his adventures and his 
 life ; but for the men who cried him up behind his back ; but 
 for a woman who looked for a triumph for her vanity, the 
 woman who was to fill his thoughts. 
 
 For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais' curiosity was 
 no less lively than natural. Chance had so ordered it that 
 her interest in the man before her had been aroused only the 
 day before, when she heard the story of one of M. de Montri- 
 veau's adventures, a story calculated to make the strongest im- 
 pression upon a woman's ever-changing fancy. 
 
 During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the 
 sources of the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his 
 guides, surely the most extraordinary debate in the annals of 
 travel. The district that he wished to explore could only be 
 reached on foot across a tract of desert. Only one of his 
 guides knew the way ; no traveler had penetrated before into 
 that part of the country, where ^he undaunted officer hoped to 
 find a solution of several scientific problems. In spite of the 
 representations made to him by the guide and the older men
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 187 
 
 of the place, he started upon the formidable journey. Sum- 
 moning up courage, already highly strung by the prospect of 
 dreadful difficulties, he set out in the morning. 
 
 The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step ; and 
 when, at the end of a long day's march, he lay down to sleep 
 on the ground, he had never been so tired in his life. He 
 knew, however, that he must be up and on his way before 
 dawn next day, and his guide assured him that they should 
 reach the end of their journey toward noon. That promise 
 kept up his courage and gave him new strength. In spite of 
 his sufferings, he continued his march, with some blasphemings 
 against science ; he was ashamed to complain to his guide, and 
 kept his pain to himself. After marching for a third of the 
 day, he felt his strength failing, his feet were bleeding, he 
 asked if they should reach the place soon. "In an hour's 
 time," said the guide. Armand braced himself for another 
 hour's march, and they went on. 
 
 The hour slipped by ; he could not so much as see against 
 the sky the palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of 
 the end of the journey near at hand ; the horizon-line of sand 
 was vast as the circle of the open sea. 
 
 He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened 
 the guide he had deceived him, murdered him ; tears of rage 
 and weariness flowed over his fevered cheeks ; he was bowed 
 down with fatigue upon fatigue, his throat seemed to be glued 
 by the desert thirst. The guide meanwhile stood motionless, 
 listening to these complaints with an ironical expression, 
 studying the while, with the apparent indifference of an Ori- 
 ental, the scarcely perceptible indications in the lay of the 
 sands, which looked almost black in its reflections, like bur- 
 nished gold. 
 
 " I have made a mistake," he remarked coolly. " I could 
 not make out the track, it is so long since I came this way ; 
 we are most surely on it now, but we must push on for two 
 hours longer."
 
 188 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 "The man is right," thought M. de Montriveau. 
 
 So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native. 
 It seemed as if he were bound to his guide by some cord like 
 the invisible bond between the condemned man and the 
 headsman. But the two hours went by, Montriveau had spent 
 his last drops of energy, and the sky-line was a blank, there 
 were no palm-trees, no hills. He could neither cry out nor 
 groan, he lay down on the sand to die, but his eyes would 
 have frightened the boldest ; something in his face seemed to 
 say that he would not die alone. His guide, like a very fiend, 
 gave him back a cool glance like a man that knows his power, 
 left him to lie there, and kept at a safe distance out of reach 
 of his desperate victim. At last M. Montriveau recovered 
 strength enough for a last curse. The guide came nearer, 
 silenced him with a steady look, and said : "Was it not your 
 own will to go where I am taking you, in spite of us all ? 
 You say that I have lied to you. If I had not, you would not 
 be even here. Do you want the truth ? Here it is : We have 
 still another five hours' march before us, and we cannot go back. 
 Sound yourself; if you have not courage enough, here is my 
 dagger." 
 
 Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human 
 strength, M. de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; 
 he drew a fresh stock of courage from his pride as a European, 
 rose to his feet, and followed his guide. The five hours were 
 at an end, and still M. de Montriveau saw nothing, he turned 
 his failing eyes upon his guide ; but the Nubian hoisted him 
 on his shoulders, and showed him a wide pool of water with 
 greenness all about it, and a noble forest lighted up by the 
 sunset. It lay only a hundred paces away ; a vast ledge of 
 granite hid the glorious landscape. It seemed to Armand 
 that he had taken a new lease of life. His guide, that giant 
 in courage and intelligence, finished his work of devotion by 
 carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely discernible 
 track on the granite. Behind him lay the hell of burning
 
 SOUND YOURSELF; IF YOU HAVE NOT COURAGE ENOUGH, 
 HERE IS MY DAGGER."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 189 
 
 sand, before him the earthly paradise of the most beautiful 
 oasis in the desert. 
 
 The duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this 
 romantic figure, was even more impressed when she learned 
 that this was that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had 
 dreamed during the night. She had been with him among 
 the hot desert sands, he had been the companion of her night- 
 mare wanderings ; for such a woman was not this a delightful 
 presage of a new interest in her life? And never was a man's 
 exterior a better exponent of his character ; never were curious 
 glances so well justified. The principal characteristic of his 
 great, square-hewn head was the thick, luxuriant black hair 
 which framed his face, and gave him a strikingly close resem- 
 blance to General Kleber ; and the likeness still held good in 
 the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his face, the quiet 
 fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery vehemence expressed 
 by strongly marked features. He was short, deep-chested, 
 and muscular as a lion. There was something of the despot 
 about him. and an indescribable suggestion of the security of 
 strength in his gait, bearing, and slightest movement. He 
 seemed to know that his will was irresistible, perhaps because 
 he willed only that which was right. And yet, like all really 
 strong men, he was mild of speech, simple in his manners, 
 and kindly natured ; although it seemed as if, in the stress of 
 a great crisis, all these finer qualities must disappear, and the 
 man would show himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, 
 terrific in action. There was a certain drawing in of the 
 inner line of the lips which, to a close observer, indicated an 
 ironical bent. 
 
 The D'-ichesse de Langeais, realizing that a fleeting glory 
 was to be won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain 
 a lover in Armand de Montriveau during the brief interval 
 before the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse brought him to be intro- 
 duced. She would prefer him above the others ; she would 
 attach him to herself, display all her powers of coquetry for
 
 190 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 him. It was a fancy, such a mere duchess' whim as furnished 
 a Lope or a Calderon with the plot of the "Dog in the 
 Manger." She would not suffer another woman to engross 
 him; but she had not the remotest intention of being his. 
 
 Nature had given the duchess every qualification for the 
 part of coquette, and education had perfected her. Women 
 envied her, and men fell in love with her, not without reason. 
 Nothing that can inspire love, justify it, and give it lasting 
 empire was wanting in her. Her style of beauty, her manner, 
 her voice, her bearing, all combined to give her that instinc- 
 tive coquetry which seems to be the consciousness of power. 
 Her shape was graceful ; perhaps there was a trace of self- 
 consciousness in her changes of movement, the one affecta- 
 tion that could be laid to her charge ; but everything about 
 her was a part of her personality, from her least little gesture 
 to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the demure glance of her 
 eyes. Her great lady's grace, her most striking characteristic, 
 had not destroyed the very French quick mobility of her per- 
 son. There was an extraordinary fascination in her swift, 
 incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if she surely 
 would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and the 
 encumbering costume of her part was laid aside. All the 
 rapture of love surely was latent in the freedom of her ex- 
 pressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the charm of her 
 words. She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within 
 her, vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess. 
 
 You might sit near her through an evening, she would be 
 gay and melancholy in turn, and her gayety, like her sadness, 
 seemed spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, inso- 
 lent, or confiding at will. Her apparent good-nature was 
 real; she had no temptation to descend to malignity. But at 
 each moment her mood changed ; she was full of confidence 
 or craft ; her moving tenderness would give place to a heart- 
 breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as 
 she was, without bringing together all the extremes of femi-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 191 
 
 nine nature? In a word, the duchess was anything that she 
 wished to be or to seem. Her face was slightly too long. 
 There was a grace in it, and a certain thinness and fineness 
 that recalled the portraits of the Middle Ages. Her skin was 
 white, with a faint rose tint. Everything about her erred, as 
 it were, by an excess of delicacy. 
 
 M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to 
 the Duchesse de Langeais ; and she, after the manner of per- 
 sons whose sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, re- 
 frained from overwhelming him witli questions and compli- 
 ments. She received him with a gracious deference which 
 could not fail to flatter a man of more than ordinary powers, 
 for the fact that a man rises above the ordinary level implies 
 that he possesses something of that tact which makes women 
 quick to read feeling. If the duchess showed any curiosity, 
 it was by her glances ; her compliments were conveyed in her 
 manner ; there was a winning grace displayed in her words, a 
 subtle suggestion of a desire to please which she of all women 
 knew the art of manifesting. Yet her whole conversation was 
 but, in a manner, the body of the letter; the postscript with 
 the principal thought in it was still to come. After half an 
 hour spent in ordinary chat, in which the words gained all 
 their value from her tone and smiles, M. de Montriveau was 
 about to retire discreetly, when the duchess stopped him wilh 
 an expressive gesture. 
 
 " I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes dur- 
 ing which I have had the pleasure of talking to you proved so 
 sufficiently attractive that I may venture to ask you to call 
 upon me ; I am afraid that it may be very selfish of me to wish 
 to have you all to myself. If I should be so fortunate as to 
 find that my house is agreeable to you, you will always find 
 me at home in the evening until ten o'clock." 
 
 The invitation was given with such irresistible grace that 
 M. de Montriveau could not refuse to accept it. When he 
 fell back again among the groups of men gathered at a dis-
 
 192 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 tance from the women, his friends congratulated him, half 
 laughingly, half in earnest, -on the extraordinary reception 
 vouchsafed him by the Duchesse de Langeais. The difficult 
 and brilliant conquest had been made beyond a doubt, and 
 the glory of it was reserved for the Artillery of the Guard. 
 It is easy to imagine the jests, good and bad, when this topic 
 had once been started ; the world of Paris salons is so eager 
 for amusement, and a joke lasts for such a short time, that 
 every one is eager to pluck the flower while it blooms. 
 
 All unconsciously, the general felt flattered by this non- 
 sense. From his place where he had taken his stand, his eyes 
 were drawn again and again to the duchess by countless 
 wavering reflections. He could not help admitting to him- 
 self that of all the women whose beauty had captivated his 
 eyes, not one had seemed to be a more exquisite embodiment 
 of faults and fair qualities blended in a completeness that 
 might realize the dreams of earliest manhood. Is there a man 
 in any rank of life that has not felt indefinable rapture in his 
 secret soul over the woman singled out (if only in his dreams) 
 to be his own ; when she, in body, soul, and social aspects, 
 satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman ? And 
 if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no argu- 
 ment for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great in- 
 ducements to the sentiment. Love would soon be convales- 
 cent, as the eighteenth-century moralist remarked, were it not 
 for vanity. And it is certainly true that for every one, man 
 or woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of 
 the beloved. Is she set so high by birth that a contemptuous 
 glance can never wound her ? is she wealthy enough to sur- 
 round herself with state which falls nothing short of royalty 
 of kings of finance during their short reign of splendor? is 
 she so ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her 
 into confusion ? beautiful enough to rival any woman ? Is it 
 such a small thing to know that your self-love will never suffer 
 through her? A man makes these reflections in the twink-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 193 
 
 ling of an eye. And how if, in the future opened out by 
 early ripened passion, he catches glimpses of the changeful 
 delight of her charm, the frank innocence of a maiden soul, 
 the perils of love's voyage, the thousand folds of the veil of 
 coquetry? Is not this enough to move the coldest man's 
 heart ? 
 
 This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau's position with re- 
 gard to woman ; his past life in some measure explaining the 
 extraordinary fact. He had been thrown, when little more 
 than a boy, into the hurricane of Napoleon's wars ; his life 
 had been spent on fields of battle. Of women he knew just 
 so much as a traveler knows of a country when he travels 
 across it in haste from one inn to another. The verdict which 
 Voltaire passed upon his eighty years of life might, perhaps, 
 have been applied by Montriveau to his own thirty-seven years 
 of existence ; had he not thirty-seven follies with which to re- 
 proach himself? At his age he was as much a novice in love 
 as the lad that has just been furtively reading " Faublas." Of 
 women he had nothing to learn ; of love he knew nothing ; 
 and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang from this vir- 
 ginity of feeling. 
 
 There are men here and there as much engrossed in the 
 work demanded of them by poverty or ambition, art or sci- 
 ence, as M. de Montriveau by war and a life of adventure 
 these know what it is to be in this unusual position if they 
 very seldom confess to it. Every man in Paris is supposed to 
 have been in love. No woman in Paris cares to take what 
 other women have passed over. The dread of being taken 
 for a fool is the source of the coxcomb'o bragging so common 
 in France ; for in France to have the reputation of a fool is 
 to be a foreigner in one's own country. Vehement desire 
 seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered strength 
 from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart 
 unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence. A strong man, 
 and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery over 
 13
 
 194 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired 
 within himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through 
 that thought lay the only way to love for him. Desire be- 
 came a solemn compact made with himself, an oath after the 
 manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived ; for among 
 them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny, a man's 
 whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfill it, and everything, 
 even his own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one 
 end. 
 
 A younger man would have said to himself: " I should very 
 much like to have the duchess for my mistress ! " or, "If the 
 Duchesse de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very 
 lucky rascal ! " But the general said : " I will have Madame 
 de Langeais for my mistress." And if a man takes such an 
 idea into his head when his heart has never been touched 
 before, and love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he 
 little knows into what a hell he has set his foot. 
 
 Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home 
 in the first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known. 
 When a man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frank- 
 ness, and impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it 
 were, to stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires ; 
 a little later he realizes that there is a gulf set between them, 
 and that it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort of childish 
 impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and 
 trembles or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the storm- 
 iest reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand 
 de Montriveau discovered that he was under the yoke of the 
 senses, and his bondage made the heavier by his love. 
 
 The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday 
 had become a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to 
 be his world, his life, from this time forth. The greatest 
 joy, the keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew color- 
 less before the bare recollection of the least sensation stirred 
 in him by her, The swiftest revolutions in a man's outward
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 19o 
 
 life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete 
 revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, 
 rather than by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, 
 the sanguine rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love 
 works a complete revolution. In a flash, with one single 
 reflection, Armand de Montriveau wiped out his whole pai>t 
 life. 
 
 A score of times he asked himself, like a boy : " Shall I 
 go, or shall I not ? " and then at last he dressed, went to the 
 Hotel de Langeais toward eight o'clock that evening, and was 
 admitted. He was to see the woman ah ! not the woman 
 the idol that he had seen yesterday, among lights, a fresh in- 
 nocent girl in gauze and silken lace and veiling. He burst 
 in upon her to declare his love, as if it were a question of 
 firing the first shot on a field of battle. 
 
 Poor novice ! He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in 
 a brown cashmere dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying 
 languidly stretched out upon a divan in a dimly lighted 
 boudoir. Mme. de Langeais did not so much as rise, nothing 
 was visible of her but her face; her hair was loose but con- 
 fined by a scarf. A hand indicated a seat, a hand that seemed 
 white as marble to Montriveau by the flickering light of a 
 single candle at the farther side of the room, and a voice as 
 soft as the light said 
 
 " If it had been any one else, Monsieur le Marquis, a 
 friend with whom I could dispense with ceremony, or a mere 
 acquaintance in whom I felt but slight interest, I should have 
 closed my door. I am exceedingly unwell." 
 
 "I will go," Armand said to himself. 
 
 "But I do not know how it is," she continued (and the 
 simple warrior attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), 
 " perhaps it was a presentiment of your kind visit (and no one 
 can be more sensible of the prompt attention than 1^, but the 
 vapors have left my head." 
 
 "Then may I stay?"
 
 196 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " Oh, I should be very sorry to have you go. I told myself 
 this morning that it was impossible that I should have made 
 the slightest impression on your mind, and that in all proba- 
 bility you took my request for one of the commonplaces of 
 which Parisians are lavish on every occasion. And I forgave 
 your ingratitude in advance. An explorer from the deserts is 
 not supposed to know how exclusive we are in our friendships 
 in the faubourg." 
 
 The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as 
 if they had been weighted with the gladness that apparently 
 brought them to her lips. The duchess meant to have the 
 full benefit of her headache, and her speculation was fully 
 successful. The general, poor man, was really distressed by 
 the lady's simulated distress. Like Crillon listening to the 
 story of the Crucifixion, he was ready to draw his sword 
 against the vapors. How could a man dare to speak just 
 then to this suffering woman of the love that she inspired? 
 Armand had already felt that it would be absurd to fire off a 
 declaration of love point-blank at one so far above other 
 women. With a single thought came understanding of the 
 delicacies of feeling, of the soul's requirements. To love : 
 what was that but to know how to plead, to beg for alms, to 
 wait ? And as for the love that he felt, must he not prove it ? 
 His tongue was mute, it was frozen by the conventions of the 
 noble faubourg, the majesty of a sick headache, the bashful- 
 ness of love. But no power on earth could veil his glances ; 
 the heat and the Infinite of the desert blazed in eyes, calm as 
 a panther's, beneath the lids that fell so seldom. The duchess 
 enjoyed the steady gaze that enveloped her in light and 
 warmth. 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse," he answered, "I am afraid I ex- 
 press my gratitude for your goodness very badly. At this 
 moment I have but one desire I wish it were in my power to 
 ure the pain." 
 
 "Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now,"
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 197 
 
 she said, gracefully tossing aside a cushion that covered her 
 feet. 
 
 'Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten 
 thousand sequins." 
 
 " A traveler's compliment ! " smiled she. 
 
 It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a 
 labyrinth of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, 
 in which he manoeuvred, in military language, as Prince 
 Charles* might have done at close quarters with Napoleon. 
 She took a mischievous amusement in reconnoitring the extent 
 of his infatuation by the number of foolish speeches extracted 
 from a novic:c whom she led step by step into a hopeless maze, 
 meaning to leave him there in confusion. She began by 
 laughing at him, but nevertheless it pleased her to make him 
 forget how time went. 
 
 The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but 
 Armand was innocent of any such intent. The famous ex- 
 plorer spent an hour in chat on all sorts of subjects, said 
 nothing that he meant to say. and was feeling that he was only 
 an instrument on whom this woman played, when she rose, 
 sat upright, drew the scarf from her hair, and wrapped it about 
 her throat, leaned her elbow on the cushions, did him the 
 honor of a complete cure, and rang for lights. The most 
 graceful movements succeeded to complete repose. She 
 turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom she had just ex- 
 tracted a confidence which seemed to interest her deeply, and 
 said 
 
 ' You wish to make game of me by trying to make me be- 
 lieve that you have never loved. It is a man's great pretension 
 with us. And we always believe it ! Out of pure politeness. 
 Do we not know what to expect from it for ourselves? Where 
 is the man that has found but a single opportunity of losing 
 his heart? But you love to deceive us, and we submit to be 
 deceived, poor foolish creatures that we are; for your hvpoc- 
 * Commander-in-chief of the Austrian armv on the Kliiue.
 
 198 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 risy is, after all, a homage paid to the superiority of our senti- 
 ments, which are all purity." 
 
 The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that 
 made the novice in love feel like a worthless bale flung into 
 the deep, while the duchess was an angel soaring back to her 
 particular heaven. 
 
 "Confound it! " thought Armand de Montriveau, "how 
 am I to tell this wild thing that I love her? " 
 
 He had told her already a score of times ; or, rather, the 
 duchess had a score of times read his secret in his eyes ; and 
 the passion in this unmistakably great man promised her 
 amusement and an interest in her empty life. So she pre- 
 pared with no little dexterity to raise a certain number of re- 
 doubts for him to carry by storm before he should gain an 
 entrance into her heart. Montriveau should overleap one 
 difficulty after another; he should be a plaything for her 
 caprice, just as an insect teased by children is made to jump 
 from one finger to another, and in spite of all its pains is kept 
 in the same place by its mischievous tormentor. And yet it 
 gave the duchess inexpressible happiness to see that this strong 
 man had told her the truth. Armand had never loved, as he 
 had said. He was about to go, in a bad humor with himself, 
 and still more out of humor with her; but it delighted her to 
 see a sullenness that she could conjure away with a word, a 
 glance, or a gesture. 
 
 " Will you come to-morrow evening ? " she asked. " I am 
 going to a ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten 
 o'clock." 
 
 Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an in- 
 determinate quantity of cigars in his study window, and so he 
 got through the hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel 
 de Langeais. To any one who had known the magnificent 
 worth of the man, it would have been grievous to see him grown 
 so small, so distrustful of himself; the mind that might have
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 199 
 
 shed light over undiscovered worlds shrunk to the proportions 
 of a she-coxcomb's boudoir. Even he himself felt that he had 
 fallen so low already in his happiness that to save his life he 
 could not have told his love to one of his closest friends. Is 
 there not always a trace of shame in the lover's bashfulness, 
 and perhaps in woman a certain exultation over diminished 
 masculine stature? Indeed, but for a host of motives of this 
 kind, how explain why women are nearly always the first to 
 betray the secret ? a secret of which, perhaps, they soon 
 weary. 
 
 " Madame la Duchesse cannot yet see visitors, monsieur," 
 said the man ; " she is dressing, she begs you to wait for her 
 here." 
 
 Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying 
 her taste in the least details. He admired Mme. de Langeais 
 herself in the objects of her choosing ; they revealed her life 
 before he could grasp her personality and ideas. About an 
 hour later the duchess came noiselessly out of her chamber. 
 Montriveau turned, saw her flit like a shadow across the room, 
 and trembled. She came up to him, not with a bourgeoise's 
 inquiry: " How do I look?" She was sure of herself; her 
 steady eyes said plainly, " I am adorned to please you." 
 
 No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some 
 princess in disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about 
 the dainty throat, so that the dazzling satin skin beneath 
 should gleam through the gleaming folds. The duchess was 
 dazzling. The pale blue color of her gown, repeated in the 
 flowers in her hair, appeared by the richness of its hue to lend 
 substance to a fragile form grown too wholly ethereal , for as 
 she glided toward Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated 
 about her, putting that valiant warrior in mind of the bright, 
 blue damosel flies* that hover now over water, now over the 
 flowers with which they seem to mingle and blend. 
 
 " I have kept you waiting," she said, with the tone that a 
 
 * The agnon, a small blue drngon-fiy.
 
 200 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 woman can always bring into her voice for the man whom she 
 wishes to please. 
 
 " I would wait patiently through an eternity," said he, " if 
 I were sure of finding a divinity so fair ; but it is no compli- 
 ment to speak of your beauty to you ; nothing save worship 
 could touch you. Suffer me only to kiss your scarf." 
 
 "Oh, fie!" she said, with a commanding gesture, "I 
 esteem you enough to give you my hand." 
 
 She held it out for his kiss. A woman's hand, still moist 
 from the scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smooth- 
 ness that sends a tingling thrill from the lips to the soul. 
 And if a man is attracted to a woman, and his senses are as 
 quick to feel pleasure as his heart is full of love, such a kiss, 
 though chaste in appearance, may conjure up a terrific storm. 
 
 "Will you always give it me thus?" the general asked 
 humbly, when he had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully 
 to his lips. 
 
 "Yes, but there we must stop," she said, smiling. She sat 
 down, and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, try- 
 ing to slip the unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, 
 while she watched M. de Montriveau ; and he was lost in 
 admiration of the duchess and those repeated graceful move- 
 ments of hers. 
 
 "Ah! you were punctual," she said; "that is right. I 
 like punctuality. It is the courtesy of kings, his majesty says ; 
 but to my thinking, from you men it is the most respectful 
 flattery of all. Now, is it not? Just tell me." 
 
 Again she gave him a side-glance to express her insidious 
 friendship, for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness 
 through such nothings as these ! Oh, the duchess understood 
 son metier de femmc the art and mystery of being a woman 
 most marvelously well; she knew, to admiration, how to raise 
 a man in his own esteem as he humbled himself to her; how 
 to reward every step of the descent to sentimental folly with 
 hollow flatteries.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. *)1 
 
 " You will never foiget to come at nine o'clock." 
 
 " No ; but are you going to a ball every night ? " 
 
 " Do I know?" she answered, with a little childlike shrug 
 of the shoulders ; the gesture was meant to say that she was 
 nothing if not capricious, and that a lover must take her as 
 she was. "Beside," she added, "what is that to you? You 
 shall be my escort." 
 
 "That would be difficult to-night," he objected; "I am 
 not properly dressed." 
 
 "It seems to me," she returned loftily, "that if any one 
 has a right to complain of your costume, it is I. Know, 
 therefore, monsieur le voyageur* that if I accept a man's arm, 
 he is forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would ven- 
 ture to criticise him. You do not know the world, I see; I 
 like you the better for it." 
 
 And even us she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of 
 that world by the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a 
 woman of fashion. 
 
 " If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a 
 simpleton to prevent her," said Armand to himself. "She 
 has a liking for me beyond a doubt ; and, as for the world, she 
 cannot despise it more than I do. So, now for the ball if she 
 likes." 
 
 The duchess probably thought that if the general came with 
 her and appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, no- 
 body would hesitate to believe that he was violently in love 
 with her. And the general was well pleased that the queen of 
 fashion should think of compromising herself for him; hope 
 gave him wit. He had gained confidence, he brought out his 
 thoughts and views ; he felt nothing of the restraint that 
 weighed on his spirits yesterday. His talk was interesting 
 and animated, and full of those first confidences so sweet to 
 make and to receive. 
 
 Was Mme. de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or 
 
 * Mister Traveler.
 
 202 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 had she devised this charming piece of coquetry? At any 
 rate, she looked up mischievously as the clock struck twelve. 
 
 "Ah ! you have made me too late for the ball ! " she ex- 
 claimed, surprised and vexed that she had forgotten how time 
 was going. 
 
 The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures 
 with a smile that made Armand's heart give a sudden leap. 
 
 "I certainly promised Madame de Beauseant," she added. 
 " They are all expecting me." 
 
 "Very well go." 
 
 " No go on. I will stay. Your Eastern adventures fasci- 
 nate me. Tell me the whole story of your life. I love to 
 share in a brave man's hardships, and I feel them all, indeed 
 I do!" 
 
 She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to 
 pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell 
 of inward dissatisfaction and deep reflection. 
 
 "Women are fit for nothing," she went on. "Ah ! we are 
 contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures. We can bore our- 
 selves with amusements, and that is all we can do. Not one 
 of us that understands that she has a part to play in life. In 
 old days in France, women were beneficent lights ; they lived 
 to comfort those that mourned, to encourage high virtues, to 
 reward artists and stir new life with noble thoughts. If the 
 world has grown so petty, ours is the fault. You make me 
 loathe the ball and this world in which I live. No, I am not 
 giving up much for you." 
 
 She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a 
 flower, pulling away all the petals one by one ; and now she 
 crushed it into a ball, and flung it away. She could show her 
 swan's neck. 
 
 She rang the bell. " I shall not go out to-night," she told 
 the footman. Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; 
 and by the look of misgiving in them, he knew that he was 
 meant to take the order for a confession, for a first and great
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 203 
 
 favor. There was a pause, filled with many thoughts, before 
 she spoke with that tenderness which is often in women's 
 voices, and not so often in their hearts. "You have had a 
 hard life," she said. 
 
 "No," returned Armand. " Until today I did not know 
 what happiness was." 
 
 "Then you know it now?" she asked, looking at him with 
 a demure, keen glance. 
 
 " What is happiness for me henceforth but this to see you, 
 to hear you? Until now I have only known privation ; now 
 I know that I can be unhappy 
 
 " That will do, that will do," she said. " You must go ; 
 it is past midnight. Let us regard appearances. People must 
 not talk about us. I do not know quite what I shall say ; but 
 the headache is a good-natured friend, and tells no tales." 
 
 " Is there to be a ball to-morrow night ? " 
 
 " You would grow accustomed to the life, I think. Very 
 well. Yes, we will go to another ball to-morrow night." 
 
 There was not a happier man in the world than Armand 
 when he went out from her. Every evening he came to Mme. 
 de Langeais* at the hour kept for him by a tacit understanding. 
 
 It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who 
 carry a redundance of such sweet memories in their hearts, it 
 were superfluous to follow the story step by step the progress 
 of a romance growing in those hours spent together, a romance 
 controlled entirely by a woman's will. If sentiment went too 
 fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when words 
 flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings. 
 Perhaps the only way of following such Penelope's progress is 
 by marking its outward and visible signs. 
 
 As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, 
 the assiduous general had won and kept the right to kiss his 
 lady's insatiable hands. Wherever Mme. de Langeais went, 
 M. de Montriveau was certain to be seen, till people jokingly 
 called him " her grace's orderly." And already he had made
 
 204 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 enemies ; others were jealous, and envied him his position. 
 Mme. de Langeais had attained her end. The Marquis de 
 Montriveau was among her numerous train of adorers, and a 
 means of humiliating those who boasted of their progress in 
 her good graces, for she publicly gave him preference over 
 them all. 
 
 " Decidedly, Monsieur de Montriveau is the man for whom 
 the duchess shows a preference," pronounced Madame de 
 Serizy. 
 
 And who in Paris does not know what it means when a 
 woman "shows a preference?" All went on therefore ac- 
 cording to prescribed rule. The anecdotes which people were 
 pleased to circulate concerning the general put that warrior in 
 so formidable a light, that the more adroit quietly dropped 
 their pretensions to the duchess, and remained in her train 
 merely to turn the position to account, and to use her name 
 and personality to make better terms for themselves with cer- 
 tain stars of the second magnitude. And those lesser powers 
 were delighted to take a lover away from Mme. de Langeais. 
 The duchess was keen-sighted enough to see these desertions 
 and treaties with the enemy ; and her pride would not suffer 
 her to be the dupe of them. As M. de Talleyrand, one of her 
 great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition 
 of revenge, laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between 
 the pairs in these "morganatic "* unions. Her mocking dis- 
 dain contributed not a little to increase her reputation as an 
 extremely clever woman and a person to be feared. Her 
 character for virtue was consolidated while she amused herself 
 with other people's secrets, and kept her own to herself. Yet, 
 after two months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in 
 the depths of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood 
 nothing of the subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the 
 Faubourg Saint-Germain ; he was taking a Parisienne's co- 
 quetry in earnest. 
 
 * Left-handed.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 205 
 
 "You will not tame him, dear duchess," the old Vidamc 
 de Pamiers had said. " 'Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he 
 will carry you off to his eyrie if you do not take care." 
 
 Then Mme. de Langeais felt afraid. The shrewd old noble's 
 words sounded like a prophecy. The next day she tried to 
 turn love to hate. She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbear- 
 able ; Montriveau disarmed her with angelic sweetness. She 
 so little knew the great generosity of a large nature, that the 
 kindly jests with which her first complaints were met went to 
 her heart. She sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affec- 
 tion. She persisted. 
 
 "When a man idolizes you, how can he have vexed you?" 
 asked Armand. 
 
 "You do not vex me," she answered, suddenly growing 
 gentle and submissive. " But why do you wish to compro- 
 mise me? For me you ought to be nothing but a. friend. Do 
 you not know it ? I wish I could see that you had the in- 
 stincts, the delicacy of real friendship, so that I might lose 
 neither your respect nor the pleasure that your presence gives 
 me." 
 
 "Nothing but your friend ! " he cried out. The terrible 
 word sent an electric shock through his brain. "On the 
 faith of these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and 
 wake in your heart. And now to-day, for no reason, you are 
 pleased to destroy all the secret hopes by which I live. You 
 have required promises of such constancy in me, you have 
 said so much of your horror of women made up of nothing 
 but caprice ; and now do you wish me to understand that, 
 like other women here in Pans, you have passions, and know 
 nothing of love? If so, why did you ask my life of me? 
 why did you accept it?" 
 
 " I was wrong, my friend. Oh, it is wrong of a woman to 
 yield to such intoxication when she must not and cannot make 
 any return."
 
 206 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " I understand. You have been merely coquetting with me, 
 and " 
 
 "Coquetting?" she repeated. "I detest coquetry. A 
 coquette, Armand, makes promises to many, and gives her- 
 self to none ; and a woman who keeps such promises is a 
 libertine. This much I believed I had grasped of our code. 
 But to be melancholy with humorists, gay with the frivolous, 
 and politic with ambitious souls ; to listen to a babbler with 
 every appearance of admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, 
 wax enthusiastic with philanthropists over the good of the 
 nation, and to give to each one his little dole of flattery it 
 seems to me that this is as much a matter of necessity as dress, 
 diamonds, and gloves, or flowers in one's hair. Such talk is 
 the moral counterpart of the toilet. You take it up and lay it 
 aside with the plumed head-dress. Do you call this coquetry ? 
 Why, I have never treated you as I treat every one else. 
 With you, my friend, I am sincere. Have I not always shared 
 your views, and when you convinced me after a discussion 
 was I not always perfectly glad ? In short, I love you, but 
 only as a devout and pure woman may love. I have thought 
 it over. I am a married woman, Armand. My way of life 
 with Monsieur de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my 
 heart; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of 
 my person. If a woman loses her honor, she is an outcast in 
 any rank of life ? and I have yet to meet with a single exam- 
 ple of a man that realizes all that our sacrifices demand of him 
 in such a case. Quite otherwise. Any one can foresee the 
 rupture between Madame de Beauseant and Monsieur d'Ajuda 
 (for he is going to marry Mademoiselle de Rochefide, it seems) ; 
 that affair made it clear to my mind that these very sacrifices 
 on the woman's part are almost always the cause of the man's 
 desertion. If you had loved me sincerely, you would have 
 kept away for a time. Now, I will lay aside all vanity for 
 you; is not that something? What will not people say of a 
 woman to whom no man attaches himself? Oh, she is heart-
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 207 
 
 less, brainless, soulless ; and what is more, devoid of charm ! 
 Coquettes will not spare me. They will rob me of the very 
 qualities that mortify them. So long as my reputation is safe, 
 what do I care if my rivals deny my merits? They certainly 
 will not inherit them. Come, my friend ; give up something 
 for her who sacrifices so much for you. Do not come quite so 
 often ; I shall love you none the less." 
 
 "Ah!" said Armand, with the profound irony of a 
 wounded heart in his words and tone. " Love, so the scrib- 
 blers say, only feeds on illusions. Nothing could be truer, I 
 see ; I am expected to imagine that I am loved. But, there ! 
 there are some thoughts like wounds, from which there is 
 no recovery. My belief in you was one of the last left to 
 me, and now I see that there is nothing left to believe in this 
 earth." 
 
 She began to smile. 
 
 "Yes," Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, "this 
 Catholic faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that 
 men make for themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the 
 future ; pride, a lie between us and our fellows ; and pity, 
 and prudence, and terror are cunning lies. And now my hap- 
 piness is to be one more, lying delusion ; I am expected to 
 delude myself, to be willing to give gold coin for silver to the 
 end. If you can so easily dispense with my visits; if you 
 can confess me neither as your friend nor your lover, you do 
 not care for me ! And I, poor fool that I am, tell myself this, 
 and know it, and love you ! " 
 
 " But dear me, poor Armand. you are flying into a pas- 
 sion ! " 
 
 " I flying into a passion ? " 
 
 " Yes. You think that the whole thing is ended because I 
 ask you to be careful." 
 
 In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that 
 leaped out in her lover's eyes. Even as she tortured him, 
 she was criticising him, watching every slightest change that
 
 208 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 passed over his face. If the general had been so unluckily 
 inspired as to show himself generous without discussion (as 
 happens occasionally with some artless souls), he would have 
 been a banished man for ever, accused and convicted of not 
 knowing how to love. Most women are not displeased to 
 have their code of right and wrong broken through. Do they 
 not flatter themselves that they never yield except to force ? 
 But Armand was not learned enough in this kind of lore to 
 see the limed snare so ingeniously spread for him by the 
 knowing duchess. So much of the child was there in the 
 strong man in love. 
 
 "If all you want is to preserve appearances," he began in 
 his simplicity, "I am willing to " 
 
 "Simply to preserve appearances!" the lady broke in; 
 "why, what idea can you have of me? Have I given you 
 the slightest reason to suppose that I can ever be yours?" 
 
 "Why, what else are we talking about?" demanded Mon- 
 triveau. 
 
 " Monsieur, you frighten me ! No. pardon me. Thank 
 you," she added, coldly; "thank you, Armand. You have 
 given me timely warning of imprudence ; committed quite 
 unconsciously, believe it, my friend. You know how to en- 
 dure, you say. I also know how to endure. We will not see 
 each other for a time; and then, when both of 'us have con- 
 trived to recover calmness to some extent, we will think about 
 arrangements for a happiness sanctioned by the world. I am 
 young, Armand ; a man with no delicacy might tempt a 
 woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild things 
 for his sake. But you ! You will be my friend, promise me 
 that you will?" 
 
 "The woman of four-and-twenty," returned he, "knows 
 what she is about." 
 
 He sat down on the divan in the boudoir, and leaned his 
 head on his hands. 
 
 "Do you love me, madame?" he asked at length, raising
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 209 
 
 his head, and turning a face full of resolution upon her. 
 " Say it straight out : Yes or No ! " 
 
 His direct question dismayed the duchess more than a 
 threat of suicide could have done ; indeed, the woman of the 
 century is not to be frightened by that stale stratagem, the 
 sword has ceased to be a part of the masculine costume. But 
 in the effect of eyelids and lashes, in the contraction of the 
 gaze, in the twitching of the lips, is there not some influence 
 that communicates the terror which they express with such 
 vivid magnetic power? 
 
 "Ah, if I jvere free, if " 
 
 "Oil! is it only your husband that stands in the way?" 
 the general exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the 
 boudoir. " Dear Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power 
 than the autocrat of all the Russias. I have a compact with 
 Fate ; I can advance or retard destiny, so far as men are con- 
 cerned, at my fancy, as you alter the hands of a watch. If 
 you can direct the course of fate in our political machinery, 
 it simply means (does it not?) that you understand the ins 
 and outs of it. You shall be free before very long, and then 
 you must remember your promise." 
 
 "Armand ! " she cried. "What do you mean? Great 
 heavens ! Can you imagine that I am to be the prize of a 
 crime? Do you want to kill me? Why! you cannot have 
 any religion in you ! For my own part, I fear God. Mon- 
 sieur de Langeais may have given me reason to hate him, but 
 I wish him no manner of harm." 
 
 M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble mantel, and 
 only looked composedly at the lady. 
 
 "Dear," continued she, "respect him. He does not love 
 me, he is not kind to me, but I have duties to perform with 
 regard to him. What would I not do to avert the calamities 
 with which you threaten him? Listen," she continued after 
 a pause, " I will not say another word about separation ; you 
 shall come here as in the past, and T will still give you my fore- 
 14
 
 210 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 head to kiss. If I refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry, 
 indeed it was. But let us understand each other," she added 
 as he came closer. " You will permit me to add to the number 
 of my satellites, to receive even more visitors in the morning 
 than heretofore ; I mean to be twice as frivolous ; I mean to 
 use you to all appearance very badly ; to feign a rupture ; you 
 must come not quite so often, and then, afterward ' 
 
 While she spoke she had allowed him to put an arm about 
 her waist, Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she 
 seemed to feel the exceeding pleasure that women usually feel 
 in that close contact, an earnest of the bliss of a closer union. 
 And then, doubtless, she meant to elicit some confidence, for 
 she raised herself on tiptoe, and laid her forehead against 
 Armand's burning lips. 
 
 "And then," Montriveau finished her sentence for her, 
 " you shall not speak to me of your husband. You ought not 
 to think of him again." - 
 
 Mme. de Langeais was silent awhile. 
 
 "At least," she said, after a significant pause, '' at least you 
 will do all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be 
 naughty; tell me so, my friend? You wanted to frighten me, 
 did you not? Come now, confess it. You are too good 
 ever to think of crimes. But is it possible that you can 
 have secrets that I do not know ? How can you control 
 Fate?" 
 
 " Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you 
 have already given me, I am far too happy to know exactly 
 how to answer you. I can trust you, Antoinette ; I shall have 
 no suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of you. But if accident 
 should set you free, we shall be one " 
 
 "Accident, Artnand ? " (with that little dainty turn of the 
 head that seems to say so many things, a gesture that such 
 women as the duchess can use on light occasions, as a great 
 singer can act with her voice). " Pure accident ! " she re- 
 peated. " Mind that. If anything should happen to Monsieur
 
 THE THIRTEEN 211 
 
 de Langeais by your fault, I should never be yours," she added 
 as a parting shot. 
 
 And so they parted, mutually content. The duchess had 
 made a pact that left her free to prove to the world by words 
 and deeds that M. de Montriveau was no lover of hers. And 
 as for him, the wily duchess vowed to tire him out. He should 
 have nothing of her beyond the little concessions snatched in 
 the course of contests that she could incite or stop at her 
 pleasure. She had so pretty an art of revoking the grant of 
 yesterday, she was so much in earnest in her purpose to re- 
 main technically virtuous, that she felt that there was not the 
 slightest danger for her in preliminaries fraught with peril for 
 a woman less sure of her self-command. After all, the duche>s 
 was practically separated from her husband , a marriage long 
 since annulled was no great sacrifice to make to her love. 
 
 Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest 
 promise, glad once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of 
 conjugal fidelity, her stock of excuses for refusing herself to 
 his love. He had gained ground a little, and congratulated 
 himself. And so for a time he took unfair advantage of the 
 rights so hardily won. More a boy than he had ever been in 
 his life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes 
 first love, the flower of life. He was a child again as he 
 poured out all his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion 
 had given him, upon her hands, upon the dazzling forehead 
 that looked so pure to his eyes ; upon her fair hair ; on the 
 tufted curls where his lips were pressed. And the duchess, on 
 whom his love was poured like a flood, was vanquished by 
 the magnetic influence of her lover's warmth ; she hesitated 
 to begin the quarrel that must part them for ever. She was 
 more a woman than she thought, this slight creature, in her 
 effort to reconcile the demands of religion with the ever-new 
 sensations of vanity, the semblance of pleasure which turns a 
 Parisienne's head. Every Sunday she went to mass ; she 
 never missed a service ; then, when evening came, she was
 
 212 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 steeped in the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire. Armand 
 and Mme. de Langeais, like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward 
 of their continence in the temptations to which it gave rise. 
 Possibly, the duchess had ended by resolving love into frater- 
 nal caresses, harmless enough, as it might have seemed to the 
 rest of the world, while they borrowed extremes of degrada- 
 tion from the license of her thoughts. How else explain 
 the incomprehensible mystery of her continual fluctuations? 
 Every morning she proposed to herself to shut her door on 
 the Marquis de Montriveau ; every evening, at the appointed 
 hour, she fell under the charm of his presence. There was a 
 languid defense ; then she grew less unkind. Her words were 
 sweet and soothing. They were lovers lovers only could 
 have been thus. For him the duchess would display her most 
 sparkling wit, her most captivating wiles ; and when at last 
 she had wrought upon his senses and his soul, she might sub- 
 mit herself passively to his fierce caresses, but she had her 
 ne plus ultra of passion ; and when once it was reached, she 
 grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and made as 
 though he would pass beyond. No woman on earth can 
 brave the consequences of refusal without some motive; noth- 
 ing is more natural than to yield to love ; wherefore Mme. de 
 Langeais promptly raised a second line of fortification, a 
 stronghold less easy to carry than the first. She evoked the 
 terrors of religion. Never did father of the church, however 
 eloquent, plead the cause of God better than the duchess. 
 Never was the wrath of the Most High better proclaimed than 
 by her voice. She used no preacher's commonplaces, no 
 rhetorical amplifications. No, She had a " pulpit- tremor " 
 of her own. To Armand's most passionate entreaty, she re- 
 plied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture in which a terrible 
 plenitude of emotion found expression. She stopped his 
 mouth with an appeal for mercy. She would not hear 
 another word ; if she did, she must succumb ; and better 
 death than criminal happiness.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 313 
 
 " Is it nothing to disobey God ? " she asked him, recover- 
 ing a voice grown faint in the crises of inward struggles, 
 through which the fair actress appeared to find it hard to 
 preserve her self-control. " I would sacrifice society, I would 
 give up the whole world for you, gladly ; but it is very selfish 
 of you to ask my whole after-life of me for a moment of pleas- 
 ure. Come, now! are you not happy?" she added, holding 
 out her hand ; and certainly in her careless toilette the sight 
 of her afforded consolations to her lover, who made the most 
 of them. 
 
 Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose 
 ardent passion gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes 
 in weakness, she suffered him to snatch a swift kiss ; and im- 
 mediately, in feigned terror, she flushed red and exiled 
 Armand from the lounge so soon as it became dangerous 
 ground. 
 
 " Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are 
 paid for by penitence and remorse," she cried. 
 
 And Montriveau, now at two chairs' distance from that aris- 
 tocratic petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed 
 against Providence. The duchess grew angry at such times. 
 
 "My friend," she would say drily, "I do not understand 
 why you decline to believe in God, for it is impossible to be- 
 lieve in man. Hush, do not talk like that. You have too 
 great a nature to take up their Liberal nonsense with its pre- 
 tension to abolish God." 
 
 Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche 
 on Montriveau ; he calmed down ; he could not return to 
 love when the duchess stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting 
 him down a thousand miles away from the boudoir, discussing 
 theories of absolute monarchy, which she defended to admi- 
 ration. Few women venture to be democrats; the attitude of 
 democratic champion is scarcely compatible with tyrannous 
 feminine sway. But often, on the other hand, the general 
 shook out his mane, dropped politics with a leonine growling
 
 214 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 and lashing of the flanks, and sprang upon his prey ; he was 
 no longer capable of carrying a heart and brain at such vari- 
 ance for very far; he came back, terrible with love, to his 
 mistress. And she, if she felt the prick of fancy stimulated 
 to a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave her bou- 
 doir; she came out of the atmosphere surcharged with desires 
 that she drew in with her breath, sat down to the piano, and 
 sang the most exquisite songs of modern music, and so baffled 
 the physical attraction which at times showed her no mercy, 
 though she was strong enough to fight it down. 
 
 At such times she was something sublime in Armand's eyes; 
 she was not acting, she was genuine ; the unhappy lover was 
 convinced that she loved him. Her egoistic resistance de- 
 luded him into a belief that she was a pure and sainted 
 woman; he resigned himself; he talked of Platonic love, did 
 this artillery officer ! 
 
 When Mme. de Langeais had played with religion suffici- 
 ently to suit her own purposes, she played with it again for 
 Armand's benefit. She wanted to bring him back to a Chris- 
 tian frame of mind; she brought out her edition of "The 
 Genius of Christianity," adapted for the use of military men. 
 Montriveau chafed ; his yoke was heavy. Oh ! at that, pos- 
 sessed by the spirit of contradiction, she dinned religion into 
 his ears, to see whether God might not rid her of this suitor, 
 for the man's persistence was beginning to frighten her. And 
 in any case she was glad to prolong any quarrel, if it bade 
 fair to keep the dispute on moral grounds for an indefinite 
 period; the material struggle which followed it was more 
 dangerous. 
 
 But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the mar- 
 riage law might be said to be the civil epoch of this senti- 
 mental warfare, the ensuing phase which might be taken to 
 constitute the religious epoch had also its crisis and conse- 
 quent decline of severity.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 215 
 
 Armand, Happening to come in very early one evening, 
 found M. 1'Abbe Gondrand, the duchess' spiritual director, 
 established in an armchair by the fireside, looking as a spirit- 
 ual director might be expected to look while digesting his 
 dinner and the charming sins of his penitent. In the eccle- 
 siastic's bearing there was a stateliness befitting a dignitary of 
 the church ; and the episcopal violet hue already appeared in 
 his dress. At sight of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, 
 smooth forehead, and ascetic's mouth, Montriveau's counte- 
 nance grew uncommonly dark ; he said not a word under the 
 malicious scrutiny of the other's gaze, and greeted neither 
 the lady nor the priest. The lover apart, Montriveau was not 
 wanting in tact; so a few glances exchanged with the bishop- 
 designate told him that here was the real forger of the duchess' 
 armory of scruples. 
 
 That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a 
 man of Montriveau's temper, and by underhand ways ! The 
 thought burst in a furious tide over his face, clenched his 
 fists, and set him chafing and pacing to and fro; but when he 
 came back to his place intending to make a scene, a single 
 look from the duchess was enough. He was quiet. 
 
 Any other woman would have been put out by her lover's 
 gloomy silence ; it was quite otherwise with Mme. de Langeais. 
 She continued her conversation with M. de Gondrand on the 
 necessity of reestablishing the church in its ancient splendor. 
 And she talked brilliantly. The church, she maintained, 
 ought to be a temporal as well as a spiritual power, stating her 
 case better than the abbe had done, and regretting that the 
 Chamber of Peers, unlike the English House of Lords, had 
 no bench of bishops. Nevertheless, the abbe rose, yielded 
 his place to the general, and took his leave, knowing that in 
 Lent he could play a return game. As for the duchess, Mont- 
 riveau's behavior had excited her curiosity to such a pitch that 
 she scarcely rose to return her director's low bow. 
 
 "What is the matter with you, my friend ?' ?
 
 216 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 "Why, I cannot stomach that abbe of yours." 
 
 "Why did you not take a book?" she asked, careless 
 whether the abbe, then closing the door, heard her or not. 
 
 The general paused, for the gesture which accompanied 
 the duchess' speech further increased the exceeding insolence 
 of her words. 
 
 " My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love preced- 
 ence of the church ; but, for pity's sake, allow me to ask one 
 question " 
 
 " Oh ! you are questioning me ! I am quite willing. You 
 are my friend, are you not ? I certainly can open the bottom 
 of my heart to you; you will see only one image there." 
 
 " Do you talk about our love to that man? " 
 
 " He is my confessor." 
 
 " Does he know that I love you? " 
 
 "Monsieur de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to 
 penetrate the secrets of the confessional ? " 
 
 "Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love 
 for you? " 
 
 '* That man, monsieur ; say God ! " 
 
 "God again! I ought to be alone in your heart. But 
 leave God alone where He is, for the love of God and me. 
 Madame, you shall not go to confession again, or " 
 
 "Or?" she repeated sweetly. 
 
 " Or I will never come back here." 
 
 "Then go, Armand. Farewell, farewell for ever." 
 
 She arose and went to her boudior without so much as a 
 glance at Armand, as he stood with his hand on the back of 
 a chair. How long he stood there motionless he himself 
 never knew. The soul within has the mysterious power of 
 expanding as of contracting space. 
 
 He opened the door of the boudoir. It was dark within. 
 A faint voice was raised to say sharply 
 
 " I did not ring. What made you come in without orders ? 
 Go away, Suzette."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 317 
 
 "Then you suffer," exclaimed Montriveau. 
 
 " Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute 
 at any rate," she said, ringing the bell. 
 
 " Madame la Duchesse rang for lights," said he to the foot- 
 man, coming in with the candles. When the lovers were 
 alone together, Mme. de Langeais still lay on her couch , she 
 was just as silent and motionless as if Montriveau had not 
 been there. 
 
 " Dear, I was wrong," he began, a note of pain and a sub- 
 lime kindness in his voice. " Indeed, I would not have you 
 without religion " 
 
 " It is fortunate that you can recognize the necessity of a 
 conscience," she said in a hard voice, without looking at him. 
 " I thank you in God's name." 
 
 The general was broken down by her harshness ; this woman 
 seemed as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him. 
 He made one despairing stride toward the door. He would 
 leave her forever without another word. He was wretched ; 
 and the duchess was laughing within herself over mental an- 
 guish far more cruel than the old judicial torture. But as for 
 going away, it was not in his power to do it. In any sort of 
 crisis, a woman is, as it were, bursting with a certain quantity 
 of things to say ; so long as she has not delivered herself of 
 them, she experiences the sensation which we are apt to feel 
 at the sight of something incomplete. Mme. de Langeais 
 had not said all that was in her mind. She took up her par- 
 able and said 
 
 "We nave not the same convictions, general, I am pained 
 to think. It would be dreadful if a woman could not believe 
 in a religion which permits us to love beyortd the grave. I set 
 Christian sentiments aside ; you cannot understand them. 
 Let me simply speak to you of expediency. Would you for- 
 bid a woman at Court the table of the Lord, for which con- 
 fession is necessary, when it is customary to take the sacrament 
 at Easter? People must certainly do something for their
 
 218 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 party. The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will 
 never destroy the religious instinct. Religion will always be 
 a political necessity. Would you undertake to govern a 
 nation of logic-choppers? Napoleon was afraid to try; he 
 persecuted ideologists. If you want to keep people from 
 reasoning, you must give them something to feel. So let us 
 accept the Roman Catholic Church with all its consequences. 
 And if we would have France go to mass, ought we not to 
 begin by going ourselves? Religion, you see, Armand, is a 
 bond uniting all the conservative principles which enable 
 the rich to live in tranquillity. Religion and the rights of 
 property are intimately connected. It is certainly a finer 
 thing to lead a nation by ideas of morality than by fear of the 
 scaffold, as in the time of the Terror the one method by 
 which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience. The 
 priest and the King that means you, and me, and the prin- 
 cess my neighbor ; and, in a word, the interests of all honest 
 people personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to 
 belong to your party, you that might be its Sulla if you had 
 the slightest ambition that way. I know nothing about poli- 
 tics myself ; I argue from my own feelings; but still I know 
 enough to guess that society would be overturned if people 
 
 were always calling its foundations in question " 
 
 " If that is how your Court and your Government think, I 
 am sorry for you," broke in Montriveau. " The Restoration, 
 madame, ought to say, like Catherine dei Medici, when she 
 heard that the battle of Dreux was lost : ' Very well ; now we 
 will go to their meeting-houses.' Now 1815 was your battle 
 of Dreux. Like the royal power of those days, you won in 
 fact, while you lost in right. Political Protestantism has 
 gained an ascendency over people's minds. If you have no 
 mind to issue your Edict of Nantes; or if, when it is issued, 
 you publish a Revocation ; if you should one day be accused 
 and convicted of repudiating the Charter, which is simply a 
 pledge given to maintain the interests established under the
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 216 
 
 Republic, then the Revolution will rise again, terrible in her 
 strength, and strike but a single blow. It will not be the 
 Revolution that will go into exile ; she is the very soil of 
 France. Men die, but people's interests do not die Eh, 
 great heavens ! what are France and the crown and rightful 
 sovereigns, and the whole world beside, to us? Idle words 
 compared with my happiness. Let them reign or be hurled 
 from the throne, little do I care. Where am I now ? " 
 
 " In the Duchesse de Langeais' boudoir, my friend." 
 
 " No, no. No more of the duchess, no more of Langeais ; 
 I am with my dear Antoinette." 
 
 " Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are," she 
 said, laughing and pushing him back, gently however. 
 
 "So you have never loved me," he retorted, and anger 
 flashed in lightning from his eyes. 
 
 " No, dear ; " but the " No " was equivalent to " Yes." 
 
 " I am a great ass," he said, kissing her hands. The terri- 
 ble queen was a woman once more. " Antoinette," he went 
 on, laying his head on her feet, " you are too chastely tender 
 to speak of our happiness to any one in this world." 
 
 "Oh ! " she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful 
 spring, "you are a great simpleton." And without another 
 word she fled into the drawing-room. 
 
 "What is it now?" wondered the general, little knowing 
 that the touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric 
 thrill through her from foot to head. 
 
 In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to 
 hear divinely sweet chords. The duchess was at the piano. 
 If the man of science or the poet can at once enjoy and com- 
 prehend, bringing his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment 
 without loss of delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and 
 phraseology of music are but cunning instruments for the com- 
 poser, like the wood and copper wire under the hands of the 
 executant. For the poet and the man of science there is a 
 musir existing apart, underlying the double expression of this
 
 220 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 language of the spirit and senses. Andiamo mio ben can draw- 
 tears of joy or pitying laughter at the will of the singer ; and 
 not infrequently one here and there in the world, some girl 
 unable to live and bear the heavy burden of an unguessed 
 pain, some man whose soul vibrates with the throb of passion, 
 may take up a musical theme, and lo ! heaven is opened for 
 them, or they find a language for themselves in some sublime 
 melody, some song lost to the world. 
 
 The general was listening now to such a song ; a mysterious 
 music unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some 
 mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest. 
 
 "Great heavens! what are you playing there ?" he asked 
 in an unsteady voice. 
 
 "The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, 'Fleuve du 
 Tage.'" 
 
 " I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he 
 returned. 
 
 "Ah ! " she said, and for the first time she looked at him 
 as a woman looks at the man she loves, "nor do you know, 
 my friend, that I love you, and that you cause me horrible 
 suffering ; and that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain 
 without putting it too plainly into words. If I did not I 
 should yield But you see nothing." 
 
 "And you will not make me happy ! " 
 
 " Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day." 
 
 The general turned abruptly from her and went. But out 
 in the street he brushed away the tears that he would not let 
 fall. 
 
 The religious phase lasted for three months. At the end 
 of that time the duchess grew weary of vain repetitions ; the 
 church, bound hand and foot, was delivered up to her lover. 
 Possibly she may have feared that by sheer dint of talking of 
 eternity she might perpetuate his love in this world and the 
 next. For her own sake, it must be believed that no man had 
 touched her heart, or her conduct would be inexcusable. She
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 221 
 
 was young; the time when men and women feel that they 
 cannot afford to lose time or to quibble over their joys was 
 still far off. She, no doubt, was on the verge not of first 
 love, but of her first experience of the bliss of love. And 
 from inexperience, for want of the painful lessons which 
 would have taught her to value the treasure poured out at 
 her feet, she was playing with it. Knowing nothing of the 
 glory and rapture of the light, she was fain to stay in the 
 shadow. 
 
 Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situa- 
 tion ; he put his hope in the first word spoken by nature. 
 Every evening, as he came away from Mme. de Langeais', he 
 told himself that no woman would accept the tenderest, most 
 delicate proofs of a man's love during seven months, nor yield 
 passively to the slighter demands of passion, only to cheat 
 love at the last. He was waiting patiently for the sun to gain 
 power, not doubting but that he should receive the earliest 
 fruits. The married woman's hesitations and the religious 
 scruples he could quite well understand. He even rejoiced 
 over those battles. He mistook the duchess' heartless coquetry 
 for modesty ; and he would not have had her otherwise. So 
 he had loved to see her devising obstacles; was he not gradu- 
 ally triumphing over them? Did not every victory won swell 
 the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long denied, and at last 
 conceded with every sign of love? Still, he had had such 
 leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small successive con- 
 quest on which a lover feeds his love, that these had come to 
 be matters of use and wont. So far as obstacles went, there 
 were none now save his own awe of her ; nothing else left be- 
 tween him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed 
 him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to de- 
 mand more, to demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover 
 who cannot dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he 
 hesitated for a long time. He passed through the experience 
 of terrible reactions within himself. A set purpose was anni-
 
 222 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 hilated by a word, and definite resolves died within him on 
 the threshold. He despised himself for his weakness, and still 
 his desire remained unuttered. 
 
 Nevertheless, one 'evening, after sitting in gloomy melan- 
 choly, he brought out a fierce demand for his illegally legiti- 
 mate rights. The duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's 
 request to guess his desire. When was a man's desire a secret ? 
 And have not women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning 
 of certain changes of countenance? 
 
 " What ! you wish to be my friend no longer?" she broke 
 in at the first words, and a divine red surging like new blood 
 under the transparent skin lent brightness to her eyes. "As 
 a reward for my generosity, you would dishonor me ? Just 
 reflect a little. I myself have thought much over this ; and I 
 think always for us both. There is such a thing as a woman's 
 loyalty , and we can no more fail in it than you can fail in 
 honor. I cannot bind myself. If I am yours, how, in any 
 sense, can I be Monsieur de Langeais' wife ? Can you require 
 the sacrifice of my position, my rank, my whole life, in return 
 for a doubtful love that could not wait patiently for seven 
 months ? What ! already you would rob me of my right to 
 dispose of myself? No, no; you must not talk like this 
 again. No, not another word. I will not, I cannot listen to 
 you." 
 
 Mme. de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push 
 back the tufted curls from her hot forehead ; she seemed very 
 much excited. 
 
 " You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely 
 planned out. You say ' For a certain length of time she 
 will talk to me of her husband, then of God, and then of 
 the inevitable consequences. But I will use and abuse the 
 ascendency I shall gain over her ; I will make myself indis- 
 pensable ; all the bonds of habit, all the misconstructions 
 of outsiders, will make for me ; and at length, when our 
 liaison is taken for granted by all the world, I shall be this
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 223 
 
 woman's master.' Now, be frank, these are your thoughts ! 
 Oh ! you calculate, and you say that you love. Shame on 
 you ! You are enamored ? Ah ! that I well believe ! You 
 wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all ! 
 Very well then, No ! The Duchesse de Langeais will not 
 descend so far. Simple bourgeoises may be the victims of 
 your treachery I, never ! Nothing gives me assurance of 
 your love. You speak of my beauty ; I may lose every trace 
 of it in six months, like the dear princess, my neighbor. You 
 are captivated by my wit, my grace. Great heavens ! you 
 would soon grow used to them and to the pleasures of posses- 
 sion. Have not the little concessions that I was weak enough 
 to make come to be a matter of course in the last few months? 
 Some day, when ruin comes, you will give me no reason for 
 the change in you beyond a curt : ' I have ceased to care for 
 you.' Then, rank and fortune and honor and all that was 
 the Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one disap- 
 pointed hope. I shall have children to bear witness to my 
 shame, and With an involuntary gesture she inter- 
 
 rupted herself, and continued : " But I am too good-natured 
 to explain all this to you when you know it better than I. 
 Come ! let us stay as we are. I am only too fortunate in that 
 I can still break these bonds which you think so strong. Is 
 there anything so very heroic in coming to the Hotel de 
 Langeais to spend an evening with a woman whose prattle 
 amuses you? a woman whom you take for a plaything? 
 Why, half-a-dozen young coxcombs come here just as regularly 
 every afternoon between three and five. They, too, are very 
 generous, I am to suppose? I make fun of them ; they stand 
 my petulance and insolence pretty quietly, and make me laugh ; 
 but as for you, I give all the treasures of my soul to you, and 
 you wish to ruin me you try my patience in endless ways. 
 Hush, that will do, that will do," she continued, seeing that 
 he was about to speak, '' you have no heart, no soul, no deli- 
 cacy. I know what you want to tell me. Very well, then
 
 224 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 yes. I would rather you should take me for a cold, insensible 
 woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart even, 
 than be taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be 
 condemned to your so-called pleasures, of which you would 
 most certainly tire, and to everlasting punishment for it after- 
 ward. Your selfish love is not worth so many sacrifices." 
 
 The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse 
 which the duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a 
 bird-organ. Nor, truly, was there anything to prevent her 
 from talking on for some time to come, for poor Armand's 
 only reply to the torrent of flute notes was a silence filled with 
 cruelly painful thoughts. He was just beginning to see that 
 this woman was playing with him ; he divined instinctively 
 that a devoted love, a responsive love, does not reason and 
 count the consequences in this way. Then, as he heard her 
 reproach him with detestable motives, he felt something like 
 shame as he remembered that unconsciously he had made 
 those very calculations. With angelic honesty of purpose, he 
 looked within, and self-examination found nothing but selfish- 
 ness in all his thoughts and motives, in the answers which he 
 framed and could not utter. He was self-convicted. In his 
 despair he longed to fling himself from the window. The 
 egoism of it was intolerable. 
 
 What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe 
 in love ? Let me prove how much I love you. The / is 
 always there. 
 
 The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow 
 the example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyr- 
 rhonists and denied movement. Montriveau was not equal to 
 this feat. With all his audacity, he lacked that precise kind 
 which never deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine 
 algebra. If so many women, and even the best of women, 
 fall a prey to a kind of expert to whom the vulgar give a 
 grosser name, it is perhaps because the said experts are great 
 , and love, in spite of its delicious poetry of sentiment,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 225 
 
 requires a little more geometry than the generality of people 
 are wont to think. 
 
 Now the duchess and Montrivcau were alike in this they 
 were both equally unversed in love lore. The lady's knowl- 
 edge of theory was but scanty ; in practice she knew nothing 
 whatever ; she felt nothing, and reflected over everything. 
 Montriveau had had but little experience, was absolutely 
 ignorant of theory, and felt too much to reflect at all. Both 
 therefore were enduring the consequences of the singular 
 situation. At that supreme moment the myriad thoughts in 
 his mind might have been reduced to the formula " Submit 
 to be mine ' words which seem horribly selfish to a 
 woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no ideas. 
 Something nevertheless he must say. And what was more, 
 though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though 
 the short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were 
 very keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he 
 should lose all by an outbreak of anger. 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should 
 have invented no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her 
 heart save by adding the gift of her person. The high value 
 which you yourself put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot 
 attach less importance to it. If you have given me your in- 
 most self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the 
 rest matter? And beside, if my happiness means so painful a 
 sacrifice, let us say no more about it. But you must pardon a 
 man of spirit if he feels humiliated at being taken for a 
 spaniel." 
 
 The tone in which the last remark was uttered might per- 
 haps have frightened another woman ; but when the wearer of a 
 petticoat has allowed herself to be addressed as a divinity, 
 and thereby set herself above all other mortals, no power on 
 earth can be so haughty. 
 
 " Monsieur le Marquis, I am in despair that God should 
 not have invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the 
 15
 
 226 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 gift of his heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously 
 vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves when we give our- 
 selves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by 
 accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? 
 The very love that I might show for you at every moment, the 
 better to keep your love, might serve you as a reason for de- 
 serting me. I have no wish to be a second edition of Madame 
 de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that keeps you 
 beside us ? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of 
 an unfailing passion in some of you ; other men ask for an 
 untiring devotion, to be idolized at every moment ; some for 
 gentleness, others for tyranny. No woman in this world as 
 yet has really read the riddle of man's heart." 
 
 There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a 
 different tone. 
 
 " After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from 
 trembling at the question: 'Will this love last always?' 
 Hard though my words may be, the dread of losing you puts 
 them into my mouth. Oh, me ! it is not I who speaks, dear, 
 it is reason ; and how should any one so mad as I be reason- 
 able? In truth, I arn nothing of the sort." 
 
 The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the 
 end into the most musical accents in which a woman could 
 find utterance for ingenuous love. To listen to her words 
 was to pass in a moment from martyrdom to heaven. Mon- 
 triveau grew pale ; and for the first time in his life he fell on 
 his knees before a woman. He kissed the duchess' skirt hem, 
 her knees, her feet ; but for the credit of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain it is necessary to respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, 
 where many are fain to take the utmost that Love can give 
 without giving proof of love in return. 
 
 The duchess thought herself generous when she suffered her- 
 self to be adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of 
 joy over her complete surrender of the position. 
 
 " Dear Antoinette," he cried. Yes, you are right ; I will
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 227 
 
 not have you doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this 
 moment lest the angel of my life should leave me; I wish I 
 could invent some tie that might bind us to each other irre- 
 vocably." 
 
 "Ah!" she said, under her breath, "so I was right, you 
 see." 
 
 " Let me say all that I have to say ; I will scatter all your 
 fears with a word. Listen ! if I deserted you, I should de- 
 serve to die a thousand deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will 
 give you the right to kill me if I am false. I myself will 
 write a letter explaining certain reasons for taking my own 
 life ; I will make my final arrangements, in short. You shall 
 have the letter in your keeping ; in the eye of the law it will 
 be a sufficient explanation of my death. You can avenge 
 yourself, and fear nothing from God or men " 
 
 "What good would the letter be to me? What would life 
 be if I had lost your love? If I wished to kill you, should I 
 not be ready to follow? No; thank you for the thought, but 
 I do not want the letter. Should I not begin to dread that 
 you were faithful to me through fear? And if a man knows 
 that he must risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not 
 seem more tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the 
 one hard thing to do." 
 
 " Then what is it that you wish? " 
 
 "Your obedience and my liberty." 
 
 "Ah, God ! " cried he, " I am a child." 
 
 "A wayward, much-spoilt child," she said, stroking the 
 thick hair, for his head still lay on her knee. "Ah ! and 
 loved far more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedi- 
 ent. Why not stay as we are? Why not sacrifice to me the 
 desires that hurt me? Why not take what I can give, when 
 it is all that I can honestly grant ? Are you not happy, 
 Armand?" 
 
 " Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. An- 
 toinette, doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not?"
 
 228 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are 
 under the influence of that hot fever ; he grew eloquent, in- 
 sinuating. And the duchess tasted the pleasures which she 
 reconciled with her conscience by some private, Jesuitical 
 ukase of her own ; Armand's love gave her a thrill of cerebral 
 excitement which custom made as necessary to her as society, 
 or the opera. To feel that she was adored by this man, who 
 rose above other men, whose character frightened her ; to 
 treat him like a child ; to play with him as Poppaea played 
 with Nero many women, like the wives of King Henry 
 VIII., have paid for such a perilous delight with all the blood 
 in their veins. Grim -presentiment ! Even as she surrendered 
 the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close 
 pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness 
 she could not mistake ; even as she herself played with his 
 dark, thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen, 
 the duchess would say to herself 
 
 "This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out 
 that I am playing with him." 
 
 Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in 
 the morning. From that moment this woman, whom he 
 loved, was neither a duchess nor a Navarreins ; Antoinette, 
 in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear to be a woman. 
 On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever played 
 by a Parisienne to what the world calls "a slip ; " in spite of 
 all her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the 
 general saw all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse 
 for believing that so many storms of caprice had been but 
 clouds covering a heavenly soul ; that these must be lifted one 
 by one like the veils that hid her divine loveliness. The 
 duchess became, for him, the most simple and girlish mistress ; 
 she was the one woman in the world for him ; and he went 
 away quite happy in that at last he had brought her to give 
 him such pledges of love that it seemed to him impossible
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 229 
 
 but that he should be but her husband henceforth in secret, 
 her choice sanctioned by heaven. 
 
 Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his 
 mind with the impartiality of a man who is conscious of all 
 the responsibilities that love lays on him while he tastes the 
 sweetness of its joys. He went along the quays to see the 
 widest possible space of sky ; his heart had grown in him ; 
 he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of 
 earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an 
 ampler breath. In the course of his self-examination, as he 
 walked, he vowed to love this woman so devoutly that every 
 day of her life she should find absolution for her sins against 
 society in unfailing happiness. Sweet stirrings of life when 
 life is at the full ! The man that is strong enough to steep 
 his soul in the color of one emotion feels infinite joy as 
 glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows 
 no diminution of passion to the end ; even so it is permitted 
 to certain mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. 
 Love would be naught without the belief that it would last 
 for ever; love grows great through constancy. It was thus 
 that, wholly absorbed by his happiness, Montriveau under- 
 stood passion. 
 
 " We belong to each other for ever ! " 
 
 The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his 
 life. He did not ask whether the duchess might not change, 
 whether her love might not last. No, for he had faith. With- 
 out that virtue there is no future for Christianity, and perhaps 
 it is even more necessary to society. A conception of life as 
 feeling occurred to him for the first time ; hitherto he had 
 lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human ener- 
 gies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the sol- 
 dier. 
 
 Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of 
 the Faubourg Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment 
 at a house not far from the Hotel de Langeais ; and the busi-
 
 230 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 ness over, he went thitner as if to his own home. The gen- 
 eral's companion chanced to be a man for whom he appeared 
 to feel a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other 
 houses. This was the Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose repu- 
 tation had grown so great in Paris boudoirs. He was witty, 
 clever, and what was more courageous ; he set the fashion to 
 all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his 
 success and experience were equally matters of envy ; and 
 neither fortune nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifica- 
 tions which add such lustre in Paris to a reputation as a leader 
 of fashion.* 
 
 " Where are you going ? " asked M. de Ronquerolles. 
 
 ' To Madame de Langeais'." 
 
 " Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you. 
 You are wasting your affections on her when they might be 
 much better employed elsewhere. I could have told you of 
 half-a-score of women in the financial world, any on? of them 
 a thousand times better worth your while than that titled 
 courtesan, who does with her brains what less artificial women 
 do with " 
 
 "What is this, my dear fellow?" Armand broke in. 
 "The duchess is an angel of innocence." 
 
 Ronquerolles began to laugh. 
 
 " Things being thus, dear boy," said he, '' it is my duty to 
 enlighten you. Just a word ; there is no harm in it between 
 ourselves. Has the duchess surrendered ? If so, I have noth- 
 ing more to say. Come, give me your confidence. There is 
 no occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature 
 on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation 
 will come to nothing." 
 
 Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his 
 position, enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights 
 so hardly won. Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter 
 
 * Montriveau and Ronquerolles belonged to " The Thirteen." See 
 Preface.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 231 
 
 so heartless that it would have cost any other man his life. 
 But from their manner of speaking and looking at each other 
 during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner almost as 
 remote from intrusion ai the desert itself, it was easy to imagine 
 the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that 
 no power on earth could estrange them. 
 
 " My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the 
 duchess was a puzzle to you ? I would have given you a little 
 advice which might have brought your flirtation properly 
 through. You must know, to begin with, that the women of 
 our faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves 
 in love ; but they have a mind to possess and not to be pos- 
 sessed. They have made a sort of compromise with human 
 nature. The code of their parish gives them a pretty wide 
 latitude short of the last transgression. The sweets enjoyed 
 by this fair duchess of yours are so many venial sins to be 
 washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you had the 
 impertinence to ask in earnest for the mortal sin to which natu- 
 rally you are sure to attach the highest importance, you would 
 see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and 
 the house would be incontinently shut upon you. The tender 
 Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory ; you 
 would be less than a cipher for her. She would wipe away 
 your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she would per- 
 form her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks 
 as she washes off rouge. We know women of that sort the 
 thoroughbred Parisienne. Have you ever noticed a grisette 
 tripping along the street ? Her face is pretty as a picture. A 
 neat cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair, a guileful smile, and the rest 
 of her almost neglected. Is not this true to the life? Well, 
 that is the Pamienne. She knows that her face is all that will 
 be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity to her 
 head. The duchess is the same; the head is everything with her. 
 She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her 
 brain, she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice.
 
 232 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 We call that kind of poor creature a Lai's of the intellect. You 
 have been taken in like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have 
 proof of it to-night, this morning, this instant. Go up to 
 her, try the demand as an experiment, insist peremptorily if it 
 is refused. You might set about it like the late Marechal de 
 Richelieu, and yet get nothing for your pains." 
 
 Armand was dumb with amazement. 
 
 " Has your desire reached the point of infatuation ?" 
 
 "I want her at any cost ! " Montriveau cried out despair- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is 
 herself. Try to humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do #0/try 
 to move her heart, nor her soul, but the woman's nerves and 
 temperament, for she is both nervous and lymphatic. If you 
 can once awaken desire in her, you are safe. But you must 
 drop these romantic boyish notions of yours. If when once 
 you have her in your eagle's talons you yield a point or draw 
 back, if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she 
 can regain her ascendency over you, she will slip out of your 
 clutches like a fish, and you will never catch her again. 
 Be inflexible as law. Show no more charity than the heads- 
 man. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep 
 on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses 
 are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand ; there is a sort 
 of feminine nature that is only softened by repeated blows ; 
 and as suffering develops a heart in women of that sort, 
 so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod. Do 
 you persevere. Ah ! when pain has thoroughly relaxed 
 those nerves and softened the fibres that you take to be so 
 pliant and yielding; when a shriveled heart has learned to 
 expand and contract and to beat under this discipline; when 
 the brain has capitulated then, perhaps, passion may enter 
 among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears 
 and affectations and languors and melting phrases ; then you 
 shall see a most magnificent conflagration (always supposing
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 283 
 
 that the chimney takes fire). The steel feminine system will 
 glow red-hot like iron in the forge ; that kind of heat lasts 
 longer than any other, and the glow of it may possibly turn 
 to love. 
 
 " Still," he continued, " I have my doubts. And, after all, 
 is it worth while to take so much trouble with the duchess? 
 Between ourselves, a man of my stamp ought first to take her 
 in hand and break her in ; I would make a charming woman 
 of her ; she is a thoroughbred ; whereas, you two left to your- 
 selves will never get beyond the A B C of love. But you are 
 in love with her, and just now you might not perhaps share 
 my views on this subject. 
 
 ''A pleasant time to you, my children," added Ronquerolles, 
 after a pause. Then with a laugh : "I have decided myself 
 for facile beauties ; they are tender, at any rate, the natural 
 woman appears in their love without any of your social season- 
 ings. A woman that haggles over herself, my poor boy, and 
 only means to inspire love ! Well, have her like an extra 
 horse for show. The match between the lounge and con- 
 fessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious 
 scruples and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of 
 chess. And if a man knows the game, let him be never so 
 little of a rake, he wins in three moves. Now, if I undertook 
 a woman of that sort, I should start with the deliberate pur- 
 pose of " His voice sank to a whisper over the last words 
 
 in Armand's ear, and he went before there was time for any 
 reply. 
 
 As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the court- 
 yard of the Hdtel de Langeais, went unannounced up the 
 stairs straight to the duchess' bedroom. 
 
 "This is an unheard-of thing," she said, hastily wrapping 
 her dressing-gown about her. "Armand ! this is abominable 
 of you ! Come, leave the room, I beg. Just go out of the 
 room, and go at once. Wait for me in the drawing-room. 
 Come, now ! "
 
 234 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatso- 
 ever ? ' ' 
 
 " But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a 
 plighted lover or a wedded husband to break in like this upon 
 his wife." 
 
 He came up to the duchess, took her in his arms, and held 
 her tightly to him. 
 
 " Forgive, dear Antoinette ; but a host of horrid doubts are 
 fermenting in my heart." 
 
 "Doubts ? Fie ! Oh, fie on you ! " 
 
 " Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you 
 make this quarrel? Would you not be glad to see me? 
 Would you not have felt a something stir in your heart? For 
 I, that am not a woman, feel a thrill in my inmost self at the 
 mere sound of your voice. Often in a ballroom a longing 
 has come upon me to spring to your side and put my arms 
 about your neck." 
 
 ' Oh ! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready 
 to spring to your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted 
 all my life long, I suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child 
 compared with you ! " 
 
 "Ah ! " he cried despairingly, " you have no love for me, 
 you " 
 
 "Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lov- 
 able." 
 
 " Then I have still to find favor in your sight? " 
 
 " Oh, I should think so. Come," added she, with a little 
 imperious air, " go out of the room, leave me. I am not like 
 you ; I wish always to find favor in your eyes." 
 
 Never woman better understood the art of putting charm 
 into insolence, and does not the charm double the effect? is 
 it not enough to infuriate the coolest of men ? There was a 
 sort of untrammeled freedom about Mme. de Langeais; a 
 something in her eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is never 
 seen in a woman who loves when she stands face to face with
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 285 
 
 him at the mere sight of whom her heart must needs begin to 
 beat. The Marquis de Ronquerolles' counsels had cured 
 Armand of sheepishness ; and further, there came to his aid 
 that rapid power of intuition which passion will develop at 
 moments in the least wise among mortals, while a great man 
 at such a time possesses it to the full. He guessed the terrible 
 truth revealed by the duchess' nonchalance, and his heart 
 swelled with the storm like a lake rising in flood. 
 
 "If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoi- 
 nette," he cried ; " you shall " 
 
 " In the first place," said she composedly, thrusting him 
 back as he came nearer "in the first place, you are not to 
 compromise me. My woman might overhear you. Respect 
 me, I beg of you. Your familiarity is all very well in my 
 boudoir in an evening ; here it is quite different. Beside, 
 what may your you shall ' mean ? ' You shall.' No one as 
 yet has ever used that word to me. It is quite ridiculous, it 
 seems to me, absolutely ridiculous." 
 
 "Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?" 
 
 " Oh ! do you call a woman's right to dispose of herself a 
 ' point? ' A capital point, indeed ; you will permit me to be 
 entirely my own mistress on that 'point.' ' 
 
 "And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should 
 absolutely require it ? " 
 
 " Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest pos- 
 sible mistake when I made you a promise of any kind ; and I 
 should beg you to leave me in peace." 
 
 The general's face grew white ; he was about to spring to 
 her side, when Mme. de Langeais rang the bell, the maid ap- 
 peared, and, smiling with a mocking grace, the duchess added : 
 "Be so good as to return when I am visible." 
 
 Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and 
 keen as a steel blade; she was crushing in her scorn. In one 
 moment she had snapped the bonds which held firm only for 
 her lover. She had read Armand's intention in his face, and
 
 236 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 held that the moment had come for teaching the Imperial 
 soldier his lesson. He was to be made to feel that though 
 duchesses may lend themselves to love, they do not give them- 
 selves, and that the conquest of one of them would prove a 
 harder matter than the conquest of Europe. 
 
 " Madame," returned Armand, " I have not time to wait. 
 I am a spoilt child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously 
 resolve to have that of which we have been speaking, I shall 
 have it." 
 
 "You will have it?" queried she, and there was a trace of 
 surprise in her loftiness. 
 
 "I shall have it." 
 
 "Oh I you will do me a great pleasure by 'resolving' to 
 have it. For curiosity's sake, I should be delighted to know 
 how you would set about it " 
 
 "I am delighted to put a new interest into your life," in- 
 terrupted Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed 
 the duchess. "Will you permit me to take you to the ball 
 to-night? " 
 
 "A thousand thanks. Monsieur de Marsay has been be- 
 forehand with you. I gave him my promise." 
 
 Montriveau bowed gravely and went. 
 
 "So Ronquerolles was right," thought he, "and now for a 
 game of chess." 
 
 Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. 
 No man is strong enough to bear such sudden alternations 
 from the height of happiness to the depths of wretchedness. 
 So he had caught a glimpse of happy life the better to feel the 
 emptiness of his previous existence? There was a terrible 
 storm within him ; but he had learned to endure, and bore 
 the shock of tumultuous thoughts as a granite cliff stands out 
 against the surge of an angry sea. 
 
 " I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert 
 me. She does not know how vile and contemptible she is. 
 Nobody has ventured to bring her face to face with herself.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 237 
 
 She has played with many a man, no doubt ; I will avenge 
 them all." 
 
 For the first time, it may be, in a man's heart, revenge and 
 love were blended so equally that Montriveau himself could 
 not know whether love or revenge would carry all before it. 
 That very evening he went to the ball at which he was sure of 
 seeing the Durhesse de Langeais, and almost despaired of 
 reaching her heart. He inclined to think that there was some- 
 thing diabolical about this woman, who was gracious to him 
 and radiant with charming smiles; probably because she had 
 no wisli to allow the world to think that she had compromised 
 herself with M. de Montriveau. Coolness on both sides is a 
 sign of love ; but so long as the duchess was the same as ever, 
 while the marquis looked sullen and morose, was it not plain 
 that she had conceded nothing? Onlookers know the rejected 
 lover by various signs and tokens ; they never mistake the 
 genuine symptoms for u coolness such as some women com- 
 mand their adorers to feign, in the hope of concealing their 
 love. Every one laughed at Montriveau ; and he, having 
 omitted to consult his cornae* was abstracted and ill at ease. 
 M. do Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him com- 
 promise the duchess by responding to her show of friendliness 
 by passionate demonstrations ; but as it was, Armand de 
 Montriveau came away from the ball, loathing human nature, 
 and even then scarcely ready to believe in such complete 
 depravity. 
 
 "If there is no executioner for such crimes," he said, as 
 he looked up at the lighted windows of the ballroom where 
 the most enchanting women in Paris were dancing, laughing, 
 and chatting, '! will take you by the nape of the neck, 
 Madame hi Duchesse, and make you feel something that bites 
 more deeply than the knife in the Place de la Greve. Steel 
 against steel ; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper 
 mark." 
 
 * T-it: Elephant driver oracle.
 
 238 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 For a week or so Mme. de Langeais hoped to see the Mar- 
 quis de Montriveau again ; but he contented himself with 
 sending his card every morning to the Hotel de Langeais. 
 The duchess could not help shuddering each time that the 
 card was brought in, and a dim foreboding crossed her mind, 
 but the thought was vague as a presentiment of disaster. 
 When her eyes fell on the name, it seemed to her that she felt 
 the touch of the implacable man's strong hand in her hair ; 
 sometimes the words seemed like a prognostication of a ven- 
 geance which her lively intellect invented in the most shock- 
 ing forms. She had studied him too well not to dread him. 
 Would he murder her, she wondered ? Would that bull- 
 necked man dash out her vitals by flinging her over his head ? 
 Would he trample her body under his feet ? When, where, 
 and how would he get her into his power? Would he make 
 her suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he inflict ? 
 She repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he 
 had come, she would have gone to his arms in complete self- 
 surrender. 
 
 Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau's face ; 
 every night it wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his 
 bitter smile, sometimes the Jovelike knitting of the brows ; 
 or his leonine look, or some disdainful movement of the 
 shoulders, made him terrible for her. Next day the card 
 seemed stained with blood. The name of Montriveau stirred 
 her now as the presence of the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover 
 had never done. Her apprehensions gathered strength in the 
 silence. She was forced, without aid from without, to face 
 the thought of a hideous duel of which she could not speak. 
 Her proud hard nature was more responsive to thrills of hate 
 than it had ever been to the caresses of love. Ah ! if the 
 general could but have seen her, as she sat with her forehead 
 drawn into folds between her brows ; immersed in bitter 
 thoughts in that boudoir where he had enjoyed such happy 
 moments, he might perhaps have conceived high hopes. Of
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 'J39 
 
 all human passions, is not pride alone incapable of engender- 
 ing anything base? Mme. de Langeais kept her thoughts to 
 herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de Mon- 
 triveau was no longer indifferent to her? And has not a man 
 gained ground immensely when a woman thinks about him? 
 He is bound to make progress with her either one way or the 
 other afterward. 
 
 Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse 
 or other fearsome beast ; she will certainly drop on her knees 
 and look for death ; but if the brute shows a milder mood 
 and does not utterly slay her, she will love the horse, lion, 
 bull, or what not, and will speak of him quite at her ease. 
 The duchess felt that she was under the lion's paws ; she 
 quaked, but she did not hate him. 
 
 The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to 
 each other met three times in society during the course of 
 that week. Each time, in reply to coquettish questioning 
 glances, the duchess received a respectful bow, and smiles 
 tinged with such savage irony, that all her apprehensions over 
 the card in the morning were revived at night. Our lives are 
 simply such as our feelings shape them for us ; and the feelings 
 of these two had hollowed out a great gulf between them. 
 
 The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles' 
 sister, gave a great ball at the beginning of the following 
 week, and Mme. de Langeais was sure to go to it. Armand 
 was the first person whom the duchess saw when she came into 
 the room, and this time Armand wa? looking out for her, or so 
 she thought at least. The two exchanged a look, and suddenly 
 the woman felt a cold perspiration break from every pore. 
 She had thought all along that Montriveau was capable of 
 taking reprisals in some unheard-of way proportioned to their 
 condition ; and now the revenge had been discovered, it was 
 ready, heated, and boiling. Lightnings flashed from the foiled 
 lover's eyes, his fare was radiant with exultant vengeancr. 
 And the duchess? Her eves were haggard in spite of hr-
 
 240 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 resolution to be cool and insolent. She went to take her 
 place beside the Comtesse de Serizy, who could not help ex- 
 claiming: " Dear Antoinette ! what is the matter with you? 
 You are enough to frighten one." 
 
 " I shall be all right after a quadrille," she answered, giving 
 a hand to a young man who came up at that moment. 
 
 Mme. de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excite- 
 ment and transport which redoubled Montriveau's lowering 
 looks. He stood in front of the line of spectators, who were 
 amusing themselves by looking on. Every time that the 
 duchess came past him, his eyes darted down upon her eddy- 
 ing face ; he might have been a tiger with the prey in his 
 grasp. The waltz came to an end, Mme. de Langeais went 
 back to her place beside the countess, and the Marquis de 
 Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the while 
 with a stranger. 
 
 " One of the things that struck me most on the journey," he 
 was saying (and the duchess listened with all her ears), "was 
 the remark which the man makes at Westminster when you 
 are shown the axe with which a man in a mask cut off Charles 
 the First's head, so they tell you. The King made it first of 
 all to some inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in 
 memory of him." 
 
 "What does the man say?" asked Mme. de Serizy. 
 
 " ' Do not touch the axe ! ' " replied Montriveau, and there 
 was menace in the sound of his voice. 
 
 "Really, my lord marquis," said Mme. de Langeais, "you 
 tell this old story that everybody knows if they have been to 
 London, and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way 
 that you seem to me to have an axe in your hand." 
 
 The duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she 
 laughed as she spoke the last words. 
 
 " But circumstances give the story a quite new application," 
 returned he. 
 
 " How so ; pray tell me, for pity's sake? "
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 241 
 
 "In this way, madame you have touched the axe," said 
 Montriveau, lowering his voice. 
 
 "What an enchanting prophecy!" returned she, smiling 
 with assumed grace. "And when is my head to fall?" 
 
 " I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I 
 only fear some great misfortune for you. If your head were 
 clipped close, would you feel no regrets for the dainty golden 
 hair that you turn to such good account ? " 
 
 " There are those for whom a woman would love to make 
 such a sacrifice ; even if, as often happens, it is for the sake 
 of a man who cannot make allowances for an outbreak of 
 temper." 
 
 "Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your 
 beauty on a sudden by some chemical process, and you, who 
 are but eighteen for us, were to be a hundred years old ? " 
 
 "Why, the small-pox is our battle of Waterloo, monsieur," 
 she interrupted. " After it is over we find out those who love 
 us sincerely." 
 
 " Would you not regret the lovely face that ?" 
 
 "Oh ! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for 
 the sake of some one else whose delight it might have been. 
 And, after all, if I were loved, always loved, and truly loved, 
 what would my beauty matter to me? What do you say, 
 Clara?" 
 
 " It is a dangerous speculation," replied Mme. de Serizy. 
 
 " Is it permissible to ask his majesty the King of Sorcerers 
 when I made the mistake of touching the axe, since I have 
 not been to London as yet ? " 
 
 "Not so," he answered in English, with a burst of ironical 
 laughter. 
 
 " And when will the punishment begin ? " 
 
 At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascer- 
 tained the hour with a truly appalling air of conviction. 
 
 "A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is 
 out." 
 
 16
 
 242 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a 
 child ignorant of danger," said the duchess. " I shall dance 
 now without fear on the edge of the precipice." 
 
 " I am delighted to know that you have so much strength 
 of character," he answered, as he watched her go to take her 
 place in a square dance. 
 
 But the duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for 
 Armand's dark prophecies, was really frightened. Her late 
 lover's presence weighed upon her morally and physically 
 with a sense of oppression that scarcely ceased when he left 
 the ballroom. And yet when she had drawn freer breath, 
 and enjoyed the relief for a moment, she found herself regret- 
 ting the sensation of dread, so greedy of extreme sensations is 
 the feminine nature. The regret was not love, but it was 
 certainly akin to other feelings which prepare the way for 
 love. And then as if the impression which Montriveau had 
 made upon her were suddenly revived she recollected his air 
 of conviction as he took out his watch, and in a sudden spasm 
 of dread she went out. 
 
 By this time it was about midnight. One of her servants, 
 waiting with her pelisse, went down to order her carriage. 
 On her way home she fell naturally enough to musing over M. 
 de Montriveau's prediction. Arrived in her own courtyard, 
 as she supposed, she entered a vestibule almost like that of her 
 own hotel, and suddenly saw that the staircase was different. 
 She was in a strange house. Turning to call her servants, she 
 was attacked by several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief 
 over her mouth, bound her hand and foot, and carried her off. 
 She shrieked aloud. 
 
 "Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream," a 
 voice said in her ear. 
 
 So great was the duchess' terror that she could never recollect 
 how nor by whom she was transported. When she came to 
 herself she was lying on a couch in a bachelor's lodging, her 
 hands and feet tied with silken cords. In spite of herself, she
 
 11/E THIRTEEN. 243 
 
 shrieked aloud as she looked round and met Armand de Mon- 
 triveau's eyes. He was sitting in his dressing-gown, quietly 
 smoking a cigar in his armchair. 
 
 "Do not cry out, Madame la Dtiehesse," he said, coolly 
 taking the cigar out of his mouth ; " I have a headache. Be- 
 side, I will untie you. But listen attentively to what I have 
 the honor to say to you." 
 
 Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet. 
 
 " What would he the use of calling out ? Nobody can hear 
 your cries. You arc too well bred to make any unnecessary 
 fuss. If you do not stay quietly, if you insist upon a struggle 
 with me, I shall tie your hands and feet again. All things 
 considered, I think that you have self-respect enough to stay 
 on this couch as if you were lying on your own at home ; cold 
 as ever, if you will. You have made me shed many tears on 
 this couch, tears that I hid from all other eyes." 
 
 While Montriveau was speaking, the duchess glanced about 
 her ; it was a woman's glance, a stolen look that saw all things 
 and seemed to see nothing. She was much pleased with the 
 room. It was rather like a monk's cell. The man's character 
 and thoughts seemed to pervade it. No decoration of any 
 kind broke the gray painted surface of the walls. A green 
 carpet covered the floor. A black sofa, a table littered with 
 papers, two big easy-chairs, a chest of drawers with an alarum 
 clock by way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet 
 flung over it a red cloth with a black key border all these 
 things made part of a whole that told of a life reduced to its 
 simplest terms. A triple candle-sconce of Egyptian design on 
 the mantel recalled the vast spaces of the desert and Mon- 
 triveau's long wanderings ; a huge sphinx-claw stood out be- 
 neath the folds of stuff at the bedfoot ; and, just beyond, a 
 green curtain with a black and scarlet border was suspended 
 by large rings from a spear handle above the door near one 
 corner of the room. The other door by which the band had 
 entered was likewise curtained, but the drapery hung from an
 
 244 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 ordinary curtain-rod. As the duchess finally noted that the 
 pattern was the same on both, she saw that the door at the 
 bedfoot stood open ; gleams of ruddy light from the room 
 beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally, the 
 ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could dis- 
 tinguish strange shapes in the shadows ; but as it did not occur 
 to her at the time that danger could come from that quarter, 
 she tried to gratify a more ardent curiosity. 
 
 " Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you 
 mean to do with me ? " The insolence and irony of the tone 
 stung through the words. The duchess quite believed that 
 she read extravagant love in Montriveau's speech. He had 
 carried her off; was not that in itself an acknowledgment of 
 her power ? 
 
 "Nothing whatever, madame," he returned, gracefully 
 puffing the last whiff of cigar smoke. " You will remain here 
 for a short time. First of all, I should like to explain to you 
 what you are, and what I am. I cannot put my thoughts into 
 words whilst you are twisting on the couch in your boudoir; 
 and, beside, in your own house you take offense at the slightest 
 hint, you ring the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover 
 out at the door as if he were the basest of wretches. Here my 
 mind is unfettered. Here nobody can turn me out. Here 
 you shall be my victim for a few seconds, and you are going 
 to be so exceedingly kind as to listen to me. You need fear 
 nothing. I did not carry you off to insult you, nor yet to 
 take by force what you refused to grant of your own will to 
 my unworthiness. I could not stoop so low. You possibly 
 think of outrage ; for myself, I have no such thoughts." 
 
 He flung his cigar coolly into the fire. 
 
 "The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?" 
 he said, and rising at once, he took a chafing-dish from the 
 hearth, burnt perfumes, and purified the air. The duchess' 
 astonishment was only equaled by her humiliation. She was 
 in this man's power ; and he would not abuse his power. The
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 246 
 
 eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet 
 and steady as stars. She trembled. Her dread of Armand 
 was increased by a nightmare sensation of restlessness and 
 utter inability to move ; she felt as if she were turned to 
 stone. She lay passive in the grip of fear. She thought she 
 saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze, as if blown 
 up by a pair of bellows ; in another moment the gleams of 
 flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures 
 suddenly flashed out ; but the terrible vision disappeared so 
 swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion. 
 
 "Madame," Armand continued with cold contempt, "one 
 minute, just one minute is enough for me, and you shall feel 
 it afterward at every moment throughout your lifetime, the 
 one eternity over which I have power. I am not God. Listen 
 carefully to me," he continued, pausing to add solemnity to 
 his words. " Love will always come at your call. You have 
 boundless power over men : but remember that once you 
 called love, and love came to you ; love as pure and true- 
 hearted as may be on earth, and as reverent as it was passion- 
 ate ; fond as a devoted woman's, as a mother's love ; a love so 
 great, indeed, that it was past the bounds of reason. You 
 played with it, and you committed a crime. Every woman 
 has a right to refuse herself to love which she feels she can- 
 not share ; and if a man loves and cannot win love in return, 
 he is not to be pitied, he has no right to complain. But with 
 a semblance of love to attract an unfortunate creature cut off 
 from all affection ; to teach him to understand happiness to 
 the full, only to snatch it from him ; to rob him of his future 
 of felicity ; to slay his happiness not merely to-day, but as 
 long as his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every 
 thought this I call a fearful crime ! " 
 
 " Monsieur " 
 
 " I cannot allow you to answer me yet. So listen to me 
 still. In any case I have rights over you ; but I only choose 
 to exercise one the right of the judge over the criminal, so
 
 246 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 that I may arouse your conscience. If you had no conscience 
 left, I should not reproach you at all ; but you are so young ! 
 You must feel some life still in your heart ; or so I like to be- 
 lieve. While I think of you as depraved enough to do a 
 wrong which the law does not punish, I do not think you so 
 degraded that you cannot comprehend the full meaning of my 
 words. I resume." 
 
 As he spoke the duchess heard the smothered sound of a 
 pair of bellows. Those mysterious figures which she had just 
 seen were blowing up the fire, no doubt ; the glow shone 
 through the curtain. But Montriveau's lurid face was turned 
 upon her ; she could not choose but wait with a fast-beating 
 heart and eyes fixed in a stare. However curious she felt, the 
 heat in Armand's words interested her even more than the 
 crackling of the mysterious flames. 
 
 "Madame," he went on after a pause, "if some poor 
 wretch commits a murder in Paris, it is the executioner's 
 duty, you know, to lay hands on him and stretch him on the 
 plank, where murderers pay for their crimes with their heads. 
 Then the newspapers inform every one, rich and poor, so that 
 the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the 
 latter are warned that they must be on the watch if they would 
 live. Well, you that are religious, and even 2. little of a bigot, 
 may have masses said for such a man's soul. You both belong 
 to the same family, but yours is the elder branch ; and the 
 elder branch may occupy high places in peace and live hap- 
 pily and without cares. Want or anger may drive your brother 
 the convict to take a man's life; you have taken more, you 
 have taken the joy out of a man's life, you have killed all 
 that was best in his life his dearest beliefs. The murderer 
 simply lay in wait for his victim, and killed him reluctantly, 
 
 and in fear of the scaffold ; but you ! You heaped up 
 
 every sin that weakness can commit against strength that sus- 
 pected no evil ; you tamed a passive victim, the better to gnaw 
 his heart out ; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing
 
 TOE THIRTEEN. 247 
 
 undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, longing fur 
 the bliss of love. You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, 
 only to refuse to make any in return. He should see the 
 light indeed before you put out his eyes ! It is wonderful 
 how you found the heart to do it ! Such villainies demand a 
 display of resource quite above the comprehension of those 
 bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise. They can give 
 and forgive ; they know how to love and suffer. The grandeur 
 of their devotion dwarfs us. Rising higher in the social scale, 
 one finds just as much mud as at the lower end ; but with this 
 difference, at the upper end it is hard and gilded over. 
 
 " Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a 
 noble bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. 
 You cannot fall lower than the lowest unless you arc set high 
 above the rest of the world. I express my thoughts badly ; 
 the wounds you dealt me are too painful as yet, but do not 
 think that I complain. My words are not the expression of 
 any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them. 
 Know this, madame, for a certainty I forgive you. My for- 
 giveness is so complete that you need not feel in the least 
 sorry that you came hither to find it against your will. But 
 you might take advantage of other hearts as childlike as my 
 own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish. So you have 
 inspired the thought of justice. Expiate your sin here on 
 earth ; God may perhaps forgive you ; I wish that He may, but 
 He is inexorable, and will strike." 
 
 The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her 
 eyes filled with tears. 
 
 " Why do you cry? Be true to your nature. You could 
 look on indifferently at the torture of a heart as you broke it. 
 That will do, madame, do not cry. I cannot bear it any 
 longer. Other men will tell you that you have given them 
 life; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have 
 given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not 
 my own, that I am bound to live for my friends, that from
 
 248 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 this time forth I must endure the cold chill of death, as well as 
 the burden of life ? Is it possible that there can be so much 
 kindness in you ? Are you like the desert tigress that licks 
 the wounds she has inflicted?" 
 
 The duchess burst out sobbing. 
 
 " Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at 
 all, it would merely set me on my guard. Is this another of 
 your artifices? or is it not? You have used so many with 
 me; how can one think that there is any truth in you? 
 Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me. 
 That is all I have to say." 
 
 Mme. de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity 
 and humility in her bearing. 
 
 "You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding 
 out a hand to the man who did not take it; " you have not 
 spoken harshly enough; and I deserve this punishment." 
 
 "/punish you, madame ! A man must love still, to punish, 
 must he not ? From me you must expect no feeling, nothing 
 resembling it. If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in 
 my cause, and pronounce and carry out the sentence. But I 
 am about to fulfill a duty, not a desire of vengeance of any 
 kind. The crudest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of re- 
 venge when it is in our power to take it. Perhaps I shall be 
 the minister of your pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from 
 this time forth, as you gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace, 
 by which society marks out the criminal, you may perforce 
 learn something of the convict's sense of honor. And then, 
 you will love ! " 
 
 The duchess sat listening ; her meekness was unfeigned ; it 
 was no coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was 
 after a silence. 
 
 " Armand," she began, "it seems to me that when I re- 
 sisted love, I was obeying all the chaste instincts of woman's 
 modesty ; I should not have looked for such reproaches from 
 you. I was weak ; you have turned all my weaknesses against
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 240 
 
 me, and made so many crimes of them. How could you fail 
 to understand that the curiosity of love might have carried 
 me further than I ought to go ; and that next morning I 
 might be angry with myself, and wretched because I had gone 
 too far? Alas! I sinned in ignorance. I was as sincere in 
 my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as in my remorse. There 
 was far more love for you in my severity than in my conces- 
 sions. And beside, of what do you complain ? I gave you 
 my heart ; that was not enough ; you demanded, brutally, 
 that I should give my person " 
 
 " Brutally ? ' ' repeated Montriveau. But to himself he said, 
 " If I once allow her to dispute over words, I am lost." 
 
 " Yes. You came to me as if I were one of those women. 
 You showed none of the respect, none of the attentions of love. 
 Had I not reason to reflect? Very well, I reflected. The 
 unseemliness of your conduct is not inexcusable, love lay at 
 the source of it ; let me think so, and justify you to myself. 
 Well, Armand, this evening, even while you were prophesying 
 evil, I felt convinced that there was happiness in store for us 
 both. Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often 
 tested and proved." She bent lower. "And I was yours 
 wholly," she murmured in his ear. " I felt a longing that I 
 cannot express to give happiness to a man so violently tried by 
 adversity. If I must have a master, my master should be a 
 great man. As I felt conscious of my height, the less I cared 
 to descend. I felt I could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime 
 of love, while you were pointing to death. Strength and 
 kindness always go together. My friend, you are so strong, 
 you will not be unkind to a helpless woman who loves you. 
 If I was wrong, is there noway of obtaining forgiveness? No 
 way of making reparation ? Repentance is the charm of love ; 
 I should like to be very charming for you. How could I, 
 alone among women, fail to know a woman's doubts and fears, 
 the timidity that it is so natural to feel when you bind your- 
 self for life, and know how easily a man snaps such ties ? The
 
 260 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 bourgeoises, with whom you compared me just now, give 
 themselves, but they struggle first. Very well I struggled ; 
 but here I am ! Ah ! God, he does not hear me ! " she broke 
 off, and wringing her hands, she cried out : " But I love you ! 
 I am yours ! " and fell at Armand's feet. 
 
 " Yours ! yours ! my one and only master ! " 
 
 Armand tried to raise her. 
 
 "Madame, it is too late! Antoinette cannot save the 
 Duchesse de Langeais. I cannot believe in either. To-day 
 you may give yourself; to-morrow you may refuse. No 
 power in earth or heaven can insure me the sweet constancy 
 of love. All love's pledges lay in the past ; and now nothing 
 of that past exists." 
 
 The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly that the 
 duchess could not help turning her head ; this time she dis- 
 tinctly saw the three masked figures. 
 
 " Armand," she said, '' I would not wish to think ill of you. 
 Why are those men there ? What are you going to do to 
 me?" 
 
 " Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the 
 thing which is about to be done. Think of them simply as 
 my hands and my heart. One of them is a surgeon " 
 
 "A surgeon ! Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense 
 is the hardest to bear. Just speak ; tell me if you wish for 
 my life; I will give it to you, you need not take it " 
 
 " Then you did not understand me? Did I not speak just 
 now of justice? To put an end to your misapprehensions," 
 continued he, taking up a small steel object from the table, 
 " I will now explain what I have decided with regard to you." 
 
 He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel 
 rod. 
 
 "Two of my friends at this very moment are heating an- 
 other cross, made on this pattern, red-hot. We are going to 
 stamp it upon your forehead, here between the eyes, so that 
 there will be no possibility of hiding the mark with diamonds,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. ->: 
 
 and so avoiding people's questions. In short, you shall bear 
 on your forehead the brand of infamy which your brothers 
 the convicts wear on their shoulders. The pain is a mere trifle, 
 but I feared a nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance 
 
 "Resistance?" she cried, clapping her hands for joy. 
 " Oil no, no ! I would have the whole world here to sec. 
 Ah, my Armand, brand her quickly, this creature of yours ; 
 brand her with your mark as a poor trifle belonging to you. 
 You asked for pledges of my love ; here they arc all in one. Ah ! 
 for me there is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal 
 happiness in this revenge of yours. When you have marked 
 this woman with your mark, when you set your crimson brand 
 on her, your slave in soul, you can never afterward abandon 
 her, you will be mine for evermore ! When you cut me off 
 from my kind, you make yourself responsible for my happiness, 
 or you prove yourself base ; and I know that you are noble 
 and great ! Why, when a woman loves, the brand of love is 
 burnt into her soul by her own will. Come in, gentlemen ! 
 come in and brand her, this Duchesse de Langeais. She is 
 Monsieur de Montriveau's for ever ! Ah ! come quickly, all 
 of you, my forehead burns hotter than your fire ! " 
 
 Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the 
 duchess kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart. 
 He said some word, and his three friends vanished. 
 
 The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects 
 another. The duchess, with every motive for reading the 
 depths of Armand's heart, was all eyes ; and Armand, all 
 unsuspicious of the mirror, brushed away two tears as they 
 fell. Her whole future lay in those two tears. When he 
 turned round again to help her to rise, she was standing before 
 him, sure of love. Her pulses must have throbbed fast when 
 he spoke with the firmness she had known so well how to use 
 of old while she played with him. 
 
 " I spare you, madame. All that has taken place shall be 
 as if it had never been, you may believe me. But now, let
 
 252 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 us bid each other farewell. I like to think that you were 
 sincere in you coquetries on your couch, sincere again in this 
 outpouring of your heart. Adieu. I feel that there is no 
 faith in you left in me. You would torment me again ; you 
 
 would always be the duchess, and But there, farewell, 
 
 we shall never understand each other. 
 
 "Now, what do you wish?" he continued, taking the tone 
 of a master of the ceremonies " to return home or to go 
 back to Madame de Serizy's ball? I have done all in my 
 power to prevent any scandal. Neither your servants nor any 
 one else can possibly know what has passed between us in the 
 last quarter of an hour. Your servants have no idea that you 
 have left the ballroom ; your carriage never left Madame de 
 Serizy's courtyard ; your carriage may likewise be found 
 in the court of your own hotel. Where do you wish to 
 be?" 
 
 " What do you counsel, Armand ? " 
 
 " There is no Armand now, Madame la Duchesse. We are 
 strangers to each other." 
 
 "Then take me to the .ball," she said, still curious to put 
 Armand's power to the test. " Thrust a soul that suffered in 
 the world, and must always suffer there, if there is no happi- 
 ness for her now, down into hell again. And yet, oh my 
 friend, I love you as your bourgeoises love; I love you so 
 that I could come to you and fling my arms about your neck 
 before all the world if you asked it of me. The hateful 
 world has not corrupted me. I am young at least, and I have 
 grown younger still. I am a child, yes, your child, your new 
 creature. Ah ! do not drive me forth out of my Eden ! " 
 
 Armand shook his head. 
 
 "Ah ! let me take something with me, if I go, some little 
 thing to wear to-night on my heart," she said, taking pos- 
 session of Armand's glove, which she twisted into her hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 " No, I am not like all those depraved women. You do
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 253 
 
 not know the world, and so you cannot know my worth. 
 You shall know it now ! There are women who sell them- 
 selves for money; there are others to be gained by gifts, it is 
 a vile world ! Oh, I wish I were a simple bourgeoise, a work- 
 ing-girl, if you would rather have a woman beneath you than 
 a woman whose devotion is accompanied by high rank, as 
 men count it. Oh, my Armand, there are noble, high, and 
 chaste and pure natures among us ; and then they are lovely 
 indeed. I would have all nobleness that I might offer it all 
 up to you. Misfortune willed that I should be a duchess ; I 
 would I were a royal princess, that my offering might be com- 
 plete. I would be a grisette for you, and a queen for every 
 one beside." 
 
 He listened, damping his cigarettes with his lips. 
 
 " You will let me know when you wish to go," he said. 
 
 "But I should like to stay " 
 
 "That is another matter ! " 
 
 " Stay, that was badly rolled," she cried, seizing on a cigar- 
 ette and grasping all that Armand's lips had touched. 
 
 " Do you smoke ? " 
 
 " Oh, what would I not do to please you ? " 
 
 "Very well. Go, madame." 
 
 " I will obey you," she answered, with tears in her eyes. 
 
 " You must be blindfolded ; you must not see a glimpse of 
 the way." 
 
 " I am ready, Armand," she said, bandaging her eyes. 
 
 "Can you see?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 Noiselessly he knelt before her. 
 
 ' Ah ! I can hear you ! " she cried, with a little fond ges- 
 ture, thinking that the pretense of harshness was over. 
 
 He made as if he would kiss her lips ; she held up her 
 face. 
 
 "You can see, madame." 
 
 " I am just a little bit curious."
 
 254 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " So you always deceive me ? " 
 
 "Ah ! take off this handkerchief, sir," she cried out, with 
 the passion of a great generosity repelled with scorn, "lead 
 me ; I will not open my eyes." 
 
 Armand felt sure of her after that cry. He led the way ; 
 the duchess, nobly true to her word, was blind. But while 
 Montriveau held her hand as a father might, and led her up 
 and down flights of stairs, he was studying the throbbing 
 pulses of this woman's heart so suddenly invaded by Love. 
 Mme. de Langeais, rejoicing in this power of speech, was glad 
 to let him know all ; but he was inflexible ; his hand was pas- 
 sive in reply to the questionings of her hand. 
 
 At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade 
 her go forward ; the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she 
 went she felt that his hand protected her dress. His care 
 touched her; it was a revelation surely that there was a little 
 love still left ; yet it was in some sort a farewell, for Montri- 
 veau left her without a word. The air was warm ; the duchess, 
 feeling the heat, opened her eyes, and found herself standing 
 by the fire in the Comtesse de Serizy's boudoir. She was 
 alone. Her first thought was for her disordered toilette ; in 
 a moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her pictur- 
 esque coiffure. 
 
 " Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you 
 everywhere." It was the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as 
 she opened the door. 
 
 "I came here to breathe," said the duchess; "it is un- 
 bearably hot in the rooms." 
 
 "People thought that you had gone ; but my brother Ron- 
 querolles told me that your servants were waiting for you." 
 
 " I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a min- 
 ute," and the duchess sat down on the sofa. 
 
 " Why, what is the matter with you ? You are shaking 
 from head to foot ! " 
 
 The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " Madame la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might 
 have happened. I have just come across your coachman, the 
 man is as tipsy as all the Swiss in the whole of the twenty- 
 two cantons." 
 
 The duchess made no answer ; she was looking round the 
 room, at the mantel and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of 
 an opening. Then with an extraordinary sensation she recol- 
 lected that she was again in the midst of the gayety of the 
 ballroom after that terrific scene which had changed the whole 
 course of her life. She began to shiver violently. 
 
 " Monsieur de Montriveau's prophecy has shaken my 
 nerves," she said. " It was a joke, but still I will see whether 
 his axe from London will haunt me even in my sleep. So 
 farewell, dear. Adieu, Monsieur le Marquis." 
 
 As she went through the rooms she was beset with inquiries 
 and regrets. Her world seemed to have dwindled now that 
 she, its queen, had fallen so low, was so diminished. And 
 what, moreover, were these men compared with him whom 
 she loved with all her heart ; with the man grown great by all 
 that she had lost in stature? The giant had regained the 
 height that he had lost for a while, and she exaggerated it per- 
 haps beyond measure. She looked, in spite of herself, at the 
 servant who had attended her to the ball. He was fast asleep. 
 
 " Have you been here all the time? " she asked. 
 
 "Yes, madame." 
 
 As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that 
 her coachman was drunk so drunk, that at any other time 
 she would have been afraid ; but after a great crisis in life, fear 
 loses its appetite for common food. She reached home, at 
 any rate, without accident; but even there she felt a change 
 in herself, a new feeling that she could not shake off. For 
 her, there was now but one man in the world ; which is to say, 
 that henceforth she cared to shine for his sake alone. 
 
 While the philosopher can define love promptly by follow- 
 ing out natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing
 
 256 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 problem before him if he attempts to consider love in all its 
 developments due to social conditions. Still, in spite of the 
 heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love, 
 there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doc- 
 trine, a line that all the discussion in the world can never de- 
 flect. A rigid application of this line explains the nature of 
 the crisis through which the duchess, like most women, was to 
 pass. Passion she knew, but she did not love as yet. 
 
 Love and passion are two different conditions which poets 
 and men of the world; philosophers and fools alike, continu- 
 ally confound. Love implies a give and take, a certainty of 
 bliss that nothing can change ; it means so close a clinging of 
 the heart, and an exchange of happiness so constant, that there 
 is no room left for jealousy. Then possession is a means and 
 not an end ; unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is 
 not the less close ; the soul is neither more nor less ardent or 
 troubled, but happy at every moment ; in short, the divine 
 breath of desire spreading from end to end of the immensity 
 of Time steeps it all for us in the selfsame hue ; life takes the 
 tint of the unclouded heaven. But Passion is the foreshadow- 
 ing of Love, and of that Infinite to which all suffering souls 
 aspire. Passion is a hope that may be cheated. Passion 
 means both suffering and transition. Passion dies out when 
 hope is dead. Men and women may pass through this expe- 
 rience many times without dishonor, for it is so natural to 
 spring toward happiness ; but there is only one love in a life- 
 time. All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper 
 or by word of mouth may, therefore, be resumed by two ques- 
 tions "Is it passion? Is it love ?" So, since love comes 
 into existence only through the intimate experience of the 
 bliss which gives it lasting life, the duchess was beneath the 
 yoke of passion as yet ; and as she knew the fierce tumult, the 
 unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is 
 meant by that word passion she suffered. Through all the 
 trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 2S7 
 
 by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit ; tor all these 
 forms of egoism make common cause together. 
 
 She had said to this man : " I love you ; I am yours ! " Was 
 it possible that the Duchessc dc Langeais should have uttered 
 those words in vain ? She must either be loved now or play 
 her part of queen no longer. And then she felt the loneliness 
 of the luxurious couch where pleasure had never yet set his 
 glowing feet ; and over and over again, while she tossed and 
 writhed there, she said : ' I want to be loved." 
 
 But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of 
 success. The duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne 
 might be humiliated ; but the woman saw glimpses of wedded 
 happiness, and imagination, avenging the time lost for nature, 
 took a delight in kindling the inextinguishable fire in her 
 veins. She all but attained to the sensations of love ; for amid 
 her poignant doubt whether she was loved in return, she felt 
 glad at heart to say to herself: " I love him ! " As for her 
 scruples, religion, and the world, she could trample them under 
 foot ! Montriveau was her religion now. She spent the next 
 day in a state of moral torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, 
 which no words could express. She wrote letters and tore 
 them all up in turn, and invented a thousand and one impos- 
 sible fancies. 
 
 When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to 
 think that he would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expecta- 
 tion. Her whole life was concentrated in the single sense of 
 hearing. Sometimes she shut her eyes, straining her ears to 
 listen through space, wishing that she could annihilate every- 
 thing that lay between her and her lover, and s" establish that 
 perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In her 
 tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful 
 to her ; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes 
 of midnight sounded from the drawing-room. 
 
 " Ah, God ! " she cried, " to see him here would be happi- 
 ness. And yet, it is not so very long since he came here, 
 17
 
 258 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 brought by desire, and the tones of his voice filled this bou- 
 doir. And now there is nothing." 
 
 She remembered the times that she had played the coquette 
 with him, and how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, 
 and the despairing tears flowed for long. 
 
 Her woman came at length with, "Madame la Duchesse 
 does not know, perhaps, that it is two o'clock in the morning ; 
 I thought that madame was not feeling well." 
 
 ''Yes, I am going to bed," said the duchess, drying her 
 eyes. " But remember, Suzanne, never to come in again with- 
 out orders; I tell you this for the last time." 
 
 For a week, Mine, de Langeais went to every house where 
 there was a hope of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to 
 her usual habits, she came early and went late ; gave up dan- 
 cing, and went to the card-tables. Her experiments were fruit- 
 less. She did not succeed in getting a glimpse of Armand. 
 She did not dare to utter his name now. One evening, how- 
 ever, in a fit of despair, she spoke to Mme. de Serizy, and 
 asked as carelessly as she could: "You must have quarreled 
 with Monsieur de Montriveau ? He is not to be seen at your 
 house now." 
 
 The countess laughed. " So he does not come here either?" 
 she returned. " He is not to be seen anywhere, for that mat- 
 ter. He is interested in some woman, no doubt." 
 
 "I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one 
 of his friends " the duchess began sweetly. 
 
 " I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted 
 with him." 
 
 Mme. de Langeais did not reply. Mme. de Serizy con- 
 cluded from the duchess' silence that she might apply the 
 scourge with impunity to a discreet friendship which she had 
 all too plainly seen, with much bitterness of soul, for a long 
 time past. 
 
 "So you miss that melancholy personage, do you? I have 
 heard most extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 25'J 
 
 he never comes back, he forgives nothing ; and, if you love 
 him, he keeps you in chains. To everything that I said of 
 him, one of those that praise him sky-high would always 
 answer: ' He knows how to love ! ' People arc always tell- 
 ing me that Montrivcau would give up all for his friend ; that 
 his is a great nature. Pooh ! society does not want such 
 tremendous natures. Men of that stamp are all very well at 
 home ; let them stay there and leave us to our pleasant little- 
 nesses. What do you say, Antoinette?" 
 
 Woman of the world though she was, the duchess seemed 
 agitated, yet she replied in a natural voice that deceived her 
 fair friend : 
 
 " I am sorry to miss him. I took a great interest in him, 
 and promised to myself to be his sincere friend. I like great 
 natures, dear friend, ridiculous though you may think it. To 
 give one's self to a fool is a clear confession, is it not, that one 
 is governed wholly by one's senses ? " 
 
 Mme. de Serizy's "preferences" had always been for 
 commonplace men ; her lover at the moment, the Marquis 
 d'Aiglemont, was a fine, tall man. 
 
 After this, the countess soon took her departure, you may 
 be sure. Mme. de Langeais saw hope in Armand's with- 
 drawal from the world ; she wrote to him at once ; it was a 
 humble, gentle letter, surely it would bring him if he loved 
 her still. She sent her footman with it next day. On the 
 servant's return, she asked whether he had given the letter to 
 M. de Montriveau himself, and could not restrain the move- 
 ment of joy at the affirmative answer. Armand was in Paris ! 
 He stayed alone in his house ; he did not go out into society ! 
 So she was loved ! All day long she waited for an answer 
 that never came. Again and again, when impatience grew 
 unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay. Armand 
 felt embarrassed ; the reply would come by mail ; but night 
 came, and she could not deceive herself any longer. It was 
 a dreadful day, a day of pain grown sweet, of intolerable heart-
 
 260 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 throbs, a day when the heart squanders the very forces of life 
 in riot. 
 
 Next day she sent for an answer. 
 
 " Monsieur le Marquis sent word that he would call on 
 Madame la Duchesse," reported Julien. 
 
 She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and 
 flung herself on her couch to devour her first sensations. 
 
 " He is coming ! " 
 
 The thought rent her soul. And, in truth, woe unto those 
 for whom suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, 
 while it increases and multiplies the sweetest joys ; for they 
 have nothing in them of that flame which quickens the images 
 of things, giving to them a second existence, so that we cling 
 as closely to the pure essence as to its outward and visible 
 manifestation. What is suspense in love but a constant draw- 
 ing upon an unfailing hope? a submission to the terrible 
 scourgings of passion, while passion is yet happy, and the dis- 
 enchantment of reality has not set in. The constant putting 
 forth of strength and longing, called suspense, is surely, to the 
 human soul, as fragrance to the flower that breathes it forth. 
 We soon leave the brilliant, unsatisfying colors of tulips and 
 coreopsis, but we turn again and again to drink in the sweet- 
 ness of orange-blossoms or volkameria flowers compared 
 separately, each in its own land, to a betrothed bride, full of 
 love, made fair by the past and future. 
 
 The duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through 
 the rapture with which she received the scourgings of love. 
 As this change wrought in her, she saw other destinies before 
 her, and a better meaning in the things of life. As she hur- 
 ried to her dressing-room, she understood what studied adorn- 
 ment and the most minute attention to her toilet mean when 
 these are undertaken for love's sake and not for vanity. Even 
 now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of 
 waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was 
 dressed ; she passed^ through nervous paroxysms brought on
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 261 
 
 by the dreadful power which sets the whole mind in ferment. 
 Perhaps that power is only a disease, though the pain of it is 
 sweet. The duchess was dressed and waiting at two o'clock 
 in the afternoon. At half-post eleven that night M. de Mon- 
 triveau had not arrived. To try to give an idea of the anguish 
 endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child 
 of civilization would be to attempt to say how many imagin- 
 ings the heart can condense into one thought. As well en- 
 deavor to measure the forces expended by the soul in a sigh 
 whenever the bell rang; to estimate the drain of life when a 
 carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her prostrate. 
 
 "Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clock 
 struck midnight. 
 
 She grew white ; her teeth chattered ; she struck her hands 
 together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as 
 she did so how often he had come thither without a summons. 
 But she resigned herself. Had she not seen him grow pale, 
 and start up under the stinging barbs of her irony? Then 
 Mme. de Langeais felt the horror of the woman's appointed 
 lot ; a man's is the active part, a woman must wait passively 
 when she loves. If a woman goes beyond her beloved, she 
 makes a mistake which few men can forgive ; ?'most every 
 man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this piece of 
 angelic flattery. But Armand's was a great nature ; he surely 
 must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding 
 love by love that lasts for ever. 
 
 "Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she 
 tossed on her bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to 
 him. I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to 
 him, but I will hold it out. A man of a thousand will see a 
 promise of love and constancy in every step that a woman 
 takes toward him. Yes, the angels must come down from 
 heaven to reach men ; and I wish to be an angel for him." 
 
 Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which 
 the intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can
 
 262 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 number particularly excel. And yet only a Duchesse de 
 Langeais, brought up by Mme. la Princcsse de Blamont- 
 Chauvry, could have written that delicious note; no other 
 woman could complain without lowering herself; could spread 
 wings in such a flight without draggling her pinions in humili- 
 ation ; rise gracefully in revolt; scold without giving offense; 
 and pardon without compromising her personal dignity. 
 
 Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the 
 victim of love's marches and countermarches. 
 
 "What did Monsieur de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as 
 indifferently as she could, when the man came back to report 
 himself. 
 
 "Monsieur le Marquis requested me to tell Madame la 
 Duchesse that it was all right." 
 
 Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have 
 her heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses ; yet 
 not to utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence ! One of 
 the countless miseries of the rich ! 
 
 More than three weeks went by. Mme. de Langeais wrote 
 again and again, and no answer came from Montriveau. At 
 last she gave out that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from 
 attendance on the princess and from social duties. She was 
 only at home to her father the Due de Navarreins, her aunt 
 the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers 
 (her maternal great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the 
 Due de Grandlieu. These persons found no difficulty in be- 
 lieving that the duchess was ill, seeing that she grew thinner 
 and paler and more dejected every day. The vague ardor of 
 love, the smart of wounded pride, the continual prick of the 
 only scorn that could touch her. the yearnings toward joys that 
 she craved with a rain continual longing all these things told 
 updn her, mind and body ; all the forces of her nature were 
 stimulated to no purpose. She was paying the arrears of her 
 life of make-believe. 
 
 She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 283 
 
 be there. For the duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries 
 with the royal family, it was one of those festival days that 
 are long remembered. She looked supremely beautiful in her 
 languor; she was greeted with admiration in all eyes. It was 
 Montriveau's presence that made her so fair. Once or twice 
 they exchanged glances. The general came almost to her 
 feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which produces 
 an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the most 
 prudish will confess. When a woman is very much in love, 
 and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift mo- 
 ment must be something like the phase of a dream when the 
 eyes embrace a world that stretches away forever. Only 
 women or young men can imagine the dull, frenzied hunger 
 in the duchess' eyes. As for older men, if during the parox- 
 ysms of early passion in youth they had experience of such 
 phenomena of nervous power ; at a later day it is so completely 
 forgotten that they deny the very existence of the luxuriant 
 ecstasy the only name that can be given to these wonderful 
 intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration of a soul that 
 has shaken off its bonds of flesh ; whereas in amorous ecstasy 
 all the forces of soul and body are embraced and blended in 
 one. If a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous frenzy before 
 which Mme. de Langeais was forced to bend, she will take 
 one decisive resolution after another so swifty that it is impos- 
 sible to give account of them. Thought after thought rises 
 and flits across her brain, as clouds are whirled by the wind 
 across the gray veil of mist that shuts out the sun. Thence- 
 forth the facts reveal all. And the facts are these : 
 
 The day after the review, Mme. de Langeais sent her car- 
 riage and liveried servants to wait at the Marquis de Montri- 
 veau's door from eight o'clock in the morning till three in the 
 afternoon. Armand lived in the Rue de Tournon, a few steps 
 away from the Chamber of Peers, and that very day the 
 House was sitting ; but long before the peers returned to their 
 palaces, several people had recognized the duchess' carriage
 
 264 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 and liveries. The first of these was the Baron de Maulincour. 
 That young officer had met with disdain from Mme. de Lan- 
 geais and a better reception from Mme. de Serizy ; he betook 
 himself at once therefore to his mistress, and under seal of 
 secrecy told her of this strange freak. 
 
 In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed 
 through all the coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain ; it 
 reached the Tuileries and the Elysee-Bourbon ; it was the sen- 
 sation of the day, the matter of all the talk from noon till 
 night. Almost everywhere the women denied the facts, but 
 in such a manner that the report was confirmed ; the men one 
 and all believed it, and manifested a most indulgent interest 
 in Mme. de Langeais. Some among them threw the blame 
 on Armand. 
 
 "That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze," said 
 they; "he insisted on making this scandal, no doubt." 
 
 "Very well, then," others replied, " Madame de Langeais 
 has been guilty of a most generous piece of imprudence. To 
 renounce the world, and rank, and fortune, and consideration 
 for her lover's sake, and that in the face of all Paris, is as fine 
 a coup d'etat for a woman as that barber's knife-thrust, which 
 so affected Canning in a court of assize. Not one of the 
 women who blame the duchess would make a declaration 
 worthy of ancient times. It is heroic of Madame de Langeais 
 to proclaim herself so frankly. Now there is nothing left to 
 her but to love Montriveau. There must be something great 
 about a woman if she says: ' I will have but one passion.' ' 
 
 " But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honor 
 vice in this way without respect for virtue ? " asked the Com- 
 tesse de Granville, the attorney-general's wife. 
 
 While the chateau, the faubourg, and the Chaussee d'Antin 
 were discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue ; while 
 excited young men rushed about on horseback to make sure 
 that the carriage was standing in the Rue de Tournon, and 
 the duchess in consequence was beyond a doubt in M. de
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 265 
 
 Montrivcau's rooms, Mine, de Langeais, with heavy throbbing 
 pulses, was lying hidden away in her boudoir. And Armand ? 
 he had been out all night, and at that moment was walking 
 with M. de Marsay in the gardens of the Tuileries. The elder 
 members of Mmc. de Langeuis' family were engaged in calling 
 upon one another, arranging to read her a homily and to hold 
 a consultation as to the best way of putting a stop to the 
 scandal. 
 
 At three o'clock, therefore, M. le Due de Navarrcins, the 
 Vidame de Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, 
 and the Due de Grandlieu were assembled in Mine, la Duch- 
 esse dc Langeais' drawing-room. To them, as to all curious 
 inquirers, the servants said that their mistress was not at home ; 
 the duchess had made no exceptions to her orders. But these 
 four personages shone conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of 
 which the revolutions and hereditary pretensions are solemnly 
 recorded year by year in the " Almanach de Gotha," where- 
 fore without some slight sketch of each of them this picture of 
 society were incomplete. 
 
 The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, 
 was a most poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In 
 her beautiful prime, so it was said, she had done her part to 
 win for that monarch his appellation of le Bien-aime (the well- 
 beloved). Of her past charms of feature, little remained save 
 a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish 
 scimitar, now the principal ornament of a countenance that 
 put you in mind of an old white glove. Add a few powdered 
 curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap with upstanding loops of 
 lace, black mittens,, and a decided taste for ombre. But to do 
 full justice to the lady, it must be said that she appeared in 
 low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her 
 ruins had she), wore long gloves, and reddened her cheeks 
 with Martin's classic rouge. An appalling amiability in her 
 wrinkles, a prodigious brightness in the old lady's eyes, a 
 profound dignity in her whole person, together with the triple
 
 266 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 barbed wit of her tongue, and an infallible memory in her 
 head, made of her a real power in the land. The whole 
 Cabinet des Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parch- 
 ment of her brain. She knew all the genealogies of every 
 noble house in Europe princes, dukes, and counts and 
 could put her hand on the last descendants of Charlemagne 
 in the direct line. No usurpation of title could escape the 
 Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry. 
 
 Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious 
 men, and young married women paid her assiduous homage. 
 Her salon set the tone of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The 
 words of this Talleyrand in petticoats were taken as final de- 
 crees. People came to consult her on questions of etiquette 
 or usages, or to take lessons in good taste. And, in truth, no 
 other old woman could put back her snuff-box in her pocket 
 as the princess could ; while there was a precision and a grace 
 about the movements of her skirts, when she sat down or 
 crossed her feet, which drove the finest ladies of the young 
 generation to despair. Her voice had remained in her head 
 during one-third of her lifetime; but she could not prevent a 
 descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a 
 peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and 
 fifty thousand francs of her great fortune, for Napoleon had 
 generously returned her woods to her ; so that personally and 
 in the matter of possessions she was a woman of no little con- 
 sequence. 
 
 This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, 
 was chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary 
 ruin. The vidame* was a big, tall, and spare man, a lord of 
 the old school, and had been a commander of the order of 
 Malta. His neck had always been so tightly compressed by a 
 strangulation stock that his cheeks pouched over it a little, 
 and he held his head high ; to many people this would have 
 
 * A feudal title of those holding the estates of a bishopric on condition 
 of defending them.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 27 
 
 given an air of self-sufficiency, but in the vidame it was justi- 
 fied by a Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed 
 to see everything, and as a matter of fact there was not much 
 that they had not seen. Altogether, his person was a perfect 
 model of aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and 
 agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at 
 will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake. 
 
 The Due de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room 
 with the Dae de Grandlicu. Both were men of fifty-six or 
 thereabout, and still hale ; both were short, corpulent, flourish- 
 ing, somewhat florid-complcxioned men with jaded eyes, and 
 lower lips that had begun to hang already. But for an ex- 
 quisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease 
 of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a 
 superficial observer might have taken them for a couple of 
 bankers. Any such mistake would have been impossible, how- 
 ever, if the listener could have heard them converse, and 
 seen them on their guard with men whom they feared, vapid 
 and commonplace with their equals, slippery with their in- 
 feriors, whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a 
 tactful word or to humiliate with an unexpected phrase. 
 
 Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that 
 determined to perish rather than submit to any change. It 
 was a noblesse that deserved praise and blame in equal mea- 
 sure : a noblesse that will never be judged impartially until 
 some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles obeyed 
 the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu's axe. and 
 how deeply they scorned the guillotine of '89 as a foul 
 revenge. 
 
 Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that 
 agreed peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among 
 themselves, at any rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. 
 None of them betrayed any sign of annoyance over the 
 duchess' escapade, but all of them had learned at Court to 
 hide their feelings.
 
 268 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the 
 opening of the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to 
 remind the reader that Locke, once happening to be in the 
 company of several great lords, renowned no less for their wit 
 than for their breeding and political consistency, wickedly 
 amused himself by taking down their conversation by some 
 shorthand process of his own ; and afterward, when he read 
 it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all 
 burst out laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which 
 circulates among the upper ranks in every country yields 
 mighty little gold to the crucible when washed in the ashes of 
 literature or philosophy. In every rank of society (some few 
 Parisian salons excepted) the curious observer finds folly a 
 constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish. 
 Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and 
 bceotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher 
 regions they must perforce talk more, but to make up for it 
 they think the less. Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the 
 rich like their lives to flow by easily and without effort. It is 
 by comparing the fundamental matter of jests, as you rise in 
 the social scale from the street-boy to the peer of France, 
 that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de 
 Talleyrand's maxim: "The manner is everything;" an 
 elegant rendering of the legal axiom: "The form is of more 
 consequence than the matter." In the eyes of the poet the 
 advantage rests with the lower classes, for they seldom fail to 
 give a certain character of rude poetry to their thoughts. 
 Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility of 
 the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repug- 
 nance felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such 
 pitiful small change. 
 
 The duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred 
 to him, and remarked to his neighbor 
 
 " So you have sold Tornthon ? " 
 
 " No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him,
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 209 
 
 and I should be uncommonly sorry. He is a very good 
 hunter. Do you know how the Duchesse de Marigny is?" 
 
 " No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to 
 call when you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yes- 
 terday she was very ill indeed ; they had given her up, she 
 took the sacrament." 
 
 " Her death will make a change in your cousin's position." 
 
 " Not at all. She gave away her property in her "lifetime, 
 only keeping an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate 
 to her niece, Madame de Soulanges, subject to a yearly 
 charge." 
 
 " It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman. 
 Her family will miss her ; her experience and advice carried 
 weight. Her son Marigny is an amiable man ; he has a sharp 
 wit; he can talk. He is pleasant, very pleasant. Pleasant? 
 oh, that no one can deny, but ill regulated to the last degree. 
 Well, and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is very acute. 
 He was dining at the club the other day with that moneyed 
 Chaussee-d'Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for 
 his game of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and 
 asked if he was a member. ''Yes,' said he, 'I don't go into 
 society now; I am living among the bankers.' You know 
 why?" added the marquis, with a meaning smile. 
 
 "No," said the duke. 
 
 " He is smitten with that little Madame Keller, Gondre- 
 ville's daughter ; she is only lately married, and has a great 
 vogue, they say, in that set." 
 
 "Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, 
 it seems," remarked the vidame. 
 
 " My affection for that little woman has driven me to find 
 a singular pastime," replied the princess, as she returned her 
 snuff-box to her pocket. 
 
 " Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed," said the duke, stop- 
 ping short in his walk. " Nobody but one of Bonaparte's 
 men could ask such an indecorous thins: of a woman of
 
 270 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 fashion. Between ourselves, Antoinette might have made a 
 better choice." 
 
 " The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well con- 
 nected, my dear, ' ' replied the princess ; ' ' they are related to all 
 the noblest houses of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the 
 Arschoot-Rivaudoults should come to an end in Galicia, the 
 Montriveaus would succeed to the Arschoot title and estates. 
 They inherit through their great-grandfather." 
 
 "Are you sure ? " 
 
 " I know it better than this Montriveau's father did. I 
 told him about it, I used to see a good deal of him ; and, 
 chevalier of several orders though he was, he only laughed ; 
 he was an encyclopaedist. But his brother turned the rela- 
 tionship to good account during the emigration. I have heard 
 it said that his northern kinsfolk were most kind in every 
 way " 
 
 "Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St. 
 Petersburg," said the vidame. "I met him there. He was 
 a big man with an incredible passion for oysters." 
 
 "How many did he ever eat?" asked the Due de Grand- 
 lieu. 
 
 "Ten dozen every day." 
 
 "And did they not disagree with him ? " 
 
 " Not the least bit in the world." 
 
 "Why, that is extraordinary! Had he neither the stone 
 nor gout, nor any other complaint, in consequence?" 
 
 " No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through 
 an accident." 
 
 " By accident ! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so 
 probably he required them; for up to a certain point our pre- 
 dominant tastes are conditions of our existence." 
 
 " I am of your opinion," said the princess, with a smile. 
 
 " Madame, you always put a malicious construction on 
 things," returned the murquis. 
 
 "I only want you to understand that these remarks might
 
 THE THIRTEEN. *J71 
 
 leave a wrong impression on a young woman's mind," said 
 she, and interrupted herself to exclaim, "But this niece, this 
 niece of mine ! " 
 
 " Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone 
 to Monsieur de Montriveau," said the Due de Navarreins. 
 
 " Bah ! " returned the princess. 
 
 " What do you think, vidaine ! " asked the marquis. 
 
 "If the duchess were an artless simpleton I should think 
 that " 
 
 "But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless 
 simpleton," retorted the princess. " Really, my poor vidame, 
 you must be getting older." 
 
 "After all, what is to be done? " asked the duke. 
 
 " If my dear niece is wise," said the princess, " she will go 
 to Court this evening fortunately, to-day is Monday, and 
 reception day and you must see that we all rally round her 
 and give the lie to this absurd rumor. There are hundreds of 
 ways of explaining things ; and if the Marquis de Montriveau 
 is a gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We will bring 
 these children to listen to reason ' 
 
 " But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell Monsieur de Montriveau 
 the truth to his face. He is one of Bonaparte's pupils, and 
 he has a position. Why, he is one of the great men of the day ; 
 he is high up in the Guards, and very useful there. He has 
 not a spark of ambition. He is just the man to say : ' Here is 
 my commission, leave me in peace,' if the King should say a 
 word that he did not like." 
 
 "Then, pray, what are his opinions?" 
 
 " Very unsound." 
 
 "Really." sighed the princess, "the King is, as he always 
 has been, a Jacobin under the lilies of France." 
 
 " Oh ! not quite so bad," said the vidame. 
 
 "Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that 
 pointed out the Court to his wife on the occasion of her fir.-t 
 State dinner in public with; 'These are our peonlf.' ronM
 
 272 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 only be a black-hearted scoundrel. I can see monsieur ex- 
 actly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother who 
 voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assem- 
 bly was sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to 
 argue and talk. This philosophical cant will be just as danger- 
 ous now for the younger brother as it used to be for the elder ; 
 this fat man with the little mind is amusing himself by creating 
 difficulties, and how his successor is to get out of them I do 
 not know ; he holds his younger brother in abhorrence ; he 
 would be glad to think as he lay dying : ' He will not reign 
 very long ' ' 
 
 "Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honor to be in his 
 service " 
 
 " But does your post take away your right of free speech, 
 my dear ? You come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. 
 If the Guises had shown a little more resolution, his majesty 
 would be a nobody at this day. It is time I went out of this 
 world, the noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all over with you, my 
 children," she continued, looking as she spoke at the vidame. 
 " What has my niece done that the whole town should be 
 talking about her? She is in the wrong; I disapprove of her 
 conduct, a useless scandal is a blunder ; that is why I still 
 have my doubts about this want of regard for appearances ; I 
 brought her up, and I know that 
 
 Just at that moment the duchess came out of her boudoir. 
 She had recognized her aunt's voice and heard the name of 
 Montriveau. She was still in her loose morning-wrapper; and 
 even as she came in, M. de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out 
 of the window, saw his niece's carriage driving back along 
 the street. The duke took his daughter's face in both hands 
 and kissed her on the forehead. " So, dear girl," he said, 
 "you do not know what is going on?" 
 
 "Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?" 
 
 "Why, all Paris believes that you are with Monsieur de 
 Montriveau."
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 273 
 
 " My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were 
 you not? " said the princess, holding out a hand, which the 
 duchess kissed with affectionate respect. 
 
 "Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And," 
 she added, as she turned to greet the vidame and the marquis, 
 " I wished that all Paris should think that I was with Mon- 
 sieur de Montriveau." 
 
 The duke flung up his hands, struck them together in de- 
 spair, and folded his arms. 
 
 " Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak ? " 
 he asked at last. 
 
 But the aged princess had suddenly risen and stood looking 
 steadily at the duchess ; the younger woman flushed and her 
 eyes fell. Mme. de Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said : 
 " My little angel, let me kiss you ! " 
 
 She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, 
 and continued smiling, while she held her hand in a tight 
 clasp. 
 
 "We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have 
 compromised your husband and your position. Still, we will 
 arrange to make everything right." 
 
 "But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It 
 is my wish that all Paris should say that I was with Monsieur 
 de Montriveau this morning. If you destroy that belief, how- 
 ever ill-grounded it may be, you will do me a singular dis- 
 service." 
 
 "Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve 
 your family?" 
 
 " My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to 
 irreparable misfortune when they sacrificed me to family con- 
 siderations. You may, perhaps, blame me for seeking alle- 
 viations, but you will certainly feel for me." 
 
 "After all the endless pains you take to settle your daugh- 
 ters suitably!" muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the 
 vidame. 
 18
 
 274 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 The princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. 
 " My dear little girl," she said, "be happy, if you can. We 
 are not talking of troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it 
 with social usages. We all of us here assembled know that 
 marriage is a defective institution tempered by love. But 
 when you take a lover, is there any need to make your bed in 
 the Place du Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable, 
 and hear what we have to say." 
 
 " I am listening." 
 
 " Madame la Duchesse," began the Due de Grandlieu, " if 
 it were any part of an uncle's duty to look after his nieces, he 
 ought to have a position ; society would owe him honors and 
 rewards and a salary, exactly as if he were in the King's ser- 
 vice. So I am not here to talk about my nephew, but of your 
 own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in 
 making a scandal I have seen the animal before, and I own 
 that I have no great liking for him Langeais is stingy enough, 
 and he does not care a rap for any one but himself; he will 
 have a separation ; he will stick to your money, and leave 
 you poor, and consequently you will be a nobody. The in- 
 come of a hundred thousand francs that you have just in- 
 herited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his 
 mistresses' amusements. You will be bound and gagged by 
 the law ; you will have to say Amen to all these arrangements. 
 
 Suppose Monsieur de Montriveau leaves you dear me ! 
 
 do not let us put ourselv.es in a passion, my dear niece ; a 
 man does not leave a woman while she is young and pretty ; 
 still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate, 
 even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, 
 an all but impossible supposition I quite wish to believe 
 Well, suppose that he goes, what will become of you without 
 a husband ? Keep well with your husband as you tnke care 
 of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's paraclete, 
 and a husband also stands between you and worse. I am sup- 
 posing that you are happy and loved to the end, and T am
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 275 
 
 leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the 
 reckoning. This being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you 
 may have children. What are they to be? Montriveaus? 
 Very well ; they certainly will not succeed to their father's 
 whole fortune. You will want to give them all that you have ; 
 he will wish to do the same. Nothing more natural, dear me ! 
 And you will find the law against you. How many times 
 have we seen heirs-at-law bringing a lawsuit to recover the 
 property from illegitimate children ? Every court of law rings 
 with such actions all over the world. You will create a fidei 
 commissum perhaps ; and if the trustee betrays your confidence, 
 your children have no remedy against him ; and they are 
 ruined. So choose carefully. You see the perplexities of the 
 position. In every possible way your children will be sacri- 
 ficed of necessity to the fancies of your heart ; they will have 
 no recognized status. While they are little they will be 
 charming ; but, Lord ! some day they will reproach you for 
 thinking of no one but your two selves. We old gentlemen 
 know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and men 
 are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not 
 hear young de Horn say, after supper : ' If my mother had 
 been an honest woman, I should be prince-regnant ! ' ' IF?' 
 We have spent our lives in hearing plebeians say if. ^"brought 
 about the Revolution. When a man cannot lay the blame on 
 his father or mother, he holds God responsible for his hard 
 lot. In short, dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I 
 will say all I have to say in a few words, on which you had 
 better meditate : A woman ought never to put her husband in 
 the right." 
 
 " Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate ; 
 I looked at interests then, as you do ; now, I can only feel." 
 
 " But, my dear little girl," remonstrated the vidame, "life 
 is simply a complication of interests and feelings ; to be happy, 
 more particularly in your position, one must try to reconcile 
 one's feelings with one's interests. A grisette may love ac-
 
 276 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 cording to her fancy, that is intelligible enough, but you have 
 a pretty fortune, a family, a name and a place at Court, and 
 you ought not to fling them out of the window. And what 
 have we been asking you to do to keep them all ? To ma- 
 noeuvre carefully instead of falling foul of social conventions. 
 Lord ! I shall very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot 
 recollect, under any regime, a love worth the price that you 
 are willing to pay for the love of this lucky young man." 
 
 The duchess silenced the vidame with a look ; if Montriveau 
 could have seen that glance, he would have forgiven all. 
 
 " It would be very effective on the stage," remarked the 
 Due de Grandlieu, " but it all amounts to nothing when your 
 jointure and position and independence are concerned. You 
 are not grateful, my dear niece. You will not find many 
 families where the relatives have courage enough to teach the 
 wisdom gained by experience, and to make rash young heads 
 listen to reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if 
 it pleases you to damn yourself; well and good ; but reflect 
 well beforehand when it comes to renouncing your income. 
 I know of no confessor who remits the pains of poverty. I 
 have a right, I think, to speak in this way to you ; for if you 
 are ruined, I am the one person who can offer you a refuge. 
 I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have the right 
 to put him in the wrong." 
 
 The Due de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflec- 
 tions. 
 
 " Since you speak of feeling, my child," he said. " let me 
 remind you that a woman who bears your name ought to be 
 moved by sentiments which do not touch ordinary people. 
 Can you wish to give an advantage to the Liberals, to those 
 Jesuits of Robespierre's that are doing all they can to vilify the 
 noblesse ? Some things a Navarreins cannot do without fail- 
 ing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your 
 dishonor 
 
 " Come, come ! " said the princess. " Dishonor? Do not
 
 TJfE THIRTEEN. 277 
 
 make such a fuss about the journey of an empty carriage, chil- 
 dren, and leave me alone with Antoinette. All three of you 
 come and dine with me. I will undertake to properly arrange 
 matters. You men understand nothing ; you are beginning 
 to talk sourly already, and I have no wish to see a quarrel 
 between you and my dear child. Do me the pleasure of 
 going." 
 
 The three gentlemen probably guessed the princess' inten- 
 tions ; they took their leave. M. de Navarreins kissed his 
 daughter on the forehead with : " Come, be good, dear child. 
 It is not too late yet if you choose." 
 
 " Couldn't we find some good fellow in the family to pick 
 a quarrel with this Montriveau ? " said the vidame, as they 
 went downstairs. , 
 
 When the two women were alone, the princess beckoned 
 her niece to a little low chair by her side. 
 
 " My pearl," said she, " in this world below, I know noth- 
 ing worse calumniated than God and the Eighteenth Century ; 
 for as I look back over my own young days, I do not recollect 
 that a single duchess trampled the proprieties under foot as 
 you have just done. Novelists and scribblers brought the 
 reign of Louis XV. into disrepute. Do not believe them. 
 The du Barry, my dear, was quite as good as the Widow 
 Scarron, and the more agreeable woman of the two. In my 
 time a woman could keep her dignity among her gallantries. 
 Indiscretion was the ruin of us, and the beginning of all the 
 mischief. The philosophists the nobodies whom we admitted 
 into our salons had no more gratitude or sense of decency 
 than to make an inventory of our hearts, to traduce us one 
 and all, and to rail against the age by way of a return for our 
 kindness. The people are not in a position to judge of any- 
 thing whatsoever ; they looked at the facts, not at the form. 
 But the men and women of those times, my heart, were quite 
 as remarkable as at any other period of the Monarchy. Not 
 gne of your Werthers, none of your notabilities, as they are
 
 L>78 THE T/TIA-TEEN. 
 
 called, never a one of your men in yellow kid gloves and 
 trousers that disguise the poverty of their legs, would cross 
 Europe in the dress of a traveling hawker to brave the dag- 
 gers of a Duke of Modena, and to shut himself up in the 
 dressing-room of the Regent's daughter at the risk of his life. 
 Not one of your little consumptive patients with their tortoise- 
 shell eyeglasses would hide himself in a closet for six weeks, 
 like Lauzun, to keep up his mistress' courage while she was 
 lying-in of her child. There was more passion in Monsieur 
 de Jaucourt's little finger than in your whole race of higglers 
 that leave a woman to better themselves elsewhere ! Just tell 
 me where to find the page that would be cut in pieces and 
 buried under the floor boards for one kiss on the Konigs- 
 mark's gloved finger. 
 
 " Really, it would seem to-day that the roles are exchanged, 
 and women are expected to show their devotion for men. 
 These modern gentlemen are worth less, yet think more of 
 themselves. Believe me, my dear, all these adventures that 
 have been made public, and now are turned against our good 
 Louis XV., were kept quite secret at first. If it had not been 
 for a pack of poetasters, scribblers, and moralists, who hung 
 about our waiting-women, and penned their slanders, our 
 epoch would have appeared in literature as a well-conducted 
 age. I am justifying the century and not its fringe. Perhaps 
 a hundred women of quality were lost ; but for every one, the 
 rogues set down ten, like the gazettes after a battle when they 
 count up the losses of the beaten side. And in any case I do 
 not know that the Revolution and the Empire can reproach 
 us ; they were coarse, dull, licentious times. Faugh ! it is re- 
 volting. 
 
 "Those are the brothels of French history. 
 
 "This preamble, my dear child," she continued after a 
 pause, " brings me to the thing that I have to say. If you 
 care for Montriveau, you are quite at liberty to love him at 
 v our case, and as much as you can. I know by experience
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 279 
 
 that, unless you arc locked up (but locking people up is out 
 of fashion now), you will do as you please ; I should have 
 done the same at your age. Only, sweet heart, I should not 
 have given up my right to be the mother of future Dues de 
 Langeais. So mind appearances. The vidame is right. No 
 man is worth a single one of the sacrifices which we are foolish 
 enough to make for their love. Put yourself in such a posi- 
 tion that you may 'still be Monsieur de Langeais' wife, in case 
 you should have the misfortune to repent. When you are an 
 old woman, you will be very glad to hear mass said at Court, 
 and not in some provincial convent. Therein lies the whole 
 question. A single imprudence means an allowance and a 
 wandering life ; it means that you are at the mercy of your 
 lover ; it means that you must put up with insolence from 
 women that are not so honest, precisely because they have 
 been very vulgarly sharp-witted. It would be a hundred 
 times better to go to Montriveau's at night in a cab, and dis- 
 guised, instead of sending your carriage in broad daylight. 
 You are a little simpleton, my dear child ! Your carriage 
 flattered his vanity; your person would have ensnared his 
 heart. All this that I have said is just and true ; but, for my 
 own part, I do not blame you. You are two centuries behind 
 the times with your false ideas of greatness. There, leave us 
 to arrange your affairs, and say that Montriveau made your 
 servants drunk to gratify his vanity and to compromise 
 you " 
 
 The duchess rose to her feet with a spring. " In heaven's 
 name, aunt, do not slander him ! " 
 
 The old princess' eyes flashed. 
 
 " My dear child," she said, " I should have liked to spare 
 such of your illusions as were not fatal. But there must be an 
 end of all illusions now. You would soften me if I were not 
 so old. Come, now, do not vex him, or us, or any one else. 
 I will undertake to sat isfjl everybody; but promise me not to 
 permit yourself a single step henceforth until you have con-
 
 280 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 suited me. Tell me all, and perhaps I may bring it all right 
 again. ' ' 
 
 "Aunt, I promise " 
 
 "To tell me everything?" 
 
 "Yes, everything. Everything that can be told." 
 
 "But, my sweet heart, it is precisely what cannot be told 
 that I want to know. Let us understand each other thoroughly. 
 Come, let me put my withered old lips on your beautiful fore- 
 head. No ; let me do as I wish. I forbid you to kiss my 
 bones. Old people have a courtesy of their own. There, 
 take me down to my carriage," she added, when she had 
 kissed her niece. 
 
 " Then may I go to him in disguise, dear aunt ? " 
 
 "Why yes. The story can always be denied," said the 
 old princess. 
 
 This was the one idea which the duchess had clearly grasped 
 in the sermon. When Mme. de Chauvry was seated in the 
 corner of her carriage, Mme. de Langeais bade her a graceful 
 adieu and went up to her room. She was quite happy again. 
 
 " My person would have snared his heart ; my aunt is right ; 
 a man cannot surely refuse a pretty woman when she under- 
 stands how to offer herself." 
 
 That evening, at the Elysee-Bourbon, the Due de Navar- 
 reins, M. de Pamiers, M. de Marsay, M. de Grandlieu, and 
 the Due de Maufrigneuse triumphantly refuted the scandals 
 that were circulating with regard to the Duchess de Langeais. 
 So many officers and other persons had seen Montriveau walk- 
 ing in the Tuileries that morning, that the silly story was set 
 down to chance, which takes all that is offered. And so, in 
 spite of the fact that the duchess' carriage had waited before 
 Montriveau's door, her character became as clear and as spot- 
 less as Mambrino's sword after Sancho had polished it up. 
 
 But, at two o'clock, M. de Ronquerolles passed Montriveau 
 in a deserted alley, and said with a smile : " She is coming on, 
 is your duchess. Go on, keep it up ! " he added, and gave a
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 281 
 
 significant cut of the riding-whip to his mare, who sped off like 
 a bullet down the avenue. 
 
 Two days after the fruitless scandal, Mme. de Langeais 
 wrote to M. de Montriveau. That letter, like the preceding 
 ones, remained unanswered. This time she took her own 
 measures, and bribed M. de Montriveau's man, Auguste. And 
 so at eight o'clock that evening she was introduced into Ar- 
 mand's apartment. It was not the room in which that secret 
 scene had passed ; it was entirely different. The duchess was 
 told that the general would not be at home that night. Had 
 he two houses? The man would give no answer. Mme. de 
 Langeais had bought the key of the room, but not the man's 
 whole loyalty. 
 
 When she was left alone she saw her fourteen letters lying on 
 an old-fashioned stand, all of them uncreased and unopened. 
 He had not read them. She sank into an easy-chair, and for 
 a while she lost consciousness. When she came to herself, 
 Auguste was holding toilet vinegar for her to inhale. 
 
 "A carriage; quick!" she ordered. 
 
 The carriage came. She hastened downstairs with con- 
 vulsive speed, returned home, and left orders that no one was 
 to be admitted. For twenty-four hours she lay in bed, and 
 would have no one near her but her woman, who brought her 
 a cup of orange-flower water from time to time. Suzette 
 heard her mistress moan once or twice, and caught a glimpse 
 of tears in the brilliant eyes, now circled with dark shadows. 
 
 The next day, amid despairing tears, Mme. de Langeais 
 took her resolution. Her man of business came for an inter- 
 view, and no doubt received instructions of some kind. After- 
 ward she sent for the Vidame de Pamiers ; and while she 
 waited, she wrote a letter to M. de Montriveau. The vidame 
 punctually came toward two o'clock that afternoon, to find his 
 young cousin looking white and worn, but resigned ; never 
 had her divine loveliness been more poetic than now in the 
 languor of her a?ony.
 
 212 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 " You owe this assignation to your eighty-four years, dear 
 cousin," she said. "Ah ! do not smile, I beg of you, when 
 an unhappy woman has reached the lowest depths of wretched- 
 ness. You are a gentleman, and after the adventures of your 
 youth you must feel some indulgence for women." 
 
 " None whatever," said he. 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 " Everything is in their favor." 
 
 "Ah! Well, you arc one of the inner family circle; 
 possibly you will be the last relative, the last friend, whose 
 hand I shall press, so I can ask your good offices. Will you, 
 dear vidame, do me a service which I could not ask of my 
 own father, nor of my Uncle Grandlieu, nor of any woman ? 
 You cannot fail to understand. I beg of you to do my bid- 
 ding, and then to forget what you have done, whatever may 
 come of it. It is this : Will you take this letter and go to 
 Monsieur de Montriveau? will you see him yourself, give it 
 into his hands, and ask him, as you men can ask things between 
 yourselves for you have a code of honor between man and 
 man which you do not use with us, and a different way of 
 regarding things between yourselves ask him if he will read 
 this letter? Not in your presence. Certain feelings men 
 hide from each other. I give you authority to say, if you 
 think it necessary to bring him, that it is a question of life or 
 death for me. If he deigns " 
 
 " Deigns ! " repeated the vidame, 
 
 " If he deigns to read it," the duchess continued with 
 dignity, " say one thing more. You will go to see him about 
 five o'clock, for I know that he will dine at home to-day at 
 that time. Very good. By way of answer he must come to 
 see me. If, three hours afterward, by eight o'clock, he docs 
 not leave his house, all will be over. The Duchesse de Lan- 
 geais will have vanished from the world. I shall not be dead, 
 dear friend, no, but no human power will ever find me again 
 on this earth. Come and dine with me; I shall at least have
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 2&3 
 
 one friend with me in the last agony. Yes, dear cousin, to- 
 night will decide my fate; and whatever happens to me, I 
 pass through an ordeal by fire. There ! not a word. I will 
 
 hear nothing of the nature of comment or advice Let us 
 
 chat and laugh together," she added, holding out a hand, 
 which he kissed. " We will be like two gray-headed philoso- 
 phers who have learned to enjoy life to the last moment. I 
 will look my best; I will be very enchanting for you. You 
 perhaps will be the last man to set eyes on the Duchesse de 
 Langeais." 
 
 The vicomte bowed, took the letter, and went without a 
 word. At five o'clock he returned. His cousin had studied 
 to please him, and she looked lovely indeed. The room was 
 gay with flowers as if for a festivity ; the dinner was exquisite. 
 For the gray-headed vidame the duchess displayed all the 
 brilliancy of her wit ; she was more charming than she had 
 ever been before. At first the vidame tried to look on ail 
 these preparations as a young woman's jest ; but now and again 
 the attempted illusion faded, the spell of his fair cousin's 
 charm was broken. He detected a shudder caused by some 
 kind of sudden dread, and once she seemed to listen during a 
 pause. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " he asked. 
 
 "Hush! " she said. 
 
 At seven o'clock the duchess left him for a few minutes. 
 When she came back again she was dressed as her maid might 
 have dressed for a journey. She asked her guest to be her 
 escort, took his arm, sprang into a hackney-coach, and by a 
 quarter to eight they stood outside M. de Montriveau's door. 
 
 Armand meantime had been reading the following letter : 
 
 "MY FRIEND: I went to your rooms fora few minutes 
 without your knowledge ; I found my letters there, and took 
 them away. This cannot be indifference, Armand, between 
 us; and hatred would show itself quite differently. If you
 
 284 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 love me, make an end of this cruel play, or you will kill me, 
 and afterward, learning how much you were loved, you might 
 be in despair. If I have not rightly understood you, if you 
 have no feeling toward me but aversion which implies both 
 contempt and disgust, then I give up all hope. A man never 
 recovers from those feelings. You will have no regrets. 
 Dreadful though that thought may be, it will comfort me in 
 my long sorrow. Regrets ? Oh ! my Armand, may I never 
 know of them; if I thought I had caused you but a single 
 
 regret But, no, I will not tell you what desolation I 
 
 should feel. I should be living still, and I could not be your 
 wife ; it would be too late ! 
 
 " Now that I have given myself wholly to you in thought, 
 to whom else should I give myself? to God. The eyes that 
 you loved for a little while shall never look on another man's 
 face; and may the glory of God blind them to all beside. I 
 shall never hear human voices more since I heard yours so 
 gentle at the first, so terrible yesterday; for it seems to me 
 that I am still only on the morrow of your vengeance. And 
 now may the will of God consume me. Between His wrath 
 and yours, my friend, there will be nothing left for me but 
 a little space for tears and prayers. 
 
 "Perhaps you wonder why I write you? Ah! do not 
 think ill of me if I keep a gleam of hope, and give one last 
 sigh to happy life before I take leave of it forever. I am in a 
 hideous position. I feel all the inward serenity that comes 
 when a great resolution has been taken, even while I hear the 
 last growlings of the storm. When you went out on that ter- 
 rible adventure which so drew me to you, Armand, you went 
 from the desert to the oasis with a good guide to show you the 
 way. Well, I am going out of the oasis into the desert, and 
 you are a pitiless guide to me. And yet you only, my friend, 
 can understand how melancholy it is to look back for the last 
 time on happiness to you, and you only, I can make moan 
 without a blush. If you grant my entreaty, I shall be happy j
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 285 
 
 if you are inexorable, I shall expiate the wrong that I have 
 done. After all, it is natural, is it not, that a woman should 
 wish to live, invested with all noble feelings, in her friend's 
 memory? Oh ! my love and only love, let her to whom you 
 gave life go down into the tomb in the belief that she is great 
 in your eyes. Your harshness led me to reflect ; and now that 
 I love you so, it seems to me that I am less guilty than you 
 think. Listen to my justification, I owe it to you; and you, 
 that are all the world to me, owe me at least a moment's 
 justice. 
 
 "I have learned by my own anguish all that I made you 
 suffer by my coquetry ; but in those days I was utterly igno- 
 rant of love. You, knowing what the torture is, you mete it 
 out to me ! During those first eight months that you gave me 
 you never roused any feeling of love in me. Do you ask why 
 this was so, my friend ? I can no more explain it than I can 
 tell you why I love you now. Oh ! certainly it flattered my 
 vanity that I should be the subject of your passionate talk, and 
 receive those burning glances of yours ; but you left me cold. 
 No, I was not a woman ; I had no conception of womanly de- 
 votion and happiness. Who was to blame? You would have 
 despised me, would you not, if I had given myself without the 
 impulse of passion ? Perhaps it is the highest height to which 
 we can rise to give all and receive no joy ; perhaps there is 
 no merit in yielding one's self to bliss that is foreseen and 
 ardently desired. Alas, my friend, I can say this now ; these 
 thoughts came to me when I played with you ; and you seemed 
 to me so great even then that I would not have you owe the 
 gift to pity What is this that I have written ? 
 
 " I have taken back all my letters ; I am flinging them one 
 by one on the fire : they are burning. You will never know 
 what they confessed all the love and the passion and the mad- 
 ness 
 
 " I will say no more. Armand ; I will stop. I will not say 
 another word of my feelings. Tf my prayers have not echoed
 
 286 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 from my soul through yours, I also, woman that I am, decline 
 to owe your love to your pity. It is my wish to be loved, be- 
 cause you cannot choose but love me, or else to be left without 
 mercy. If you refuse to read this letter, it shall be burnt. If, 
 after you have read it, you do not come to me within three 
 hours, to be henceforth for ever my husband, the one man in 
 the world for me ; then I shall never blush to know that this 
 letter is in your hands, the pride of my despair will protect my 
 memory from all insult, and my end shall be worthy of my 
 love. When you see me no more on earth, albeit I shall still 
 be alive, you yourself will not think without a shudder of the 
 woman who, in three hours' time, will live only to overwhelm 
 you with her tenderness ; a woman consumed by a hopeless 
 love, and faithful not to memories of past joys but to a love 
 that was slighted. 
 
 "The Duchesse de la Valliere wept for lost happiness and 
 vanished power ; but the Duchesse de Langeais will be happy 
 that she may weep and be a power for you still. Yes, you will 
 regret me. I see clearly that I was not of this world, and I 
 thank you for making it clear to me. 
 
 "Farewell; you will never touch my axe. Yours was the 
 executioner's axe, mine is God's ; yours kills, mine saves. 
 Your love was but mortal, it could not endure disdain or ridi- 
 cule ; mine can endure all tilings without growing weaker, 
 it will last eternally. Ah ! I feel a sombre joy in crushing 
 you that believe yourself so great ; in humbling you with the 
 calm, indulgent smile of one of the least among the angels 
 that lie at the feet of God, for to them is given the right and 
 the power to protect and watch over men in His name. You 
 have but felt fleeting desires, while the poor nun will shed the 
 light of her ceaseless and ardent prayer about you, she will 
 shelter you all your life lonp; beneath the wings of a love that 
 has nothing of earth in it. 
 
 " I have a presentiment of your answer ; our trysting-place 
 will be in heaven. Strength and weakness can both enter
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 287 
 
 there, dear Armand ; the strong and the weak are bound to 
 suffer. This thought soothes the anguish of my final ordeal. 
 So calm am I that I should fear that I had ceased to love you 
 if I were not about to leave the world for your sake. 
 
 "ANTOINETTE." 
 
 "Dear vidame," said the duchess as they reached Montri- 
 veau's house, " do me the kindness to ask at the door whether 
 he is at home." 
 
 The vidame, obedient after the manner of the eighteenth 
 century to a woman's wish, got out, and came back to bring 
 his cousin an affirmative answer that sent a shudder through 
 her. She grasped his hand tightly in hers, suffered him to 
 kiss her on either cheek, and begged him to go at once. He 
 must not watch her movements nor try to protect her. 
 
 "But the people passing in the street," he objected. 
 
 "No one can fail in respect to me," she said. It was 
 the last word spoken by the duchess and the woman of 
 fashion. 
 
 The vidame went. Mme. de Langeais wrapped herself 
 about in her cloak, and stood on the doorstep until the 
 clocks struck eight. The last stroke died away. The un- 
 happy woman waited ten, fifteen minutes; to the last she tried 
 to see a fresh humiliation in the delay, then her faith ebbed. 
 She turned to leave the fatal threshold. 
 
 "Oh, God ! " the cry broke from her in spite of herself; 
 it was the first word spoken by the Carmelite. 
 
 Montriveau and some of his friends were talking together. 
 He tried to hasten them to a conclusion, but his clock was 
 slow, and by the time he started out for the Hotel de Langeais 
 the duchess was hurrying on foot through the streets of Paris, 
 goaded by the dull rage in her heart. She reached the Boule- 
 vard d'Enfer, and looked out for the last time through falling 
 tears on the noisy, smoky city that lay below in a red mist.
 
 288 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 lighted up by its own lamps. Then she hailed a coach, and 
 drove away, never to return. 
 
 When the Marquis de Montriveau reached the Hotel de 
 Langeais, and found no trace of his mistress, he thought that 
 he had been duped. He hurried away at once to the vidame, 
 and found that worthy gentleman in the act of slipping on 
 his flowered dressing-gown, thinking the while of his fair 
 cousin's happiness. Montriveau gave him one of the terrific 
 glances that produced the effect of an electric shock on men 
 and women alike. 
 
 " Is it possible that you have lent yourself to some cruel 
 hoax, monsieur? " Montriveau exclaimed. " I have just come 
 from Madame de Langeais' house ; the servants say that she is 
 out." 
 
 "Then a great misfortune has happened, no doubt," re- 
 turned the vidame, "and through your fault. I left the 
 duchess at your door " 
 
 "When?" 
 
 "At a quarter to eight." 
 
 "Good-evening," returned Montriveau, and he hurried 
 home to ask the porter whether he had seen a lady standing 
 on the door-step that evening. 
 
 "Yes, my lord marquis, a handsome woman, who seemed 
 very much put out. She was crying like a Magdalen, but she 
 never made a sound, and stood as upright as a post. Then at 
 last she went, and my wife and I that were watching her, 
 while she could not see us, heard her say, ' Oh, God ! ' so 
 that it went to our hearts, asking your pardon, to hear her 
 say it." 
 
 Montriveau, in spite of all his firmness, turned pale at those 
 few words. He wrote a few lines to Ronquerolles, sent off 
 the message at once, and went up to his rooms. Ronquerolles 
 came just about midnight. 
 
 Armand gave him the duchess" letter to read. 
 
 "Well?" asked Ronquerolles.
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 289 
 
 " She was here at rny door at eight o'clock ; at a quarter- 
 past eight she had gone. I have lost her, and I love her. 
 Oh ! if my life were altogether my own, I could blow my 
 brains out." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! Keep cool," said Ronquerolles. " Duch- 
 esses do not fly off like wagtails. She cannot travel faster 
 than three leagues an hour, and to-morrow we will ride six. 
 Confound it ! Madame de Langeais is no ordinary woman," 
 he continued. " To-morrow we will all of us mount and 
 ride. The police will put us on her track during the day. 
 She must have a carriage ; angels of that sort have no wings. 
 We shall find her whether she is on the road or hidden in 
 Paris. There is the semaphore. We can stop her. You shall 
 be happy. But, my dear fellow, you have made a blunder, of 
 which men of your energy are very often guilty. They judge 
 others by themselves, and do not know the point when human 
 nature gives way if you strain the cords too tightly. Why 
 did you not say a word to me sooner ? I would have told 
 you to be punctual. Adieu till to-morrow," he added, as 
 Montriveau said nothing. " Sleep if you can," he added, 
 with a grasp of the hand. 
 
 But the greatest resources which society has ever placed at 
 the disposal of statesmen, kings, ministers, bankers, or any 
 human power, in fact, were all exhausted in vain. Neither 
 Montriveau nor his friends could find any trace of the duchess. 
 It was clear that she had entered a convent. Montriveau 
 determined to search, or to institute a search, for her through 
 every convent in the world. He must have her, even at the 
 cost of all the lives in a town. And in justice to this extra- 
 ordinary man, it must be said that his frenzied passion awoke 
 to the same ardor daily and lasted through five years. Only 
 in 1829 did the Due de Navarreins hear by chance that his 
 daughter had traveled to Spain as Lady Julia Hopwood's maid, 
 that she had left her service at Cadiz, and that Lady Julia never 
 discovered that Mile. Caroline was the illustrious duchess 
 19
 
 290 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 whose sudden disappearance wagged the tongues of the highest 
 society of Paris. 
 
 The feelings of the two lovers when they met again on 
 either side of the grating in the Carmelite convent should now 
 be comprehended to the full, and the violence of the passion 
 awakened in either soul will doubtless explain the catastrophe 
 of the story. 
 
 In 1823 the Due de Langeais was dead, and his wife was 
 free. Antoinette de Navarreins was living, consumed by love, 
 on a ledge of rock in the Mediterranean ; but it was in the 
 pope's power to dissolve Sister Theresa's vows. The happi- 
 ness bought by so much love might yet bloom for the two 
 lovers. These thoughts sent Montriveau flying from Cadiz to 
 Marseilles, and from Marseilles to Paris. 
 
 A few months after his return to France, a merchant brig, 
 fitted out and munitioned for active service, set sail from the 
 port of Marseilles for Spain. The vessel had been chartered 
 by several distinguished men, most of them Frenchmen, who, 
 smitten with a romantic passion for the East, wished to make 
 a journey to those lands. Montriveau's familiar knowledge 
 of Eastern customs made him an invaluable traveling com- 
 panion, and at the entreaty of the rest he had joined the 
 expedition ; the Minister of War appointed him lieutenant- 
 general, and put him on the Artillery Commission to facilitate 
 his departure. 
 
 Twenty-four hours later the brig lay to off the northwest 
 shore of an island within sight of the Spanish coast. She had 
 been specially chosen for her shallow keel and light mastage, 
 so that she might lie at anchor in safety half a league away 
 from the reefs that secure the island from approach in this 
 direction. If fishing vessels or the people on the island caught 
 sight of the brig, they were scarcely likely to feel suspicious of 
 her at once ; and beside, it was easy to give a reason for her 
 presence without delay, Montriveau hoisted the flag of the
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 291 
 
 United States before they came in sight of the island, and the 
 crew of the vessel were all American sailors, who spoke noth- 
 ing but English. One of M. de Montriveau's companions 
 took the men ashore in the ship's long boat, and made them 
 so drunk at an inn in the little town that they could not talk. 
 Then he gave out that the brig was manned by treasure- 
 seekers, a gang of men whose hobby was well known in the 
 United States ; indeed, some Spanish writer had written a 
 history of them. The presence of the brig among the reefs 
 was now sufficiently explained. The owners of the vessel, 
 according to the self-styled boatswain's mate, were looking 
 for the wreck of a galleon which foundered thereabout in 
 1778 with a cargo of treasure from Mexico. The people at 
 the inn and the authorities asked no more questions. 
 
 Armand and the devoted friends who were helping him in 
 his difficult enterprise were all from the first of the opinion 
 that there was no hope of rescuing or carrying off Sister 
 Theresa by force or stratagem from the side of the little town. 
 Wherefore these bold spirits, with one accord, determined to 
 take the bull by the horns. They would make a way to the 
 convent at the most seemingly inaccessible point ; like General 
 Lamarque, at the storming of Capri, they would conquer 
 Nature. The cliff at the end of the island, a sheer block of 
 granite, afforded even less hold than the rock of Capri. So 
 it seemed at least to Montriveau, who had taken part in that 
 incredible exploit, while the nuns in his eyes were much more 
 redoubtable than Sir Hudson Lowe. To raise a hubbub over 
 carrying off the duchess would cover them with confusion. 
 They might as well set siege to the town and convent, like 
 pirates, and leave not a single soul to tell of their victory. 
 So for them their expedition wore but two aspects. There 
 should be a conflagration and a feat of arms that should dis- 
 may all Europe, while the motives of the crime remained un- 
 known ; or, on the other hand, a mysterious, aerial descent 
 which should persuade the nuns that the devil himself had
 
 292 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 paid them a visit. They had decided upon the latter course 
 in the secret council held before they left Paris, and subse- 
 quently everything had been done to insure the success of an 
 expedition which promised some real excitement to jaded 
 spirits weary of Paris and its pleasures. 
 
 An extremely light pirogue, made at Marseilles on a Ma- 
 layan model, enabled them to cross the reef, until the rocks 
 rose from out the water. Then two cables of iron-wire were 
 fastened several feet apart between one rock and another. 
 These wire-ropes slanted upward and downward in opposite 
 directions, so that baskets of iron-wire could travel to and fro 
 along them ; and in this manner the rocks were covered with 
 a system of baskets and wire-cables, not unlike the filaments 
 which a certain species of spider weaves about a tree. The 
 Chinese, an essentially imitative people, were the first to take 
 a lesson from the work of instinct. Fragile as these bridges 
 were, they were always ready for use; high waves and the 
 caprices of the sea could not throw them out of working 
 order; the ropes hung just sufficiently slack, so as to present 
 to the breakers that particular curve discovered by Cachin, 
 the immortal creator of the harbor at Cherbourg. Against 
 this cunningly devised line the angry surge is powerless ; the 
 law of that curve was a secret wrested from Nature by that 
 faculty of observation in which nearly all human genius 
 consists. 
 
 M. cle Montriveau's companions were alone on board the 
 vessel, and out of sight of every human eye. No one from 
 the deck of a passing vessel could have discovered either the 
 brig hidden among the reefs, or the men at work among the 
 rocks ; they lay below the ordinary range of the most power- 
 ful telescope. Eleven days were spent in preparation before 
 the Thirteen, with all their infernal power, could reach the foot 
 of the cliffs. The body of the rock rose up straight from the 
 sea to a height of one hundred and eighty feet. Any attempt 
 to rlinib the sheer wall of granite seemed impossible ; a mouse
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 293 
 
 might as well try to creep up the slippery sides of a plain 
 china vase. Still there was a cleft, a straight line of fissure so 
 fortunately placed that large blocks of wood could be wedged 
 firmly into it at a distance of about a foot apart. Into these 
 blocks the daring workers drove iron clamps, specially made 
 lor the purpose, with a broad iron bracket at the outer end, 
 through which a hole had been drilled. Each bracket carried 
 a light pine board which corresponded with a notch made in 
 a pole that reached to the top of the cliffs, and was firmly 
 planted in the beach at their feet. With ingenuity worthy of 
 these men who found nothing impossible, one of their number, 
 a skilled mathematician, had calculated the angle from which 
 the steps must start ; so that from the middle they rose gradu- 
 ally, like the sticks of a fan, to the top of the cliff, and de- 
 scended in the same fashion to its base. That miraculously 
 light, yet perfectly firm, staircase cost them twenty-two days 
 of toil. A little tinder and the surf of the sea would destroy 
 all trace of it for ever in a single night. A betrayal of the 
 secret was impossible ; and all search for the violators of the 
 convent would be doomed to failure. 
 
 At ,the top of the rock there was a platform with sheer prec- 
 ipice on all sides. The Thirteen, reconnoitring the ground 
 with their glasses from the masthead, made certain that, 
 though the ascent was steep and rough, there would be no 
 difficulty in gaining the convent garden, where the trees were 
 thick enough for a hiding-place. After such great efforts 
 they would not risk the success of their enterprise, and were 
 compelled to wait till the moon passed out of her last quarter. 
 
 For two nights Montriveau, wrapped in his cloak, lay out 
 on the rock platform. The singing at vespers and matins 
 filled him with unutterable joy. He stood under the wall to 
 hear the music of the organ, listening intently for one voice 
 among the rest. But in spite of the silence, the confused 
 effect of music was all that reached his ears. In those sweet 
 harmonies defects of execution are lost ; the pure spirit of art
 
 294 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 comes into direct communication with the spirit of the hearer, 
 making no demand on the attention, no strain on the power 
 of listening. Intolerable memories awoke. All the love 
 within him seemed to break into blossom again at the breath 
 of that music ; he tried to find auguries of happiness in the 
 air. During the last night he sat with his eyes fixed upon an 
 ungrated window, for bars were not needed on the side of the 
 precipice. A light shone there all through the hours; and 
 that instinct of the heart, which is sometimes true, and as 
 often false, cried within him : " She is there ! " 
 . " She is certainly there! To-morrow she will be mine," 
 he said to himself, and joy blended with the slow tinkling of 
 a bell that began to ring. 
 
 Strange unaccountable workings of the heart ! The nun, 
 wasted by yearning love, worn out with tears and fasting, 
 prayer and vigils ; the woman of nine-and-twenty, who had 
 passed through heavy trials, was loved more passionately than 
 the light-hearted girl, the woman of four-and-twenty, the 
 sylphide, had ever been. But is there not, for men of vigorous 
 character, something attractive in the sublime expression en- 
 graven on women's faces by the impetuous stirrings of thought 
 and misfortunes of no ignoble kind? Is there not a beauty of 
 suffering which is the most interesting of all beauty to those 
 men who feel that within them there is an inexhaustible wealth 
 of tenderness and consoling pity for a creature so gracious in 
 weakness, so strong in love? It is the ordinary nature that is 
 attracted by young, smooth, pink-and-white beauty, or, in one 
 word, by prettiness. In some faces love awakens amid the 
 wrinkles carved by sorrow and the ruin made by melancholy ; 
 Montfiveau could not but feel drawn to these. For cannot a 
 lover, with the voice of a great longing, call forth a wholly new 
 creature? a creature athrob with the life but just begun breaks 
 forth for him alone, from the outward form that is fair for 
 him, and faded for all the world beside. Does he not love 
 two women ? One of them, as others see her, i> pale and wan
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 295 
 
 and sad ; but the other, the unseen love that his heart knows, 
 is an angel who understands life through feeling, and is adorned 
 in all her glory only for love's high festivals. 
 
 The general left his post before sunrise, but not before he 
 had heard voices singing together, sweet voices full of tender- 
 ness sounding faintly from the cell. When he came down to 
 the foot of the cliffs where his friends were waiting, he told 
 them that never in his life had he felt such inthralling bliss, 
 and in the few words there was that unmistakable thrill of re- 
 pressed strong feeling, that magnificent utterance which all 
 men respect. 
 
 That night eleven of his devoted comrades made the ascent 
 in the darkness. Each man carried a poinard, a provision of 
 chocolate, and a set of house-breaking tools. They climbed 
 the outer walls with scaling-ladders, and crossed the cemetery 
 of the convent. Montriveau recognized the long, vaulted 
 gallery through which he went to the parlor, and remembered 
 the windows of the room. His plans were made and adopted 
 in a moment. They would effect an entrance through one of 
 the windows in the Carmelite's half of the parlor, find their 
 way along the corridors, ascertain whether the sisters' names 
 were written on the doors, find Sister Theresa's cell, surprise 
 her as she slept, and carry her off, bound and gagged. The 
 programme presented no difficulties to men who combined 
 boldness and a convict's dexterity with the knowledge pecu- 
 liar to men of the world, especially as they would not scruple 
 to give a stab to insure silence. 
 
 In two hours the bars were sawn through. Three men stood 
 on guard outside, and two inside the parlor. The rest, bare- 
 footed, took up their posts along the corridor. Young Henri 
 de Marsay, the most dexterous man among them, disguised by 
 way of precaution in a Carmelite's robe, exactly like the cos- 
 tume of the convent, led the way, and Montriveau came im- 
 mediately behind him. The clock struck three just as the two
 
 296 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 men reached the dormitory cells. They soon saw the posi- 
 tion. Everything was perfectly quiet. With the help of a 
 dark lantern they read the names luckily written on every 
 door, together with the picture of a saint or saints and the 
 mystical words which every nun takes as a kind of motto for 
 the beginning of her new life and the revelation of her last 
 thought. Montriveau reached Sister Theresa's door and read 
 the inscription : Sub invocation sancta matris Theresa, and her 
 motto: Adoremus in ccternum. Suddenly his companion laid 
 a hand on his shoulder. A bright light was streaming through 
 the chinks of the door. M. de Ronquerolles came up at that 
 moment. 
 
 ''All the nuns are in the church," he said; "they are 
 beginning the Office for the Dead." 
 
 "1 will stay here," said Montriveau. "Go back into the 
 parlor, and shut the door at the end of the passage." 
 
 He threw open the door and rushed in, preceded by his 
 disguised companion, who let down the veil over his face. 
 
 There before them lay the duchess dead ; her plank bed had 
 been laid on the floor of the outer room of her cell, between 
 two lighted candles. Neither Montriveau nor de Marsay 
 spoke a word or uttered a cry ; but they looked into each 
 other's faces. The general's dumb gesture seemed to say: 
 " Let us carry her away ! " 
 
 " Quick ! " shouted Ronquerolles, " the procession of nuns 
 is leaving the church. You will be caught ! " 
 
 With magical swiftness of movement, prompted by an in- 
 tense desire, the dead woman was carried into the convent 
 parlor, passed through the window, and lowered from the 
 walls before the abbess, followed by the nuns, returned to 
 take up Sister Theresa's body. The sister left in charge had 
 imprudently left her post ; there were secrets that she longed 
 to know ; and so busy was she ransacking the inner room that 
 she heard nothing, and was horrified when she came back to 
 fir.d that the body was gone. Before the women, in their
 
 THE THIRTEEN. 
 
 297 
 
 blank amazement, could think of making a search, the duchess 
 had been lowered by a cord to the foot of the crags, and Mon- 
 triveau's companions had destroyed all traces of their work. 
 By nine o'clock that morning there was not a sign to show 
 that either staircase or wire-cables had ever existed, and Sister 
 Theresa's body had been taken on board. The brig came 
 into the port to ship her crew, and sailed that day. 
 
 Montriveau, down in the cabin, was left alone with Antoi- 
 nette de Navarreins. For some hours it seemed as if her dead 
 face was transfigured for him by that unearthly beauty which 
 the calm of death gives to the body before it perishes. 
 
 "Look here!" said Ronquerolles when Montriveau reap- 
 peared on deck, "that was a woman once, now it is nothing. 
 Let us tie a cannon-ball to both feet and throw the body over- 
 board ; and if you ever think of her again, think of her as of 
 some book that you read as a boy." 
 
 "Yes," assented Montriveau, "it is nothing now but a 
 dream." 
 
 " That is sensible of you. Now, after this, have passions; 
 but as for love, a man ought to know how to place it wisely. 
 It is only the last love of a woman that can satisfy the first 
 love of a man." 
 
 PRE-LEVEQUE, GENEVA, January 26, 1834.
 
 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY JNO. RUDO, B. A. 
 
 To Monsieur Le Compte George Mniszech^ 
 
 Some envious beings may imagine on seeing this page 
 adorned by one of the most illustrious of Samartian 
 names that I am trying, as the goldsmiths do, to en- 
 hance a modern work with an ancient jewel one of 
 the fashions of the day. But you, my dear count, and 
 a few others will know that I am only aiming at pay- 
 ing the debt I owe to Talent, Memory, and Friend- 
 ship. 
 
 IN 1479, on All-Saints' Day, the time at which this history 
 commences, vespers were just ending in the cathedral of Tours. 
 The Archbishop Helie de Bourdeilles arose from his throne to 
 himself give the benediction to the faithful. The sermon 
 had been long, and darkness had fallen before its conclusion ; 
 and in some portions of the great church, the towers of which 
 were not finished at that time, the densest obscurity pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 However, a goodly number of tapers were burning in honor 
 of the saints, on the triangular frames destined to receive these 
 so pious offerings, the merit and significance of which have 
 never been properly explained. The lights on each altar and 
 the candles of the candelabra in the chancel were all flaming. 
 Most irregularly shed among the forest of columns and arches 
 which support the roof of the main aisles of the cathedral, the 
 gleam of those masses of candles scarcely illumined the vast 
 (298)
 
 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 299 
 
 building ; for, by the strong shadows cast by the pillars and 
 projected upward among the galleries, they caused a myriad 
 fantastic effects and increased the gloom that enveloped the 
 arches, the vaulted ceilings, and the lateral chapels which, 
 even at mid-day, were always gloomy. 
 
 The immense congregation presented no less picturesque 
 effects. Some figures were so vaguely seen in the uncertain 
 light that they seemed like phantoms ; while others, lit up by 
 some chance side-light, drew the attention like the principal 
 heads in a picture. Some statues were animate, some of the 
 men were stone. Here and there eyes might be seen sparkling 
 among the columns ; the marble saw, the stone spake, the 
 vaulted groins reechoed sighs, the whole edifice was instinct 
 with life. 
 
 The existence of nations can present no more solemn scenes, 
 no moment more majestic. Mankind in the mass needs motion 
 to make it poetical ; but in these resorts of religious thought, 
 when mundane wealth unites itself with celestial splendor, an 
 incredible sublimity is experienced in the silence ; there is 
 awe in the bent knees, hope in the upraised hands. The con- 
 cert of feeling which is ascending heavenward from each soul 
 produces an inexplicable phenomenon of spiritual effect. 
 
 The mystical exaltation of the true worshipers reacts upon 
 each individual ; the feebler are doubtless upborne upon this 
 flood-tide of faith and love. Prayer, an electric force, draws 
 our nature higher than itself. This involuntary unison of all 
 wills, each equally humbled to earth, equally risen to heaven, 
 contains, doubtless, the secret of the magic influence wielded 
 by the intonations of the priests, the music of the organs, the 
 perfumes and pomps of the altar, the voices of the crowd, its 
 silent meditations. 
 
 Therefore we need not be astonished to see in the Middle 
 Ages that so many affairs of the heart began in churches after 
 long ecstatic hours passions not always ending in sanctity, 
 and for which, as is usually the case, woman did the penance.
 
 300 MAI IRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 In those days religious sentiment certainly was in close 
 affinity to love ; either it was the motive or the end of it. 
 Love was but a second religion ; it had its fine frenzies, its 
 innocent superstitions, its sublime emotions, all in sympathy 
 with Christianity. 
 
 The manners of that period will also serve to explain the 
 alliance existing between religion and love. First, then, 
 social life had no place of meeting but before the altar. 
 Lords, vassals, men, women were never equals elsewhere. 
 In the church alone could lovers meet and exchange their 
 vows. The festivals of the church formed our predecessors' 
 theatres; woman's soul was more deeply stirred than to-day 
 it is at an opera or a ball ; and does not every strong emotion 
 invariably bring woman around to love? 
 
 So, by dint of mingling with life and seizing it in all its 
 acts and interests, religion had become the sharer of every 
 virtue, the accomplice of every vice. Religion had become a 
 science ; it was mixed up with politics, eloquence, crime ; it 
 entered the skin of the sick man and the poor ; it sat on 
 thrones it was all-pervading. These semi-learned observa- 
 tions may, perhaps, serve to vindicate the veracity of this 
 Study, though certain details may scandalize the more perfect 
 morals of our age, which are, as is known of all, a trifle too 
 strait-laced. 
 
 At that moment when the priests stopped their chanting, 
 and the notes of the organ mingled with the vibrant voices of 
 the loud "Amen" as it issued from the deep chests of the 
 choir-men, and sent a murmuring echo through the farther 
 arches, the while the devout assembly awaited the archbishop's 
 benediction, a burgher, impatient to get home or trembling 
 for the safety of his purse in the crowd when the congrega- 
 tion should disperse, quietly slipped out, taking the risk of 
 being called a bad Catholic. On this, a gentleman, who was 
 leaning on one of the enormous columns that surround the 
 choir, where he was enshrouded in the shadows, hastened to
 
 MAfTRE CORNELIUS. IJOI 
 
 take the place so recently vacated by the worthy Tourangeau. 
 Which done, he quickly hid his face behind the tall plumes 
 of his tall, gray cap, and knelt down before his chair with so 
 deep an air of contrition that it might even have deceived an 
 inquisitor. 
 
 His immediate neighbors, after observing him closely, 
 seemed to recognize him ; after which as with one accord they 
 returned to their devotions with a significant shrug expressive 
 of all their thoughts a caustic, jeering, mocking scandal. 
 Two old women nodded their heads expressively, exchanging 
 glances which seemed to penetrate the future. 
 
 The chair into which this young man had glided was near 
 by a chapel built in between two columns, inclosed by an 
 iron railing. It was a custom for the dean and chapter of the 
 cathedral to rent at a high figure to seignorial families, and 
 even to rich -burgesses, the right to be present at the services, 
 themselves and their household exclusively, in the various 
 lateral chapels situated along the side-aisles of the cathedral. 
 This simony is practiced even now. Then a woman had her 
 chapel as she now has her box at the opera. The tenants of 
 these privileged places were expected to decorate and keep up 
 the altars therein ; and each made it a pride to adorn theirs 
 most sumptuously a vanity which, needless to say, was not 
 rebuked by the church. 
 
 In this particular chapel a lady was kneeling close to the 
 railing on a handsome rug of red velvet trimmed with gold 
 tassels, and close to the spot but now vacated by the worthy 
 citizen. A silver-gilt lamp hung from the vaulted ceiling of 
 the chapel before the magnificently decorated altar and cast 
 its mild light on the Book of Hours* held by the lady. The 
 book trembled violently in her hand as the young man ap- 
 proached her. 
 
 "Amen ! " 
 
 To that response, chanted with a low. sweet, agitated voice, 
 * Praver Book.
 
 302 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 happily submerged in the now general clamor, she rapidly 
 added in a whisper : 
 
 "You will ruin me ! " 
 
 The words were spoken with an innocence to which any 
 man of delicacy would at once have submitted ; they reached 
 and pierced the heart. But the stranger, carried away perhaps 
 by one of those paroxysms of passion which stifle conscience, 
 remained in his chair, and slightly raised his head that he 
 might peer into the chapel. 
 
 " He sleeps ! " he replied in a voice so low that the words 
 could only be heard by the young woman as sound is heard 
 in its own echo. 
 
 The lady turned pale ; her furtive glance left for an instant 
 the vellum page of the missal and turned on the old man 
 whom the youthful one had designated. What terrible com- 
 plicity was in that look ? When the young woman had cau- 
 tiously examined the old man, she drew a deep breath and 
 raised her brow, adorned with a precious jewel, to a picture 
 of the Virgin ; this simple movement, her attitude, the glis- 
 tening eye, disclosed her life with ingenuous candor ; had she 
 been wicked she would have exercised more dissimulation. 
 
 The person who thus inspired these two with terror was a 
 little old hunchback, nearly bald, with a savage expression, 
 and who wore a long, dingy-colored gray beard cut into the 
 shape of a broad fan. On his breast glittered the cross of St. 
 Michael. His coarse, thick hands were covered with rough 
 gray hairs and had been clasped together, but they had now 
 dropped slightly asunder in the slumber to which he had so 
 imprudently yielded himself. The right hand seemed ready 
 to grasp the dagger, the handle guard of which was of iron in 
 shape like a shell. In the manner in which he had disposed 
 this weapon the hilt was immediately under his hand ; if by 
 ill-luck he should touch it he would, beyond doubt, awaken 
 instantly and look at his wife. 
 
 His sardonic mouth, the peaked chin, aggressively pushed
 
 MA!TRE CORNELIUS. 303 
 
 forward, showed all the characteristics of malignancy, of a 
 coldly cruel sagacity, which would surely enable him to divine 
 all because he suspected all. His yellow forehead was puck- 
 ered like to those of men who believe nothing, weigh every- 
 thing, who test the exact meaning of every human act and the 
 meaning thereof. His bodily frame, though deformed, was 
 bony and sinewy ; it looked to be both vigorous and irritable ; 
 he was, in short, an ogre who had been spoiled in the making. 
 
 When this terrible being should awake the young lady was 
 evidently in much danger. That jealous husband would cer- 
 tainly not fail to at once detect the difference between the 
 worthy old burgher, who gave him no umbrage, and the new- 
 comer, a young courtier, slender and elegant. 
 
 "Libera nos a malo " [deliver us from evil], said she, trying 
 to impart her fears to the young cavalier. 
 
 The latter raised his eyes and looked at her. Tears were in 
 his eyes ; the tears of love and despair. When the young 
 lady saw them she trembled and thus betrayed herself. Per- 
 haps both had long resisted and were no longer able to 
 further hold out against a love which increased with each 
 recurring day through invincible obstacles, brooded over by 
 fear, strengthened by youth. 
 
 The lady was fairly handsome ; but her pallor told of suffer- 
 ings endured in secret, which made her interesting. More- 
 over, she had an elegant figure and her hair was the most 
 lovely in the world. Watched over by a tiger, her life was 
 the forfeit if discovered whispering a word, accepting a glance, 
 or in permitting a mere pressure of the hand. 
 
 It is possible that love may have been more deeply felt 
 than by those hearts, if never more rapturously confessed, never 
 more enjoyed, but certes it is that never was passion so peril- 
 ously circumstanced. It is easy to understand that to these two 
 beings the air, the sounds about them, the foot-falls and so 
 forth, things of utter indifference to other people, presented 
 hidden qualities, perceptible peculiarities which only they could
 
 304 MAJTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 distinguish. Ic may be that their love caused them to become 
 faithful interpreters of the touch of the icy hands of the old 
 priest to whom they made their auricular confessions of their 
 sins, and from whose hands they received the Host as they 
 knelt at the holy altar of God. It was a deep love, love 
 gashed into the soul like as a scar is hewn upon the body and 
 which remains during the whole of our life ! As these two 
 young people regarded each other, the woman seemed to say 
 to her lover: " Let us perish, but as one." And the young 
 knight made answer : " We are one, but we will not die ! " 
 
 For her response she made him a sign, indicating the pres- 
 ence of her elderly duenna and two pages. 
 
 The duenna slept ; the pages were but youthful ones and 
 seemingly careless of what might happen, of good or evil, to 
 their master. 
 
 " Do not be alarmed as you leave the church; go and be 
 managed as you may be led." 
 
 The young noble had but murmured these words, when the 
 hand of the old seigneur slipped down upon the handle of his 
 dagger. Feeling the cold touch of the iron he instantly 
 awoke, and his tawny eyes at once fixed themselves upon his 
 wife. By a peculiarity, seldom granted even to men of genius, 
 he awoke with an alert brain and as vivid ideas as though 
 he had never slept. 
 
 He was jealous. 
 
 The lover, one eye on his mistress, the other on her husband, 
 whom he closely watched, now rose and vanished behind a 
 column at the first movement he had detected in the old man's 
 hands ; then he effaced himself swiftly as a bird. The lady's 
 eyes were engaged on her book and she appeared to be quite 
 calm. But try how she might, she could not prevent the 
 flushing of her face nor the unwonted violence of. the beating 
 of her heart. The old lord saw the unusual crimson of her 
 cheeks, forehead, and even of her eyelids. He could also 
 hear the vehement throbs of her heart, which were distinctly
 
 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 305 
 
 audible in the chapel. He looked inquisitively around, but 
 not seeing any one whom he could distrust, said to his wife : 
 
 " What troubles you, my dear ? " 
 
 " The scent of the incense sickens me," she replied. 
 
 "Is it particularly unpleasant to-day? " he asked. 
 
 Despite this sarcastic query, the wily old man pretended 
 to accept this excuse ; but still he suspected some treachery 
 and resolved to watch his treasure more carefully even than he 
 had hitherto done. 
 
 The benediction was pronounced. Without waiting for the 
 Sacula S(zculorum, the crowd rushed like a heaving torrent to 
 the doors of the church. Following his usual custom, the old 
 lord waited until the general hurry was over ; then issued 
 forth, the duenna in front with the youngest page, who carried 
 a lantern on a pole ; himself, his wife on arm, being followed 
 by the other page. 
 
 As he made his way to the side-door opening on the west 
 nave of the cloister, by which he generally went out, a stream 
 of people detached itself from the flood which obstructed the 
 great portals and surged through the aisle around the old 
 noble and his people. The mass was impacted too solidly to 
 allow of his retracing his steps ; and the gentleman and his 
 wife were therefore pushed onward to the door by the tremen- 
 dous pressure of the crowd behind them. 
 
 The husband tried to pass out first, dragging the lady by 
 her arm, but just then he was jerked vigorously into the street 
 and his wife snatched from him by a stranger. The sinister 
 hunchback at once saw that he had fallen into a trap, and one 
 that had been cleverly arranged. 
 
 It was now he repented himself that he had slept ; but he 
 collected his whole strength, seized his wife once more by the 
 sleeve of her gown and with his other tried to cling fast to the 
 door-post of the church ; but love's ardor carried the day 
 against jealous rage. The young man clasped his mistress 
 round the waist and tore her away with the strength of 
 20
 
 306 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 despair ; so violent was the disruption that the stuff of silk and 
 gold was rent noisily apart, the brocade and whalebone gave 
 way, and the old man remained standing with naught save the 
 sleeve in his clutch. 
 
 A roar like that of a lion rose above the tumult of the mul- 
 titude, and a terrible voice was heard bawling out the words : 
 
 " To me, Poitiers! Help ; here to the door ! The Comte 
 de Saint-Vallier's retainers, here, help ! " 
 
 And the Comte Aymar de Poitiers, Sire de Saint- Vallier, 
 attempted to draw his sword and clear a space around him. 
 But he found himself pressed upon and surrounded by forty 
 or fifty gentlemen whom it were most dangerous to wound. 
 Several of these, especially of the highest rank, replied gibingly 
 to him as they dragged him along the cloisters. 
 
 With a lightning-like celerity the abductor carried the 
 countess to an open chapel, seating her on a wooden bench 
 behind a confessional box. By the light of the candles burn- 
 ing before the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated they 
 gazed upon each other for a silent moment, clasped hands, 
 and amazed at their audacity. The countess could not sum- 
 mon the cruel courage to blame the young man for the bold- 
 ness to which they owed this first and only instant of happiness. 
 
 "Will you fly with me into the adjacent States?" asked 
 the young man eagerly. " Two English horses are awaiting 
 us near-by which are able to do thirty leagues at a stretch." 
 
 "Ah ! " she cried softly, ' ; in what corner of the world 
 could you find a hiding-place for a daughter of King Louis 
 the Eleventh?" 
 
 "True," answered the young man, silenced by a difficulty 
 he had not anticipated. 
 
 "Why, then, did you tear me from my husband?" she 
 asked in a voice of terror. 
 
 "Alas ! " replied the young lover, " I did not guess at the 
 agitation I should experience in finding myself by your side, 
 in hearing your voice as you spoke to me. I had arranged
 
 MAiTRE CORNELIUS. 307 
 
 plans, two or three schemes, and now that I see you, I feel as 
 if all were accomplished." 
 
 " But I am lost ! " said the countess. 
 
 " We are saved ! " the young man cried in the blind enthu- 
 siasm of love. ''Listen carefully to me." 
 
 ''This will cost me my life!" said she, letting the tears 
 that filled her eyes go rolling down her cheeks. " The count 
 will kill me perhaps this very night ! But go you to the 
 King ; tell him all the tortures his daughter has endured these 
 five years. He loved me well when I was a child ; he used to 
 laugh and call me ' Marie-full-of-grace,' because I was so ugly. 
 Ah ! could he only know to what a man he gave me, his anger 
 would be terrible. I have never dared complain out of a sense 
 of pity for the count. Beside, how could my plaint reach the 
 ears of the King ? Even my confessor is but a spy of Saint- 
 Vallier. That is why I consented to this criminal meeting, 
 hoping to find a champion some one who will declare the 
 truth to the King. But may I dare trust? Oh ! " she cried, 
 turning pale and interrupting herself, " here comes the 
 page." 
 
 The distraught countess put her hands before her face and 
 tried to veil it. 
 
 "Fear nothing," said the young lord, "he is ours ! You 
 may safely trust him ; he belongs to me. When the count con- 
 trives to return to you, he will give us timely warning. In 
 the confessional," he added in a muttered tone, " is a priest, 
 a friend of mine ; he will say that he rescued you from the tur- 
 moil, and drew you here for safety out of the crowd, and gave 
 you his protection in this chapel. Thus all is arranged to 
 deceive him." 
 
 At these words the countess dried her tears, but a saddened 
 expression clouded her face. 
 
 "He cannot be deceived," said she. "To-night he will 
 know all. Beware his revenge. Save me from his blows. At 
 once to le Plessis, see the King, tell him ; " here she hesi-
 
 308 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 tated; but some dreadful memory gave her courage to disclose 
 some secrets of her married life, so she continued : 
 
 "Yes, tell him that to obtain the mastery over me the count 
 has me bled in both arms to exhaust me. Tell him that my 
 husband drags me around by my hair; tell him that I am a 
 prisoner; say that " 
 
 Her heart was bursting, sobs choked her throat, tears rained 
 from her eyes. In her agitation she allowed the young man 
 to kiss her hand, the while he muttered broken, inconsecutive 
 words. 
 
 "Poor love ! No one may speak to the King. Although 
 my uncle is chief master of his bowmen, I cannot obtain ad- 
 mission to le Plessis. My darling lady ! my most beautiful 
 queen ! Oh ! but what has she not suffered? Marie, at least 
 let me say two words to you, or we are assuredly lost." 
 
 "What will become of us?" she murmured. Then, dis- 
 cerning on the dark wall a picture of the Virgin on which the 
 light fell from the lamp, she cried out : 
 
 " Holy Mother of God, give us counsel ! " 
 
 "To-night," said the young man, " I shall be in your room 
 with you." 
 
 " How? " was her nal've question. 
 
 " This evening I go to propose myself as an apprentice to 
 Maitre Cornelius, the King's silversmith. To him I bear a 
 letter of introduction which will compel him to receive me. 
 His house is next to yours. Once under the roof of that old 
 scoundrel I can, by the aid of a silken ladder, soon find my 
 way to your suite of rooms." 
 
 "Oh ! " said she, petrified with horror, " if you love me, 
 do not go to Maitre Cornelius." 
 
 "Ah!" cried he, pressing her to his heart with all the 
 energy of youth, " then, indeed, you do love me ! " 
 
 "Yes," said she. -'Are you not my sole hope ? Beside," 
 she added, regarding him with dignity, " you are a gentleman, 
 I confide myself to your honor. So unhappy am T that you
 
 MAI'TRE CORNELIUS. soy 
 
 will never betray my trust. But to what end is all this? Go, 
 the rather let me die than that you should abide in the house 
 of Maitre Cornelius. Do you not know that all his appren- 
 tices " 
 
 " Have been hanged?" said the young noble, laughing. 
 
 "But do not go ; you will become the victim of some sor- 
 cery." 
 
 " I cannot pay a too high price for the great honor of serving 
 you," said he, with a look of such ardor that her eyes drooped 
 under it. 
 
 "And my husband? " said she. 
 
 " Here is that will cause him to sleep," answered the young 
 man, drawing a small phial from his belt. 
 
 " Not for ever?" queried the countess tremblingly. 
 
 For all reply the young seigneur made a gesture of horror. 
 
 " I would long ago have defied him to mortal combat if it 
 were not for his great age," said he. " But God preserve me 
 from ridding his life by a philter." 
 
 " Forgive me," said the countess blushing. " My sins have 
 cruelly punished me. In a moment of despair I have thought 
 of killing the count I feared you might have the same desire. 
 So great has my sorrow been that as yet I have never been 
 able to confess the so wicked thought ; I believed it would be 
 repeated to him, and then he would be avenged on me. I 
 have shamed you," she went on, distressed by his silence. 
 " Well, I deserve your blame ! " 
 
 She flung the phial with great violence to the ground and it 
 was broken. 
 
 "Do not come," said she, "it is that my husband sleeps 
 lightly ; my duty demands that I await the help of heaven 
 that will I do." 
 
 She arose to leave the chapel. "Ah!" cried the young 
 man, "but bid me kill him and I will do it. You will see 
 me this evening, madame." 
 
 " I showed wisdom in destroying that drusr," she murmured
 
 310 MA!TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 in a voice husky with joy at finding herself so ardently loved. 
 "The dread of arousing my husband will save us from our- 
 selves." 
 
 " I pledge you my life," said the young man, pressing her 
 hand. 
 
 " Should the King be willing the pope can annul my mar- 
 riage ; then we may be united," she cried, giving him a look 
 full of delicious hopes. 
 
 " Monseigneur comes ! " exclaimed the page bustling in. 
 
 Instantly the young noble, surprised at the short time he 
 had gained with his mistress and greatly wondering at the 
 count's celerity, snatched a kiss which the countess could not 
 refuse. 
 
 "To-night," said he, as he hastily slipped out of the 
 chapel. 
 
 Thanks to the darkness, the lover made his way to the great 
 portal in safety, gliding from pillar to pillar in the long 
 shadows which they cast across the nave. An old canon 
 suddenly issued from the confessional, came to the side of the 
 countess and gently closed the railing, while the page gravely 
 marched up and down with the manner of a sentry. 
 
 A blaze of light heralded the coming of the count. He 
 was accompanied by a number of his friends and by servants 
 bearing torches ; himself advanced, drawn sword in hand. His 
 gloomy gaze seemed to pierce the dense cathedral shadows 
 and to rake the remotest depths. 
 
 " Monseigneur, madame is there," said the page to him. 
 
 The Count de Saint-Vallier found his wife kneeling on the 
 steps before the altar, the canon standing alongside reading 
 his breviary. At the sight the count violently shook the rail- 
 ing as if to give vent to his fury. 
 
 "What want you here in church, with a drawn sword?" 
 asked the old priest. 
 
 " Father, this is my husband," said the countess. 
 
 The priest took a key out of his sleeve and unlocked the
 
 MA 17 RE CORNELIUS. 311 
 
 railed gate of the chapel. The count, almost against his will, 
 cast an eye into the confessional, then entered the chapel, 
 and seemed to be listening to the silence of the place. 
 
 "Monsieur," said his wife, "you owe your thanks to this 
 venerable canon for giving me a refuge here." 
 
 The Count de Saint-Vallier turned pale with anger; he 
 dared not look at his friends, who had come less with the in- 
 tention of assisting than of laughing at him. Then he curtly 
 answered : 
 
 "Thank the Lord, my father, for I will surely find some 
 way to repay you." 
 
 He took his wife by the arm, and, without giving her an 
 opportunity to finish the curtsey she was making to the canon, 
 he signed to his retainers and left the church without uttering 
 a word to those who had accompanied him. His silence was 
 ominous. 
 
 Impatient to reach his castle and occupied as he was in an 
 effort to get at the truth, he made his way through the tor- 
 tuous street which at that time separated the cathedral from 
 the chancellerie, a fine building but recently erected by the 
 Chancellor Juvenal des Ursins, on the site of an old fortress 
 given by Charles VII. to that faithful servant as a guerdon for 
 his splendid services. This street, the Rue de la Scellerie, so 
 named in honor of the office of the Great Seal which long 
 stood there, connected old Tours with Chateauneuf, where 
 was the noted abbey of Saint-Martin, of which many Kings 
 had been glad to be elected canons. After long discussions 
 this borough had been incorporated with the city ; this had 
 been so now for nearly a hundred years. 
 
 At last the count reached the Rue du Murier in which his 
 dwelling, the Hotel de Poitiers, was situated. When the 
 escort had passed the gates into the courtyard, and they had 
 been closed after them, a profound silence pervaded the nar- 
 row street where a few high seigneurs at that time had resi- 
 dences; for this new suburb of the town was near to le Plessis,
 
 312 MA1TRL CORNELIUS. 
 
 the King's usual place of abode, and where the courtiers when 
 summoned could instantly go. The last house in the street 
 was also the last in the town. It belonged to Maitre Cornelius 
 Hoogworst, an old merchant of Brabant, to whom Louis the 
 Eleventh gave his closest confidences in the various financial 
 dealings which his cunning policy required done outside his 
 own kingdom. For the favorable opportunity it gave to his 
 tyranny over his wife, the Comte de Saint-Vallier had taken 
 the mansion next to the house of Maitre Cornelius. 
 
 An explanation of the houses will show the advantages of- 
 fered the jealous husband. It was easy to be seen that the 
 same architect had built both of them, and that they were 
 destined as the abodes of tyrants. The count's house had 
 been built near the old boundary of the city, and was inclosed 
 in a garden. On the side next the embankment, lately con- 
 structed by Louis XI. between Tours and le Plessis, dogs 
 defended the entrance to the premises ; while on the east they 
 were divided from the nearest houses by a large courtyard ; 
 on the west backed up the house occupied by Maitre Cornelius. 
 
 Each was of sinister aspect and resembled a small fort, 
 which could be well defended against a turbulent populace. 
 The riots and civil wars of this period amply justified these 
 precautions. The windows looking on the street were strongly 
 barred with iron, and shutters of the same material. A stone 
 block used for mounting horseback stood close to the porch. 
 
 As six o'clock was striking from the great tower of the 
 abbey Saint-Martin, the lover of the hapless countess walked 
 past the de Poitiers hotel and paused there for a moment to 
 listen for any sound made by the servants in the lower hall, 
 who were taking their suppers. Casting a glance at the win- 
 dow of the room he supposed to be his minstress', he went on 
 his way to the next house. Everywhere on his way the young 
 man had heard the roistering of the jolly holiday-makers, in 
 honor of the day. The badly-joined blinds let out beams of 
 light, the chimneys smoked, the pleasant savor of roasting
 
 MAlTRE CORNELIUS. 313 
 
 meats pervaded the town. Religious services being over, the 
 inhabitants were regaling themselves with confused mutterings 
 of satisfaction, more readily imagined than described. But 
 here deep silence reigned, for in those two dwellings lived 
 two passions which can never rejoice. 
 
 Beyond them stretched the silent country. While these 
 two dwellings standing beneath the towers of Saint-Martin, 
 standing apart from the others in the street, at the crooked 
 end of it, seemed afflicted with leprosy. The opposite build- 
 ing was the property of some State criminal and was under 
 the ban of the law. No young man but would have been 
 struck by the great contrast. About, as he was, to fling him- 
 self into a horribly hazardous enterprise, it is not to be won- 
 dered at that the daring young noble stopped short before the 
 door of the silversmith-treasurer, and called to mind the many 
 uncanny tales he had heard of the life of Maitre Cornelius 
 tales which had caused such untoward terror to the countess. 
 
 In this time a man of war, a lover even, every man trembled 
 at the word "magic." Few indeed were the minds whose 
 imaginations were incredulous of occult forces and tales of 
 the marvelous. This lover of the Comtesse de Saint-Vallier, 
 one of the daughters of Louis XI. by Madame de Sassenage, 
 and born in Dauphine, courageous as he was in other respects, 
 was apt to think twice before entering the house of a sorcerer. 
 
 The history of Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst will fully ex- 
 plain the confidence he had inspired in the count, the terrible 
 fear of the countess, and the hesitation to which the lover 
 now made pause. To enable the nineteenth-century reader 
 to clearly understand how such seeming commonplace events 
 could be turned into something supernatural, and to cause 
 them to share the dread of that olden time, it is necessary to 
 interrupt the course of the narrative and cast a glance at the 
 preceding life and career of Maitre Cornelius. 
 
 Cornelius Hoogworst, one of the richest merchants of
 
 314 MAlTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 Ghent, having drawn upon himself the resentment of Charles, 
 Duke of Burgundy, had found a refuge and protection at the 
 Court of Louis XI. The King was well aware of the advan- 
 tages he could gain from a man connected with all the prin- 
 cipal houses of commerce of Flanders, Venice, and the East; 
 he naturalized and ennobled by royal letters and, more, 
 flattered Maitre Cornelius ; a most rare thing with that mon- 
 arch. Louis XI. pleased the Fleming as much as the Fleming 
 pleased the King. Wily, suspicious, avaricious; equally poli- 
 tic, equally well informed ; both superior to their time ; each 
 understanding the other marvelously; they discarded and re- 
 sumed with equal facility, the one his conscience, the other 
 his religion ; they worshiped the same Virgin one from con- 
 viction, the other from policy ; in short, if we may trust the 
 jealous statements of Olivier le Daim and Tristan, the King 
 resorted to the Fleming's house for those diversions with 
 which King Louis XL amused himself.* History has been at 
 the pains to preserve to the knowledge of posterity the licen- 
 tious tastes of this monarch who was certainly not averse to 
 debauchery. No doubt the Fleming derived both pleasure 
 and profit in lending himself to the caprices and indulgences 
 of his royal client. 
 
 Cornelius at this time had lived for nine years in the city 
 of Tours. During these nine years extraordinary events had 
 occurred in his house, which had made him the object of 
 universal execration. On his arrival he had spent immense 
 sums in order to safely guard his treasures. The curious in- 
 ventions secretly made for him by the locksmiths of the town, 
 the singular precautions he took to bring them to his house in 
 a way to compel their silence, were for a long time the subject 
 of countless tales, which furnished the evening gossip of the 
 Tourangeaux. These peculiar devices on the part of the old 
 man caused every one to believe him the possessor of Oriental 
 wealth. Consequently the story-tellers of that district the 
 * See " Dndl Stories."
 
 MA1TKE CORNELIUS. 315 
 
 birthplace of French romance built rooms full of gold and 
 precious stones in the Fleming's house, not omitting to ascribe 
 this fabulous wealth to compacts with unholy genii. 
 
 Maitre Cornelius had brought with him from Ghent two 
 Flemish servants, an old woman and a young apprentice ; 
 the latter, youthful, with a gentle, attractive appearance, 
 served as his secretary, cashier, factotum, and messenger. 
 During the first year of his settlement in Tours a considerable 
 robbery was effected on his premises ; judicial inquiry showed 
 that the crime must have been committed by one of its inmates. 
 The old man had his two menservants and apprentice put in 
 prison. The young lad was weakly and he died under the 
 sufferings of the "question,"* still protesting his innocence. 
 The two men confessed the crime to escape torture ; but when 
 asked by the judge where the stolen property could be found, 
 they kept silence; so, after renewed tortures, they were tried, 
 condemned, and hung. On their way to the gallows they de- 
 clared themselves innocent, as is the custom of all men when 
 about to be executed. 
 
 For many a day the town of Tours talked over this singular 
 business ; but the criminals were Flemish, and the interest in 
 their unhappy fate, and that of the young clerk, soon evapor- 
 ated. In those days, wars and seditions supplied continual 
 excitement, and each day's new drama eclipsed that of the 
 preceding night. 
 
 More affected by the loss of his pelf than by the death of 
 his three servants, Mattre Cornelius lived alone in the house 
 with the old Flemish woman, his sister. From the King he 
 obtained the privilege to use the royal couriers for his private 
 affairs ; sold his mules to a muleteer in the neighborhood, and 
 lived thenceforward in the deepest solitude, seeing no one but 
 the King, and transacting his business through the medium 
 of Jews, who, shrewd arithmeticians, served him faithfully and 
 well for the sake of his so-powerful interest. 
 Torture to induce confession.
 
 316 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 Some time after this affair, the King himself placed with 
 his old torfonnoir a young orphan in whom he took much 
 interest. Louis XI. called Maitre Cornelius by that obsolete 
 term, familiarly, which under the reign of Saint-Louis meant 
 a usurer, a collector of taxes, a man who squeezed money out 
 of folk by extortion. The term tortionnaire, which is a legal 
 term still extant, explains the old French word torfonnier, 
 and which is often spelled tortionneur. The poor young boy 
 devoted himself to the interest of his master, the old Fleming, 
 and succeeded in winning his encomiums and getting into his 
 good graces. One winter's night the diamonds placed in 
 Cornelius' keeping by the King of England as security for a 
 hundred thousand crowns were stolen ; suspicion naturally 
 fell on the poor orphan. Louis XI. was the more severe with 
 him because he had vouched for the boy's fidelity. So, after 
 a very brief examination by the grand provost, the unfortunate 
 youth was taken out and hanged. After that it was a long 
 time before any one dared to go tc learn the art of banking 
 and exchange from Maitre Cornelius. 
 
 In the course of time, however, it came that two young men 
 of the town, Tourangeaux, men of honor, eager to make their 
 fortunes, took service with the silversmith. Large robberies 
 coincided with the admission of the two youths into the 
 house. The circumstances of these crimes, the manner of the 
 perpetration, plainly enough showed some collusion between 
 the thieves and the inmates of the house ; how was it possible 
 that the new-comers should escape accusation? Become by 
 this time more than ever suspicious and vindictive, the old 
 Fleming laid the matter before the King, who placed the case 
 in the hands of his grand provost. A trial was promptly had, 
 and more quickly finished. Each was more promptly exe- 
 cuted. 
 
 But the inhabitants of Tours, in their patriotism, secretly 
 blamed Tristan 1'Hermite for unseemly haste. Guilty or not 
 ':ilty, the young fellow-townsmen were looked upon as vie-
 
 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 317 
 
 iims, and Cornelius as an executioner. The two families thus 
 thrown into mourning were of much esteem ; their complaints 
 secured much sympathy, and, little by little, they succeeded 
 in making it come to be common belief that all the victims 
 sent to the scaffold by the King's silversmith were innocent. 
 Some went so far as to say that the cruel miser imitated the 
 King and sought to put terror and- the gibbet between himself 
 and the world of men ; others there were who declared he had 
 never been robbed at all that these terrible executions were 
 brought about as the result of cold calculation ; that all he 
 cared about was to be relieved of all care for his treasure. 
 
 The first effect of these rumors was to effectually isolate 
 Maitre Cornelius. The good people of Tours treated him as 
 they would have done a leper; called him the "tortionnaire," 
 and named his house Malemaison House of Evil. Even if 
 the Fleming could have found strangers to the town bold 
 enough to enter his service, the inhabitants of the town would 
 have prevented by their warnings. The most favorable impres- 
 sion had of Maitre Cornelius was that of those who considered 
 him as being merely baneful and sinister. Some he inspired 
 with instinctive dread ; others were impressed with the power 
 that is always paid to great wealth and influence ; to some he 
 had the fascination of mystery. His mode of life, his counte- 
 nance, and the favor of the King seemed to justify all the 
 rumors of which he was the subject. 
 
 After the death of his persecutor, the Duke of Burgundy, 
 Cornelius traveled much in foreign lands ; during his absence 
 the King caused his house to be patrolled by a company of 
 his Scottish Guard. This royal solicitude it was that made the 
 courtiers believe that Maitre Cornelius had bequeathed his 
 property to Louis XI. When he wac home it was but rarely 
 that he left his premises; the gentlemen of the Court frequently 
 visited him, and he loaned them money rather liberally, though 
 he was very capricious about so doing. On certain days he 
 refused them a sou ; the next day lie would offer large sums
 
 318 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 always, though, at high interest and on undoubtedly good 
 security. He was a good Catholic, went regularly to the ser- 
 vices, and always attended the earliest mass at Saint-Martin's ; 
 and as he had purchased there a chapel in perpetuity, as else- 
 where, he was separated even in church from other Christians. 
 A popular proverb of that day, and was long remembered, 
 was the saying: " You passed in front of the usurer; evil will 
 befall you." To pass in front of the Fleming explained every 
 misfortune ; it explained all sudden pains and evil, involuntary 
 depression, bad turns of fortune among the people of Tours. 
 Even at Court the people most oftener than not attributed to 
 Cornelius that fatal influence wnich Italian, Spanish, and 
 Asiatic superstition has termed the " Evil Eye." 
 
 Only for the terrible power of Louis XL, which overspread 
 his house like a mantle, the populace on the least pretext 
 would have utterly demolished la Malemaison that "evil 
 house" in the Rue du Murier. And yet it was Cornelius 
 that was the first to plant mulberry trees in Tours, and at 
 that time the Tourangeaux looked upon him as their good 
 genie. Who may depend on popular favor? 
 
 A few seigneurs having met Maitre Cornelius on his jour- 
 neys out of France had been astonished at his friendliness and 
 good-humor. At Tours he was always gloomy and absent- 
 minded, but yet he returned there. Some inexplicable attrac- 
 tion brought him back to his dismal house in the Rue du 
 Murier. Like a snail, whose life is so strongly a part of its 
 shell, he admitted to the King that he was not at his ease 
 elsewhere ; he only found it under the bolts and time-worn 
 stone of his little bastille ; and yet he was well aware that 
 should the King die it would be the most dangerous spot on 
 earth for him. 
 
 "The devil is amusing himself at the expense of our crony 
 the torfonnier" said Louis XI. to his barber, a few days be- 
 fore the festival of All-Saints. " He says he has been robbed 
 again, but he can't hang anybody this time, unless he hangs
 
 MAJTRE CORNELIUS. 319 
 
 himself. The old vagabond came and asked me if I had not 
 chanced to carry off a string of rubies that he had intended 
 selling to me. 'Pasgues-Dieu ! I don't steal what I have 
 only to take,' said I." 
 
 " And was he afraid ? " asked the barber. 
 
 " Misers are only afraid of one thing," responded the King. 
 " My chum the tor$onnicr knows very well that I shall not 
 plunder him for nothing ; otherwise I were unjust, and I have 
 never yet done anything but what is just and necessary." 
 
 "And yet that old bandit overcharges you," replied the 
 barber. 
 
 "You only wish he did, don't you?" answered the King, 
 with a sinister look at the barber. 
 
 " By Mahomet's belly, Sire, the inheritance would be a 
 noble one, between you, me, and the devil." 
 
 " There, there !" said the King. "Don't put bad ideas 
 into my head. My crony is a more faithful man than many 
 whose fortunes I have made it may be it is because he owes 
 me nothing." 
 
 For the two last years, Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely 
 alone with his old sister, who was believed to be a witch. A 
 tailor who lived hard by declared that he had frequently seen 
 her at night, on the roof the house, looking out for the witches' 
 Sabbath. This seemed the more extraordinary, as it was known 
 to be the miser's custom to lock up his sister in her bedroom 
 when night came, the windows of which were barred with 
 iron. 
 
 As he grew older, Cornelius, always afraid of being robbed 
 or duped by men, came to hate everybody but the King, whom 
 he highly esteemed. He had sunk into a state of abject mis- 
 anthropy ; but, like most misers, his passion for gold, the 
 assimilation, as it were, of that metal with his very substance, 
 became more and more complete, while age but intensified 
 it. He was even suspicious of his sister, though she was a 
 shade the more miserly and rapacious than her brother, and
 
 320 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 really surpassed him in penurious inventiveness. Their way 
 of life was a mysterious enigma. The old woman rarely took 
 bread of the baker ; so seldom she appeared in the market, 
 that the least credulous of the townsfolk at last attributed to 
 her some diabolical knowledge of a secret for maintaining life. 
 Others there were who dabbled in alchemy that declared that 
 Maitre Cornelius possessed the power of making gold. Men of 
 science stated that he had discovered the Universal Panacea. 
 According to most of the country people, when they spoke of 
 him, Cornelius was a chimerical being, and a number came to 
 view his house out of mere curiosity. 
 
 The young seigneur, whom we left in front of that house, 
 looked about him, first at the Hotel de Poitiers, the home of 
 his mistress, and then at the Malemaison. The moonbeams 
 shed their light on the prominent parts, giving a tint of light 
 and shadow in the carvings and reliefs. The caprices of this 
 white light gave a sinister expression to both edifices ; it 
 seemed as if Nature had tried to encourage the superstitious 
 dread that hung around the place. 
 
 The young man called to mind the many traditions which 
 made Cornelius such a strange and formidable person. Though 
 the violence of his passion still held him to the decision of 
 entering that house, and to stay there long enough to accom- 
 plish his purpose, he yet hesitated at taking the final step, all 
 the time aware that he would at last do this. But what man 
 is there who, in a crisis of his life, does not willingly pay heed 
 to presentiments, and gyrate, as it were, over the precipice of 
 uncertainty ? A lover worthy of his love, the young man 
 feared he might perish before the love of the countess should 
 crown his life. 
 
 His mental deliberation was so painfully absorbing that he did 
 not feel the cold wind that whistled round his legs and against 
 the buildings. On entering that house he mu>t. iay aside his 
 name, as he already had laid aside the handsome garb of a 
 noble. In case of disaster he would be unable to claim the
 
 MA!TRE CORNELIUS. 321 
 
 privileges of his rank or the protection of his friends without 
 destroying the Countess of Saint- Vallier. If her old husband 
 suspected her of having a lover paying nocturnal visits, he was 
 quite capable of roasting her alive in an iron cage by a slow 
 fire, or of killing her by degrees in the depths of some dank 
 dungeon. 
 
 Looking over his shabby clothes in which he was disguised, 
 the young man felt ashamed of his appearance. His black 
 leather belt, his heavy shoes, ribbed hose, frieze breeches, and 
 his gray woolen doublet made him look like the clerk of some 
 poor devil of a justice. To a nobleman of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury it was like to death itself to play the part of a mean 
 burgher, and renounce the privileges of his rank. But yet, 
 to climb the roof of the house where his mistress was weeping ; 
 to descend the chimney or crawl along the cornice from gutter 
 to gutter to the window of her room ; to risk his life if haply 
 he might sit by her side before a glowing fire, during the 
 slumber of a dangerous husband, whose every snore would add 
 to their rapture ; to defy both heaven and earth in exchanging 
 the most audacious embrace ; to say no word which would not 
 be the certainty of death, or at least of bloody combat, if 
 overheard these all-entrancing visions, with the romantic 
 perils of the adventure, made the decision of the young man. 
 
 However slight the guerdon of his endeavor might be, could 
 he but once more kiss the hand of his lady, he would venture 
 all, urged on by the peril-loving, passionate spirit of his age. 
 Never for one moment did he think that the countess would 
 refuse him the sweetest reward of love in the midst of such 
 mortal danger. The adventure was too perilous, too impos- 
 sible, not to be attempted to carry out. 
 
 Suddenly every bell in the town rang out the curfew a 
 custom elsewhere fallen into desuetude, but was still observed 
 in the country for in the provinces customs die slowly. 
 Though the lights were not extinguished, the watchman 
 placed the chains across the streets. Many doors were barred 
 21
 
 322 MA!TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 and bolted ; the steps of a few belated citizens were heard in 
 the distance, attended by their servants, armed to the teeth 
 and bearing lanterns. Soon the town, garroted, as .it were, 
 seemed to be slumbering, fearing naught of robbers and male- 
 factors except by the roofs. At that time the roofs of houses 
 were like a highway, so thronged were they at night. 
 
 The streets were so narrow in the country towns, and even 
 in Paris, that robbers could jump from the roofs on one side 
 on to those of the other. This perilous game was once the 
 delight of King Charles IX. in his youth, if we may put 
 faith in the chronicles of his day. 
 
 Fearing that he might be too late in presenting himself to 
 the old Maitre Cornelius, the young noble now went up to 
 the Malemaison, intending to knock at the door, when, on 
 looking at it, his attention was excited by a kind of vision, 
 which the writers of that day would have termed devilish 
 (jcornuc], perhaps with reference to horns and hoofs. He 
 rubbed his eyes to clear them, a thousand diverse ideas cours- 
 ing through his mind the while at the spectacle before him. 
 On each side of the door was a face framed between the bars 
 in a kind of loophole. At first he took these faces to be 
 grotesque gargoyles carved in stone, so angular, so distorted, 
 exaggerated, motionless, and discolored were they ; but pres- 
 ently the cold wind and the moonlight enabled him to detect 
 the thin white mist which living breath sent out from two 
 blue noses ; at . last he could make out in each hollow face, 
 beneath the shadow of the eyebrows, a pair of blue china eyes 
 casting fire like those of a wolf crouching in the brushwood 
 when it hears the bay of the hounds in full cry. The uneasy 
 gleam of those eyes was turned on him so fixedly that for quite 
 a minute's space he felt like a bird put up by a pointer-dog ; 
 a fever-spasm struck his soul, but it was at once repressed. 
 The two faces, strained and suspicious, were beyond a doubt 
 those of Cornelius and his sister. 
 
 The young rrjan pretended to be gazing around him. as if
 
 MAl'lRE CORNELIUS. 323 
 
 in uncertainty as to his whereabouts, and to be searching for 
 a dwelling the address of which might be on the card he took 
 from his pocket and was trying to read by the moonlight ; 
 then straight to the door he walked and struck three blows 
 upon it, which echoed within as though it had been the en- 
 trance to a cavern. A faint light became visible beneath the 
 door, and an eye was seen at a small and strongly barred 
 wicket-gate. 
 
 "Who is there?" 
 
 "A friend, sent by Oosterlinck, of Brussels." 
 
 " What do you want? " 
 
 "To come in." 
 
 "Your name?" 
 
 "Philippe Goulenoire." 
 
 " Have you credentials ? " 
 
 " Here they are." 
 
 "Put them in through the box." 
 
 "Where is it?" 
 
 "To your left." 
 
 Philippe Goulenoire put the letter through the slit of an 
 iron box above which was a loophole. 
 
 " The devil ! " thought he. "It is very evident that the 
 King comes here, as they say he does ; he could not take 
 more precautions at le Plessis." 
 
 For over a quarter of an hour he waited on the street. At 
 the end of that time he heard the old man say to his sister : 
 
 " Close the traps of the door." 
 
 A clanging of chains sounded from within. Philippe heard 
 the bolts slide, the locks creak, and finally a small, low door, 
 iron-bound, opened just the smallest chink through which a 
 man could press. At the risk of tearing his clothes, Philippe 
 squeezed rather than walked himself into la Malemaison. A 
 toothless old woman with a hatchet face, eyebrows like the 
 handle of a caldron, who could not have put a nut between 
 her nose and chin so near were they together a pallid, hag-
 
 324 MA/TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 gard creature, her hollow temples made up only, or so it 
 seemed, of bones and sinews silently preceded the stranger 
 into a lower chamber, Cornelius prudently following him. 
 
 " Seat yourself there," said she to Philippe, pointing out a 
 three-legged stool, standing beside a huge, carved fireplace of 
 stone ; the hearth though was fireless. 
 
 On the other side of the fireplace was a walnut-wood table 
 with twisted legs, on which were an egg on a plate and ten 
 or a dozen of little bread-sops, hard and dry, each cut with 
 parsimonious exactitude. Two stools placed beside the table, 
 on one of which the old woman seated herself, showed that 
 the miserly pair were about supping. 
 
 Cornelius went to the door and closed two iron shutters, thus 
 most likely securing the looped windows through which they 
 had been gazing out on the street ; then he returned to his 
 seat. Philippe Goulenoire, as he called himself, next saw the 
 brother and sister dipping each their sops in turns into the 
 egg, and with the perfect gravity and precision that soldiers 
 use in dipping their spoons in regular rotation into the mess- 
 pan. This performance was gone through in perfect silence. 
 But as he ate Cornelius studied the mock apprentice with as 
 much carefulness and shrewdness as if he had been gold coin 
 in the balance. 
 
 Philippe felt, as it might be, an icy cloak had fallen on his 
 shoulders, he was tempted to look around ; but with the cir- 
 cumspection born of an amorous adventure he was careful not 
 to glance, even furtively, at the walls, for he was well aware 
 that so suspicious a person as Cornelius would not house an 
 inquisitive inmate. He restricted himself to the modest con- 
 templation of first the egg, then the old woman, and anon his 
 future master. 
 
 Louis XL's silversmith-treasurer resembled that monarch. 
 He had even caught the same tricks of expression, as often 
 happens where persons dwell in a kind of quasi intimacy. 
 The thick eyebrows of the Fleming almost concealed his eyes,
 
 MA/TRE CORNELIUS. 325 
 
 but by raising them a little he could flash out a glance that was 
 bright, penetrating, and full of power, the look of men habit- 
 uated to silence, and to whom concentration of thought is 
 familiar. His thin lips, finely furrowed with vertical lines, 
 gave him an air of keen subtlety. The lower part of the 
 face bore a vague resemblance to a fox ; but a lofty, pro- 
 minent forehead, deeply indented with wrinkles, bespoke 
 great and noble qualities and nobility of soul one whose 
 flights had been degraded by experience and whence the cruel 
 lessons of life had driven it back into the farthest recesses of 
 his strange humanity. Most certainly he was no ordinary 
 miser ; his passion covered, no doubt, the highest pleasures 
 and secret conceptions. 
 
 " At what rate are Venetian sequins going?" he abruptly 
 asked his to be apprentice. 
 
 "Three-fourths at Brussels; one at Ghent." 
 
 "-What is the freight on the Scheldt? " 
 
 "Three sous parisis." 
 
 " Anything new in Ghent? " 
 
 "The brother of Lieven d'Herde is ruined." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 After giving vent to this exclamation, the old man spread 
 the skirts of his dahnation over his knees this was a sort of 
 robe made of black velvet, open in front, wide sleeves, no 
 collar, the sumptuous material being much worn and shiny. 
 This corpse of a magnificent costume he had formerly worn 
 as president of the tribunal of the Parchons a position 
 which had earned him the enmity of the Duke of Burgundy 
 was now but a mere rag. 
 
 Philippe was not cold, he perspired in the harness he had 
 assumed, dreading further questioning. Thus far the brief 
 information he had extracted the day before, from a Jew 
 whose life he had saved, had been enough thanks to his 
 good memory and to the Jew's perfect understanding of the 
 customs of Maitre Cornelius and his habits and manners.
 
 326 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 But the young man, who in his first flush of enthusiasm had 
 feared nothing, now began to perceive the difficulties of his 
 undertaking. The solemn, grave manner of the Fleming 
 reacted upon himself; he felt himself under lock and key and 
 remembered that the urbane Grand Provost Tristan and his 
 rope obeyed the behest of Maitre Cornelius. 
 
 "Have you supped?" asked the miser in a tone which 
 implied an affirmative answer. 
 
 The old maid, despite her brother's tone, trembled as she 
 looked at the new inmate, as if gauging the capacity of the 
 stomach she might have to fill, then said with a specious 
 grin: 
 
 " You do not belie your name ; your hair and mustache are 
 both black as the devil's tail." 
 
 " I have supped," said he. 
 
 "Well, then," replied the usurer, " you can come and see 
 me again to-morrow. I have had no apprentice for a number 
 years. Beside, in the night comes wisdom." 
 
 "Hey! by Saint-Bavon, monsieur, I am from Flanders; 
 I know not one soul in this place ; the chains are up in the 
 streets: I shall be thrown into prison. However," he went 
 on, alarmed at his own temerity, " if it suits your good plea- 
 sure, of course I will go." 
 
 The oath had a singular effect on the old man. 
 
 " Come, then, by Saint-Bavon ! You shall sleep here." 
 
 "But " began his sister. 
 
 "Silence," said Cornelius. "In his letter Oosterlinrk 
 says that he will be answerable for this young man. Yon 
 well know," he whispered in his sister's ear, "that we have 
 a hundred thousand livres here belonging to Oosterlinck. Is 
 that not security enough ? " 
 
 "And suppose he steals the Bavarian jewels? He looks 
 more like a thief than a Fleming." 
 
 " Hark ! " said the old man listening attentively. 
 
 The two misers listened. An instant after the "hark"
 
 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 327 
 
 uttered by Cornelius, a noise caused by men's footsteps echoed 
 in the distance on the other side of the town moat. 
 
 " The guard of le Plessis is on its rounds," said the sister. 
 
 "Give me the key to the apprentices' room," Cornelius 
 continued. 
 
 The old woman was about to take up the lamp. 
 
 " What, do you mean to leave us alone together without a 
 light?" exclaimed Cornelius in a voice eloquent with some 
 hidden meaning. "Old as you are you ought to be able to 
 see in the dark. It is not so difficult to find a key." 
 
 The sister evidently understood the meaning hidden in 
 these words and left the room. As he looked at this singular 
 creature, as she made her way toward the door, Philippe was 
 able to hide the glance from Cornelius that he cast around 
 the room. It was wainscoted half-way up with oak, the walls 
 were hung with yellow leather stamped out with black arabes- 
 ques ; but what most struck the young man was a match-lock 
 musket with its long spring dagger attached. This then new 
 and terrible weapon lay close to Cornelius. 
 
 " How do you expect to earn your living with me? " asked 
 the miser. 
 
 " I have but little money," said Philippe, " but I know 
 some good business schemes. If you give me but one sou on 
 every mark I make you, I shall be satisfied." 
 
 " A sou ! a sou," spoke out the miser, " why that's a great 
 deal ! " 
 
 At this time reentered the old hag with the key. 
 
 " Come," said Cornelius to Philippe. 
 
 The pair went out beneath the portico and mounted a 
 spiral stairway of stone the circular well of which rose through 
 a turret by the side of the room they had occupied. On the 
 second floor the young man came to a stand. 
 
 "Nay, nay," cried Cornelius, "the devil! why, this is 
 the cranny in which the King enjoys himself." 
 
 The architect had constructed the room used for the ap-
 
 328 MA1TRE CORXLUUS. 
 
 prentices' lodging under the pointed roof of the turret up 
 which the stairs wound. It was a little circular room, the 
 walls of stone, cold and bare of ornament. The tower stood 
 in the centre of the facade on the courtyard, which was like 
 all country courtyards narrow and dark. At the farther end, 
 through an iron grating, could be seen a wretched garden, in 
 which only the mulberries grew that Cornelius had introduced. 
 The young noble could take in these details through the loop- 
 holes of the turret, the moon, luckily, casting a brilliant 
 light. 
 
 A cot, a stool, an unmatched pitcher and basin, and a flimsy 
 chest comprised the furniture in the room. The light could 
 only enter through little square slits, placed at intervals in the 
 wall ot the tower, corresponding, no doubt, to the ornamenta- 
 tion of the outside. 
 
 "Here is your lodging," said Cornelius; " it is plain and 
 substantial, and contains all that is needed for sleep. Good- 
 night ! Do not leave this room as the others did." 
 
 After giving his apprentice a last look fraught with divers 
 meanings, Cornelius double-locked the door, took away the 
 key and went down the stairs, leaving the young fellow as 
 much befooled as a bell-founder who on opening his mould 
 finds it empty. Alone, without a light, seated on a stool in 
 this small garret-room from which so many of his predecessors 
 had gone to the gallows, the young noble felt like a wild 
 beast caught in a trap. He jumped on to the stool and stood 
 on tip-toe to peer out of one of the little slits through which 
 shone a faint glimmer of light. From thence he could see 
 the Loire, the lovely slopes of Saint-Cyr, the sombre splen- 
 deur of le Plessis, where a few lights were gleaming in the 
 deep recesses of the windows. Farther away lay the beautiful 
 meadows of Touraine and the silvery stream of the great river. 
 Every point of this lovely landscape wore, just then, a myste- 
 rious charm ; the windows, the waters, the roofs of the houses 
 glistened like diamonds in the trembling rays of the moon.
 
 MA1TRE CORXX.LWS. 329 
 
 The soul of the young noble could not altogether repress 
 some tender^ sweet and sad emotions. 
 
 " Suppose this is my last farewell ! " said he to himself. 
 
 As he stood there, he already felt the terrible emotion his 
 adventure promised him ; he yielded to the fears of a prisoner 
 who still retains a gleam of hope. His mistress brightened 
 each difficulty. To him she was no more a woman, she be- 
 came a supernatural being seen in the incense vapors of his 
 hot desire. A feeble cry, which seemed to come from the 
 Hotel de Poitiers, restored him to reason and to a realization 
 of his situation. He threw himself on his bed to meditate on 
 his course ; soon he heard a slight rustling sound which came 
 from the spiral staircase. He listened with all his ears, when 
 the whispered words: "He is in bed," uttered by the old 
 woman, came to his ear. 
 
 By an accident of which the architect was ignorant, the 
 lightest sound on the stairway was echoed in the room of the 
 apprentices, so the ostensible apprentice did not miss a single 
 movement of the old miser and his sister, who were spying 
 upon him. ' He undressed, got into bed, and pretended to 
 sleep ; during the time the couple remained on the stairs he 
 was employed in devising means to escape his prison and his 
 entry of the Hotel de Poitiers. 
 
 About ten o'clock Cornelius and his sister, convinced that 
 the new inmate was asleep, retired to their own rooms. 
 
 The young man paid careful attention to the sound they 
 made in thus doing, and thought he could guess as to the 
 rooms they each occupied ; they must, he thought, occupy the 
 whole of the second floor. 
 
 Like all the houses of that date, this floor was next below 
 the roof, from which its dormer windows projected, which 
 were adorned with tops of richly sculptured stone. The roof 
 was bordered with a kind of balustrade, which concealed the 
 gutters for the descent of the rain-water which gargoyles, like 
 crocodiles' heads, discharged into the street. The youth, who
 
 330 MA1TRE CORN&L1US, 
 
 had so carefully studied his bearings like as a cat might cun- 
 ningly have done, believed he could make his way from the 
 tower to the roof, thence to Madame de Vallier's room by the 
 waterspouts and gargoyles; but he had not counted on the 
 narrowness of the windows in the turret ; it was a manifest 
 impossibility that he could pass through them. He now made 
 up his mind to get upon the roof of the house through the 
 window of the staircase on the second story. To accomplish 
 
 this bold project he must have egress from his room and 
 
 Cornelius had carried off the key ! 
 
 The young noble had taken the precaution of bringing with 
 him, concealed under his clothes, one of those poinards used 
 at that time for dealing the coup-de-gr&ce in a duel, when 
 the vanquished adversary begged the victor to dispatch him. 
 This horrible weapon had one edge sharpened like a razor, 
 and the other one was toothed like a saw, but the teeth run- 
 ning in the reverse direction to that by which it would enter 
 the body in the thrust. The youth purposed to use this latter 
 edge as a saw to cut the wood through around the lock. Hap- 
 pily for him the staple of the lock was attached to the outside 
 of the door by four stout screws. By the help of his dagger 
 he contrived, not without much difficulty, to unscrew and re- 
 move this altogether ; he carefully laid aside the staple and the 
 four screws, and proceeded down the stairs without his shoes 
 to reconnoitre the locality. It was midnight when he was 
 free. 
 
 He was quite astonished to discover a wide-open door to a 
 corridor leading to several chambers, at the end of which pas- 
 sage was a window opening on to the V-shaped roof connecting 
 the roofsof the Hotel de Poitiers and the " evil house," which 
 there met. Nothing could express his joy, unless it be the 
 vow which he forthwith made to the Blessed Virgin to found 
 a mass in her honor at the noted parish church of the Escrig- 
 noles, at Tours. 
 
 After examining the vast, tall chimneys of the Hotel de
 
 MA1TRE CORN&LWS. 331 
 
 Poitiers, he retraced his steps to fetch his poinard ; he saw, 
 to his terror, a bright light upon the stairs, and Maitre Cor- 
 nelius himself in his dalmation, carrying a lamp, holding it 
 out as far as possible, his eyes open to their fullest extent and 
 fixed upon the corridor, at the entrance of which he stood still 
 as a spectre. 
 
 "If I open the window and jump out upon the roof, he will 
 hear me," thought the young man. 
 
 But the terrible old man was coming on coming like the 
 hour of death stealing upon the criminal. In this extremity 
 Philippe, his wits quickened by love, recovered his presence 
 of mind ; he slipped into a doorway, squeezing himself into 
 the angle of it, and awaited the old man's passing him. As 
 soon as Cornelius, holding his lamp in advance, came into 
 line with the current of air which the young man ejected from 
 his lungs, the light was blown out. 
 
 Cornelius uttered a Dutch oath and muttered some vague 
 phrases ; but he turned around and retraced his footsteps. 
 Then the noble hurriedly sought his room and the poinard, 
 returned with the latter to his so blessed window, softly opened 
 it, and sprang out upon the roof. 
 
 Once free and under the open sky, he felt weak, so deliri- 
 ously happy was he. The excitement of the danger, or the 
 audacity of his enterprise, caused his emotion ; victory is to 
 the full as perilous as the battle. He leaned against the par- 
 apet, quivering in his satisfaction, and said to himself: 
 
 " By which of these chimneys, now. can I get into her 
 room ? ' ' 
 
 He looked at them all. With the instinct of a lover, he 
 touched each in turn to judge by the feel in which there had 
 been a fire. When his mind was made up on this point, the 
 daring young man securely stuck his poinard in the joint be- 
 tween two stones, attached to it a silken ladder, threw the 
 latter down the chimney, and then, trusting to his good blade 
 and the chance of having selected the route to his mistress'
 
 332 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 room, without a tremor descended. He knew not whether 
 Saint-Vallier was asleep or awake ; but one thing he did know, 
 and that was that he would embrace the countess, even if it 
 should be at the price of two men's lives. 
 
 Presently his feet touched warm embers ; he gently trod 
 them ; more gently yet he stooped down and saw the countess 
 seated in an armchair. 
 
 And she saw him. 
 
 By the light of the lamp, the timid being, pale and palpi- 
 tating with pleasurable emotions, pointed to the Comte de 
 Saint-Vallier lying in bed, about ten feet away from her. 
 You may suppose that their burning, silent kisses echoed only 
 in their hearts. 
 
 The next day, about nine in the morning, as Louis XI. was 
 leaving his chapel after attending mass, he found Maitre Cor- 
 nelius in his path. 
 
 "Good-luck, crony," said he, straightening his cap in his 
 usual jerky manner. 
 
 " Sire, I would willingly pay you a thousand gold crowns 
 if I could have a moment's speech with your majesty ; I have 
 discovered the thief who stole the rubies and all the jewels of 
 the Duke " 
 
 "Let us hear about this," said Louis XL, going into the 
 courtyard of le Plessis, followed by his silversmith, Coyctier 
 his physician, Olivier le Daim, and the captain of the Scottish 
 Guard. "Tell me this business. Another man to hang for 
 you! Halloo, Tristan ! " 
 
 The grand provost, who was marching up and down the 
 courtyard, came with slow steps, like a dog proud of his 
 fidelity. The group paused under a tree. The King seated 
 himself on a bench and the courtiers formed a circle around 
 him. 
 
 " Sire, a man pretending to be a Fleming has entrapped 
 and got the better of me " be<ran Cornelius.
 
 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. ;333 
 
 "Indeed, then he must be crafty," said the King, wagging 
 his head. 
 
 "Yes, truly," answered the silversmith. "But methinks 
 he would have snared even yourself. How should I distrust 
 a poor beggar recommended to me by Oosterlinck, a man 
 for whom I hold a hundred thousand livres? Nay, I will 
 wager that the Jew's letter and seal were forged ! In short, 
 Sire, I found myself this morning robbed of those jewels you 
 praised so admiringly. They have been ravished from me, 
 Sire ! To steal the jewels of the Elector of Bavaria ! The 
 scoundrels will stop at nothing ! They'll steal your kingdom 
 if you don't look out. They respect no one ! 
 
 " As soon as I missed the jewels I went up to the room of 
 that apprentice, who is certainly a pastmaster in thievery. 
 This time proof is not lacking. He had forced the lock of 
 his door. The moon was down wiien he returned to his 
 room, so he couldn't find all the screws. By good chance I 
 trod upon one as I entered his room. He was sound asleep, 
 the wretch, tired out. Just fancy, gentlemen, he climbed 
 into my strong room by way of the chimney. To-morrow, 
 or perhaps to-night, I'll make it hot for him though. We 
 can always learn something from these villains. He had a 
 silk ladder about him, and his clothes were marked with the 
 dust of the roofs over which he had clambered, and the soot 
 of the chimney down which he had descended. He intended 
 remaining with me and robbing me night after night, the bold 
 villain! But where has he hid the jewels? The country- 
 folk coming early into town saw him on the roof. He must 
 have had accomplices, who waited for him on that dyke you 
 made. Ah ! Sire, you are the accomplice of fellows who come 
 in boats; when, crack! they carry off everything and leave 
 never a trace ! But we hold this fellow, this leader, as a key, 
 the horrid miscreant, the daring scapegrace. Ah ! but he'll 
 be a dainty morsel for the gibbet ; with a screw or two of 
 qufsi 'toning beforehand, he will tell all. And the honor of
 
 334 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 your reign is concerned in it is it not ? There ought not to 
 be robbers in the realm of so great a King." 
 
 But for long the King had ceased to listen. He had fallen 
 into one of those gloomy meditations which became so fre- 
 quent and ominous in the latter period of his life. A deep 
 silence reigned. 
 
 ''This is your business," said he at length to Tristan. 
 "Search ye it out." 
 
 He rose, walked a few steps, and the courtiers left him 
 alone. He then perceived Cornelius, who, mounted on his 
 mule, was riding away in the company of the grand provost. 
 
 "And the thousand gold crowns? " shouted the King after 
 him. 
 
 "Ah ! Sire, you are too great a King ! No sum can pay 
 for your justice ! " 
 
 Louis XI. smiled. The courtiers envied the old Fleming 
 his bold speech and privileges, as he passed off at a good pace 
 down the avenue of young mulberry trees leading from Tours 
 to le Plessis. 
 
 Exhausted with fatigue, the young siegneur was sleeping 
 soundly. When he returned from his gallant adventure the 
 spirit which had carried him through ceased to act in giving 
 him the ability to defend himself against distant or imaginary 
 dangers ; he was no longer rashly pursuing anticipated joys. 
 He postponed until the morrow the cleansing of his soiled 
 garb ; a great blunder, to which all else conspired. It is true 
 that the moon had failed him ; through this he was unable to 
 find all the screws belonging to the cursed lock, he was im- 
 patient. Then with the happy-go-lucky indifference of a tired 
 man he trusted to chance which had served him so well. He 
 did, indeed, make a bargain with himself to awake at the 
 dawn, but the events of the day and the tumults of the night 
 prevented his keeping the promise. Happiness is forgetful. 
 Cornelius was no longer, so it seemed, formidable to him, as 
 he flung himself down on the trucklc-bcd where so many poor
 
 A1A/TKE CORNELIUS, 335 
 
 wretches had awoke to their doom. This recklessness was his 
 ruin. 
 
 While the King's silversmith was returning from le Plessis, 
 in the company of the grand provost and his redoubtable bow- 
 men, the pretended Goulenoire was being watched by the old 
 sister, who was seated on the spiral stairs, knitting stockings 
 and paying no heed to the cold. 
 
 The young man continued to dream of the ravishing en- 
 chantments of the charming night, in full ignorance of that 
 danger which was rushing upon him at a hand-gallop. He 
 saw himself on a cushion at the feet of the countess, his head 
 on her knees warm with affection's fire. 
 
 He was dreaming. 
 
 He listened to the story of her persecutions and the full 
 details of the count's petty tyranny; he wept over the lot of 
 the unhappy lady, who was, in truth, the one natural daugh- 
 ter of Louis XL, who was best beloved by him. He promised 
 her that to-morrow he would go to the King and reveal her 
 wrongs to that terrible father ; everything, he assured her, 
 should be satisfactorily arranged as she might wish, the mar- 
 riage annulled, the husband banished while they themselves 
 might be the victims of his sword, so perilously near, if the 
 slightest noise should awaken him. But in his dreams, the 
 gleam of the lamp, the flame of their eyes, the colors of the 
 stuffs and draperies were more vivid, brighter than in reality ; 
 a more delightful perfume exhaled from their night-dresses ; 
 there was more of love in the air, more fire in the atmosphere 
 than there had really been. The Marie of his dream did not 
 so strongly resist his advances as the living Marie had done. 
 The adoring glances, those tender entreaties, those adroit 
 silences, those voluptuous solicitations, the affected gener- 
 osity, which render the first moments of a passion so fiercely 
 ardent, which arouse a fresh delirium at each new step toward 
 love, were less objected to. 
 
 Jn obedience to the amorous jurisprudence of the period,
 
 336 MA1TRE CORXLL1US. 
 
 Marie de Saint-Vallier granted her lover all the superficial 
 privileges of the tender passion, la petite oie.* She will- 
 ingly allowed him to kiss her feet, her robe, her hands, her 
 throat ; she avowed her love ; she accepted his vows and at- 
 tentions; she consented for him to die for her; she yielded 
 to an intoxication which the rigor of her half-chasteness inten- 
 sified ; further than that she could not be induced to go she 
 made her deliverance the guerdon of the highest surrender to 
 his love. 
 
 In order to have a marriage annulled, in those days, it was 
 necessary to apply to Rome ; to obtain the help of certain 
 cardinals, and to personally appear before the sovereign pontiff 
 armed with the approval of the King. Marie was firm in de- 
 siring to be free to love, that she might freely give it to the 
 one she loved. 
 
 Almost every woman in those days had enough of power to 
 establish her empire in the heart of a man in such manner as 
 to make that passion the history of his life, the principle of 
 his noblest resolves. Women were then a power in France, 
 they were sovereigns ; they had noble pride ; their lovers far 
 more belonged to them than they to their lovers ; their love 
 was often the cause of bloodshed, but this must be faced to 
 become a lover. But this Marie of his dream was gracious ; 
 she was deeply moved by her lover's devotion ; she made but 
 small defense against his vehement onslaught. 
 
 Which one was true? Did the false apprentice see the real 
 woman in his dream ? Was the lady he saw in the Hotel de 
 Poitiers only assuming virtue's mask? This question it is 
 difficult to decide; it is too delicate: woman's honor de- 
 mands, as it were, that it should remain unanswered. 
 
 At the instant that the Marie of the dream may have been 
 about to forget her high dignity as his mistress, the lover 
 found himself in the grasp of an iron hand, and the sharp 
 tones of the grand provost, as he thus addressed him : 
 * Lit.: the little goose.
 
 MAI'TRE CORNELIUS. 337 
 
 " Come, you Christian of midnight, who feel around the 
 roofs for God, wake up, come ! " 
 
 The young man saw the black face of Tristan d'Hermite 
 above him ; he recognized his sardonic leer ; then on the 
 steps of the corkscrew stairway he saw Cornelius and his sis- 
 ter, while beyond them were the provost guards. At that sight 
 and noticing the diabolical visages, expressive of either hatred 
 or curiosity of persons accustomed to hanging people, the 
 whilom Philippe Goulenoire sat up on his bed and rubbed his 
 eyes. 
 
 " 'Sdeath ! " he exclaimed, seizing the poinard which was 
 under his pillow. " Now is the time for our knives to play." 
 
 " Ho, ho ! " cried Tristan, " that's the speech of a noble. 
 It seemeth me that here is Georges de Estouteville, nephew of 
 the grandmaster of bowmen." 
 
 Hearing his real name uttered by Tristan, young d'Estoute- 
 ville thought less of himself than of the danger his recognition 
 would cause his unhappy mistress. To avert suspicion he 
 cried out : 
 
 " By Mahomet's belly ! help, help, comrades, help ! " 
 
 After this terrible outcry, and made really in despair, the 
 young courtier gave a bound, poinard in hand, and reached 
 the landing on the stairs. But the myrmidons of the grand 
 provost were well up in such games. As Georges d'Estoute- 
 ville reached the stairs they most dexterously seized him, not 
 at all alarmed at the vigorous lunges he made at them with 
 his dagger, which, fortunately for the man at whom it was 
 aimed, slipped on his corslet. He was disarmed, his arms 
 tied, and he was thrown on the bed before the provost, who 
 stood motionless, thinking. 
 
 Tristan looked for a moment, without speaking, at the pris- 
 oner's hands ; he scratched his chin and pointed Cornelius to 
 them, and said : 
 
 " Those are no vagabond's hands, neither are they those of 
 an apprentice. He is a noble."
 
 338 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 " Say a thief, rather ! " retorted the Fleming. " My good 
 Tristan, whether noble or serf, he has undone me, the villain. 
 I would that this moment I could see his feet warming in your 
 pretty boots. Beyond any doubt he is the chief of that gang 
 of invisible devils who know all my secrets, open my locks, 
 rob me, kill me by inches. They are rich with my wealth, 
 Tristan. Ah ! this time, though, we will recover the treasure, 
 for this fellow has the face of the King of Egypt. I shall 
 recover my so precious rubies, all the sums I have lost ; our 
 good King shall have his division of the spoil." 
 
 "Oh, our hiding-places are more secret than yours," said 
 Georges, smiling. 
 
 "Ah, the damned villain, he confesses ! " cried the miser. 
 
 The provost during this time had been carefully examining 
 Georges' clothing and the lock of the door. 
 
 " How did you remove those screws ? " asked Tristan. 
 
 Georges kept silent. 
 
 "Oh, all right; hold your tongue if you wish. You will 
 soon confess to Saint Rackbones," said the provost. 
 
 "Now you talk business ! " cried Cornelius. 
 
 " Away with him," said the grand provost. 
 
 Georges d'Estouteville asked permission to dress himself. 
 On a sign from their chief the guard put on his clothing with 
 the deft rapidity of a nurse who is changing a baby's dress 
 during a moment's quietude. 
 
 An immense throng had assembled in the Rue du Murier. 
 The growling increased with every moment, and had the 
 sound of an incipient riot. Rumors of the theft had been 
 prevalent since early morning. On all sides popular favor 
 was aroused on behalf of the apprentice, who was said to 
 be young and handsome; while the hatred against Cornelius 
 had revived afresh. There was not a young woman with fresh 
 cheeks and pretty feet to exhibit, nor a mother's son in all 
 the town, but was determined on seeing the victim. When 
 Georges issued from the house there was a frightful uproar in
 
 MAfTRE CORNELIUS. 339 
 
 the street, as he was seen led by one of the guard, who, after 
 he had mounted his horse, kept the twisted end of the strong 
 leathern thong that bound his prisoner's arms. 
 
 Whether it was that the mob merely wished to see this new 
 victim, or whether rescue was intended, the people behind 
 pushed those in front close upon the little squad of cavalry 
 posted outside the Malemaison. At this time, Cornelius and 
 his sister slammed the door and banged the shutters to with 
 the violence of panic-terror. Tristan was not accustomed to 
 respect the populace, as in those days they were not yet the 
 'sovereign people," and cared but little for a probable riot. 
 
 " Push on ! Push on ! " he cried to his men. 
 
 At his voice the bowmen spurred their horses toward the end 
 of the street. The crowd seeing a few persons knocked down 
 and trampled by the horses, and others crushed up against the 
 walls of the houses and nearly suffocated, took the wise course 
 of returning to their homes. 
 
 "Make way for the King's justice! " cried Tristan. 
 " What are you doing here? Do some of you want hanging, 
 too? Go home, good people; your dinner is being burned. 
 Here, my good dame, your husband's hose need mending, 
 get off home and darn them, get back to your needles." 
 
 Though this jocular speech showed that the grand provost 
 was in a good humor, the most obstreperous fled before them 
 as if he were the Black Plague itself. 
 
 At the time the crowd began to give somewhat, Georges 
 de Estouteville was astounded to see at one of the windows of 
 the Hotel de Poitiers his beloved Marie de Saint-Vallier, 
 laughing with the count. She was mocking at him, the poor 
 devoted lover, who was going to his death for her. But, 
 perhaps, she was only amused by seeing the caps of the 
 populace knocked off by the spears of the bowmen. 
 
 One must b twenty-three years old, rich in illusions, fully 
 able to believe in a woman's love, must love with all the 
 power of our life, risking it with pleasure on the handsel of a
 
 340 MAJTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 kiss, and then be betrayed to comprehend the fury of hatred 
 and despair which shook Georges de Estouteville's heart at the 
 sight of his laughing mistress, who only vouchsafed him a 
 cold, indifferent glance. Without a doubt she had been there 
 some time, for her arms rested on a cushion ; she was quite at 
 her ease and her old mountebank seemed content. He, too, 
 was laughing all curses on the hunchback ! 
 
 A few tears ran from the young man's eyes ; but when 
 Marie saw them she hastily drew back. The tears, though, 
 were suddenly dried when Georges beheld the red and white 
 plumes of the page who was in his interest. The count did 
 not notice the movements of this cautious page, for he 
 advanced to his mistress on tip-toe. After he had spoken a 
 few words in her ear, Marie returned to the window. She 
 managed to elude the watchful eye of her tyrant for a moment 
 and cast upon Georges a look that was bright with the fires of 
 love and the triumph of having so skillfully deceived her 
 Argus a glance that seemed to say : 
 
 " I am watching over you." 
 
 Had she cried aloud these words to him, she could not more 
 have impressed them upon his hearing ; that glance was full 
 of a thousand thoughts, it was charged with the terrors, hopes, 
 pleasure, of their situation. He had passed in that one second 
 from heaven to martyrdom, from martyrdom back to heaven ! 
 So, then, this brave young man, light-hearted and content, 
 walked gayly to his doom ; he adjudged the horrors of the 
 grim " question " but a small price for the rapture of his love. 
 
 As Tristan was turning off the Rue du Mftrier, his men 
 halted as an officer of the Scottish Guard rode toward them 
 at full tilt. 
 
 "What is to do?" asked the provost. 
 
 "Naught concerning you," replied the officer, scornfully. 
 " The King sends me to summon the Comte and Comtesse de 
 Saint-Vallier, whom he bids dine with him." 
 
 The grand provost had barely reached the quay of le Plessis
 
 AfAlTRE CORNELIUS. 341 
 
 when the count and countess, both riding, he on his horse, 
 she on a white mule, and followed by their pages, joined the 
 bowmen, intending to enter Plessis-le-Tours in their company. 
 All were moving slowly. Georges was on foot between two 
 mounted guards, one of whom still held him by the leathern 
 thong. 
 
 Tristan, the count, and his wife naturally led the van ; the 
 criminal followed them. The young page mingled with the 
 bowmen and questioned them, at times addressing the pris- 
 oner ; he contrived with some cunning to say to him in a low 
 voice : 
 
 " I got over the garden-wall of le Plessis and took a missive 
 to the King from madame. She was nearly dying when she 
 learned of your arrest for theft. Be of good courage. She 
 now goes to the King to speak for you." 
 
 Already had love given wiliness and courage to the countess. 
 The laughter she had forced was part of the heroism women 
 can display in the great crises of life. 
 
 Despite the singular fancy which possessed the author of 
 " Quentin Durward " to place the royal chateau of Plessis-le- 
 Tours on an eminence, we must content ourselves in leaving 
 it where it really was situated, that is, on the low land, pro- 
 tected on either side by the Cher and the Loire; also by 
 the Canal Sainte-Anne, so named in honor of his well-loved 
 daughter, Madame du Beaujeu. By uniting the two rivers 
 between Tours and le Plessis, this canal served as a formidable 
 further protection to the castle, and was also valuable as a 
 highway for commerce. On that side toward Brehemont, a 
 broad, fertile plain, the park was inclosed by a moat, the re- 
 mains of which still show its extent and depth. 
 
 At a period when the power of artillery was still in embryo, 
 the position of le Plessis, long the favorite retreat of Louis XL, 
 might be considered impregnable. The chateau, built of 
 brick and stone, was in no way remarkable ; but surrounding it 
 were noble trees, and from its windows could be seen through
 
 342 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 the well-arranged vistas* the loveliest views imaginable. No 
 rival place was to be found near this solitary castle, which 
 stood in the very centre of the little plain reserved for the 
 King and guarded by four streams of water. 
 
 If tradition may be relied upon, Louis XI. occupied the 
 West wing, and from his chamber could see at one glance the 
 course of the Loire, the pretty valley watered by the Croisville, 
 and some part of the slopes of Saint-Cyr. From the windows 
 opening on the courtyard he could see the entrance to his 
 fortress and the dyke by which he had connected his favorite 
 residence with the city of Tours. The suspicious disposition 
 of the King gives much weight to this tradition. It is certain 
 that had Louis XI. bestowed upon the building of his castle 
 the luxury of architecture which Francois I. afterward dis- 
 played at Chambord, the royal residence of France would 
 always have remained in Touraine. This lovely spot and ex- 
 quisite scenery need only to be seen to at once establish its 
 superiority over all other royal residences in the fair realm of 
 France. 
 
 Louis XL, now in his fifty-seventh year, had scarcely more 
 than three years of life before him ; already he began to feel 
 death's approach by many attacks of that illness which was to 
 prove mortal ; delivered from his enemies ; on the point of 
 adding to his territories by absorbing the possessions of the 
 duchy of Burgundy, through the marriage of the dauphin and 
 Marguerite, the sole heiress of that dukedom which marriage 
 was arranged by Desquerdes, the captain-general of his army 
 in Flanders ; having established his authority throughout his 
 realm ; now meditating ameliorations and improvements of 
 every description in the kingdom, he found time slipping 
 from his grasp, no troubles remaining to him save those of old 
 age. Deceived by every one, even by the minions nearest 
 him, experience had increased his natural distrust. The desire 
 to live had become in him the egotism of a king who has be- 
 
 * Plcxitium.
 
 MA2TRE CORNELIUS. 343 
 
 come incarnate in his subjects ; he craved long life in which 
 to carry out vast designs. 
 
 Everything that the commonsense of statesmen of spirit or 
 the genius of revolution has since introduced of change in the 
 monarchy, Louis XL had devised. Equality of taxation, and 
 of people before the law the Sovereign being then the Law 
 were the objects for which he endeavored. On the eve of All- 
 Saints he had gathered together the learned goldsmiths of 
 France for the purpose of establishing in his kingdom a system 
 of uniform weights and measures. He had already established 
 a uniform power. Thus his great spirit soared like an eagle 
 above his realm, joining, singular but true, the prudence of a 
 king to the idiosyncrasies of a man of genius. 
 
 At no period of our history has Monarchy's figure been 
 greater or more majestic. Amazing contrast ! A great mind 
 in a frail body ; an unbelieving spirit as concerned the mun- 
 dane, a devout believer in all the practices of religion ; a man 
 struggling against two powers greater than his own the 
 present, the future; the future in which he dreaded eternal 
 torment, a fear causing him to sacrifice largely to the church ; 
 the present, his own life, for the saving of which he was the 
 slave of Coyctier. This King, who could crush all about him, 
 was himself crushed by remorse, by disease, in the midst of 
 that mysterious poem the combat of Man in his highest mani- 
 festations of power tilting against nature. 
 
 It was stupendous, it was impressive. 
 
 While awaiting his dinner, which, in those days, was par- 
 taken between eleven o'clock and noon, Louis XL, after a 
 short walk, sat down in a large, tapestried chair near the 
 fire in his private chamber. Olivier le Daim and Coyctier, 
 the leech, looked at each other without a word, standing in a 
 window recess and watching their master, who was sleeping. 
 The only sound to be heard was the steps of the two chamber- 
 lains as they paced back and forth in the anteroom, the Sire 
 de Montresor and Jean Dufou, Sire de Montbazon. These
 
 344 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 two seigneurs of Touraine kept an eye on the captain of the 
 Scottish Guard, who, according to his usual custom, was 
 sleeping in his chair. 
 
 The King seemed to be dozing. His head drooped upon 
 his breast ; his cap, pulled forward over his forehead, hid his 
 eyes. Thus, seated on his high chair of State, which was sur- 
 mounted by a crown, he seemed, huddled up as he was, like 
 a man who had fallen asleep while engaged in some profound 
 meditation. 
 
 At this moment Tristan and his followers crossed the bridge 
 of Sainte-Anne over the canal, about two hundred feet from 
 the entrance to le Plessis. 
 
 " Who goes there? " asked the King. 
 
 The courtiers, in surprise, looked at each other inquiringly. 
 
 " He is dreaming," said Coyctier in a low voice. 
 
 " Pasque s-Dicu ! " cried Louis XI. "Do you think I'm 
 a fool ? People are now crossing the bridge. To be sure I 
 am sitting near the chimney, and I may hear more clearly 
 than you. This effect of nature might be made useful," he 
 thoughtfully added. 
 
 " What a man ! " said le Daim. 
 
 Louis XI. arose and walked toward one of the windows 
 looking over the town. He saw the grand provost and ex- 
 claimed : 
 
 " Ha, ha ! here come my old crony and his thief. And 
 there, too, is my little Marie de Saint-Vallier ; I had forgotten 
 all about that. Olivier," he continued to the barber, " go at 
 once and tell Monsieur de Montbazon to serve us some good 
 Bourgueil wine at dinner, and mind the cook forgets not the 
 lampreys. Madame la Comtesse likes those of all things. 
 May I eat lampreys? " he added after a pause, glaring uneasily 
 at Coyctier. 
 
 For all answer the physician commenced to examine his 
 master's face. The two men were a picture. 
 
 Historians and romancists have consecrated the brown cam-
 
 . CORNELIUS. 346 
 
 let large coat, with breeches of the same material, worn by 
 Louis XI. His cap, decorated with pewter medallions, his 
 collar of the order of Saint-Michael are not less known ; but 
 no writer, no painter, has ever depicted the visage of that 
 terrible monarch in his last years; sickly, hollow, yellow, 
 brown, every feature of which was expressive of sour cunning 
 and cold sarcasm. This mask had the brow of a noble man, a 
 forehead furrowed with wrinkles, weighty with deep thoughts ; 
 but on his lips and cheeks was a something indescribably low 
 and vulgar. Looking at certain details of that countenance 
 you might have thought him a debauched vine-grower or a 
 miserly tradesman ; but then, above these resemblances and 
 the decrepitude of a dying old man, could vaguely be seen the 
 King, the man of power, the man of action, arising supreme. 
 His pale yellow eyes seemed extinct of sight ; but a spark of 
 courage and wrath lurked within ; at the slightest friction it 
 could burst into flame and cast about consuming fires. 
 
 The physician was a stout burgher with a florid face, dressed 
 in black, peremptory, greedy of gain, of much self-importance. 
 
 These two personages were framed, so to say, in that pan- 
 eled chamber of walnut-wood, hung about with tapestry of 
 Flanders; the ceiling was of carved beams and dingy with 
 smoke. 
 
 The furniture, the bed, all inlaid with arabesques of polished 
 pewter, would to-day seem more valuable than they were at 
 that time when the arts were just exploiting their numberless 
 masterpieces. 
 
 "Lampreys are not good for you," replied the physician. 
 
 (This title, le physicicn, but recently substituted for the 
 former term maitre myrrhe, is still applied to the faculty in 
 England. The name was at that time almost universally used 
 in France.) 
 
 " What then may I eat ? " asked the King humbly. 
 
 "Widgeon in salt. Otherwise, you have so much bile 
 moving that you might die on All-Souls' Day."
 
 34C MA fox E CORNELIUS. 
 
 " To-day ! " cried the King, terrified. 
 
 "Be composed, Sire," answered Coyctier. "Do not fret 
 your mind; try and amuse yourself some." 
 
 "Ah!" said the King, " my daughter Marie used to suc- 
 ceed in that difficult business." 
 
 As he spoke, Imbert de Basternay, Sire de Montresor, and 
 de Bridore, softly knocked on the royal door. By the King's 
 permission he entered and announced the Comte and Comtesse 
 de Saint-Vallier. Louis nodded a sign. Marie appeared, 
 followed by her aged husband, who had to allow her to pre- 
 cede him. 
 
 "Good-day, my children," said the King. 
 
 " Sire," replied the lady in a whisper, as she embraced him, 
 "I would speak secretly with you." 
 
 Louis made as though he had not heard her. 
 
 "Dufou, Hola ! " he cried in a hollow voice, turning to the 
 door. 
 
 Dufou, Lord of Montbazon, grand cupbearer of France, 
 entered in haste. 
 
 " Go to the steward; tell him I must have widgeon salted 
 for dinner. Then to Madame de Beaujeu, inform her that I 
 dine alone to-day. Do you know, madame," continued the 
 King, pretending to some feeling, " that you neglect me. It 
 is nearly three years since I saw you. Come, come hither, 
 pretty one," he added, sitting down and holding out his 
 arms to her. " How thin you have become ! Why have you 
 allowed her to get so thin? Eh?" he ejaculated, turning to 
 the Count de Poitiers. 
 
 The jealous husband cast so frightened a look at his wife 
 that she almost pitied him. 
 
 " It's happiness, Sire," replied he. 
 
 "Ah ! you love each other too much, do you ? " said the 
 King, holding his daughter between his knees. " I was right 
 in calling you Marie-pleine-de-Grace. Coyctier, leave us ! 
 Now, what do you want of me?" he asked his daughter, as
 
 CORNELIUS. 347 
 
 soon as he saw the physician was gone. "After sending me 
 your " 
 
 In this so great danger Marie audaciously placed her hand 
 on the King's lips and whispered in his ear : 
 
 " I always thought you cautious and quick-witted 
 
 " Saint-Vallier," said the King, laughing, " I think Bridore 
 has something he wishes to say to you." 
 
 The count left the room ; but he made a gesture with his 
 shoulder, well known to his wife, who could guess the thoughts 
 of this jealous man, and realized that she must guard against 
 his malignancy. 
 
 "Tell me, child, how you think I am looking? Have I 
 changed much, eh?" 
 
 ' Do you want the truth, my lord? Or must I only speak 
 you fair? " 
 
 " No," said he in a husky tone of voice, " I want to know 
 where I am." 
 
 " In that case you look but poorly to-day. I trust, though, 
 that my veracity mars not my cause's success." 
 
 "What is your cause?" asked the King, frowning and 
 passing one hand over his forehead. 
 
 'Ah! Sire," she replied, "the young man that you have 
 had arrested in the house of your silversmith, Maitre Cor- 
 nelius, and who is now a prisoner to the grand provost, is 
 innocent of theft." 
 
 " How know you this ? " asked the King. 
 
 Marie hung her head and blushed. 
 
 ' I need not ask if there is love at the bottom of this busi- 
 ness," said the King gently, and stroking his chin, while he 
 raised his daughter's face. " If you do not confess every 
 morning, child, you will go to hell." 
 
 " Cannot you oblige me without questioning my secret 
 thoughts?" 
 
 "Where were the pleasure in that ?" exclaimed the King, 
 seeing a chance of some amusement in this affair.
 
 348 MAJTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 "Ah ! but would you have pleasure at the cost of my sor- 
 row?" 
 
 "Oh! you sly puss, you; won't you give me your confi- 
 dence, then ?" 
 
 "So, then, my lord, set that young noble free." 
 
 "Oh, oh! he is a nobleman, is he?" cried the King. 
 " Then he is not an apprentice ? " 
 
 " He is certainly innocent," said she. 
 
 "I do not so see it," replied the King coldly. "I am 
 the supreme judge in my kingdom ; it is my duty to punish 
 malefactors." 
 
 " Come, put not on that solemn face of yours ! Grant to 
 me the life of that young man." 
 
 "Would not that be giving back your own ?" 
 
 "Sire," said she, "I am pure and virtuous. You do but 
 jest 
 
 "Then," said Louis XL, interrupting her, " if you cannot 
 show me my way, I must get the light of Tristan upon it." 
 
 Marie de Sassenage turned pale ; she made a violent effort ; 
 she said : 
 
 "Sire, let me assure you that should you do this, you will 
 afterward regret it. The so-called thief has stolen nothing. 
 If you will but grant me his pardon, I will tell you all, even 
 though you should visit it on me." 
 
 " Oh, ho ! this' is becoming serious," exclaimed the King 
 as he pushed up his cap. " Speak, child." 
 
 "Well," said she in a low voice in her father's ear, "he 
 was in my room all night." 
 
 "He may have been there and yet robbed Cornelius; a 
 double larceny." 
 
 "Sire, I have your blood in my veins I was not born to 
 love a scoundrel. That young noble is the nephew of the 
 captain-general of your bowmen." 
 
 "Well, well!" cried the King, "you are hard to con- 
 fess."
 
 MA!TRE CORNELIUS. 349 
 
 At these words the King pushed his daughter off his knee, 
 hurried to the door of the room, but softly and on tiptoe, 
 making no sound. A moment ago the light from the window 
 in the outer room, shining in the space beneath the door, had 
 traced the shadow of a listener's foot projected slightly on the 
 floor of his room. He abruptly opened the iron-bound door 
 and surprised the Comte de Saint-Vallicr eavesdropping. 
 " Pasques-Dieu ! " he exclaimed, "such insolence deserves 
 the axe." 
 
 "My liege," said Saint-Vallier boldly, "I would rather 
 the axe were at my neck than that the ornament of the mar- 
 ried were on my head." 
 
 "You may yet have both," said Louis XI. "Not a man 
 of the lot of you is safe from such a misfortune, my lords, all. 
 Go into the outer hall. Conyngham," continued the King, 
 addressing the Scottish captain, "you were asleep, eh? Where, 
 then, is Monsieur de Bridore? Why do you thus allow me to 
 be invaded ? Pasques-Dieu, the meanest burgher in Tours is 
 better served than his King." 
 
 After venting his anger Louis reentered the room ; but he 
 was careful to draw the tapestry curtains, which formed a 
 second door, intended less for the stoppage of the whistling, 
 harsh winds than for the stifling of the King's words. 
 
 "So, my daughter," said he, amusing himself with teasing 
 her as a cat does with a mouse, " Georges de Estouteville was 
 your lover last night ? " 
 
 " Oh, no, Sire !" 
 
 "No? Ah! by Saint-Carpion ! he deserves death. Did 
 the villain then not think my daughter fair enougli ? " 
 
 "Oh! that's not the way of it," said she. "He kissed 
 my feet and hands with such ardor as might have melted the 
 most virtuous wife. He loves me truly and in all honor," 
 she added. 
 
 "Then do you mistake me for Saint-Louis, that I should 
 believe such nonsense ? A voung fellow made like he is, to
 
 360 MAJTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 risk his life just to kiss your little slippers or your sleeve? 
 Tell that to some one else." 
 
 " But aye, my lord, it is true ! Still he came for another 
 reason." 
 
 Having uttered these words, Marie felt that she had en- 
 dangered her husband's life, for Louis eagerly asked : 
 
 "For what?" 
 
 The adventure amused him muchly. He certainly did not 
 anticipate the strange confidences his daughter now made him 
 after she had stipulated for her husband's pardon. 
 
 " Oh, ho ! Monsieur de Saint-Vallier. So you would even 
 dare to shed the royal blood ! " cried the King, his eyes 
 blazing with fury. 
 
 At this moment the bell of le Plessis rang the hour of 
 dinner and the escort of the King to arms. Leaning on his 
 daughter's arm, Louis XL appeared with lowering brow on 
 the threshold of his Chamber, and there found his guard in 
 attendance. He glanced ambiguously at the Comte de Saint- 
 Vallier, as he was thinking up the sentence he meant to pro- 
 nounce on him. 
 
 The deep silence which reigned was presently broken by 
 Tristan's footsteps as he ascended the grand stairway. The 
 grand provost entered the hall, and, advancing toward the 
 King, said : 
 
 "Sire, the affair is settled." 
 
 " What, is it all over ? " said the King. 
 
 " Our man is in the hands of the monks. He confessed the 
 theft after a screw of the ' question.' ' 
 
 The countess sighed and turned pale ; she was unable to 
 utter a word, she could only gaze at the King. That look 
 was observed by Saint-Vallier, who muttered in an under- 
 tone : 
 
 " I am betrayed ! The thief is acquainted with my wife." 
 
 "Silence!" commanded the King. "Someone there is 
 here who tires my patience. At once, and stop the execu-
 
 MAlTRE CORNELIUS. 351 
 
 tion," he added, addressing the grand provost. "Your own 
 body will answer for that of the criminal, my too prompt 
 friend ! This affair must be thoroughly sifted, I purpose the 
 doing of it myself. Set the prison*.. Hrge provisionally ; 
 t can always recover him ; these robbers have hiding-places 
 that they love, lairs where they lurk. Let it be made known 
 to Cornelius that to-night I go to his house to conduct the 
 inquiry. Monsieur de Saint-Vallier," said the King, fixing 
 his eyes on the count, " I know of your doings. All the 
 blood in your body could not pay for one drop of mine ; 
 do'st understand ? By our Lady of Clery ! You have com- 
 mitted lese-majeste. Did I give you so sweet a wife that you 
 should make her pale and haggard ? To your house at once, 
 there make ready preparations for a long journey." 
 
 The mere habit of cruelty made the King pause at these 
 words ; then he added : 
 
 " To-night you set forth to Venice to attend to my business 
 with that government. You need have no anxiety about your 
 wife ; she will abide with me at le Plessis ; she certainly should 
 be safe here. From this on I shall watch over her with 
 greater care than I have done since I married her to you." 
 
 When she heard these words, Marie silently pressed her 
 father's arm as though thanking him for his clemency and 
 good grace. As for Louis XL, he was laughing in his sleeve. 
 
 Louis XI. was particularly fond of interfering in the do- 
 mestic concerns of his subjects, and he was every ready to 
 mingle his royal majesty in bourgeoisie life. This taste, sin- 
 cerely blamed by some historians, was really but a passion for 
 the incognito, one of the greatest relaxations of princes a 
 kind of temporary abdication, enabling them to put a dash 
 of spice into their existence which becomes insipid for the 
 lack of opposition. Louis' XL, however, played his incognito 
 without disguise. On such occasions he was always the " good- 
 fellow," endeavoring to please the middle-class whom he thus
 
 362 MAfTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 made his allies against grim feudality. It was some time now 
 since he had found an opportunity of "making himself 
 popular," or taking up the defense of some person cngarric, 
 an old term still surviving in Tours and meaning petty litiga- 
 tion, so that he vehemently entered into the secret sorrows of 
 Maitre Cornelius, as also into his anxieties. 
 
 Several times during dinner he said to his daughter : 
 
 "Who, think you, can have robbed my old crony? His 
 losses from theft now amount to over twelve hundred thou- 
 sand crowns' worth of jewels, this in eight years. Twelve 
 hundred thousand crowns, my lords ! " he went on, looking 
 round at the gentlemen-in-waiting. " By our lady ! with 
 such a sum a great many absolutions may be bought at Rome. 
 Pasques-Dieu, with such a sum of money I could have built 
 the bank along the Loire, or, still better, have conquered 
 Piedmont ; a fine buffer all ready constructed for our kingdom." 
 
 When dinner was ended, Louis XI. led away his daughter, 
 the physician, and the grand provost, with an escort of men- 
 at-arms, to the Hotel de Poitiers, where he found, as he ex- 
 pected, the Comte de Saint-Vallier awaiting his wife, most 
 likely to make away with her. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the King, "my instructions were for 
 your immediate departure. Bid farewell to your wife, and at 
 once proceed to the frontier; you will be accompanied by an 
 escort of honor. As to your instructions and credentials, 
 they will be in Venice before yourself." 
 
 Louis issued his orders, not forgetting to add certain secret 
 instructions to a lieutenant of the Scottish Guard, to take a 
 squad of men and attend the King's envoy to Venice. Saint- 
 Vallier departed in haste, after giving a cold kiss to his wife, 
 which he would have been pleased had it been fatal to her. 
 
 When the countess had retired to her chamber, Louis XI. 
 crossed over to the Malemaison, eager to begin the unraveling 
 of the dismal farce, lasting, as it had done, for eight years, in 
 the house of his silversmith. He flattered himself that being;
 
 MA2TRE LOKNEL2US. 353 
 
 the King he could exercise enough penetration to discover the 
 mystery of the robberies. Cornelius did not look upon the 
 advent of this numerous retinue without forebodings of woe. 
 
 "And are all these people to take part in the inquiry?" he 
 asked the King. 
 
 Louis could not refrain from smiling at the evident fright of 
 the old miser and his sister. 
 
 "No, crony," said he; "don't worry yourself, they will 
 sup with us at le Plessis ; you and I will alone go into the 
 matter. I am so excellent an investigator that I will wager 
 ten thousand crowns with you that I can find the criminal." 
 
 " Never mind the wager, Sire ; just find him." 
 
 They went at once into the strong-room in which the Flem- 
 ing kept his treasures. There King Louis, who first asked to 
 see the casket whence the Duke of Burgundy's jewels had been 
 abstracted, and then the chimney down which the robber was 
 supposed to have come, easily proved to the silversmith the 
 falseness of the latter supposition, inasmuch as there was no 
 sign of soot upon the hearth where, of a truth, a fire was but 
 seldom kindled and no trace of anything having descended 
 the flue. Moreover, that the chimney issued at a portion of 
 the roof that was practically inaccessible. 
 
 After two hours of close investigation, marked with that 
 sagacity which distinguished the suspicious nature of Louis XI. , 
 it was proved to a demonstration that no one had forced an 
 entrance into the treasury. No marks of violence showed 
 upon the locks, inside or out, nor on the iron coffers used to 
 contain the gold, silver, and jewels hypothecated by wealthy 
 debtors. 
 
 " If the thief opened this box," said the King, "why did 
 he take nothing more than the Bavarian jewels? What reason 
 had he for leaving this pearl necklace laying beside them ? A 
 queer robber ! " 
 
 At this remark the wretched miser turned deathly pale; the 
 King and he eyed each other for a moment. 
 23
 
 354 MAJTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 " Then, my liege, for what did that robber come here whom 
 you have taken under your protection? And, also, why was 
 he prowling around at night ? " 
 
 " If you have not guessed, oh ! my crony, I command you 
 to remain in ignorance. That is a secret of my own." 
 
 "Then I am haunted of the devil!" cried the usurer 
 lamentably. 
 
 Under any other circumstances the King would have laughed 
 at his silversmith's cry ; but in place of this he was studious 
 and thoughtful ; he was now casting on the Fleming a scrutiny 
 peculiar to men of genius and force, penetrating to the brain. 
 Cornelius was alarmed ; he thought he must have, in some 
 way, offended his dangerous master. 
 
 "Be it devil or angel, I'll have him, the criminal," the 
 King abruptly exclaimed. "Should you be robbed to-night, 
 to-morrow I will know who did it. Summon that old hag, 
 your sister," he added. 
 
 Cornelius slightly hesitated at leaving the King alone in 
 his treasure chamber ; but the stern smile that curled Louis' 
 withered lips compelled him. He, nevertheless, hastened to 
 return, followed by the old woman. 
 
 " Have you any flour? " demanded the King. 
 
 " Oh, yes ; we have laid in our winter supply," she answered. 
 
 "Well, go and fetch some," said the King. 
 
 "What then would you be doing with our flour, Sire?" 
 she exclaimed in alarm, and not impressed in the least by the 
 King's august majesty. 
 
 "Old fool ! do you as our gracious liege commands," cried 
 Cornelius. "And shall the King lack flour?" 
 
 "My good flour!" grumbled she, as she descended the 
 stairs. " Is this for what I buy fine flour? " 
 
 Then she returned and said to the King : 
 
 " Is it, Sire, only a royal fancy to examine my flour? " 
 
 Finally she reappeared, this time carrying one of those 
 coarse flax-sacks, which from time immemorial have been used
 
 MAITRE CORNELIUS, 365 
 
 in Touraine to fetch and carry provisions to and from the 
 market nuts, fruit, or grain. The bag was half full of flour. 
 The housewife opened it and showed it to the King, casting 
 a viperous, venomous glance with which old maids, as one 
 may say, seem to squirt venom on a man. 
 
 " It costs six sous the septeree or measure," said she. 
 
 " What, then, does that matter? " said the King. " Spread 
 it upon the floor, but do it carefully so that it may be evenly 
 strewn as if it had been a light fall of snow." 
 
 But the old maid comprehended him not. This order dis- 
 mayed her more than though the end of the world had come. 
 
 " My flour, Sire ! on the ground ! But why 
 
 Maitre Cornelius was vaguely beginning to understand the 
 intent of the King's doings. He grasped the sack and gently 
 spread its contents on the floor. The old woman shuddered, 
 but she extended her hand for the empty bag, and when it 
 was given her by her brother disappeared step by step with a 
 profound sigh. 
 
 Cornelius took a feather-duster and carefully smoothed over 
 the flour till it lay like a sheet of snow ; as he did this he 
 stepped backward, the King before him. and who seemed 
 much amused over the proceedings. When they reached the 
 door Louis XI. said to Cornelius : 
 
 " Are there two keys to the lock? " 
 
 "No, Sire." 
 
 The King carefully examined the structure of the door, 
 which was heavy and strengthened with plates of iron and 
 strong bars of the same, all of which latter converged to a 
 secret lock, the key of which Cornelius only possessed. 
 
 After scrutinizing everything thoroughly the King sent for 
 Tristan ; him he ordered to set a watch at night with the 
 greatest circumspection and secrecy in the mulberry trees on 
 the embankment and on the roofs of the adjoining houses ; 
 first, though, to assemble at once the rest of his command 
 and escort him back to le Plessis, so that it might appear that
 
 356 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 the King did not stay to sup with Cornelius. Then he told 
 the miser to close his windows with extreme care, so that not 
 a single ray of light might escape through them, and to give 
 orders that he be served with a light repast to continue the 
 deception. Then the King departed in much pomp for le 
 Plessis by way of the embankment, and privately returned 
 with only two of his suite to the house of the tor$onnier. 
 These precautions were so well taken and carried out that the 
 good folk of Tours and the courtiers really believed that the 
 King had returned to le Plessis, and that he was to sup on the 
 morrow with Maitre Cornelius. The miser's sister still further 
 confirmed this by buying some green-sauce from the best 
 maker, who had a store near the quarroir aux hcrbes, after- 
 ward known as the carroir de Beaune, in honor of a splendid 
 white marble fountain which was sent from Italy as an orna- 
 mentation for the capital of his Province by Jacques de 
 Beaune. 
 
 About eight o'clock that evening, as the King was supping 
 with his physician, Cornelius, and the captain of the Scottish 
 Guard, conversing jollily and forgetting for the nonce that he 
 was Louis XL, ill and in danger of death, profound silence 
 was without, and all passers, even the cleverest thief, might 
 have taken it that the house was uninhabited by any but its 
 usual inmates. 
 
 "I hope," said the King laughing, "that my chum the 
 silversmith may this night be robbed, so shall my curiosity be 
 satisfied. See to it, my lords, that no one leaves his chamber 
 to-morrow morning without my order under pain of condign 
 punishment." 
 
 Thereupon all went to bed. 
 
 The next morning Louis XI. was the first to leave his 
 chamber, and he at once proceeded to the door of the treasury. 
 He was more than astonished to see, as he went along, the 
 imprint of a large foot along the stairway and corridors of the
 
 COKNLWS. 357 
 
 house. He carefully avoided these so precious footmarks, but 
 traced them to the door of the miser's closet ; this he found 
 locked and without any sign of violence or fracture. He 
 examined the direction of the steps, but they became gradually 
 fainter and ultimately left not the faintest trace ; it was there- 
 fore impossible to discover whither the robber had escaped. 
 
 "Ha! crony," cried the King to Cornelius, "you have 
 been robbed most excellently this time, for sure ! " 
 
 At these words the old Fleming, terrified out of his senses, 
 hurried out. Louis XI. made him look at the footprints on 
 the pavements, and while again examining himself for the 
 second time, the King by chance observed the old man's 
 slippers and there recognized the shape of the sole of which 
 so many copies were spread before him on the stairs. He 
 said not a word and restrained his laughter, for he remem- 
 bered the number of innocent men who had been hanged for 
 this. 
 
 Cornelius now hurried to his treasures. When he was in 
 the room the King caused him to make a new mark alongside 
 those already there, and he soon proved to him that the thief 
 of his treasure was none other than himself. 
 
 " The pearl necklace is missing ! There is sorcery in this," 
 cried Cornelius. " I never left my room." 
 
 "We'll soon learn as to that, now," said the King. The 
 evident sincerity of the silversmith quite mystifying him. 
 
 He at once summoned the men of the watch and asked : 
 
 '' Marry, now, what saw you during the night ? " 
 
 ' Ah, Sire ! " said the lieutenant, " a most amazing sight ! 
 Your majesty's silversmith crept down by the side of the wall 
 like a cat ; so lightly withal that he seemed but a spectre." 
 
 " I ? " exclaimed Cornelius ; this one word he uttered, then 
 remained silent, and stood stock-still and rigid like a man 
 who has lost all use of his limbs. 
 
 "' Begone now, all of you," said Louis, addressing the bow- 
 men, "and tell Messicur Conyngham, Coyctier, Bridore, and
 
 358 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 also Tristan to leave their rooms and come here at once to 
 mine. You have incurred the penalty of death," said he to 
 Cornelius, who very happily did not hear him. "You have 
 ten such on your soul ! " 
 
 Thereupon the King grimly, but noiselessly, laughed, then 
 paused. But as he remarked the strange pallor that overspread 
 the old man's face, he said : 
 
 "Be not uneasy; you are more valuable to bleed than to 
 kill. You may escape the fangs of my justice in consideration 
 of a good round sum paid into my treasury by you ; but, mark 
 you, if you build not at least one chapel to the Virgin, you 
 are more than like to find that things are made hot for you 
 throughout all eternity." 
 
 "Twelve hundred and thirty and eighty-seven thousand 
 crowns make thirteen hundred and seventeen thousand crowns," 
 replied Cornelius, absorbed in his calculations. "Thirteen 
 hundred and seventeen thousand crowns hidden where?" 
 
 " He must have buried them in some hiding-place," mut- 
 tered the King, who began to think the sum as royally mag- 
 nificent. "That was the lodestone that ever attracted him 
 back to Tours. He smelt his gold." 
 
 At this moment entered Coyctier. Noticing the attitude of 
 Maitre Cornelius, he scrutinized him keenly, the while Louis 
 XI. narrated the adventure. 
 
 "My liege," replied the physician, "there is naught of the 
 supernatural in this. Your silversmith is a sleep-walker. This 
 is the third case I have come across of this so singular malady. 
 If you would amuse yourself by watching him at such times, 
 you might see the old hulks stepping without danger on the 
 verge of the parapet to the roof. In two other cases I have 
 already studied, I could observe a curious connection between 
 the actions of the nocturnal existence and the interests and 
 occupations of daily life in which they were engaged." 
 
 "Ah ! Maitre Coyctier, von are indeed most wise." 
 
 "Am I not then your physician?" he insolently retorted.
 
 MAlTRE CORNELIUS. 369 
 
 On hearing this reply, Louis XL made a slight gesture 
 habitual with him when a good idea struck him he hastily 
 shoved up his cap. 
 
 "At such times," continued Coyctier, "persons transact 
 their business when asleep. As this friend of ours is fond of 
 hoarding, he has simply carried out his darling hobby. He 
 would most probably have an attack when, during the day, he 
 has felt much alarm for the safety of his treasure." 
 
 "Pasques-Dicu ! and such a treasure! " exclaimed the King. 
 
 "Where is it?" asked Cornelius, who, by a singularity of 
 our nature, heard all the remarks of the King and his physi- 
 cian, while yet practically in a state of torpor, caused by 
 thought and the shock of his misfortune. 
 
 "Ah!" cried* Coyctier, with a diabolically coarse laugh, 
 "somnambulists never have recollection of their acts when 
 they awake." 
 
 " Leave us," said the King. 
 
 When Louis XI. was alone with Cornelius, he glanced at 
 him and ejaculated a cold chuckle. 
 
 "Be it known, Worshipful Master Hoogworst," said he, 
 bowing ironically low, " all treasure-trove in France is the 
 property of the King." 
 
 " Yes, my liege, all is yours; you are the absolute master of 
 our lives and fortunes ; but thus far you have been merciful, 
 and have only taken what you needed." 
 
 " Listen to me, old crony mine ; if I assist you in recovering 
 this lost treasure, you can surely, in all confidence and with- 
 out fear, agree to divide it with me." 
 
 " No, Sire, I will not divide it ; I will give it all to you at 
 my death. But what scheme have you for finding it?" 
 
 " I myself will watch you when you take your nocturnal 
 walks. You doubtless would fear to intrust any but me." 
 
 "Ah! Sire," exclaimed Cornelius, flinging himself at the 
 King's feet, "you are the only man in the kingdom whom I 
 would trust in such service ; and I shall try to prove my grati-
 
 360 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 tude for your goodness to your so humble servant, by doing 
 my utmost to promote the marriage of the heiress of Burgundy 
 with Monseigneur the Dauphin. She indeed would bring you 
 a noble treasure, not of crown-pieces, to be sure, but of lands 
 which would round off your dominions to their greater glory." 
 
 " Pshaw, Dutchman, you think to hoodwink me ! " said the 
 King, his brow growing threatening, "or you have hitherto 
 played me false." 
 
 "Nay, Sire, can you then doubt my devotion you the 
 only man I love?" 
 
 "Words, words!" retorted the King, turning to face the 
 miser, and looking him in the eye. " You ought not to have 
 waited for this moment to be of use to me. You are selling 
 me your influence Pasques-Dieu .' to me Louis the Eleventh. 
 Are you, then, the master? Am I the servant? I wish to 
 know." 
 
 "Ah ! Sire," said the old man, " I was but waiting to sur- 
 prise you most agreeably with the news of arrangements I had 
 made for you in Ghent ; I was looking for confirmation of it 
 from Oosterlinck through that apprentice. What has become 
 of him?" 
 
 "Enough! " said the King. "This is but a blunder the 
 more. I do not like that persons should interfere, uncalled 
 for, in my affairs. Enough ! leave me ; I must think it all 
 out." 
 
 Maitre Cornelius found the agility of youth to fly to the 
 lower rooms where he made sure of finding his sister. 
 
 "Ah! Jeanne, dear soul, we have a hoard hidden some- 
 where in this house : I have put away thirteen hundred thou- 
 sand crowns in jewels somewhere. I I I am the thief." 
 
 Jeanne Hoogworst rose from her stool and stood erect as if 
 the seat had been red-hot iron. 
 
 The shock was so violent for an old maid, accustomed as 
 she was to reduce herself by voluntary privations and fasts, 
 that she trembled in every limb; horrible pains seized her
 
 MAlTRE CORNELIUS. 361 
 
 back. By degrees her paleness increased, and her face the 
 wrinkles of which made any change difficult to discover be- 
 came quite distorted while her brother told her the malady to 
 which he was a victim, and the perplexing situation in which 
 he was placed. 
 
 " King Louis the Eleventh and I," said he in conclusion, 
 " have just been lying to each other like two miracle-mongers. 
 You see, child, if he watches me, he will learn the secret place 
 of my hidden treasure. Only the King may watch my nightly 
 wanderings. I am not so sure that his conscience, near as he 
 is to death, could withstand the temptation of thirteen hun- 
 dred and seventeen thousand crowns. We must be beforehand 
 with him ; we must find this nest and send the treasure to 
 Ghent, and you alone '' 
 
 Cornelius stopped suddenly short ; he setmed to be weigh- 
 ing the heart of his sovereign, who at twenty-two years of age 
 had dreamed of parricide. When he had made up his mind 
 about Louis XL, he rose abruptly like a man in haste to 
 escape a pressing danger. At this moment his sister, too 
 weak or too strong for such a crisis, fell stark ; she was dead. 
 
 Maitre Cornelius raised her and shook her with violence, 
 saying : 
 
 " This is no time for dying. You will have time enough 
 for that later on. Oh ! it's all over. Old hag, she never 
 could do the right thing at the right time." 
 
 He closed her eyes and laid her on the floor. But then 
 the good and noble feelings which lay cumbered over in his 
 heart came back to him, and, almost forgetting his hidden 
 treasure, he pathetically cried : 
 
 "Ah! my poor companion, have I really lost you? You 
 who understood me so well ! Oh ! you were my real treasure. 
 There, there, lies my real treasure ! With you goes my peace 
 of mind, my affections all are gone. If only you had known 
 what good it would have done me for you to have lived two 
 days longer, you would surely have remained alive, if only to
 
 362 MAITRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 please me, my poor sister. Ah ! Jeanne ! thirteen hundred 
 thousand crowns ! Won't that wake you? No, she is indeed 
 dead ! " 
 
 Thereupon he sat down and said no more ; but two great 
 tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his hollow cheeks ; 
 then, with many an ejaculation, he locked up the room and 
 returned to the King. Louis was startled by the expression 
 of grief on the damp features of his old crony. 
 
 "What now?" he asked. 
 
 "Alas! Sire, misfortunes never come singly. My sister is 
 dead. She's gone below before me," said he, pointing to the 
 floor with a terrible gesture. 
 
 "Enough!" cried Louis XI., who disliked any mention 
 of death. 
 
 " I make you my heir. I have now nothing for which I 
 care. Here are my keys. Hang me, if such be your good 
 pleasure. Take all ; ransack the house ; it is full of gold. I 
 give it all up to you " 
 
 " Come, come, old friend," said the King, half moved by 
 the sight of this strange grief, " we shall yet find your treasure 
 some of these fine nights ; the sight of such riches will give 
 you a further heart to live. I will come again in the course 
 of the week." 
 
 "When it pleaseth you, my liege." 
 
 At this answer the King, who had made a few steps toward 
 the door, turned sharply around, and the two men looked at 
 each other with an expression that pen or pencil would vainly 
 try to reproduce. 
 
 "Adieu, my crony ! " said Louis XI. at last, in a curt voice, 
 pushing up his cap. 
 
 " May God and the Virgin keep you in their good graces ! " 
 replied the usurer humbly, as he conducted the King to the 
 door. 
 
 After so long a friendship the two men found a barrier raised 
 between them, erected of suspicion ;;ml gold; though they had
 
 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 3t>3 
 
 always been as one man on matters of suspicion and gold. But 
 then they knew each other so well, they had so completely the 
 habit, as one might say, of intimacy, that the King could di- 
 vine from the tone of expression in his voice as he said : 
 " When it pleaseth you, my liege," the repugnance he would 
 henceforth feel when he visited the silversmith, just as the 
 latter recognized a declaration of war in the manner of the 
 King's saying : "Adieu, my crony ! " 
 
 Thus Louis XI. and his treasurer parted in much doubt as 
 to what their future conduct would be to each other. The 
 monarch, for a truth, knew the secret of the Fleming ; but he, 
 on his part, could, by means of his connections, bring about 
 one of the greatest acquisitions that any King of France had 
 ever made ; namely, the domains of the house of Burgundy, 
 which were, at that time, the coveted of every European sov- 
 ereign. 
 
 Cornelius' gold and influence could most powerfully aid the 
 negotiations now begun by Desquerdes, the general appointed 
 by Louis XI. to the command of the army then encamped on 
 the Belgian frontiers. The celebrated Marguerite's choice 
 would be guided by the good people of Ghent and the inhab- 
 itants about her. Thus these two master-foxes were like two 
 duelists whose arms are paralyzed by some stroke of fate. 
 
 Now, whether it was that from that day the King's health 
 began to fail and got steadily worse, or that Cornelius did 
 assist in bringing into France Marguerite of Burgundy who 
 arrived at Amboise in July, 1438. to be married to the Dauphin 
 to whom she was betrothed in the chapel of the castle certain 
 it is that the King took no steps toward finding the treasure ; 
 further, he levied no tribute on his silversmith, and no trial 
 was held ; so the pair remained in a cautious condition of armed 
 neutrality. 
 
 Happily for Cornelius, a rumor spread around Tours that 
 his sister was proven to have been the robber ; and that she 
 had secretly been put to death by Tristan. Otherwise, and if
 
 364 MAlTRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 the true history had become generally known, the whole town 
 would have arisen as one man and hastened to destroy the 
 Malemaison before the King could have taken means to de- 
 fend it. 
 
 But, though these historical guessings may have had some 
 foundation as regards the inaction of Louis XL, it was not so 
 as to Cornelius Hoogworst. He was not supine. The first 
 few days which succeeded the fatal one the silversmith spent 
 in a ceaseless hurry. Like a carnivorous beast confined in a 
 cage, he went and came, lie smelt for gold in every cranny of 
 his domicile ; he sounded the walls ; he studied the crevices ; 
 he besought the trees of the garden, the foundations of the 
 house, the turret roofs, earth and heaven, to give back his 
 treasure. Often he stood motionless for hour upon hour, 
 casting his eyes around on every side, plunging them into 
 space. He essayed the miracles of second-sight and sorcery ; 
 he tried to see his riches through space and solids. 
 
 One overwhelming thought constantly absorbed him ; he 
 was consumed by a single desire that gnawed his vitals ; he 
 was more cruelly racked by the everlasting agony of the duel 
 he fought with himself since his passion for gold had turned 
 upon and rent him. It was a species of incomplete suicide, 
 embracing all the pangs of living and dying. 
 
 Never was a vice so trapped by itself: a miser who by in- 
 advertence locks himself in his subterranean stronghold that 
 contains his treasure has, like Sardanapalus, the happiness of 
 dying in its midst. But Cornelius, the robber and the robbed 
 in one, knowing neither the secret of the one nor the other, 
 possessed, and yet possessed not, his treasure a novel, whim- 
 sical, but ever-continuing form of torture. 
 
 Sometimes, when he forgot himself, he would leave the little 
 gratings of his door open, and then the passers in the street 
 could see the little, weazened old man planted on his two legs 
 in the middle of his unfilled garden, absolutely motionless, 
 and looking on any one who stopped to gaze at him with a
 
 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 365 
 
 fixed, glaring stare, the luridness of which froze them with 
 terror. If by any chance he waited about the streets of Tours, 
 he seemed like a stranger there ; he knew not where he was, 
 nor did he know whether the sun or moon shone on him. 
 Oftentimes he would ask his way of those he met, believing 
 himself to be still at Ghent ; everywhere he seemed on the 
 hunt for his lost treasure. 
 
 The most perennial and the most corporeal of all human 
 ideas that by which man reproduces himself by creating out- 
 side and apart from himself the fictitious being known as 
 Property that mental demon had its claws of steel perpetually 
 clutching at his miser-soul. 
 
 In the midst of this torture, Fear arose, with its accom- 
 panying train of sentiments. Two men possessed his secret 
 the one that he himself knew not. Louis XI. or Coyctier 
 could post their spies to watch his movements when he slept, 
 they might thus discover the unknown gulf into which he had 
 cast his riches, that wealth that he had watered with the life- 
 blood of so many innocent ones : and Remorse stood beside 
 Fear. 
 
 To prevent during his lifetime the abduction of his lost 
 riches, during the early days after his disaster, he took every 
 conceivable precaution to avoid sleeping ; beside, his com- 
 mercial relations put him in the way of procuring the most 
 powerful anti-narcotics. His wakeful nights were most terrible, 
 his struggles to keep awake awful alone with night, silence, 
 Remorse, Fear, with all the thoughts that man, instinctively 
 it may be, has most embodied, in obedience to some moral 
 truth, as yet devoid of certain proof. 
 
 At last, this man so powerful, his heart so calloused by 
 politics and commerce, this genius (unknown to history), was 
 doomed to succumb to the horrors of the torture he himself 
 had created. Crazed by some reminiscence more agonizing 
 han any he had as yet resisted, he cut his throat with a razor. 
 
 His death was almost exactly coincident with that of Louis
 
 366 MA1TRE CORNELIUS. 
 
 XL; thus there was nothing to restrain the violence of the 
 mob. The populace, unrestrained, pillaged Malemaison, the 
 Evil House. A tradition exists among the older inhabitants of 
 Touraine that a revenue-farmer, named Bohier, had discovered 
 the old usurer's treasure and used it in building the castle of 
 Chenonceaux, that marvelous mansion which, in spite of the 
 lavish wealth of several kings, and the taste of Diane de Poitiers 
 and her rival Catherine de' Medici, remains unfinished to 
 this day. 
 
 Happily for Marie de Sassenage, the Comte de Saint- 
 Vallier died, as we all know, during his embassy to Venice. 
 The family did not become extinct. After the departure of 
 the count the countess gave birth to a son, whose career was 
 famous in the history of France under the reign of King Fran- 
 c.ois I. He was saved by his daughter, the celebrated Diane de 
 Poitiers, the illegitimate great-granddaughter of Louis XL, 
 and who became the morganatic wife, the adored mistress of 
 Henry II.; for love and bastardy were hereditary in that 
 noble family. 
 
 CHATEAU DE SACHE, November and December, 1831.
 
 GAMBARA. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY JNO. RUDD, B. A. 
 
 To Monsieur le Marquis de Bflloy. 
 
 NEW YEAR'S DAY 1831 was throwing around its packets of 
 sugared-almonds ; four o'clock was striking; great crowds 
 thronged the Palais-Royal, and the restaurants were filling up. 
 At this time a coupe stopped at the entrance and a young 
 man of noble bearing alighted ; a foreigner undoubtedly, or 
 he would not have had as attendant an aristocratic chasseur 
 wearing a plumed hat. neither would the panels have dis- 
 played the coat-of-arms, which the heroes of July still sought 
 for the purpose of attack. 
 
 Our stranger entered the Palais-Royal and followed the 
 crowd around the wooden galleries, evidently not caring to 
 notice the slow progression he was compelled to make by the 
 sauntering mass of humanity ; he seemed born to the noble 
 gait, called in derision the "ambassadors' strut," and yet his 
 dignity had a touch of the theatrical. Although his face was 
 grave and handsome, his hat, under which showed a mass of 
 black, curling hair, tipped the least bit too much over his 
 right ear, belying his gravity with a touch of rakishness. His 
 inattentive, half-closed eyes let fall an occasional contemptuous 
 glance upon the crowd. 
 
 "There's a handsome young fellow," said a grisette to an- 
 other one in her company, as they drew aside to let him pass. 
 
 " And right well he knows it, too," responded aloud the 
 companion, who was very plain. 
 
 After having made a turn through the arcades, the young 
 man alternately looked at his watch and at the sky ; he seemed 
 to be impatient, and at last went into a tobacconist's store, 
 
 (367)
 
 368 GAMBARA. 
 
 lit a cigar, and stood for a moment before the mirror to glance 
 over his apparel, which was more ornate than the French law 
 of good taste could tolerate. He pulled down his collar and 
 black velvet vest, over which hung many festoons of those 
 heavy gold chains made in Genoa; then, with one jerk of his 
 left shoulder, he satisfactorily arranged his velvet-lined cloak 
 in graceful folds, and resumed his promenade, paying not the 
 slightest attention to the glances of the inquisitive bourgeois. 
 
 When the store windows began to be illuminated and the 
 dusk seemed dark enough, he walked to the open square of 
 the Palais-Royal with an appearance of avoiding recognition ; 
 he kept close to the wall as far as the fountain, under cover of 
 the hackney-coaches, to thus reach the entrance of the Rue 
 Froidmanteau, a dirty, dark, and disreputable street a moral 
 sewer which the police tolerate near the purified precincts of 
 the Palais-Royal, the same as an Italian major-domo allows a 
 negligent servant to leave the sweepings from a suite of rooms 
 in a corner of the staircase. 
 
 The young man hesitated. He had something of the air of 
 a middle-class wife in her Sunday best clothes when she fears to 
 cross a gutter swollen by the rain ; yet the hour was not ill- 
 chosen in which to indulge some questionable whim. Earlier 
 in the day he might have been detected ; later, he might be 
 cut out. To have been tempted by a glance more encour- 
 aging than alluring ; to have followed a young and pretty 
 woman for an hour, perhaps for a day ; to set her on a pedes- 
 tal in his own mind and giving a thousand flattering excuses 
 for her light conduct ; to find one's self believing in a sudden, 
 irresistible affinity ; to imagine under the flame of a passing ex- 
 citement the beginning of a love-adventure at an epoch when 
 romances are written because there no longer exists the slightest 
 trace of romance ; to have dreamed of balconies, guitars, strata- 
 gems, and bolts and Almaviva's mantle; to have written, in 
 fancy, a poem in honor of this divinity ; and, after all this, to 
 stop at the door of a house of ill-fame ; to find in the decorum
 
 GAMBARA. 369 
 
 of his Rosina a reticence enforced by the police, is surely a 
 history, a delusion ; is it not, I ask, an experience of many a 
 man, much as he would desire to deny it? 
 
 Our most natural feelings we confess the least willingly ; 
 chiefest is self-conceit. When the lesson goes no further than 
 the door, a Parisian profits by it or forgets it ; so no great 
 harm is done. With a foreigner, though, this is not so ; he 
 begins to think his Parisian education may cost him altogether 
 too dear. 
 
 The saunterer was a noble of Milan, banished his country, 
 where some pranks of liberalism had led the Austrian govern- 
 ment to suspect him. The Comte Andrea Marcosini had been 
 welcomed in Paris with that French cordiality always shown 
 to one of a witty, amiable nature and of a high-sounding 
 name, especially so when accompanied by an income of two 
 hundred thousand francs a year and a prepossessing appear- 
 ance. To such a man exile meant but a pleasure tour ; his 
 property was only sequestrated, and his friends took means to 
 let him know that after the course of a year or two he could 
 return to his own country without risk. 
 
 After rhyming crudelli affami with / miei tiranni in a dozen 
 or so sonnets, after also assisting as many of the poorer Italian 
 refugees, Comte Andrea, who for his misfortune was born a 
 poet, thought himself released from patriotic concerns. So 
 since his arrival he had given himself up without discretion to 
 the pleasures of every kind that Paris so kindly offers gratis to 
 everybody who may be rich enough to buy them. His talents 
 and attractive person won him success with many women, 
 whom he collectively loved, as was natural to his age, but 
 among all of which he had, as yet, not selected a particular 
 one. Beside, in him the taste for such pleasures was subordi- 
 nate to the love of music and poetry, gifts which he had 
 assiduously cultivated since childhood ; he thought success in 
 these realms more difficult of attainment and more glorious 
 than the triumphs of gallantry, since nature had spared him 
 24
 
 370 GAMBARA. 
 
 the difficulties which most other men take a pride in van- 
 quishing. 
 
 Of a complex nature, like many another man, he let himself 
 be charmed by the comforts of luxury, without which he could 
 hardly have lived ; he held just as tenaciously to the social 
 distinctions rejected by his political creed. Thus his theories 
 as an artist, a thinker, and a poet were often in direct contra- 
 diction to his tastes, his feelings, and his habits as an opulent 
 man of rank; but he consoled himself for this seeming incon- 
 sistency by recognizing the same traits in many Parisians 
 men who are Liberals from self-interest and aristocrats by 
 nature. 
 
 Hence it was not without some misgivings that he found 
 himself on foot, on December 3ist, in a thaw, following at 
 the heels of a woman whose dress betrayed abject poverty an 
 inveterate, long-accustomed poverty and who was not one 
 whit handsomer than others to be seen on any evening at the 
 Bouffbns, the opera, or in society, and she certainly was not 
 as handsome as Madame de Manerville, with whom he had an 
 assignation that self-same day, and who, most probably, was 
 at that moment awaiting him. 
 
 But there was a something in the glance, half-wild, half- 
 tender, rapid yet intense, which that woman's black eyes had 
 furtively shot at him ; a world of buried sorrows and stifled 
 delights was there; she blushed so fiercely when, emerging 
 from a store where she had lingered a little while, her eyes 
 met those of Marcosini, who was outside awaiting her return, 
 but her look met that of the count's with equal candor. There 
 were, in short, so many incentives to curiosity that the count, 
 seized by one of those crazy temptations for which no lan- 
 guage has a name, not even in that of the orgy, followed in 
 pursuit of the woman exactly as an old Parisian runs a grisette 
 to earth. 
 
 As he went aloncj. sometimes before, sometimes in her rear, 
 he examined the details of her person and dress; lie tried to
 
 GAMBARA. 371 
 
 dislodge the absurd and frenzied desire that had taken pos- 
 session of his brain ; but soon his scrutiny felt a keener pleas- 
 ure than he had experienced the day before as he stood gazing 
 at the perfect shape of a woman he loved, as she took in her 
 bath. Sometimes the unknown fair, bending her head, would 
 throw on him a glance like that of a kid tethered with its 
 head near the ground ; then, still finding him in pursuit, she 
 hurried on as if to escape him. Nevertheless, when a block 
 caused by carriages or persons crowded together brought 
 Andrea beside her, he saw that she turned away from his 
 gaze without any sign of annoyance. These signals of re- 
 pressed emotions spurred on the unruly dreams which were 
 running away with him, and he gave them a free rein as far 
 as the Rue Froidmanteau, down which, after many windings, 
 she suddenly disappeared, trusting that her pursuer would thus 
 find the scent killed for him ; he was astonished at this move 
 and had lost trace of her. 
 
 It was dark. Two highly rouged women, who were drink- 
 ing a liqueur of black-currant in a grocery, saw the young 
 woman and called to her. She paused a moment on the 
 threshold, replied to their greeting by a few gentle words and 
 passed on. Andrea, who was close behind her, saw her vanish 
 in one of the darkest courts in the street, of which he knew 
 not the name. The repulsive appearance of the house which 
 the heroine of his romance had entered turned his stomach. 
 He stepped back a few paces to examine the surroundings, 
 when, finding a villainous-looking fellow' at his elbow, he 
 asked for information. The man rested one hand on a knotty 
 stick, and ironically answered in two words : 
 
 "Droll dog !" 
 
 But catching a full view of the Italian, who stood in the 
 light of a street lamp, his face suddenly assumed a wheedling 
 expression. 
 
 "Ah ! your excuses, monsieur," said he, at once changing 
 his tune; " there's a restaurant in that house, a kind of table*
 
 372 GAMBARA. 
 
 (fhdte is there served, where the cooking is horribly bad and 
 they put cheese in the soup. Monsieur, perhaps, is in search 
 of that place for it is easy to see that monsieur is an Italian 
 and Italians are fond of velvet and cheese. If monsieur 
 would like to know of a better eating-house, I can show him 
 one ; my aunt lives near by, and she is very fond of foreign- 
 ers." 
 
 Andrea drew his cloak as high as his nose and rushed out 
 of the street, driven by the disgust he felt for this filthy 
 creature, whose clothing and gestures were in keeping with 
 the squalid house into which the unknown woman had dis- 
 appeared. He returned with delight to the comforts and 
 elegancies of his suite of rooms, and passed the evening with 
 the Marquise d'Espard, to cleanse himself, if possible, of the 
 pollution of the fancy that had taken such hold upon him. 
 
 Nevertheless, afterward when he was in bed, in the silence 
 of the night, his evening vision arose before him, brighter, 
 clearer, more vividly than the reality. Before him walked his 
 divinity ; at times as she crossed the street gutters she slightly 
 raised her dress and displayed a shapely leg ; and her beauti- 
 fully mouldered hips swayed at every step. Once more An- 
 drea wished to speak to her and dared not. He, Marcosini, 
 a noble of Milan ! Then he saw her once more enter the 
 dark court and the wretched house, and blamed himself for 
 not following her farther. 
 
 " For," said he to himself, " if it was that she avoided me 
 and tried to put me off the scent, surely it is a sign of her 
 loving me. With women of this kind coyness is proof of 
 love. Possibly though if I had gone further with the adven- 
 ture it might have ended in disgust. I'll just sleep in peace." 
 
 The count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest sensa- 
 tions, as all men born with a good headpiece involuntarily do 
 when their brain equals their heart ; he was greatly surprised 
 to still find himself thinking of the strange damsel, not in the 
 ideal glamour of a vision, but in all the reality of the naked
 
 GAMBARA. 373 
 
 facts. And yet, if his fancy had stripped her of the misery of 
 wretchedness, the woman herself would have been spoilt for 
 him ; for he wanted her, he desired her ; he loved her muddy 
 stockings, broken shoes, her battered straw bonnet, all ! He 
 longed for her in that very house which he had seen her enter. 
 
 "Am I then enamored of vice?" he asked himself with 
 horror. " Nay, I have not come to that, I am but three-and- 
 twenty ; there is nothing of the senile stage about me." 
 
 The very vehemence of the caprice of which he was the 
 plaything seemed to somewhat reassure him. This curious 
 struggle, these reflections, this love on a run may be an enigma 
 to some persons who imagine they know the ways of Paris ; 
 but let such bear in mind that Count Andrea Marcosini was 
 not a Frenchman. 
 
 Brought up as he was by two pious abbes, by the instruction 
 of a pious father, who had seldom permitted him out of their 
 sight, Andrea had not fallen in love with a cousin at eleven, 
 nor had he seduced his mother's waiting-maid at twelve ; he 
 had not studied at those colleges where the most consummate 
 teaching is not prescribed by the State ; he had lived in Paris 
 but a short time, and he was yet on the watch against those 
 sudden and deep impressions against which the education and 
 customs of a French education are such a powerful aegis. 
 
 In Southern lands great passions are often born at a glance. 
 A Gascon gentleman who had tempered his sensibility by 
 deep reflection, and owned a horde of little recipes against 
 the sudden apoplexies of the head and heart, had one day 
 advised Marcosini to indulge at least once a month in a wild 
 sensual orgy, so he might avert those storms of the soul which, 
 without such precautions, were apt to burst forth at inconven- 
 ient times. Andrea well remembered this advice, and, as he 
 sank to sleep, muttered to himself: 
 
 "Well, I'll begin to-morrow, January the ist." 
 
 This will explain why it was that the Comte Andrea Mar- 
 cosini so furtively skirted the line of hackney-coaches to get
 
 374 GAMBARA. 
 
 at the entrance of the Rue Froidmanteau. The man of fashion 
 hampered the lover ; he hesitated for some time, but, after a 
 final appeal to his courage, the lover advanced with a firm 
 step to the house, which he easily recognized. There he again 
 stopped. Was the woman what he took her to be ? Might 
 it not be that he was about taking a false step ? 
 
 Just then he recollected the Italian table-d'hote, and eagerly 
 jumped at the middle course thus offered, and which seemed 
 like to serve the ends of his desires and his repugnance. 
 
 He entered the place, intending to dine there ; he made his 
 way down a greasy passage, at the end of which he found, 
 after groping about for some time, the damp and slimy steps 
 of a stairway, and which, to an Italian nobleman, must have 
 seemed little more than a ladder. 
 
 Attracted to the second floor by the light of a lamp placed 
 on the floor, and by a strong scent of cooking, he pushed a 
 door which stood ajar, and saw a large room dingy with smoke 
 and grease, where a woman was engaged laying a table for 
 about twenty customers. None of the guests had as yet ar- 
 rived. 
 
 Glancing around the ill-lighted room, where the paper hung 
 in strips from the wall, the nobleman seated himself near a 
 stove which rumbled and smoked in a corner. 
 
 The major-domo of the place, attracted by the noise the 
 count made in entering, now hustled into the room. Picture 
 to yourself a thin, lank cook, very tall, blessed with a nose of 
 extravagant dimensions, casting about him from time to time 
 a feverish glance that he intended to seem cautious. At sight 
 of Andrea, whose dress and appearance bespoke affluence, 
 Signer Giardini bowed respectfully. 
 
 The count expressed an intention of habitually dining there 
 with his compatriots ; he paid for a number of tickets in ad- 
 vance, and gave a friendly tone to the conversation to enable 
 him to achieve his purpose the quicker. 
 
 He had scarcely alluded to the woman he was seeking than
 
 GAMBARA. 375 
 
 Signer Giardini made a grotesque gesture, looked knowingly 
 at his customer with a wink, and let a smile curl his lip. 
 
 "asta/" he exclaimed. " Capisco / You, signer, are 
 brought hither by two appetites. The Signora Gambara will 
 not have wasted her time if she has managed to interest a 
 gentleman so generous as you seem to be. I can tell you in 
 one word all that we know here of the woman, who is truly to 
 be pitied. 
 
 " The husband was born, I think, at Cremona, but he came 
 here from Germany, quite recently. He has been endeavor- 
 ing to get the Tedeschi to try some new music and a new 
 kind of instrument. It is pitiable, eh?" exclaimed Giar- 
 dini, shrugging hrs shoulders. " Signer Gambara, who 
 believes himself a great composer, does not seem to me to be 
 particularly smart in other directions. A fine fellow enough, 
 occasionally good-natured, full of commonsense and wit, 
 especially when he has drunk a glass or two of good wine 
 a not frequent occurrence, for he is frightfully poor. He toils 
 night and day in composing imaginary operas instead of 
 working for a living as he should do. His poor wife is 
 reduced to working for all sorts of people, prostitutes and the 
 like sewing she does. Well, it can't be helped, she loves 
 her husband like a father and cares for him like a baby. 
 
 " Lots of young men have come here to dine in hopes of 
 being able to pay court to madame, but no one has as yet 
 succeeded," he said, with a significant emphasis on the last 
 word. " La Signora Marianna is virtuous, sir; much too vir- 
 tuous for her own good, worse luck. Nowadays men give 
 nothing for nothing. The poor creature will die in poverty 
 
 " You would naturally suppose that her husband would 
 reward such fine devotion, wouldn't you? Bah, he doesn't 
 even give her one smile. The cooking is done at the bakery, 
 for, see you, this devil of a husband never earns a sou, but he 
 spends his whole time in making instruments, which he cuts 
 and lengthens, and shortens and fits, and sets up and takes to
 
 376 GAMBARA. 
 
 pieces again till they give out squeaks that would scare a cat ; 
 then only is he happy. And yet you will find him the kindest 
 and gentlest of men ; he's not a bit lazy, no indeed, he's 
 alway busy. To speak truth, he's mad and doesn't know it. 
 I have seen monsieur filing and forging those instruments of 
 his and chewing away on his black bread with an appetite 
 that I have often envied I, monsieur, who keep the best 
 table in Paris. 
 
 " Your excellenza shall learn before an hour passes over 
 your head the man I am. I have introduced a number of 
 refinements into Italian cookery that will amaze you. Ex- 
 cellenza, I am Neapolitan, which is saying, a born cook. But 
 of what good is instinct without science IV Science ! I have 
 spent thirty years in acquiring it. See, then, to what it has 
 brought me! My history is that of every man of talent. 
 My efforts, my experiments, have ruined three restaurants in 
 succession one at Naples, the others at Parma and Rome. 
 Again reduced in this city to making a trade of my art, I prac- 
 tice in my ruling passion more than before. Some of my finest 
 ragouts I give to these poor refugees. I ruin myself. Folly ! 
 you would say? I know this, but, then, can I help myself? 
 Genius is stronger than I ; is it possible I can restrain myself 
 from creating a dish that smilingly allures me ? And they 
 always know it, the scallawags ! I can make oath to you 
 that they know at once whether it was my wife or I who 
 handled the ladles. 
 
 "And what now is the consequence? Out of the sixty or 
 more guests whom I used to see at my table-d'hote every day 
 when I first opened this wretched place, barely twenty remain, 
 and most of these want credit. 
 
 " The Piedmontese, the Savoyards, have quit me, but the 
 persons of taste, the Italians proper, remain. And for these 
 what sacrifices would I not make ! I often give them a din- 
 ner at five-and-twenty sous a head that has cost me double 
 that to prepare."
 
 GAMMARA. 377 
 
 Signer Giardini's little speech was so redolent of Neapoli- 
 tan cunning that the count was tickled immensely ; he could 
 have fancied himself back at Gerolamo's. 
 
 "If such be the case, my good host," said he familiarly to 
 the chef, "and since accident, chance, and your good-nature 
 have let me into the secrets of your daily sacrifices, permit 
 me the honor of paying double." 
 
 Thus speaking, Andrea flung a forty-franc piece on the 
 table, out of which Signor Giardini solemnly returned him 
 two francs and fifty centimes in change, with a mysterious 
 ceremony which enchanted the young man. 
 
 "In a few minutes," continued the signer, "you shall be- 
 hold your donnina. I'll seat you next the husband ; if you 
 wish to get in his good graces, talk music ; I have invited 
 both of them for this evening, poor souls. For New Year's 
 Day celebration I have prepared a dish for my guests in which 
 I may say that I have surpassed myself." 
 
 The words of Signor Giardini were drowned in the noisy 
 greetings of the said company, who streamed in singly or in 
 pairs, irregularly, after the manner of tables-d'hote. Giardini 
 stood ostentatiously by the count and pointed out to him the 
 regular company. He was liberal with his quips and quirks, 
 and tried by his humorous remarks to bring a smile to the lips 
 of this man whom, as his Neapolitan instinct assured him, was 
 a wealthy patron who might be turned to account. 
 
 "That man," said he, "is a poor composer who would 
 much like to leave the ballad line for the realm of opera ; but 
 he can't. He abuses managers, music publishers, everybody 
 but himself, who is his own greatest enemy. Don't you catch 
 on to his rubescent complexion, what jolly self-conceit, how 
 little firmness he displays ? He's only cut out for a ballad- 
 monger, and nothing else. The other man in his company, 
 who looks like a match-vendor, is a great musical celebrity, 
 Gigelmi the greatest of Italian conductors. But he is now 
 going deaf, and is ending his days most miserably, deprived
 
 373 GAMBARA. 
 
 as he is of all that is attractive to him. Ah ! and here comes 
 our Ottoboni the great, the most guileless old fellow on earth ; 
 and yet he is suspected of being the most vindictive of all 
 those who are plotting for the regeneration of Italy. I should 
 dearly like to know why ever they banished such a mild old 
 gentleman " 
 
 Here Giardini looked closely at the count, who, aware 
 that he was being pumped on the political question, kept an 
 impassibility that was truly Italian. 
 
 "A man who cooks for all the world is denied political 
 opinions, excellenza," went on this culinary genius. "But 
 any one seeing that worthy man, who looks more the lamb than 
 the lion, would say as I do about him, even to the Austrian 
 ambassador himself. Beside all, at this day liberty is no 
 longer proscribed ; it is en route again ! At least that's what 
 these good people here present fancy," he whispered in the 
 count's ear, " and I, why should I daunt their hopes ? Though 
 I myself do not hate an absolute government. 
 
 "All great talent is for absolutism. Well, though Ottoboni 
 is choke full of genius, he expends time and trouble in teach- 
 ing Italy ; he writes little books to teach the minds of children 
 and the laboring classes, and he very cleverly gets them smug- 
 gled into Italy ; he adopts every means to awaken a moral 
 sense in our unlucky native land, where, after all, enjoyment 
 is more desired than liberty it may be they are right." 
 
 The count still retained his impassiveness, and the cook was 
 unable to learn any of his political opinions. 
 
 " Ottoboni," he went on, " is a saint ; very benevolent and 
 helpful ; all the refugees love him, for you must know, excel- 
 lenza, that even a Liberal may have his virtues. Ah ! here we 
 have a journalist ! " he exclaimed, interrupting himself, and 
 pointing out a man who wore the attire generally attributed, 
 perhaps more conventionally than truthfully, to the garret 
 poet ; his coat was threadbare, his shoes cracked, his hat shiny, 
 his overcoat in senile decay. ' Kxcellenza, that poor man is
 
 GAMBARA. 379 
 
 full of talent and incorruptibly honest ! He was born in a 
 wrong age; he tells the truth to the whole world; people 
 detest him. He is the theatrical critic of two little journals, 
 though he is smart enough to write for the great dailies. Poor 
 fellow ! 
 
 " The others are beneath your notice ; your excellency will 
 easily learn about them without my help," he hastily added, 
 perceiving that the count was no longer paying attention to 
 him, as the wife of the composer entered the room. 
 
 Seeing Andrea there, Signora Marianna visibly started and 
 a blush tinged her cheeks. 
 
 "Here he is," said Giardini in an undertone, pressing the 
 count's arm and motioning to a man of tall stature. "See 
 how pale and grave he is, poor man ! His hobby is evidently 
 not cantering to his mind to-day." 
 
 Andrea's love-dream of Marianna was suddenly overpowered 
 by the captivating grace which Gambara's presence exercised 
 over every true lover of art. The composer was forty ; but 
 although his high forehead, from which the hair had flown, 
 was furrowed with a few wrinkles, not deep, but in parallel 
 lines, and in spite of the hollow temples where the blue veins 
 showed through the clear, transparent skin, and of the sunken 
 orbits of his dark eyes surmounted by heavy lids and light- 
 colored lashes, the lower part of his face made him still appear 
 young, so calm were the lips, so tranquil the outline. It 
 could be recognized at a glance that this man had subserved 
 passion by the curb of intellect ; that he would only grow old 
 from mental struggle. 
 
 oo 
 
 Andrea stole a rapid glance at Marianna, who was watching 
 him. The sight of her glorious Italian head, the exquisite 
 proportion and rich coloring, revealed an organization where 
 all the human forces were symmetrically balanced ; he sounded 
 the gulf which separated this pair accidentally joined together. 
 More than pleased with this evidence of dissimilarity between 
 husband and wife, he no longer combated the feelings which
 
 380 GAMBARA. 
 
 drew him to Marianna. But for the man whose only blessing 
 she was, he already felt a touch of respectful pity, seeing, as he 
 could not help doing, the dignified and serene acceptance of 
 ill-fortune that was expressed in Gambara's melancholy and 
 mild eyes. 
 
 Expecting to find, from Giardini's description, one of those 
 grotesque beings so often set before us by German novelists 
 and libretto poets, instead he found, to his great astonishment, 
 a simple, reserved man, whose manner and demeanor were 
 aught but eccentric, and possessed a dignity all their own. 
 The dress of the musician, though it showed no trace what- 
 ever of luxury, was more seemly than his extreme poverty 
 would lead one to expect, while his linen bore testimony to 
 the tender care which watched over even the minor details of 
 his being. 
 
 Andrea raised his moistened eyes to Marianna, who did not 
 blush, though a half-smile curled iier lips, perhaps called 
 forth by the pride she felt in the young man's mute homage. 
 Too seriously fascinated not to watch for the slightest indica- 
 tion that his feelings were returned, the count began to fancy 
 himself beloved by her because he saw that she comprehended 
 him. From this moment he set himself to the conquest of 
 the husband rather than of the wife, directing all his batteries 
 against poor Gambara, who unsuspectingly went on eating the 
 bocconi of Signer Giardini without knowing their taste. 
 
 The count opened the conversation with some general re- 
 mark ; but from the first he was conscious that the man's 
 intellect, supposedly blind on one point at least, was extra- 
 ordinarily clear-sighted on all others, and he saw that it would 
 be far more important to understand his ideas than to attempt 
 any flattery of his whims. 
 
 The remainder of the guests, a hungry crew, whose wits 
 were only sharpened by the sight of a dinner, were it good or 
 bad, betrayed a positive animosity to Gambara. and only 
 waited the end of the first course to give vent to their satire.
 
 GAMBARA. 381 
 
 One refugee, whose frequent leers showed an ambitious scheme 
 in connection with Marianna, and who seemed to fancy that 
 he could entrench himself in her good graces by making her 
 husband ridiculous, opened fire by trying to explain to Mar- 
 cosini the lay of the land of the table-d'hote. 
 
 " It is quite a long time since we have heard anything about 
 the opera of ' Mahomet,' " he exclaimed, smiling at Marianna. 
 " Can it be that Paolo Gambara is wholly given up to domestic 
 affairs, the charms of l\\.t pet-au-feu,* and so neglects his super- 
 human genius, thus allowing his talent to grow cold and his 
 imagination to stale?" 
 
 Gambara knew all the company ; he felt that he lived in a 
 sphere high above them ; he therefore no longer took the 
 trouble to repel their attacks, he made no answer. 
 
 " It is not given to everybody," said the journalist, " to 
 have an intellect that can comprehend the musical efforts of 
 Monsieur Gambara ; it is for this reason, doubtless, that our 
 divine maestro hesitates to produce his works for the worthy 
 Parisians." 
 
 "And yet," put in the ballad-monger, who up to now had 
 only opened his mouth to cram into it all the food that was 
 within reach, " I know some men of talent who think much 
 of the judgment of these same Parisians. I myself have some- 
 thing of a reputation as a musician," he added diffidently ; " I 
 owe it solely to my little songs in vaudevilles, and the great 
 success of my quadrille music in drawing-rooms ; but I pro- 
 pose to very soon present to the world a mass composed for 
 the anniversary of the death of Beethoven, and I anticipate a 
 better understanding in Paris than elsewhere. You, monsieur, 
 may perhaps do me the honor of hearing it?" he said, ad- 
 dressing Andrea. 
 
 " Thank you," replied the count, " I am afraid that I am not 
 endowed with an understanding necessary for the appreciation 
 of French music. But if you were dead, monsieur, and Bee- 
 * The stock-pot; really meaning the chimney-corner.
 
 382 GAMBARA. 
 
 thoven had written your mass, I should have pleasure in at- 
 tending the performance." 
 
 This retort effectually stopped the skirmishing of the enemy, 
 who wanted to start Gambara off on his hobby-horse so that 
 his gambols might furnish amusement to the new guest. Al- 
 ready it was repugnant to Andrea's feelings to see a madness 
 so gentle and pathetic, if madness it were, at the mercy of 
 this vulgar wit. It was not then with any baseness that he 
 carried on a desultory conversation, in the course of which 
 Giardini's nose not infrequently interposed between two re- 
 plies. When Gambara gave expression to a paradoxical idea, 
 the cook would poke his head forward, to glance pityingly on 
 the composer, and to wink knowingly at the count as he 
 whispered in his ear : 
 
 "Ematto!" 
 
 Presently, though the second course demanded the attention 
 of the chef, and as he attached extreme importance to this, he 
 was interrupted in his sapient remarks. During his absence, 
 which was only a short one, Gambara leaned toward Andrea 
 and said in his ear : 
 
 "Our worthy host threatens us to-day with a dish of his 
 own concoction, which I would advise your avoiding, though 
 his wife has had her eye upon him. The honest fellow has a 
 mania for innovations in cookery. He has ruined himself by 
 experimenting ; the last one compelled him to flee from Rome 
 without a passport, a thing he never talks about. After buy- 
 ing the good-will of a famous restaurant, he was engaged to 
 cater for a banquet given by a lately created cardinal, whose 
 'Household was in an incomplete state. Giardini thought the 
 time had come for him to distinguish himself; he succeeded. 
 That very evening he was accused of trying to poison the 
 whole conclave and was forced to leave Rome, and Italy, 
 without packing his trunk. That misfortune was the la.^t 
 
 straw, and now " and Gambara laid his forefinger on his 
 
 forehead and shook his head.
 
 GAMBARA. 383 
 
 " In other respects," he added, " he is a right good fellow. 
 My wife can inform you that we are under numerous obliga- 
 tions to him." 
 
 And now came in Giardini, carefully carrying a dish, which, 
 with much elaboration, he laid upon the centre of the table ; 
 then he modestly resumed his seat by Andrea, who was first 
 helped. When the count took just one taste of the mess, he 
 felt that an immeasurable abyss separated him from the next 
 mouthful. He was much embarrassed, and, being anxious to 
 avoid annoying the cook, he kept his eye upon him and 
 studied. Though a French restaurateur may trouble himself 
 but little about what his guests may think of his cooking, for 
 which they must needs pay anyhow, it is otherwise with an 
 Italian trattore, who is scarcely satisfied with perfunctory 
 praise. 
 
 To gain time, Andrea paid extravagant compliments to 
 Giardini ; he leaned over to whisper in his ear, and as he did 
 this slipped into his hand a gold-piece, begging him to go out 
 and himself purchase some champagne, giving him the free- 
 dom to announce to the company that it was his own treat. 
 
 When, after a while, the cook reappeared, every plate was 
 cleared, and the room reechoed with praises for the master- 
 cook. Under the influence of the champagne the Italian 
 tongues were soon unlimbered, and the conversation, till now 
 more or less subdued in the stranger's presence, leaped the 
 barriers of suspicious reserve, and wandered wildly hither 
 and thither over the broad fields of political and artistic 
 theories. Andrea, who was guiltless of all intoxicants but 
 love and poetry, soon controlled the attention of the com- 
 pany, and cleverly led the discussion to matters musical. 
 
 "Monsieur will, perhaps, kindly inform me," he said to 
 the composer of dance-music, "how it is that the Napoleon 
 of petty tunes can bemean himself to a struggle with such 
 people as Palestrina,* Pergolese, and Mozart poor creatures, 
 
 * Much of this composer's music is still popular in the United States.
 
 384 GAMBARA. 
 
 who must go, bag and baggage, on the advent of this stupen- 
 dous mass for the dead ? " 
 
 "You see, monsieur," replied the composer, "a musician 
 finds it difficult to reply when his answer needs the cooperation 
 of a hundred skilled performers. Mozart, Haydn, and Bee- 
 thoven, without an orchestra, would have been no great 
 shakes." 
 
 "No great shakes! " cried the count. "Why, man, the 
 whole world knows that the immortal composer of ' Don Gio- 
 vanni ' and the ' Requiem ' was named Mozart ; but I am so 
 unhappy as to be in ignorance by what name the inventor of 
 fashionable country dances is known " 
 
 " Music is a being independent of its execution," said the 
 ex-conductor of orchestras, who, despite his deafness, had 
 caught a few words of the conversation. " Take the C-minor 
 symphony by Beethoven, the musical mind is borne onward 
 into Fancy's realm on the golden wings of the theme in 
 G-natural, repeated by the cornets in E. He sees a whole 
 nature illuminated in turn by dazzling jets of light darkened 
 by clouds of melancholy, inspirited by heavenly strains." 
 
 "Beethoven is outclassed by the new school," said the 
 ballad-monger scornfully. 
 
 " Beethoven is not yet understood," said the count. " How, 
 then, can he be excelled?" 
 
 Here Gambara drank a large glass of champagne, accom- 
 panying his libation with a covert glance of approval. 
 
 "Beethoven," the count went on, "has extended the 
 limits of instrumentation, and, as yet, none have followed in 
 his path." 
 
 Gambara assented with a slight nod. 
 
 " His works are specially remarkable for simplicity of con- 
 struction and for the manner in which the theme is worked 
 out," continued the count. " In the works of most com- 
 posers the instrumentation is vague and at random, an inco- 
 herent blending for a specious effect ; they do not carry forward
 
 GAMBARA. 385 
 
 the progression of the harmony in the movement by any regu- 
 larity and system. Whereas, Beethoven assigns to each part 
 its tone-quality from the indication. The same as various 
 regiments assist by disciplined movements in the winning of a 
 battle, so do the various orchestral scores of a symphony by 
 Beethoven over the general command for the interest of the 
 whole, and are subordinate to an admirably conceived plan. 
 
 " In this respect he maybe likened to another genius. We 
 often find in Walter Scott's noble historical romances that the 
 personage who appears to have less to do with the action of 
 the story than any other character is, at the proper moment, 
 brought forward, and leads up to the climax by threads woven 
 into the plot." 
 
 " vere/" said Gambara, whose commonsense seemed to 
 return inversely to his sobriety. 
 
 Being anxious to test the musician still further, Andrea for 
 the nonce abandoned his own predilections and proceeded to 
 attack Rossini's European reputation. He disputed the posi- 
 tion which the Italian school had captured by storm, night 
 after night for thirty years on a hundred stages. He soon 
 found he had enough on his hands. At his first words a 
 strong murmur of disapproval arose ; but neither interruptions 
 nor exclamations, nor frowns, nor contemptuous looks were 
 now able to check this determined advocate of Beethoven. 
 
 "Compare," said he, "the productions of the sublime 
 composer with what is by common consent called the Italian 
 school ; what a paucity of ideas, what a limp in the style ! 
 Listen to those monotonous measures, those trite cadences, 
 the endless bravura passages flung out haphazard irrespective 
 of the dramatic situation, the ever-recurring crescendo brought 
 into vogue by Rossini, and which is now become an essential 
 in musical composition, and, last of all, those trills, vocal 
 fireworks, all combined in a chattering, pattering, vaporous 
 music, the sole merit of which consists in the fluency of the 
 singer and his agility in vocalization. 
 25
 
 386 GAMBARA. 
 
 " The Italian school has lost sight of art's highest mission. 
 Instead of elevating the world, it has condescended to the 
 crowd ; its fame is won by seeking the suffrages of the multi- 
 tude, and by appealing to the perverted taste of the majority. 
 Its fame is a street-corner celebrity. 
 
 "To say all, the compositions of Rossini, in which this 
 music is embodied, as well as of those writers who derive more 
 or less of their style from him, seem to me to be worthy only 
 of collecting a street crowd around a barrel-organ or keeping 
 step to the capers of a punch-and-judy show. I prefer French 
 music even to that ; I can't say more. Long live German 
 
 music!" he cried, " when it is tuneful," he muttered 
 
 ironically to himself. 
 
 This sally was the summing up of a long argument in which 
 Andrea soared metaphysically with all the ease of a somnam- 
 bulist on a roof. Gambara, keenly interested in such subtleties, 
 had not missed a word of the argument. At the instant that 
 Andrea dropped it he took it up, and the attention of the 
 company was at once arrested ; a few who were about leaving 
 the room returned to listen. 
 
 " You attack the Italian school most vehemently," said 
 Gambara, who was warmed to his work by the champagne he 
 had supped, " but that to me is a matter of indifference. 
 Thank God, I stand outside all these frivolities of melodious 
 frippery. Yet for a man of the world you show but little 
 gratitude to the land from which Germany and France de- 
 rived their first lessons. While the compositions of Carissimi, 
 Cavalli, Scarlatti, Rossi, were being played through all Italy, 
 the violinists of the French opera enjoyed the singular privi- 
 lege of being allowed to play their instruments with gloved 
 hands. Lulli, who so much extended the realm of harmony, 
 and who first gave the rule of discords, on arriving in France 
 found only two men, a cook and a mason, who had voice and 
 intelligence enough to execute his music ; of the first he made 
 a tenor, and the latter he made a bass. At that time Germans,
 
 GAMBARA. 387 
 
 always excepting Sebastian Bach, were ignorant of music. 
 But, monsieur," added Gambara, in the humble tone of a 
 man who realizes that his remarks will be received with scorn, 
 if not ill-will, " you must, although young, have studied the 
 higher questions of musical art for a long time, or you could 
 not so clearly explain them." 
 
 These words caused a smile in many of the hearers, for they 
 had not understood the fine distinction of Andrea's views. 
 Giardini, convinced that the count was only talking at ran- 
 dom, nudged him warily, laughing in his sleeve at the hoax 
 in which he thought himself an accomplice. 
 
 "There is much that strikes me as being very true in what 
 you have said," Gambara went on; "but take care. Your 
 argument, while it brands Italian sensualism, seems to incline 
 somewhat to German idealism, which is a not less fatal error. 
 If men of imagination and good taste, like yourself, desert 
 one field only to stray into the other, if they cannot remain 
 neutral between two extremes, we shall always be subject to 
 the satire of the sophists who deny progress and liken human 
 genius to to this table-cloth, which, being too short to wholly 
 cover Signer Giardini's table, decks one end at the expense 
 of the other." 
 
 Giardini bounded in his chair as though he had been stung 
 by a gad-fly, but quick reflection restored his dignity as a 
 host ; he raised his eyes to heaven and again poked the count, 
 who was beginning to think the cook more crazy than Gam- 
 bara. 
 
 The serious and even religious manner in which the latter 
 spoke of art interested Marcosini extremely. Seated betweeu 
 these two manias, one so noble, the other so vulgar, and mak- 
 ing game of both, to the great amusement of the crowd, the 
 count felt as if he was continually being tossed about from 
 the sublime to the ridiculous the two extravaganzas of the 
 comedy of human life. Suddenly breaking the chain of the 
 fantastic events which had led him to this smoky den, he fan-
 
 388 GAMBARA. 
 
 cied himself the victim of some strange hallucination, and 
 began to believe that Gambara and Giardini were two ab- 
 stractions. 
 
 Presently, after a last piece of buffoonery on the part of the 
 deaf orchestra leader, directed at Gambara, the company re- 
 tired amid roars of laughter ; Giardini went off to make 
 coffee he intended offering his guests remaining and his dis- 
 tinguished patron ; and his wife meanwhile cleared the table. 
 The count was seated near the stove and between Marianna 
 and Gambara, and in the precise position that the latter had 
 declared to be so desirable midway between sensualism on 
 the one hand and idealism on the other. Gambara, who for 
 the first time met a man who did not laugh at him to his face, 
 soon left off generalizing and began to speak of himself, his 
 life, his toil, and his hopes of a final musical redemption of 
 which he believed himself to be the Messiah. 
 
 "Hearken to me," said he, "ye that have thus far not 
 laughed me to scorn ; I will tell you my life not that I may 
 extol a constancy which does not emanate from my own self, 
 but for the glory of One who has placed this force in my soul. 
 You seem to be good and reverent ; if you cannot believe in 
 me, you at least can extend me your sympathy ; pity comes of 
 man, faith is God." 
 
 Andrea, who blushed crimson, turned amd withdrew his 
 foot which had been seeking M.irianna's, and fixed his gaze 
 upon her while he listened to her husband. 
 
 "I was born at Cremona," continued Gambara, " the son 
 of an instrument-maker ; a fairly good performer of music, 
 but a far better composer. I had thus at an early age mastered 
 the laws of composition in its dual aspect, the spiritual and 
 material ; and, with the natural curiosity of my age, I paid 
 attention to many things which I afterward applied in my 
 more mature manhood. 
 
 "The French invasion drove us. my father and myself, from 
 our home. We were ruined by the war. From the age of ten
 
 CAMBARA. 389 
 
 I began that wandering life to which all men are condemned 
 who revolve in their brain reforms in art, science, or politics. 
 Fate, or the natural instincts of their minds, which never gee 
 with those of ordinary comprehension, leads them onward, 
 providentially, to points where they receive instruction. Led 
 by my passion for music I wandered through Italy from theatre 
 to theatre, living on little, as mea can live there. Sometime 
 I played the violoncello in orchestras ; often I formed one of 
 the chorus ; or worked in the wings with the carpenters. Thus 
 I studied music in its every aspect, learned the tones of the 
 human voice and instruments, in what manner they differed 
 from each other ; I listened carefully to the scores and noted 
 the harmonizing, always applying the rules taught by my father. 
 Often, again, I traveled through the country mending instru- 
 ments. It was a hard life in a land where the sun ever shines, 
 where art permeates the air and money is not at least for the 
 artist, since Rome is no longer, save in name only, the sover- 
 eign of the Christian world. 
 
 "Sometimes I was gladly welcomed, at times driven forth 
 because of my poverty ; yet I never lost heart ; I heard an 
 inner voice foretelling fame. Music to me seemed but in its 
 infancy. That opinion is still retained. 
 
 "All that we still have of the musical efforts anterior to the 
 seventeenth century demonstrates to me that ancient com- 
 posers knew melody only ; they were ignorant of harmony and 
 its vast resources. Music is both science and art. It is rooted 
 in physics and mathematics, hence a science ; its inspiration 
 makes it an art, unconsciously employing the propositions of 
 science. It derives from the physical by the very essence of 
 the matter on which it subsists. Sound is air in motion ; air 
 is made up of elements which undoubtedly find within us anal- 
 agous constituents which respond to them, which sympathize 
 with and augment them by the power of the intellect. Thus 
 air must contain as many varieties of elastic molecules, capable 
 of vibrating in as many diverse periods as there are tones in
 
 390 GAMBARA. 
 
 all sonorous bodies; and these particles, put in motion by the 
 musician and received by the ear, respond to our ideas in 
 accord with our several organizations. It is my opinion that 
 the nature of sound is identical with that of light. Sound is 
 light under a different form ; both act by vibrations which are 
 sentient to man, and which he transforms in his nerve-centres 
 into ideas. 
 
 " Music is analogous to painting, making use of materials 
 that possess the property of freeing this or that property of 
 the birth substance in suggesting a picture. So in music the 
 instruments perform this part, as does color in the painting. 
 Now, as all sound produced by a reverberating body is in- 
 variably accompanied by its major third and fifth, whereby it 
 acts on grains of sand spread upon a plain of stretched 
 parchment and arranges them in geometrical figures always 
 the same in form according to the pitch regular when the 
 harmony is a true chord, but without definity under the influ- 
 ence of discords, I say that music is an art conceived in 
 Nature's very womb." 
 
 Gambara's calm eyes were fixed upon Marcosini, who lis- 
 tened with rapt attention. 
 
 " It is that music is subject to both physical and mathemat- 
 ical laws," he went on. "The physical laws are but little 
 understood, the mathematical laws are somewhat more fully 
 comprehended ; and, since their relationship has been more 
 studied, it has enabled those creations of harmony to be effected 
 which we owe to the genius of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, 
 and Rossini, men of glorious genius, whose music is unques- 
 tionably nearer perfection than that of their predecessors, for 
 it must be admitted that the latter's genius is incontestable. 
 The old masters could create melody, but they had none of 
 the resources of art and science at command that noble alli- 
 ance which blends into a grand whole the beauties of melody 
 and the power of harmony. 
 
 "Now, if a knowledge of the mathematical laws of music
 
 GAMBARA. 391 
 
 gave these four musicians to us, to what height may we not 
 attain if we can succeed in discovering the physical laws by 
 virtue of which (please note this) we may store up in a greater 
 or less quantity, according to the proportions required, a cer- 
 tain ethereal substance diffused in the air, which gives us music 
 as it gives us light, the phenomena of vegetation and animal 
 life ! Do you grasp my meaning? 
 
 " These new laws would arm the composer with new powers; 
 it would supply him with instruments superior to those now 
 used, and, more than possibly, with a potency of harmony than 
 that which dictates the realm of music at this time. If every 
 modulation obeys a power, we must need learn that power that 
 we may be enabled to couple these forces in accordance with 
 their appropriate laws. Just now composers are working on 
 substances unknown to them. 
 
 "Why should an instrument of metal and one of wood, say 
 a bassoon and a cornet, have so little resemblance of tone, 
 though they act on the same matter, in the same manner, on 
 the constituent gases of the atmosphere ? Their dissimilarities 
 must come either from some decomposition of these gases or 
 by the assimilation of affinities, whence they return modified by 
 the influence of some force unknown to us. Could we only 
 discover what those faculties are, then science and art would 
 be immense gainers. Whatever extends science enhances 
 art. 
 
 "Well!" he exclaimed, after a short pause, "as to these 
 discoveries! I have traced, I have made them ! Yes," said 
 Gambara, with more and more vehemence, " up to now man 
 has noted the effect less than the cause. If he could but 
 penetrate cause, music would be the greatest of the arts. 
 Is it not the one that drives deepest in the soul ? In painting 
 you see no more than the picture shows ; in poetry you hear 
 only what the poet speaks ; music goes far beyond this it 
 forms thought, it rouses torpid memory. Take a thousand 
 souls present at a concert ; a strain speeds forth from Pasta's
 
 392 GAMBARA. 
 
 throat, executing so masterly the thoughts that shone in 
 Rossini's soul as he wrote the passage; that single phrase 
 of the master, transmitted to attentive souls, develops in 
 them as many diverse poems. To one it shows a woman 
 long dreamed of and desired ; to another some shore anon 
 he traversed, where rising before him are the drooping willows, 
 its clear waters, and the hopes that danced with him beneath 
 the leafy coverts. This woman is recalled to the throng of 
 feelings that tortured her in an hour of jealous rage; another 
 one sees the unsatisfied longings of her heart, which is painted 
 by her mind in the rich hues of a dream, the ideal lover to 
 whom she would fain abandon herself with the rapture of the 
 woman in the Roman mosaic, who is seen embracing a 
 chimera ; yet another dreams of desires about to be gratified, 
 she plunges in anticipation into a torrent of delight whose 
 raging waves of feeling surge about and break upon her burn- 
 ing bosom. Music alone has power to make us return unto 
 ourselves ; all other arts give but limited pleasures. But I am 
 digressing. 
 
 " Such, then, were my first ideas, vague it may be, for an 
 inventor in his inception only catches a faint glimpse of the 
 dawn. I kept these glorious ideas at the bottom of my knap- 
 sack ; they gave me spirit to eat the dry crusts as I gayly 
 soaked them in the waters of a spring. I worked, I composed 
 airs, and after I had played them on some instrument, the first 
 one to hand, I resumed my travels through Italy. At last, 
 when I was two-and-twenty, I settled in Venice, where for the 
 first time I enjoyed rest and gained a fair competence. There 
 I made the acquaintance of a Venetian nobleman, who was 
 taken with my ideas; he encouraged me in my investigations 
 and procured me employment at the Fenice theatre. In 
 Venice living is cheap and lodgings cost but little. I had a 
 room in the Palazzo Capello whence the celebrated Bianca 
 issued one night to become the Grand Duchess of Tuscany and 
 Queen of Cyprus.
 
 GAMBARA. 393 
 
 " And there I would dream that at some future time my 
 hidden fame would issue thence to be like her, crowned. 
 
 " My evenings were spent at the theatre, my days in work. 
 But disaster came. The representation of an opera, ' The 
 Martyrs,' in which I had experimented with my music, was a 
 failure. No one could understand my score. Place Beetho- 
 ven before the Italians and they cannot gauge him. No one 
 had the patience to await an effect to be produced by the 
 different motifs given out by each instrument, all intended to 
 at last unite in one grand harmony. 
 
 " I had founded my hopes on the success of the ' Martiri,' 
 for we ever discount success, we disciples of the azure god- 
 dess Hope. When a man thinks himself destined to pro- 
 duce great thoughts, it becomes difficult to believe that they 
 are not achieved ; the cask has chinks through which the light 
 will shine. 
 
 "In the same palace resided my wife's family; and the 
 hope of winning Marianna, who frequently smiled on me 
 from her window, had greatly stimulated my efforts. 
 
 " I now fell into a state of dark melancholy, as I sounded 
 the depths of the abyss into which I had fallen ; for before me 
 I saw naught but a life of poverty a ceaseless struggle in 
 which love must perish. 
 
 " Marianna acted as genius does; she bounded over every 
 obstacle, both feet at once. I will not speak of the slender 
 happiness which gilded the early days of my misfortunes. 
 Dismayed by my failure, I felt that Italy was but dull of com- 
 prehension and too much under the influence of the routine 
 chorus to be prepared to receive the innovations I meditated ; 
 so I turned my thoughts to Germany. 
 
 "As I traveled to that country, which I did by way of 
 Hungary, I paid heed to the manifold voices of nature ; I 
 tried to reproduce those sublime harmonies by the assistance 
 of instruments which I wholly constructed or changed for the 
 purpose. These experiments necessitated enormous outlay,
 
 394 GAMBARA. 
 
 and soon exhausted our slender savings. And still this was 
 the happiest time of our lives ; I was appreciated in Germany. 
 Never was my life so glorious as then. I know of nothing to 
 compare with the tumultuous joys that filled me in Marianna's 
 presence, whose beauty was then in all its celestial radiancy 
 and power. I was happy. 
 
 " More than once during these hours of weakness I ex- 
 pressed my passion in the language of terrestrial harmony. I 
 even composed some of those melodies which resemble geomet- 
 rical figures, which are so much prized in the world in which 
 we live. But so soon as I gained success, insurmountable 
 obstacles were placed in my path by rivals, envious or un- 
 appreciative. 
 
 "I had heard of France as a country which welcomed in- 
 novations ; thither I resolved to go ; my wife provided the 
 means and we came to Paris. 
 
 " Before this no one had ever actually laughed in my face ; 
 but in this dreadful city I had to undergo this new form of 
 torture, to which was added the keen anguish of miserable 
 poverty. Compelled to sojourn in this fever-stricken quarter, 
 for many months we have lived on Marianna's work ; she does 
 sewing for the wretched prostitutes who make this horrid street 
 their stamping ground. Marianna tells me that she is treated 
 with deference and generosity, which I, for my part, ascribe 
 to the ascendency of a so pure virtue that even vice itself must 
 needs respect it." 
 
 "Hope on," said Andrea. "Perhaps you have reached 
 the end of your trials. My efforts shall be united to yours, 
 and it may be that your labors will yet be seen in their true 
 light ; permit me, in the meanwhile, as a compatriot and an 
 artist like yourself, to offer you in advance some part, however 
 small, of your inevitable future gains." 
 
 " All that has to do with my material life is my wife's affair 
 alone," replied Gambara. " She it is who must decide whether 
 without humiliation we can accept the assistance of an honor-
 
 GAMBARA. 395 
 
 able man, as you seem to be. For myself, who have been led 
 to make you this long-drawn confidence, I must beg your 
 permission to retire. A melody beckons me ; it starts dan- 
 cingly before me ; bare, quivering, like a beautiful girl entreat- 
 ing her lover for the clothes he has hidden. Adieu, I go to 
 dress my mistress. My wife I leave with you." 
 
 He hastened away like a man who blames himself for losing 
 valuable time, and Marianna, somewhat embarrassed, prepared 
 to follow him. 
 
 Andrea dared not detain her. 
 
 Giardini however came to the rescue. 
 
 " But, signorina," said he, "did not you hear your husband 
 tell you to settle some business with the signer count ? " 
 
 Marianna resumed her seat, but without looking at Andrea, 
 who hesitated about addressing her. 
 
 "And will not Signor Gambara's confidence," he at length 
 said, in a voice of emotion, " also win for me that of his 
 wife's ? Will la bella Marianna refuse to give me the history 
 of her life?" 
 
 " My life ? " answered Marianna ; " my life, it is that of the 
 ivy. If you would ask the story of my heart, you must sup- 
 pose me equally devoid of pride and modesty after listening 
 to what you have just heard." 
 
 "Of whom then shall I ask it?" cried the count, whose 
 passion was blinding his wit. 
 
 "Of yourself!" replied Marianna. "You have either 
 understood me, or you never will. Ask yourself." 
 
 " I will, but you must listen to me. I take your hand, it 
 is to lay in mine so long as I tell your story truthfully." 
 
 " I listen," said Marianna. 
 
 " The life of a woman begins with her first passion," said 
 Andrea. "And my dear Marianna began to live only on the 
 day when she first saw Paolo Garnbara. Her nature needed 
 a deep passion to afford it joy ; more than all she needed some 
 pathetic feebleness to sustain and protect. The lovely female
 
 396 GAMBARA. 
 
 nature with which she is endowed is perhaps less amenable to 
 passion than maternity. 
 
 " You sigh, Marianna ; have I then laid a finger on an open 
 wound ? You took upon yourself a noble part, young as you 
 were, in protecting a noble, distraught intellect. You said to 
 yourself : ' Paolo shall be my genius, I will be his common- 
 sense ; between us we shall almost be that well-nigh divine 
 being that men term angel ; that sublime creature which en- 
 joys and comprehends, while reason never stifles love.' 
 
 " In the first transports of youth, you heard the thousand 
 voices of nature which your poet longed to reproduce. En- 
 thusiasm seized your soul when Paolo spread before you those 
 treasures of poetry as he vainly searched for their equivalent, 
 striving to embody them in the sublime but limited language 
 of his art. You admired him as an ecstatic rapture carried 
 him high above you, for you loved to think that all this errant 
 energy would finally fall and alight upon you as love. You 
 did not realize the tyrannous and jealous empire which thought 
 maintains over the minds of those who are subject to it. 
 Gambara before he knew you was the slave of that proud, 
 vindictive mistress with whom you have been combating 
 against for him to this day. Once, for an instant, happiness 
 was opened before you. 
 
 " Paolo, fallen from the lofty sphere where his mind was 
 ever soaring, was amazed to find a reality so sweet ; so sweet 
 that you may well have believed that his mania would forever 
 slumber in your arms. But ere long music clutched her prey. 
 The dazzling vision which carried you suddenly into the 
 thrilling delights of mutual passion made the solitary path on 
 which you had started look only the more arid and desolate. 
 
 "In the story just narrated by your husband, as from the 
 striking contrast between your person and his, I can readily 
 divine the secret anguish of your life, the painful mysteries of 
 that ill-assorted union in which you have taken the lot of 
 suffering upon yourself alone. Marianna, though your con-
 
 GAMBARA. 397 
 
 duct is and has been unfailingly heroic, and though fortitude 
 never deserts you in the performance of your cruel duties, 
 perhaps in the silence of your solitary nights the heart which 
 only now is beating so violently in your breast may from time 
 to time have rebelled. 
 
 "Your husband's worthiness is your worst torture. Had 
 he been less noble, less pure, you might have deserted him ; 
 but your virtues are supported by his. It may be that you 
 have at times speculated which of the two heroisms will first 
 give way. 
 
 " You pursue the real grandeur of the task while Paolo is 
 chasing his chimera. If you had only the love of duty to sus- 
 tain and guide you, perhaps triumph might seem the easier; 
 to kill your heart and carry your life into the region of ab- 
 stractions might possibly suffice you ; religion would absorb 
 the rest ; you would have lived for an idea, like those saintly 
 women who extinguish at the foot of the cross all the instincts 
 of their nature. But the pervading charm of Paolo's person, 
 the elevation of his soul, his rare and affecting proofs of ten- 
 derness, constantly drag you down from that ideal world 
 where virtue tried to keep you ; they have excited forces 
 within you which are being incessantly exhausted in contend- 
 ing against the phantom of love. But now the time has come 
 in which you must no longer deceive yourself. You never 
 suspected this. The faintest glimmer of hope kept you in the 
 pursuit of this sweet dream. 
 
 "Year after year of disillusion has undermined your pa- 
 tience ; an angel would long ago have lost it. To-day the 
 phantom so long pursued is naught but a shadow without sub- 
 stance. Madness so closely allied to genius can never know 
 a cure in this world. You have at last become aware of this 
 fact, you have glanced backward on your vanished youth, 
 lost, if not sacrificed ; you bitterly perceive the blunder of 
 nature that gave you a father only when you sought, a husband. 
 You ask yourself whether you have not gone beyond the
 
 398 GAMSARA. 
 
 duties of a wife in keeping yourself faithful to a man who 
 knows no mistress but science. Marian na, let your hand re- 
 main in mine ; all that I have told you is true. You have 
 looked around you but now you were in Paris, not in Italy, 
 where only men know how to love " 
 
 "Oh! let me finish the tale," cried Marianna; "it were 
 better fitting that I say these things myself. I will be frank ; 
 I feel that I address my truest friend. Yes, I was in Paris 
 when all you have so lucidly explained took place within me, 
 for nowhere had I met the love I had dreamed of from child- 
 hood up. 
 
 " My poor dress, my so poor abode, concealed me from the 
 notice of men like yourself. The few young men I met here, 
 whose position did not allow of their insulting me, are odious 
 to me ; these scoff at my husband as a rambling old dotard ; 
 some only court him the more easily to betray him ; all aim 
 at getting me separated from him ; none of them all can un- 
 derstand the adoration I have vowed to that soul which is so 
 far away from us only because it is so much nearer heaven ; 
 nor the love I feel for that friend, brother, whose handmaid 
 I would ever be. You alone have understood the tie that 
 binds me to him. Tell me that your interest in my Paolo is 
 sincere, without an object " 
 
 "I accept your praises," interrupted Andrea, '' but do not 
 go further ; do not compel me to contradict you. I love you, 
 Marianna, as we know how to love in that glorious country 
 where you and I were born. I love you with all my soul, 
 with all my strength ; but before I tender you this love, I 
 intend to make myself worthy of your affection. 
 
 " I will make a last effort to give back to you the man you 
 have loved since childhood, and whom, most probably, you 
 will never cease to love. While awaiting success or defeat, 
 accept, with no trace of shame, the modest comforts which 
 I can give you both. To-morrow we will look out a suitable 
 abode for him.
 
 GAMBARA. 399 
 
 " Is your esteem sufficiently great to allow me to be a sharer 
 in your guardianship?" 
 
 Marianna, astounded by such generosity, held out her hand 
 to the count ; he took it, and departed, endeavoring to evade 
 the civilities of Giardini and his wife. 
 
 Next day Andrea was taken up to the room in which Gam- 
 bara and his wife lived. Though Marianna fully recognized 
 the noble nature of her lover (for there are natures which can 
 quickly read), she was too good a housewife not to show em- 
 barrassment on receiving so great a gentleman in so humble 
 a chamber. But it was exquisitely clean. She had spent the 
 morning in dusting her motley furniture, the handiwork of 
 Signor Giardini, who had devoted his moments of leisure in 
 constructing it from the woodwork of instruments which had 
 been discarded by Gambara. 
 
 Never in his life had Andrea seen anything so amazing. 
 To keep a sober countenance he was compelled to turn away 
 his eyes from a bed, so grotesquely manufactured by the in- 
 genious cook out of the case of an old harpsichord, to look at 
 Marianna's narrow couch, of which the single mattress was 
 covered with a white lawn counterpane, a circumstance which 
 surcharged his mind with sad, but some sweet thoughts. 
 
 He wished to talk of his plans and morning's work ; but 
 the enthusiastic Gambara, who believed that he had at last 
 found a willing auditor, seized upon the count and made him 
 listen to an opera which he had written for the Parisians. 
 
 " In the first place, morisieur," said Gambara. " allow me 
 to explain the subject in two words. Here in Paris people 
 who receive a musical impression do not work it out in their 
 own minds, as religion teaches us to develop sacred texts, by 
 meditation and prayer. It is therefore very difficult to make 
 them understand that there exists in nature an eternal theme, 
 disturbed only by fluctuations independent of the Pivine will, 
 as passions are uncontrolled by the will of men.
 
 400 GAMBARA. 
 
 " It became necessary that I should seek some vast frame- 
 work in which to combine cause and effect, for my music aims 
 at presenting a picture of the life of nations taken at its loftiest 
 points of view. My opera, for I myself wrote the libretto (as 
 no poet could have fittingly developed the subject), gives the 
 life of Mahomet, a personage who unites the magic of ancient 
 Sabaeanism and the Oriental poetry of the Jewish Scriptures, 
 resulting in one of the grandest of human epics the domin- 
 ion of the Arab. 
 
 " Mahomet, without a doubt, borrowed the idea of despotic 
 government from the Jews, and the progressive movement 
 which created the brilliant empire of the caliphs from the 
 pastoral or Sabaean religions. The prophet's destiny was 
 stamped upon him at his birth his father was a Pagan, his 
 mother a Jewess. Ah ! my dear count, to be a great musician 
 one must also be very learned. Without education there can 
 be no local color ; in fact, no musical ideas. The musician 
 who only sings to sing is but an artisan, not an artist. 
 
 " This magnificent opera is a continuation of the great work 
 I had already commenced. My first opera was called 'The 
 Martyrs;' I intend to write a third one on ' Jerusalem Deliv- 
 ered.' You can of course discern the beauty of this triology 
 and the manifold motives it affords. The Martyrs, Mahomet, 
 Jerusalem ! The God of the Occident, the God of the Orient, 
 and the struggle of their religionists about a tomb. But let 
 us not speak of my fame for ever gone. Listen to the argu- 
 ment of my opera." 
 
 He paused. 
 
 " The first act," he went on, " shows Mahomet as a porter 
 living in the house of Khadijah, a rich widow with whom his 
 uncle has placed him. He is in love and ambitious. Driven 
 from Mecca he flies to Medina, and dates his era from the 
 time of his flight, the Hegira. 
 
 " The second act presents him as a prophet founding a 
 religion militant. The third shows him disgusted with all
 
 GAMBARA. 401 
 
 things ; having exhausted life, he seeks to conceal his death 
 that he may be deemed a god, last effort of human pride. 
 
 " Now you shall judge of my method of expressing in sound 
 a great fact which poetry can only imperfectly render in 
 words." 
 
 Gambara seated himself at the piano with a calm and col- 
 lected air, and his wife brought the voluminous sheets of the 
 score, which, however, he did not open. 
 
 " The whole opera," said he, " is founded on a base as on a 
 fruitful soil. Mahomet must therefore have a majestic bass 
 voice, and necessarily his first wife must have a contralto one. 
 Khadijah was quite old twenty ! Attention ! Here is the 
 overture. It begins andante, C-minor, triple time. Do you 
 hear the sadness of the ambitious man whom love cannot 
 satisfy? Through his plaints, by a modulation to E-flat, 
 allegro, common time, are heard the cries of the epileptic 
 lover, his ravings, mingled with certain warlike sounds ; for 
 the all-powerful scimitar of the caliphs begins to gleam before 
 his eyes. The charms of the single wife give him that idea of 
 the plurality of love which so forcibly impresses us in ' Don 
 Giovanni.' As you listen to this theme do you not already 
 catch a glimpse of the paradise of Mahomet ? 
 
 " Now we have, A-flat major, six-eight time, a cantabile, 
 fit to create emotions of delight in those rebellious to all musi- 
 cal feeling; Khadijah comprehends Mahomet! Then Kha- 
 dijah announces to the multitude the prophet's conferences 
 with the angel Gabriel maestoso sostenuto, in F-minor. 
 
 "The magistrates and priests, power and religion, feeling 
 themselves attacked by the reformer, as Christ and Socrates 
 attacked the effete, expiring religions and powers, turn upon 
 Mahomet and drive him forth from Mecca stretto in C-major. 
 But now, pay heed ! comes my glorious dominant G, 
 common time. Arabia hears her prophet, the horsemen 
 gather G-major, E-flat, B-flat, G-minor, still common time. 
 The mass of men gathers like an avalanche. The false prophet 
 26
 
 402 GAMBARA. 
 
 practices on one tribe the deceptions he is so soon to impose 
 upon a world G-major. 
 
 " He promises univeral dominion to the Arabs ; they believe 
 him because he is inspired. The crescendo begins in the 
 dominant still. Listen to the fanfare of the trumpets C- 
 major ; brass instruments woven into the harmony, strongly 
 marked, and asserting themselves as an expression of the 
 first triumphs of victory. Medina is conquered for the 
 prophet, the whole army marches on Mecca burst of martial 
 music still in C-major. The whole power of the orchestra 
 is worked up to a conflagration ; every instrument gives voice ; 
 do you hear the torrents of harmony? 
 
 " Suddenly the tutti is interrupted by a graceful air minor 
 third. You hear the last strains of devoted love ! The 
 woman who upheld the great man dies, concealing her despair; 
 dies, dies at the triumph of the man in whom love had become 
 too mighty to be content with one woman ; she adores him 
 enough to sacrifice herself to the grandeur that destroys her. 
 Soul of flame ! 
 
 "But now behold ! The desert invades the world C-major 
 again. The orchestra takes up the score in the terrific fifth of 
 the fundamental bass which dies away Mahomet is satiated ; 
 he has tasted all, he has exhausted all ! But he craves to die 
 a god. Arabia adores him in prayer ; we fall back upon my 
 first sad strain to which the curtain rose C-minor. 
 
 "Do you not discern in this music," said Gambara, ceasing 
 to play and turning toward the count, " in this vivid, pic- 
 turesque music, abrupt, jostling, melancholy, fantastic, but 
 always grand, the expression of an epileptic frantic after enjoy- 
 ment, unable to read or write, making his very defects a 
 stepping-stone to his grandeur, transferring blunder and dis- 
 aster into triumphs? Do you not obtain from this overture 
 an epitome of the opera an idea of his seductive power over 
 a greedy and lustful rare? " 
 
 The face of the maestro, at first calm and stern, on which
 
 GAMBARA. 403 
 
 Andrea had been trying to divine the meaning of the ideas 
 he was uttering with an inspired voice, though the chaotic 
 flood of notes estopped his hearer from comprehending, grew 
 even more animated until it took on an impassioned, fiery 
 glow which infected Marianna and the cook. Marianna, 
 deeply affected by the passages in which she read her own 
 position, could not hide the agitation from Andrea. 
 
 Gambara wiped his forehead and threw his glance with such 
 force to the ceiling that he seemed to pierce it and rise upward 
 to the skies. 
 
 "You have seen the vestibule," said he; "now we enter 
 the temple. The opera begins : 
 
 "Acr I. Mahomet, alone on the stage, sings an air F-nat- 
 ural, common time, interrupted by a chorus of camel-drivers, 
 who surround a well at the rear of the stage contrary time, 
 twelve-eight. What majestic grief ! It touches the heart of 
 the most frivolous woman, piercing the soul if she has no heart. 
 Is not this the very expression of repressed genius ? " 
 
 To Andrea's very great amazement (for Marianna was ac- 
 customed to it) Gambara contracted his larynx so violently 
 that choking sounds issued thence, something like the at- 
 tempted growl of a watch-dog which has lost its voice. A 
 light froth arose on the composer's lips and caused Andrea to 
 shudder. 
 
 " His wife appears A-minor. Magnificent duet ! In this 
 number I make it known that Mahomet has the will, his 
 wife the brains. Khadijah announces that she is about under- 
 taking a work which will bereave her of the love of her young 
 husband. Mahomet aspires to conquer the world : his wife 
 divines his purpose ; she seconds his endeavor by persuading 
 the people of Mecca that her husband's epileptic fits are due 
 to his commerce with the angels. Chorus of Mahomet's first 
 disciples, who press forward to promise him their help C- 
 sharp minor, sotto voce. Mahomet txuent to speak with the 
 angel Gabriel recitative in F-major. His wife encourages
 
 404 GAMBARA. 
 
 the chorus aria, accompanied by chorus ; gusts of chanting 
 voices sustain Khadijah's grand, majestic song A-major. 
 
 "Abdallah, the father of Ayesha, the only maiden that 
 Mahomet has found to be a virgin, whose name he thereupon 
 changes to Abu-Bekr, the father of the virgin, comes forward 
 with Ayesha and sings against the chorus, taking up Khadijah's 
 in contrapuntal treatment. Omar, father of Hafsah, another 
 virgin who is to be Mahomet's concubine, follows Abu-Bekr's 
 example ; he and his daughter join in and form a quintette. 
 The virgin Ayesha is first soprano ; Hafsah, mezzo soprano ; 
 Abu-Bekr is a bass ; Omar a baritone. 
 
 "Mahomet returns inspired. 
 
 " He sings his first bravura aria, the beginning of the finale 
 E-major ; he promises the empire of the world to those who 
 believe in him. The prophet sees the two maidens, by a soft 
 transition from B-major to G-major ; he turns to amorous 
 tones. Ali, Mahomet's cousin, and Kahled, his greatest gen- 
 eral, both tenors, now appear and announce the persecution ; 
 the magistrates, the soldiers, and rulers have banished the 
 prophet recitatiite. 
 
 "Mahomet now makes an invocation to the angel Gabriel 
 in C. He declares that the angel is with him, and points out 
 a pigeon flying above his head. The chorus of believers make 
 reply in tones of devotion modulating to B-major. The 
 soldiers, magistrates, and officials arrive tempo di marcia, B- 
 major. Struggle between the two forces sirette in E-major. 
 Mahomet, in a succession of diminished sevenths in a descend- 
 ing theme, yields to the storm and takes to flight. The sav- 
 age, sombre color of the finale is raised somewhat by the 
 phrases of the three women, who utter predictions of Mahomet's 
 triumph ; and these motifs will be found further accentuated 
 in the third act, where Mahomet is found enjoying the de- 
 lights of splendor." 
 
 Tears arose in Gambara's eyes; he controlled his emotion 
 and resumed :
 
 GAMBARA. 405 
 
 " ACT II. Behold religion is now established. Arabs guard 
 the prophet's tent, who confers with God chorus in A-minor. 
 Mahomet appears prayer in F. What a majestic and noble 
 strain underlies this chant in the bass voices, in which, I 
 believe, I have enlarged the limits of melody ! It seemed 
 necessary to express the marvels of that immense uprising 
 which created an architecture, a poetry, a music ; with its own 
 manners, customs, and morals. 
 
 "As you listen you walk beneath the arches of the Genera- 
 life and thread the vaulted portals of the Alhambra. The 
 fiorituri of the melody paint the exquisite Moorish arabesques, 
 the gallant and warlike religion which was presently to meet 
 in battle the noble and valorous chivalry of Christianity. A 
 few brass instruments now sound the first notes of triumph 
 by a broken cadenza. The Arabs, on their knees, worship 
 the prophet E-flat major. Khaled, Amrou, and Ali enter 
 tempo di marcia. The armies of the Faithful have taken many 
 towns and conquered the three Arabias. Such a sonorous 
 recitative. Mahomet rewards his generals by giving them 
 maidens. 
 
 "And here comes in," said Gambara, ruefully, "one of 
 those wretched ballets which cut the thread of our finest musi- 
 cal tragedies. But Mahomet B-minor redeems it by his 
 transcendent prophecy, which that poor Monsieur de Voltaire 
 describes in these words : 
 
 " 'Arabia's day at last has come.' 
 
 " The chorus of Arabs breaks triumphant six-eight time, 
 accelerando. Now the tribes in multitude come on ; horns 
 and brass join in the orchestra. General rejoicings ensue, by 
 degrees all the voices take part, and Mahomet declares polyg- 
 amy. 
 
 "In the midst of all this triumph the woman who has done 
 so much for Mahomet pours forth a magnificent aria B-major. 
 'And I,' sings she, 'am I no longer loved?' 'We must 
 part/ he responds. 'Thou art a woman, I am a prophet j
 
 406 GAMBARA. 
 
 slaves I may have, equals never.' Hearken to this duet 
 G-sharp minor. What anguish ! The woman realizes the 
 grandeur to which she has been the means of elevating Ma- 
 homet ; she loves him enough to sacrifice herself to his glory, 
 she adores him as a god, she judges not, she murmurs not. 
 Poor woman ! his first dupe, his first victim ! What a subject 
 for the finale B-major. 
 
 " Behold the sombre grief standing out against the acclama- 
 tions of the chorus, mingling with the tones of Mahomet as 
 he flings his wife aside as a used-out instrument, and yet 
 causes us to understand that he can never forget her. What 
 fireworks of triumph, what red fire of joyous, rippling songs 
 gush from the voices of Ayesha and Hafsa {premiere and mezzo 
 soprano), further sustained by Ali and his wife, by Omar and 
 Abu-Bekr. Weep, rejoice ! Triumph and tears ! Of such is 
 life." 
 
 Marianna could not restrain her sobs ; Andrea was so deeply 
 moved that his eyes grew moist. The Neapolitan cook, 
 shaken by the magnetic current of ideas generated by the 
 spasmodic accents of Gambara's voice, was overcome by emo- 
 tion like the rest. 
 
 The composer turned around to the group ; he smiled. 
 
 " You understand me at last ! " cried he. 
 
 No conqueror haled in triumph to the Capitol, amid the 
 purple radiance of his glory and the acclamations of a nation, 
 ever wore such an expression when the crown was placed upon 
 his head as Gambara did at this time. His face had the halo 
 of a martyred saint. None undeceived him. A dreadful 
 smile flickered on Marianna's lips. The count was appalled 
 by the artless, blind insanity. 
 
 " ACT III.," said the rapt musician, again seating himself at 
 the piano : 
 
 " Solo, andantino, Mahomet unhappy though in his seraglio 
 surrounded by women. Quartette of houris A-major. What 
 pomp of harmony, what trills as those of a happy nightingale]
 
 GAMBARA. 407 
 
 It modulates into F-sharp minor. The theme is given on the 
 dominant (E) and is then repeated in A-major. Here all de- 
 lights are grouped visibly to the senses and produce a grand 
 contrast to the sombre finale of the first act. 
 
 "After the dances Mahomet arises and sings a grand 
 bravura F-minor. He regrets the singleness and devotion 
 of his first wife, but acknowledges himself as wedded to po- 
 lygamy. Never did musician have so grand a subject. The 
 orchestra and women's chorus express the joys of the houri ; 
 meanwhile Mahomet reverts to the sad strain of the beginning. 
 
 "Where is Beethoven?" cried Gambara; "where, then, 
 is that soul who only could understand the majestic over- 
 turning of my opera upon itself. See how completely all 
 depends upon the bass ; thus did Beethoven construct his 
 symphony in C. 
 
 " But his heroic movement is purely instrumental, while 
 mine is sustained by a sextette of glorious human voices, and 
 a chorus of believers who are on guard at the gate of the 
 sacred dwelling. I have here collected all the treasures of 
 melody and harmony, vocal and orchestral. Listen to the 
 utterance of all human life, rich or poor : BATTLE, TRIUMPH, 
 SATIETY. 
 
 " Ali enters; everywhere the Koran is triumphant duet, 
 D-minor. Mahomet places himself in the hands of his two 
 fathers-in-law ; he is weary of all ; he will abdicate and die in 
 secret after he has consolidated his religion. Magnificent 
 sextette B-flat major ! He bids all farewell solo in F- 
 natural. His two fathers-in-law, appointed his vicars or 
 caliphs, summon the people. A grand triumphal march. 
 Prayer of the Arabs kneeling before the sacred dwelling, the 
 Kasba, whence a pigeon takes its flight same key. This prayer, 
 sung by sixty voices and led by women B-flat crowns my 
 stupendous work, which so well expresses the life of men and 
 nations. Here you have heard every emotion, human or 
 divine."
 
 408 GAMBARA. 
 
 Andrea was overcome with sheer amazement. He was much 
 affected by this good man's mania, he colored, and stole a 
 glance at Marianna ; while she became pallid and turned her 
 eyes downward, silently weeping. Had he not been shocked 
 by the irony which the man showed as he presented the feel- 
 ings of Mahomet's wife and yet not perceiving the same 
 emotions in Marianna, the madness of the husband was 
 eclipsed by the craziness of the composer. There was not the 
 least resemblance to musical or poetical ideas in the loud 
 blathering which oppressed his ears. All the principles of 
 harmony, the first rules of composition, were quite ignored in 
 this formless creation. Instead of a theme scientifically worked 
 out such as had been described by Gambara, his fingers had 
 brought out a succession of fifths, sevenths, octaves, major 
 thirds, progressions of fourths, minus the sixths in the bass 
 a jumble of discordant sound, randomly made, as though in- 
 tended to destroy the ear of the least sensitive of listeners. It 
 is impossible to attempt a description of this grotesque execu- 
 tion ; new words must needs be coined to portray this im- 
 possible music. 
 
 During its execution he had closed his eyes in ecstasy; had 
 smiled upon his piano ; had frowned at it ; put out his tongue 
 after the manner of an inspired performer. He had been, in 
 fact, intoxicated by the poetry of the thoughts that peopled 
 his brain he had vainly endeavored the utterance of them. 
 The strange discords had evidently been to him celestial har- 
 monies. Beyond any doubt the vision of his inspired blue 
 eyes in rapt enjoyment of another world ; the rosy glow of 
 his cheeks ; above all, the heavenly serenity stamped upon his 
 lofty features, would have led any deaf man to believe that he 
 was present at the improvisation of some maestro. The illu- 
 sion would have been the more perfect because the mechanical 
 execution of this crazy music required immense skill in finger- 
 ing. Gambara must have worked at it for years. 
 
 His hands were not alone employed ; his feet were constant
 
 GAMBARA. 4U'J 
 
 in the pedaling; perspiration streamed down his face as he 
 labored to fully emphasize a crescendo by all the feeble means 
 which a decrepit piano afforded. He stamped, snorted, puffed, 
 and shouted ; his fingers darted hither and thither like the 
 forked fangs of a snake ; finally, as the piano uttered its last 
 growl, he flung himself backward and let his head rest on the 
 back of the chair. 
 
 "Per Bacco! I am stunned, dizzy," cried Andrea, escap- 
 ing from the chamber. "A child dancing on the keyboard 
 would make better music." 
 
 "Certainly," said Giardini. "All that chance could do 
 couldn't manage to avoid hitting two notes in concord than 
 that devil of a fellow has done during the hour now gone." 
 
 " How comes it that the regular features of Marianna's 
 beauty remain ?" muttered the count to himself. " Such an 
 incessant hearing of so hideous melody must change anything. 
 She will grow ugly." 
 
 " Signer confe, she must be saved from that," cried Giardini. 
 
 "Yes," said Andrea, "I have been thinking of that. But 
 to be sure that my plans are not built upon the sands, I must 
 test my thoughts by yet another experiment. To-morrow I 
 will return and examine the instruments he has invented ; after 
 dinner we will have a little supper (medianoche}. I provide 
 the wine and a few fancy dishes." 
 
 The cook bowed low. 
 
 The next day was spent by the count in arranging the suite 
 of rooms in which he intended domiciling the poor household. 
 
 He returned in the evening to the Rue Froidmanteau and 
 found the wine and so forth set out by Marianna and Giar- 
 dini, displaying some little taste. Gambara with much pride 
 showed him some little drums, on which lay grains of gun- 
 powder, by which means he made observations on the pitch 
 and temperament of the sounds emitted by his instruments. 
 
 " Do you see," said he, " by what simple means I am able 
 to demonstrate a great proposition? Acoustics by this means
 
 410 GAMBARA. 
 
 reveal actions analogous to sound on every object which that 
 sound affects. All harmonies start from a common centre and 
 always retain an intimate relation to each other ; rather, har- 
 mony, like light, is decomposed by our art as a ray is by a 
 prism." 
 
 Here Gambara proceeded to show Andrea the instruments 
 constructed according to his principles, and he explained the 
 changes he had made in their shape and material. Finally 
 he announced, with gravity, that, to properly conclude this 
 preliminary evening, which had thus far only gratified the 
 curiosity of the eye, he would allow all then present to hear 
 an instrument which was capable of taking the place of an 
 entire orchestra ; he called this the panharmonicon. 
 
 "If it is the arrangement in that case which causes a grum- 
 bling of all the neighbors," said Giardini, "when you are 
 working on it, you won't do much playing thereon, for the 
 police will interfere. Bear that in mind." 
 
 "If that unhappy idiot remains in the room," whispered 
 Gambara in Andrea's ear, " it will be impossible that I should 
 play." 
 
 The count made a pretext to get rid of the cook by prom- 
 ising him a present if he would stay downstairs and prevent 
 the police and neighbors from interfering. Giardini, who had 
 not stinted his own allowance of wine while pouring out for 
 the others, willingly complied. 
 
 The composer, while not intoxicated, was in that elevated 
 condition when every function of the brain is overexcited ; 
 when the opaque walls become transparent, the garret roofless, 
 and the soul takes flight into the world of spirits. 
 
 Marianna, not without difficulty, uncovered an instrument 
 about the size of a grand piano ; but with an upper manual 
 a-nd a great double case, not altogether unlike the boxing of 
 an organ. This curious machine was also provided with stops 
 for various instruments, and the bent elbows of a number of 
 tubes or pipes.
 
 GAMBARA. 411 
 
 "Will you play for me the prayer which you say is so fine, 
 the finale of your opera?" asked the count. 
 
 To Andrea's great astonishment and Marianna's surprise, 
 Gambara commenced with a few chords in perfect harmony that 
 proclaimed him a master ; their astonishment was succeeded by 
 admiration and in turn by complete rapture ; they entirely 
 lost sight of the place and performer. The effects 01' a full 
 orchestra would have been less fine than the reedy tone of the 
 wind instruments, which swelled like an organ and formed a 
 marvelous blend with the string harmonies. But the unfin- 
 ished state of this machine prevented the full development of 
 the composer's ideas, which seemed the greater for the sense 
 of incompleteness. It may be remarked that certain perfec- 
 tions in works of art seem rather to detract from than improve 
 the unfinished sketch ; for one may then add the deficiency 
 by his own thoughts. 
 
 The purest and sweetest music that Andrea had ever heard 
 rose from under the impact of Gambara's fingers like incense 
 from an altar. The composer's voice became again youthful ; 
 so far from marring the fine melody, it expounded, supported, 
 and directed it ; as the quavering voice of a reader like 
 Andrieux gives scope to the meaning of some great scene by 
 Corneille or Racine by lending it a personal and sympathetic 
 emotion. 
 
 This angelic music revealed the treasures that lay hidden in 
 the grand opera which could never be understood so long as 
 this man persisted in the endeavor to explain it in his normal 
 state of dementia. 
 
 Marianna and Andrea, equally divided between delight of 
 the music and surprise at the strange instrument with its 
 hundred-voiced stops, in which a stranger might think a choir 
 of young girls was hidden, so closely did some of the tones 
 resemble the human voice, dared not exchange ideas either 
 by word or look. Marianna's countenance was radiant with 
 a glow of hope, which revivified the beauty ol" her youth.
 
 412 GAMBARA. 
 
 This new birth of beauty, in connection with the luminosity 
 of her husband's genius, cast a shadowy tinge of sadness over 
 the pleasure that this mysterious hour had given the count. 
 
 "You are our good spirit ! " Marianna whispered to him. 
 "I am tempted to think that you inspire him, for I, who am 
 never away from his side, have never yet heard anything like 
 this." 
 
 "Khadijah's farewell," said Gambara; who now sang the 
 cavatina which he had the previous evening described as being 
 sublime, and which now brought tears to the eyes of the 
 lovers, so perfectly did it express the noblest sentiments of 
 devoted love. 
 
 " Who can have inspired you with such music?" cried the 
 count. 
 
 "The spirit," answered Gambara. "When he appears, 
 flame is all around me. I see the melodies face to face ; fresh, 
 beautiful, in floral coloring. They sparkle, they echo I 
 listen. But an infinity of time is necessary to reproduce 
 them." 
 
 "Play on," said Marianna. 
 
 Gambara, who seemed not to feel fatigue, played without 
 effort or untowardness. He executed the overture with such 
 facility and skill, he showed such new and undiscovered 
 musical effects, that the count was dazzled by what he heard ; 
 he began to believe in some magic like that controlled by 
 Liszt and Paganini a genius of execution which can change 
 all musical conditions and create of it a poetry transcendent 
 of all conditions of music. 
 
 "Well, excellenza, and can you cure him?" asked Giar- 
 dini, when at length Andrea went down. 
 
 " I shall soon be able to say," replied the count. "The 
 man's intellect has two windows : one is turned toward the 
 earth and is closed ; the other looks in upon heaven. The 
 first is music, the second poetry. Until now he would stand 
 stubbornly before the closed window ; we must get him to the
 
 GAMBARA. 413 
 
 other. It was you, Giardini, that first put me on the track of 
 this truth, by letting me know that his mind was clearer after 
 a few glasses of wine." 
 
 "Yes," cried the cook, "and lean guess your scheme, 
 excellenza." 
 
 " If it is not too late to make poetry ring in his ears to the 
 sound of a glorious harmony, we must put him into a condi- 
 tion to hear and judge of it. Now it seems to me that only 
 intoxication can bring this about. Will you assist me in this? 
 You won't be any the worse for it, eh?" 
 
 " What is your excellency getting at? " 
 
 Andrea made no answer, but went away laughing at the per- 
 spicacity of the crazy mind of the Neapolitan. 
 
 On the following day Marcosini came to fetch away Mari- 
 anna and show her the lodging he had secured. She had 
 used the morning in fixing up a simple but decent dress, into 
 which she had put the whole of her little savings. The 
 change would have been the disillusion of a mere dangler ; 
 but the fancy of the count had now become a settled pas- 
 sion. 
 
 Marianna, stripped of her picturesque poverty, was trans- 
 formed outwardly into a mere bourgeoise, and gave Andrea 
 visions of a wedded life ; he gave her his hand in assisting 
 her into the hackney-coach, and acquainted her with his ideas. 
 She smiled and approved ; she was happy at finding her ad- 
 mirer more lofty, more generous, more disinterested than she 
 had dared to hope. He soon reached the new dwelling, where 
 Andrea had endeavored to keep himself ever in her thoughts 
 by adding a few of those little elegancies which beguile the 
 most virtuous of women. 
 
 "I will never mention my love to you until we despair of 
 Paolo's sanity," he said to her, as they returned to the Rue 
 Froidmanteau. " You shall be witness to the sincerity of my 
 efforts. If these prove successful, I may be unable to keep up 
 my part as only your friend. If this happens I shall flee you,
 
 414 GAMBARA. 
 
 Marianna. I have firmness enough, I think, to work for your 
 happiness, though I may not have enough to look upon it." 
 
 "Do not say such things," said Marianna, with difficulty 
 keeping back her tears. "Has not generosity its dangers, 
 also ? But are you going so soon ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Andrea, "seek your happiness without my 
 drawback. ' ' 
 
 If Giardini is to be believed, the excellent change of air 
 and living was favorable to both husband and wife. Every 
 evening after his wine, Gambara appeared less absent-minded, 
 talked more, and was more sedate ; he even proposed to read 
 the papers. Andrea quaked in his shoes at each manifestation 
 of his success ; but, though his distress made him aware of the 
 strength of his passion, this did not cause him to relax his 
 virtuous resolution. He now came every evening to learn the 
 progress of this singular cure. On one occasion the state of 
 the patient gave him satisfaction, but his pleasure was dazed 
 by Marianna's beauty, for her life being rendered less onerous 
 had restored her brilliant loveliness. 
 
 He joined each evening in the conversations, grave or gay, 
 in which he argued coolly and dispassionately against Gam- 
 bara's singular theories. He used the remarkable lucidity of 
 the latter's mind, on every point that did not touch upon his 
 malady, to make him clearly perceive and acknowledge prin- 
 ciples in other branches of art and which he afterward demon- 
 strated were equally applicable to music. 
 
 All went well so long as the composer's brain was under the 
 influence of the fumes of wine ; but just as soon as he became 
 perfectly sober his reason was dethroned he was again the 
 maniac. And yet, in the main, Paolo was more easily aroused 
 by impressions from the outer world ; his mind even began to 
 employ itself on a greater diversity of subjects. 
 
 Andrea, who took all an artist's interest in his semi-medical 
 treatment, thought at length that it was about time to try
 
 GAMBARA. 415 
 
 a master-stroke. He resolved to give a dinner at his own 
 house, to which he intended inviting Giardini for the purpose, 
 as he told himself, of not separating the sublime and the 
 ridiculous. He selected the day that " Robert le Diable," an 
 opera he had already heard in rehearsal, was for the first time 
 given in public. 
 
 After the second course Gambara was already half-seas over, 
 he was laughing at himself with a good grace, while Giardini 
 was admitting that his own culinary innovations were of the 
 devil. 
 
 Andrea had neglected no means to bring about this twofold 
 miracle. Flagons of Orvieto and Montefiascone, expensive 
 wines which are easily spoiled if carelessly carried ; liqueurs 
 of Lachrymae Christi, and Giro, and other heady liqueurs of 
 la cara patria or the beloved country, soon caused the double 
 intoxication, in these excitable minds, of grape and reminis- 
 cence. At dessert the musician and the cook mutually abjured 
 every heresy ; one hummed a cavatina from Rossini, the other 
 piled confectionery on his plate and washed them down with 
 maraschino from Zara, to the honor of the cuisine Fran$aise. 
 
 The count took advantage of Gambara's happy frame of 
 mind to carry him off to the opera, whither he allowed him- 
 self to be led like a lamb. 
 
 With the first notes of the introduction Gambara's inebriety 
 vanished, and gave place for the feverish excitement which at 
 times brought his judgment and imagination into harmony ; 
 the habitual discord of which was the undoubted source of his 
 insanity. The dominant idea of that great musical drama 
 appeared to him in all its radiant simplicity, like a flash of 
 lightning breaking through the clouds of darkness in which 
 he lived. To his unsealed eyes the music seemed to sweep 
 the immense horizons of world in which he found himself for 
 the first time, though he recognized it as what he had seen in 
 his dreams. 
 
 He fancied himself transported to those slopes of his own
 
 416 GAMBARA. 
 
 dear native country where la bella Italia commences, and 
 which Napoleon so appropriately termed the " glacis of the 
 Alps." His memory took him back to the day when his 
 young, vigorous brain was not yet troubled by the fervid 
 imagination ; he listened in reverent awe, unwilling to miss a 
 word. The count respected the travail of his soul. Till after 
 twelve o'clock he sat so motionless that the opera-house audi- 
 ence might have taken him for a drunken man which he 
 was. On his way home the count began to attack Meyerbeer's 
 masterpiece, trying to arouse Gambara, who was now plunged 
 in the half-torpid state of drunkenness. 
 
 " What is there in that incoherent score that it makes a 
 somnambulist of you?" said Andrea, when they arrived at 
 his house. "The story of 'Robert le Diable ' is not alto- 
 gether without interest, I'll admit. Holtei has very happily 
 worked out with much skill a well-written drama, full of 
 strong and moving situations, but the French librettists have 
 managed to make it the most absurd bundle of nonsense. No 
 libretto of even Vesari or Schikaneder has ever equaled in 
 absurdity the words of 'Robert le Diable;' it becomes a 
 dramatic nightmare, which oppresses the hearer without arous- 
 ing any deep emotion. 
 
 " Meyerbeer's devil plays too prominent a part. Bertram 
 and Alice represent the contest between right and wrong, the 
 good and evil spirit. That antagonism offers a splendid op- 
 portunity to the composer. The sweetest melodies, placed 
 side by side with harsh and crude airs, is the natural conse- 
 quence of the libretto ; but, unfortunately, in the score of the 
 German composer the devils sing better than the saints. 
 
 " The heavenly inspirations give the lie to their origin ; 
 when the composer leaves the infernal lay for a moment, he 
 returns as speedily as may be, worn out with the effort of 
 trying to be rid of them. Melody, the golden thread that 
 should never be broken in so vast a scheme, is often strained 
 to the vanishing point in Meyerbeer's work. Sentiment is
 
 GAMBARA. 417 
 
 absolutely lacking ; the heart has no part in it ; we find few 
 of those delightful inventions, those artless themes which touch 
 our sympathies and leave a tender impression on the soul. 
 
 " Harmony reigns supreme, instead of being the ground- 
 work from whence should issue the melodious groups of the 
 musical picture. Those discordant notes, far from moving 
 the hearer, only excite in him a sentiment similar to the one 
 he would experience in seeing a tight-rope walker hanging, as 
 it were, midway between life and death. The soothing arias 
 never come at the right moment to quieten this nervous agita- 
 tion. One might well believe that the composer had no other 
 object in view than to produce a bizarre effect, not troubling 
 himself about musical truth or unity ; or about the capability 
 of the human voice, which is overwhelmed in this flood of 
 instrumental hurly-burly." 
 
 " Hush, my friend ! " said Gambara, " I am still under the 
 influence of that glorious chorus of hell, made still more terrible 
 by those long trumpets a new instrumentation. The broken 
 cadenzas which add such vigor to Robert's scene, the cavatina 
 in the fourth act, \hzfinalc to the first, still hold me in the 
 clutch of some superhuman power. No, even Gluck's com- 
 positions never produced so powerful an effect ; I am amazed 
 at such skill." 
 
 " Signor Maestro,'" said Andrea smiling, "permit me to 
 contradict you. Before Gluck wrote he pondered long ; he 
 calculated the chances and adopted plans which might after- 
 ward be modified under his inspirations in their details, but he 
 never allowed himself to stray from the marked-out path. 
 Therein lies his power of emphasis ; that elocution of music 
 which has life and truth in every beat. 
 
 " I agree with you that the science of Meyerbeer's opera is 
 very great ; but science becomes a defect when isolated from 
 inspiration ; I think I can see in that opera the painful work 
 of a cultivated craftsman, who in his music has interlarded 
 gems from many forgotten sources, or from damned operas ; 
 27
 
 418 GAMBARA. 
 
 these he has extended, remodeled, or concentrated. But he 
 has fallen into the usual error of the plagiarist, an abuse of 
 good things. This clever gleaner in the harvest-fields of 
 music is prodigal in discords, which, when too frequently 
 introduced, end by annoying the ear; it becomes habituated 
 to startling effects, such as a composer should he chary in 
 giving, so that he may obtain the full benefit when the situa- 
 tion demands it. 
 
 " This inharmonic phrasing is repeated to satiety, and the 
 abuse of the plagal cadence* detracts from the religious 
 solemnity of the work. 
 
 "Of course I am well aware that every composer has his 
 particular methods to which he will return again and again in 
 spite of himself; but he should watch and guard himself 
 against that blunder. A picture that had none but blues and 
 reds in it would be unfaithful to nature, beside fatiguing to 
 the eye. Thus the constantly recurring rhythm of the score 
 of ' Robert le Diable ' gives monotony to the whole. As to the 
 effect of the long trumpets, of which you speak, it has long 
 been known in Germany, and what Meyerbeer gives us for 
 novelty was constantly utilized by Mozart, who makes his 
 chorus of devils in ' Don Giovanni' sing in that manner." 
 
 By these contradictions and renewed libations Andrea 
 strove to bring Gambara back to his proper musical senses ; 
 he endeavored to show him that his so-called mission to the 
 world was not to regenerate an art beyond his powers, but to 
 seek expression for his ideas under another form, by poetry, in 
 fact. 
 
 " You, my dear count, do not understand the least thing 
 about that stupendous musical drama," said Gambara airily. 
 
 He stood in front of Andrea's piano, struck the keys, 
 listened to the tone, then seated himself, meditating for a few 
 moments as if to collect his ideas. 
 
 * The chord of the sub-dominant followed by th.it of the dominant. 
 TRANS.
 
 GAMBARA. 419 
 
 "In the first place you must know," said he, "that a 
 trained ear like mine perceived at once that labor of setting 
 of which you speak. Yes, this music has been lovingly 
 selected from the store of a rich and fertile imagination into 
 which science has squeezed ideas which are to bring out the 
 very essence of music. 
 
 " I will illustrate this." 
 
 He rose to move the wax-candles into the adjoining room, 
 and, before returning to his seat, he drank a large glass of 
 Giro, a wine of Sardinia, as full of fire as any old Tokay has 
 ever been. 
 
 "It is this," said Gambara, "this music was not written 
 for skeptics nor for those who know not love. If you have 
 never in your life experienced the vehement assaults of an evil 
 spirit, who ever moves the object at which you are about to 
 take aim, who brings to a painful end your liveliest hopes 
 in one word, if you have never felt the devil's tail whisk- 
 ing about the world the opera of ' Robert le Diable ' must 
 be to you what the Apocalypse is to those who think that all 
 ends when they do. But if, persecuted and wretched, you 
 understand that spirit of evil, that so great ape which hourly 
 is engaged in destroying the work of God ; if you imagine 
 him as not having loved, but of ravishing an almost divine 
 woman, and gaining from that deed the joys of paternity ; 
 as so loving his son that he would rather have him miserable 
 to all eternity that he might be with him, than to think of 
 his being in eternal happiness with God ; if, again, you 
 can imagine the soul of the mother hovering around her son 
 to draw him away from the atrocious temptations offered by 
 his father, you, even then, will have but a faint idea of that 
 stupendous poem, in which little is wanting for it to become 
 the rival of Mozart's ' Don Giovanni.' 
 
 " ' Don Giovanni' is, I admit, the superior by the perfec- 
 tion of its form. ' Robert le Diable ' represents ideas ; ' Don 
 Giovanni' arouses sensations. 'Don Giovanni' is still the
 
 420 . GAMBARA. 
 
 only musical work in which harmony and melody are exactly 
 balanced. In this lies its superiority to ' Robert le Diable,' 
 for ' Robert ' is the richer work. 
 
 " But to what good are these comparisons, since both works 
 are beautiful in their own way? To me, subject as I have 
 been to the oft-repeated assaults of the demon, ' Robert ' 
 speaks more powerfully than to you ; I find it at once vast and 
 concentrated. 
 
 " Thanks to you, I have been transported to the land of 
 dreams, where our senses expand, where the universe unfolds 
 in gigantic scale in comparison with man." 
 
 He was silent for a moment. 
 
 "I am still quivering," continued the unlucky artist, "at 
 the sound of those four measures of the cymbals, which shook 
 my very being when they open that short, abrupt intro- 
 duction where the trombone solo, the flutes, oboes, and 
 the clarionet cast a fantastic color over the soul. The andante 
 in C-minor is a foretaste of the invocation of spirits in the 
 abbey ; it gives grandeur to the scene by its announcement of 
 a purely spiritual struggle. I shuddered ! " 
 
 Gambara struck the keys with a firm hand and developed 
 Meyerbeer's theme in a masterly fantasia, a kind of explosion 
 after the manner of Liszt. The instrument was no longer a 
 piano, it was an orchestra they heard the Genius of music 
 rose before them. 
 
 "That is Mozart," he cried. "Hear how that German 
 handles his chords ; see through what intricate modulations 
 he raises the image of terror to come to the dominant of C. 
 I can hear all hell there ! 
 
 "The curtain rises. 
 
 "What do I see? The only spectacle to which we can 
 give the epithet infern.il ; an orgy of Knights in Sicily. The 
 chorus in F contains every human passion let. loose in that 
 bacchanalian allegro. Every thread by which the devil holds 
 us is pulled. That is the kind of joy that comes over men
 
 GAMBARA. 421 
 
 when they dance on the verge of a precipice ; they whirl them- 
 selves into vertigo. What ' go ' in that chorus ! 
 
 " From that chorus, the reality of life, an artless bourgeois 
 of every-day existence stands out G-minor in the song by 
 Raimbaut, full is it is of simplicity. That worthy man, who 
 is the representative of the fresh verdure of plenteous Nor- 
 mandy, refreshes my soul as he recalls it to Robert's mind in 
 the midst of his drunkenness. The sweetness of that beloved 
 land shines like a thread of gold in the dark texture of the 
 scene. 
 
 "'Now comes the marvelous ballad in C-major, accompanied 
 by the chorus in C-minor, so expressive of the theme. Then 
 the outburst l Je suis Robert' I am Robert. The rage of 
 the prince offended by his vassal is no longer a natural fury ; 
 but presently it calms down, for memories of childhood arise, 
 with those of Alice, in that gracefully pretty allegro A-major. 
 
 " Do you not hear the cries of the persecuted innocent as it 
 enters this infernal drama? 'No, no ! ' " sang Gambara, and 
 making the piano echo him. " His native land and its sweet 
 memories bloom anew in Robert's heart ; his mother's shade 
 now arises, bringing in its train soothing religious thoughts. 
 Religion it is that inspires that beautiful song in E-major, with 
 its miraculous progressions in harmony and melody, in the 
 words : 
 
 ' Car dans les cieux, comme sur la terre 
 Sa m6re va prier pour lui.'* 
 
 The struggle begins between the mysterious powers and the 
 only human being who has the fire of hell in his veins to re- 
 sist them. To make this quite clear, as Bertram comes on, 
 the great musician gives the orchestra a ritorntllo reminiscent 
 of Raimbaut's ballad. What art ! What cohesion of every 
 part ! What strength of construction ! . 
 
 * For in the skies as on the earth 
 For him his mother prayeth.
 
 422 GAMBARA. 
 
 "The devil is beneath all; he hides, he squirms. With 
 the terror of Alice, who recognizes the devil of the image of 
 St. Michael in her own Norman village, the conflict of the 
 powers antagonistic begins. The musical theme develops in 
 what varied phrases ! The antithesis so necessary in every 
 opera is emphatically shown in a grand recitative, such as 
 Gluck might have composed, between Bertram and Robert : 
 
 ' Tu ne sauras jamais a quel exces je t'aime.'* 
 
 In that diabolical C-minor, Bertram, in his terrible bass, 
 which countermines and destroys every effort of the vehement, 
 passionate man, is, to me, terribly appalling. 
 
 "Must the crime become possessed of the criminal? Will 
 the executioner clutch his prey? Must misfortune swallow up 
 the genius of the artist ? Will the disease kill the patient ? 
 Can the guardian angel save the Christian ? 
 
 " Now the finale, the gambling scene, in which he torments 
 his son by rousing him to terrible emotions. Robert, de- 
 spoiled, angry, destroying everything around him, eager for 
 killing, breathing blood, fire, and sword, is his own son ; the 
 father sees the likeness. What horrid glee we note in Ber- 
 tram's words, 'Je ris de tes coup .' ' or, ' I laugh at thy blows ! ' 
 How the Venetian barcarole tinges this finale ! Through 
 what bold transitions that infamous parent is brought on the 
 stage again to drag Robert to once more throw the dice ! 
 
 "This first act is overpowering to those who follow out 
 such themes in the profundity of their thought and gives them 
 the breadth of meaning the composer intends to convey. 
 
 " Love alone could be in contrast with that grand symphony 
 of song, in which you cannot detect any monotony nor twice 
 the employment of the same means. It is one, it is many ; it 
 is characteristic/^ all that is grand and natural. I breathe 
 freer ; I reach the higher sphere of a chivalrous court ; I hear 
 
 * Never wilt thou understand to what excess I love thce.
 
 GAMBARA. 423 
 
 Isabella in charming phrase, fresh, but always melancholy; 
 and the female chorus in two divisions, echoing each other, 
 with a suggestion, it seems, of the Moorish influence on Spain. 
 
 "Here the terrifying music is softened to a gentler tone, 
 like a storm dying away, till it comes to this dainty flowery 
 duet, so sweetly modulated and entirely unlike the preceding 
 music. After the turmoil of a camp of martial heroes and 
 free-lances comes a fair picture of love. Poet ! I thank thee ! 
 My heart could not have borne more. 
 
 "If I could not here and there have plucked the daisies of 
 a French light opera, if I had listened to the sweet gayety of a 
 woman able alike to love and charm, I could not have endured 
 that terrible, deep note with which Bertram reappears, as he says 
 to his son : ' Si je le permets .' ' (If I permit it) ; when Robert 
 has promised, in his hearing, the princess he adores, that he 
 will conquer with the arms she gives him. 
 
 "To the hope of the gambler reforming through love, the 
 love of the exquisite Sicilian do you not note that falcon 
 eye? to the hope of the man hell answers in that awful 
 cry : ( A tot, Robert de Normandie ! ' 
 
 " Does not the sombre horror of those long-held, splendid 
 notes excite your admiration in that : ' Dans la foret pro- 
 chaine?' All the fascinations of 'Jerusalem Delivered ' is to 
 be found here, just as Chivalry appears in that chorus with the 
 Spanish movement ; and in the tempo di marcia. What origi- 
 nality in that allegro ; in the modulation of the four cymbals 
 in C-D, C-G ! What grace in the call to the lists ! The 
 movement of the whole heroic life of the period is there ; the 
 soul unites with it ; I read in it a romance, a poem of chivalry. 
 
 "The exposition now ends; the resources of the art of 
 music appear to have been exhausted ; and yet it was a homo- 
 geneous whole. You have had human life set before you in 
 its one, its only real aspect. ' Shall I be happy or unhappy ? ' is 
 the query of the philosopher. ' Shall I be saved r damned? 1 
 is that of the Christian."
 
 424 GAMBARA. 
 
 Here Gambara struck the last chords of the chorus, which 
 he brought forth in a lingering, melancholy way ; he then 
 rose and poured out and drank another large glass of Giro. 
 This semi-African vintage again lit up the fires of his counte- 
 nance, which had been somewhat paled by the passionate and 
 wonderful sketch of Meyerbeer's opera that he had made. 
 
 "That nothing maybe lacking to this composition," he 
 resumed, " the great artist has given us the only buffo duet 
 permissible for a devil to sing ; that in which the unhappy 
 troubadour is tempted. He puts a horror and a jest side by 
 side, a jest that literally swallows up the only realism he had 
 allowed himself in the weird opera the pure, calm love of 
 Alice and Raimbaut ; their life is to be troubled by anticipa- 
 tory evils. Only great souls can feel the nobility that animates 
 these buffo airs. 
 
 "They have neither the gaudiness of our Italian music nor 
 the vulgarity of our Parisian street favorites ; they possess 
 rather the divinity of Olympus. The bitter laugh of a divine 
 being mocks the surprise of the Don-Juanized troubadour. 
 Only for this dignity the return to the general tone of the 
 opera would be too suddenly achieved, full as it is of terrible 
 fury of diminished sevenths, and resolving into that infernal 
 waltz, which at last brings us face to face with the howling 
 demons. 
 
 " How vigorously Bertram's couplet detaches itself B- 
 minor from the devil's chorus, in which is depicted the 
 knowledge of paternity mingled in awful despair with de- 
 moniac voices ! What an exquisite transition is the arrival of 
 Alice, ritornello in B-flat. I still hear those voices of the 
 angels in their heavenly freshness ; it is the warble of the 
 nightingale after the tempest. 
 
 "Thus is the leading idea of the whole worked out in 
 detail ; for what could better be done than the contrast with 
 the tumult of demons in their den and the wonderful aria by 
 Alice ?
 
 GAMBARA. 425 
 
 "The golden thread of the melody glides through the entire 
 length of the grand harmony like a hope of heaven ; it is em- 
 broidered on it with marvelous skill. She sings : 
 
 Quand j ai quitti la Normandie.'* 
 
 " Genius can never lose hold on the science that guides it. 
 Here Alice's song in B-flat is taken up to F-sharp, the domi- 
 nant of the chorus of devils. Do you hear the tremolo of the 
 orchestra ? Robert is being bidden to the rout of devils. 
 
 " Here Bertram reenters, and this is the culminating point 
 of musical interest, a recitative, only comparable to the finest 
 compositions of the greatest masters ; comes the struggle in 
 E-flat between the two combatants, Heaven and Hell one 
 in ' Out, tu me connais /' (Yes, thou knowest me !) on a 
 diminished seventh ; the other in that sublime F, ' Le del 
 cstavccmoi!' Heaven is with me! Hell and the crucifix 
 are face to face. 
 
 " Then we have Bertram's threats to Alice, the most awful 
 pathos ever written ; the Genius of Evil complacently making 
 himself known, and, as usual, tempting through self-interest. 
 The arrival of Robert gives us the magnificent trio, unaccom- 
 pained, in A-flat ; this opens the struggle between the two 
 rival forces for the possession of the man. Note how clearly 
 this is effected," exclaimed Gambara, who epitomized the scene 
 with such passion of execution as startled Andrea. 
 
 " All this avalanche of music, from the crash of the cymbals 
 in common time, has rolled onward to this contest of the three 
 voices. The spell of Evil triumphs ! Alice flees. You hear 
 the duet between Bertram and Robert in D. The devil 
 fixes his talons in Robert's heart ; he rends it for his own ; he 
 decants on every feeling honor, hope, eternal pleasure, all 
 are in turn displayed before him ; he carries him, as he did 
 Jesus, to the pinnacle of the temple, he shows him all the 
 treasures of the earth, that jewel-case of Sin. Finally he 
 * When I forsook my Normandy.
 
 42C GAMBARA, 
 
 piques his courage, he stings him, and the noble instincts of 
 the man is expressed in that cry : 
 
 ' Des chevaliers de ma patrie 
 L'honneur toujours fut le soutien.' 
 
 (To the knights of my native land, 
 Their mainstay was honor ever.) 
 
 To crown the whole opera comes in the same theme which so 
 fatally prognosticated the work at its opening, that grand in- 
 vocation to the dead : 
 
 ' Nonnes qui reposez sous cette froide pierre, 
 M'entendez-vous ? ' 
 
 (Nuns who sleep beneath that cold, cold stone, 
 Hear ye me?) 
 
 Carried most gloriously through the career of the music, it 
 ends equally gloriously in the allegro vivace of the bacchanal 
 D-minor. Here is the triumph of Hell ! Roll on har- 
 mony ! Swathe us in thy manifold cloak ! Roll on, be- 
 witching ! 
 
 "The powers of the infernal have seized their prey. They 
 hold him while they dance around him. The noble genius 
 born to vanquish, born to reign, is lost ! Devils rejoice, 
 genius is stifled by povetry, passion wrecks the knight." 
 
 Here Gambara improvised ^fanlasia himself, cleverly vary- 
 ing the bacchanale, and accompanying the piano in a soft tone 
 of voice, as if to give utterance to the sufferings he had 
 known. 
 
 "Do you hear the celestial plaints of neglected love?" 
 said he. " Isabella calls Robert from the midst of that grand 
 chorus of knights wending their way to the tournament, where 
 the motifs of the second act reappear to emphasize the fact that 
 the events of the third act happen in supernatural spheres. 
 Here is real life again. The chorus fades away as the enchant-
 
 GAMBARA. 427 
 
 ments of hell approach, which are brought by Robert with 
 his talisman. Now develops the deviltries of the third act. 
 First the viola duet, where the rhythm plainly depicts the 
 brutal desires of a man who is omnipotent, while the princess, 
 in plaintive moans, endeavors to recall her lover to reason. 
 
 " Here the musician has placed himself in a position that 
 is very difficult to be brought out ; but he surmounts it by the 
 sweetest gem in the whole work. What exquisite melody in 
 the cavatina ' Grace pour tot ! ' (Mercy for thee \) That one 
 number would suffice to make any opera famous ; for every 
 woman feels that she is contending against a knight. Never 
 yet was music so passionate, so dramatic. 
 
 " The whole world now rises against the reprobate. Some 
 may object that the finale resembles too much that of ' Don 
 Giovanni ; ' but there is this immense difference : a noble 
 faith inspires Isabella, a perfect love that will rescue Robert, 
 who scornfully rejects the talisman of hell confided to him, 
 while, on the other hand, Don Giovanni persists in his unbelief. 
 Beside all, this accusation has been made against every com- 
 poser who has written a finale since the time of Mozart. The 
 finale to ' Don Giovanni ' is one of those classic forms that has 
 been invented once for all time. 
 
 " At last we hear Religion, which arises omnipotent, in a 
 voice that rules the universe, that calls all sorrow to come and 
 be consoled, all repentances, that they may have peace. 
 
 " The whole house is stirred by the chorus : 
 
 ' Malheureux ou coupables, 
 Hatez-vous d'accourir ! ' 
 
 (Now wretched, guilty men, 
 Haste to approach !) 
 
 Hitherto, in the fearful tumult of unchained passions, the 
 Holy Voice had not been heard ; but at this critical moment 
 it booms out like thunder ; the Catholic church divine rises
 
 428 GAMBARA. 
 
 glorious in light. And I am astonished to here find at the 
 close of such a lavish use of harmonic treasures a new vein of 
 gold in that grand masterpiece of chorus : ' Gloire a la Provi- 
 dence .' ' written in Handel's style. 
 
 " Robert, distracted, rushes on the stage with his heart-rend- 
 ing cry: 'Si je pouvais prier ! ' (Could I but pray!) But, 
 constrained by the edict of hell, Bertram pursues his son and 
 makes a final effort. Alice calls up the vision of the Mother. 
 Now you hear the glorious trio to which the whole opera has 
 gradually advanced, the triumph of soul over matter, the vic- 
 tory of the spirit of Good over the spirit of Evil. The strains 
 of faith prevail over the chorus of hell ; joy reappears in 
 majesty. Here the music weakens. I but see a cathedral 
 instead of hearing a concert of angels in bliss ; a divine prayer 
 of souls delivered, consecrating the union of Robert and Alice. 
 We ought not to be left under the spells of hell, we should be 
 able to leave the scene with a heart of hope. 
 
 " Myself a Catholic and a musician, I needed for my soul 
 another prayer like the one from ' Moses in Egypt.' Also 
 would I fain have seen Germany contending with Italy what 
 Meyerbeer could do to rival Rossini. 
 
 " However, the writer may say, in justification of this de- 
 fect, that, after five hours of such solid, substantial music, a 
 Parisian prefers a bon-bon to a musical masterpiece. You 
 heard the applause that followed the performance ; it will run 
 five hundred nights. If the French really understand that 
 music " 
 
 "It is because they have ideas," said the count. 
 
 " No, it is because it powerfully sets forth in definite shape 
 an image of that struggle in which so many souls are worsted ; 
 and because all individual existences are connected with it by 
 memory, as it were. Therefore is it that I, unhappy one, 
 grieve that at the end I do not hear the sound of those celestial 
 voices I have so often heard in dreams." 
 
 Here Gambara fell into a musical ecstasy ; he improvised the
 
 GAMBARA. 429 
 
 most lovely, melodious, and harmonious cavatina that Andrea 
 should ever hear ; a song divinely sung, on a theme as graceful 
 and full of charm as that of O fi Hi ct filia: ; but with such 
 added beauties such as none but musical genius of the highest 
 order could have rendered. 
 
 The count was lost in rapt admiration ; the clouds were 
 breaking ; the celestial blue shone out ; now angelic forms 
 appeared and raised the veil that hid the sanctuary ; the light 
 of heaven descended. 
 
 Silence reigned again. 
 
 The count, surprised at the music suddenly ceasing, looked 
 up at Gambara, who, with fixed, staring eyes and rigid form, 
 stammered the word : " GOD ! " 
 
 The count quietly awaited the moment when the composer 
 returned from celestial glory, whither the prismatic wings of 
 inspiration had borne him, resolving to illuminate his mind 
 with the very truths that he himself should bring down. 
 
 " Well," said he, pouring out another bumper of wine and 
 clinking glasses with him, " this German has written, as you 
 say, a sublime opera without troubling himself about theory ; 
 whereas musicians who write grammars of music are, more 
 than often, like literary critics atrocious composers." 
 
 "Then you do not like my music?" 
 
 " I don't say that. But, if instead of perpetually dissecting 
 the method of idea expression which carries you beyond the 
 mark you would simply awaken our sensations, I feel sure 
 that you would be better comprehended, unless, that is, you 
 have not entirely mistaken your vocation. You are a great 
 poet." 
 
 "What!" cried Gambara. "What, are five-and-twenty 
 years of study simply wasted ? Am I then to learn the im- 
 perfect utterance of man I who hold the key to the language 
 of heaven ? Ah ! should you be right then I crave to die ! " 
 
 " No, no, not you. You are great, you are strong. You 
 shall begin a new life, and I, your friend, will sustain you.
 
 430 GAMBARA. 
 
 We will show to the world the rare and noble alliance of a 
 rich man and an artist who comprehend each other." 
 
 " Do you speak truth?" asked Gambara, rigid in a sudden 
 torpor. 
 
 " As I have already said, you are more poet than musician." 
 
 "A poet, poet! That is better than nothing. But truly 
 tell me, whom do you most esteem, Mozart or Homer?" 
 
 " I admire them equally." 
 
 " On your honor? " 
 
 "On my honor." 
 
 " H'm ! One word more. What think you of Meyerbeer 
 and Byron?" 
 
 "You have judged them by naming them together." 
 
 The count's carriage was at the door. The composer arrd 
 his titled physician were driven to Gambara's residence. 
 They ran upstairs and were soon in Marianna's presence. 
 
 As they entered Gambara threw himself into his wife's arms, 
 who withdrew a step and averted her head. The husband also 
 drew back, and, beaming on the count, said, in a husky voice : 
 
 "You might at least have left me my madness, monsieur." 
 
 Then his head drooped and he fell. 
 
 " What have you done ? " cried Marianna, casting a look at 
 her husband, in which disgust and pity were equally blended. 
 " He is dead drunk ! " 
 
 The count with the help of his valet raised Gambara and 
 laid him upon the bed ; then Andrea left the house, his heart 
 glad in horrid rapture. 
 
 The next day he purposely let the hour of his daily visit 
 pass by ; he was beginning to fear that he had been duped by 
 himself, and had paid too dearly for the comfort and virtue 
 of that humble couple whose peace he had for ever destroyed. 
 
 At length Giardini came bringing a note from Marianna. 
 
 "Come," she wrote, "the harm done is not so great as 
 you desired, cruel man." 
 
 " Exccllcnza," said the cook, while Andrea was dressing,
 
 GAMBARA. 431 
 
 " you entertained right royally last night. But you must 
 allow that, apart from the wines, which were excellent, your 
 mattrc d' hdtel did not produce a single dish worthy an epicure's 
 table. You won't deny, I suppose, that the dish placed before 
 you, on the day you honored my table with your presence, 
 was superlatively better than those that sullied your 
 service of plate last evening? Consequently, when I awoke 
 this morning, I remembered the promise you had made me to 
 become your chef. I henceforth consider myself as one of 
 your household." 
 
 " I have had the same thought in my mind for the past few 
 days," replied Andrea. "I have mentioned your name to 
 the Austrian ambassador, and you will be allowed to recross 
 the Alps as soon as you please. In Croatia I have a castle 
 which I seldom visit. There you may combine the offices of 
 porter, butler, cook, and steward, with two hundred crowns a 
 year. This emolument will also be that of your wife, who 
 can do the rest of the work. You can there try all your ex- 
 periments in anima vili that is to say, on the stomachs of my 
 vassals. Here is a cheque for the costs of your journey." 
 
 Giardini kissed the count's hand, in the Neapolitan fashion. 
 
 " Excellenza," said he, "I accept the cheque, but not the 
 position. It would be dishonoring in me to give up my art 
 and lose the good opinion of the most perfect epicures, who 
 are undoubtedly those of Paris." 
 
 When Andrea arrived at Gambara's apartments the com- 
 poser arose and came forward to meet him. 
 
 " My generous friend," said he frankly, "either it is that 
 you took advantage of the weakness of my head to play a 
 joke on me last night, or else your brain is no whit stronger, 
 when testing the heady fumes of our native Latium, than 
 mine is. I choose the latter hypothesis : I prefer to doubt 
 your stomach than your heart. Be this as it may, I from this 
 renounce the use of wine for ever. Last evening the abuse 
 of good liqueur led me into culpable folly. When I call to
 
 432 GAMBARA. 
 
 mind that I nearly degraded " He glanced in terror at 
 
 Marianna. 
 
 "As to that wretched opera you took me to hear, I have 
 thought it over ; it is naught but music made by very ordi- 
 nary methods ; a heap of piled -up notes verba et voces. It 
 is but the dregs of the nectar which I quaff in deep draughts 
 as I reproduce the heavenly music that I hear. I know the 
 origin of those patched-up phrases. That Gloire a la Provi- 
 dence is too like Handel ; the chorus of knights on their way 
 to the lists is closely related to the Scotch air in ' La Dame 
 Blanche.' In short, if the opera is pleasing, it is simply be- 
 cause the music is borrowed from everybody and is therefore 
 generally known. 
 
 " I must now leave you, my dear friend. Since morning I 
 have had an idea seething in my brain which bids me rise to 
 God on the wings of song ; but I wished to see you and say 
 this much to you. Adieu ! I go to ask forgiveness of my 
 Muse. We shall meet this evening at dinner; but no more 
 wine at least not for me. Oh ! I am firmly resolved " 
 
 " I give him up," said Andrea, blushing violently. 
 
 "You enlighten my conscience," said Marianna, "I dared 
 not question it. My friend, my friend, the fault is not ours ; 
 he won't let us cure him." 
 
 Six years later, in January, 1837, such musical artists as 
 were unlucky enough to injure their wind or string instru- 
 ments were in the habit of taking them to the Rue Froidman- 
 teau, to a squalid, disreputable house where the said instruments 
 were repaired by an old Italian named Gambara, who resided 
 on the sixth floor. 
 
 For the past five years this man had lived alone, his wife 
 having deserted him. An instrument, called by him a pan- 
 harmonicon, from which he expected fame, had been sold at 
 auction by the sheriff, on the Place du Chfttelet, in addition 
 to a great pile of musical manuscript thickly scrawled. The
 
 GAMBARA. 433' 
 
 day after the sale, this said paper appeared in the markets 
 wrapped around pats of butter, fish, and fruits. 
 
 In this manner the three grand operas of which the poor 
 man would often boast, though a once-celebrated Neapolitan 
 cook, now a vendor of broken victuals, declared they were 
 but a mass of rubbish were scattered throughout Paris in the 
 baskets of hucksters. But what matter ? the landlord had 
 gotten his rent, the sheriff's men their fees. 
 
 The Neapolitan victual-monger, who had as regular cus- 
 tomers the prostitutes of the Rue Froidmanteau for his 
 warmed-up scraps, which were the crumbs from the fine ban- 
 quets given by society on the previous night, was always ready 
 to tell that Signora Gambara had gone off to Italy with a 
 nobleman of Milan, and no one knew what had become of 
 her. Weary of poverty and wretchedness, she was more than 
 likely ruining the count by a career of extravagant luxury, for 
 they adored each other with so fierce a passion that he had 
 never in all his Neapolitan experience beheld the like. 
 
 Toward the end of this same month, January, one evening as 
 Giardini was chatting with a girl, who had chanced in to buy her 
 supper, about the beautiful Marianna, so pure, so glorious, so 
 nobly self-devoted, and who had, notwithstanding, gone the 
 way of alt the rest, the street-girl and the wife of Giardini 
 noticed in the street a tall, thin woman, with a sunburnt, 
 dusty face ; a nervous walking skeleton, who was peering at 
 all the numbers and trying to recognize a house. 
 
 "Ecco la Marianna.'" cried Giardini. 
 
 Marianna recognized the one-time cook in the poor object, 
 but gave no heed to the misfortunes which had reduced him 
 to his present wretched trade as a dealer in second-hand food. 
 She went in and sat down ; she had walked from Fontaine- 
 bleau ; she had walked fourteen leagues that day, after begging 
 her bread from Turin to Paris. 
 
 The sight of her horrified that miserable trio. Of all her 
 marvelous loveliness naught now remained but a pair of fading, 
 28
 
 434 GAMBARA. 
 
 anguished eyes. The one thing faithful to her was misfor- 
 tune. 
 
 The old mender of instruments heartily welcomed her ; he 
 greeted her with inexpressible joy. 
 
 "Here you are, my poor Marianna ! " he said affection- 
 ately. " During your absence they sold my instrument and 
 my operas." 
 
 It would have been a difficult job to kill the fatted calf for 
 the prodigal returned ; but Giardini produced the fag-end of 
 a salmon, the street-walker paid for the wine, Gambara found 
 the bread, Signora Giardini lent a table-cloth, and these 
 diverse unfortunates supped together in the musician's garret. 
 
 When questioned about her adventures, Marianna refused 
 to reply, but she raised her fine eyes to heaven and whispered 
 to Giardini : 
 
 "He married a ballet-girl." 
 
 "And how do you mean to live?" asked the girl. "The 
 journey from Milan has killed you and 
 
 "Made me an old woman," said Marianna. "No, it is 
 not fatigue, not poverty, it is grief that has done this." 
 
 "Bah! why then did you never send your man here any 
 money?" 
 
 Marianna only answered by a look, but it stabbed the 
 woman to the heart. 
 
 "She ain't proud at all ! oh, no ! " she exclaimed. "But 
 much good it has done her," she whispered in Giardini's ear. 
 
 That year it seemed that every musician took extraordinary 
 care of his instrument, and the business of repairing them 
 dropped to nil, or to less than sufficient to provide for the 
 daily bread of that poor household. The wife earned little 
 by her needle, and they were compelled to turn their talents to 
 account in the meanest occupation. 
 
 In the dusk they would go together to the Champs-Elysees 
 and sing duets, and Gambara, poor soul, accompanied on a 
 wretched guitar. On the way thither Marianna, who always
 
 GAMBARA. 435 
 
 concealed her head under a sort of veil of lawn, would take her 
 husband to a grocery in the Faubourg Saint-Honore and give 
 him two or three nips of brandy to make him tipsy ; otherwise 
 he could not play but intolerably. Then they would stand 
 up together before the gay world seated on chairs along the 
 esplanade, and the greatest genius of the day, the unrecognized 
 Orpheus of modern music, played fragments of his operas to 
 the crowd. These were so remarkable that they were able to 
 extract a few sous from Parisian supineness. 
 
 One day a dilettante of the Bouffons happened to be sitting 
 there, and, not recognizing from what opera they were taken, 
 questioned the woman in the Grecian head-dress, when she 
 held out the stamped, round metallic plate on which she col- 
 lected her charity. 
 
 " I say, my dear, from what music is that ? " 
 
 " From the opera of ' Mahomet,' " Marianna replied. 
 
 As Rossini had composed an opera, "Mahomet II.," the 
 gentleman remarked to the lady : 
 
 " What a pity that they will not give us at the Italiens those 
 works of Rossini that are known the least. Certain it is that 
 this is glorious music." 
 
 Gambara smiled. 
 
 A few days ago it was necessary for this poor couple to pay 
 the paltry sum of thirty-six francs as arrears of rent due on 
 their miserable garret. The grocer refused to give credit for 
 the brandy with which Marianna plied her husband to enable 
 him to play. Gambara was thus so atrociously bad that it 
 became insufferable ; the ears of the rich were irresponsive 
 the tin bottle-stand remained empty. 
 
 It was nine o'clock in the evening when a beautiful Italian, 
 the Principessa Massimilla di Varese,* took pity on the poor 
 creatures. She gave Marianna forty francs and questioned 
 both, after discovering from the wife's thanks that she was a 
 
 * See " Massimilla Doni."
 
 436 GAMBARA. 
 
 Venetian. Prince Emilio, who accompanied his wife, would 
 learn the history of their distress, and Marianna detailed all, 
 making no complaints against God or man. 
 
 "Madame," said Gambara, who was not drunk, "we are 
 the victims of our own superiority. My music is good ; but 
 so soon as music rises from sensation to idea, only persons of 
 genius should be the hearers, for only they are capable of 
 responding to it ! It has been my misfortune to hear the 
 chorus of angels ; I believed that men could understand those 
 strains. It is thus with women when their love assumes a 
 divine aspect : men can no longer comprehend them." 
 
 These words were well worth the forty francs bestowed by 
 Massimilla ; she drew out another gold-piece from her purse, 
 saying, as she gave it to Marianna, that she would write An- 
 drea Marcosini. 
 
 "Do not write him, madame ! " exclaimed Marianna. 
 "And God grant you may be beautiful for ever ! " 
 
 " Let us provide for them," said the princess to her hus- 
 band ; " this man has remained faithful to the IDEAL which 
 we have killed." 
 
 When Gambara saw the gold he wept ; then there came to 
 him a vague reminiscence of some old scientific experiment, 
 and the wretched composer, as he wiped away his tears, uttered 
 these words, which the attendant circumstances make oiteous : 
 
 *' Water is produced by burning."
 
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