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THE COMEDY OF HUMAN LIFE 
 By H. DE BALZAC 
 
 SCENES FROM PARISIAN LIFE 
 
 GOBSECK. 
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN. 
 UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS. 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 COMEDIES PLAYED GRATIS. 
 
 [r-i^C 
 
 
BALZAC'S NOVELS. 
 
 Translated by Miss K. P. Wormeley. 
 
 Already fublislied: 
 PEEE GORIOT. 
 DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS. 
 RISE AND FALL OF CESAR BIROTTEATJ. 
 EUGENIE GRANDET. 
 COUSIN PONS. 
 THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
 THE TWO BROTHERS. 
 
 THE ALKAHEST (La Recherche del'Absolu). 
 MODESTE MIGNON. 
 
 THE MAGIC SKIN (La Peau de Chagrin). 
 COUSIN BETTE. 
 LOUIS LAMBERT. 
 BUREAUCRACY (Les Employe's). 
 SERAPHITA. 
 
 SONS OF THE SOIL (Les Paysans). 
 FAME AND SORROW (Chat-qui-pelote). 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY, 
 URSULA. 
 
 AN HISTORICAL MYSTERY. 
 ALBERT SAVARUS. 
 BALZAC : A MEMOIR. 
 PIERRETTE. 
 THE CHOUANS. 
 LOST ILLUSIONS. 
 
 A GREAT MAN OF THE PROVINCES IN 
 
 PARIS. 
 THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION. 
 THE VILLAGE RECTOR. 
 MEMOIRS OF TWO YOUNG MARRIED 
 
 WOMEN. 
 CATHERINE DE' MEDICI. 
 LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE. 
 
 FERRAGUS, CHIEF OF THE DEVORANTS. 
 A START IN LIFE. 
 THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT. 
 BEATRIX. 
 
 DAUGHTER OF EVE. 
 THE GALLERY OF ANTIQUITIES. 
 GOBSECK. *__ 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, Boston. 
 
. 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY 
 
 GOBSECK 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 3 SOMERSET STREET 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 1896 
 

 Copyright, 1896, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Stnf6«r0ttg flress: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
To Monsieur le Baron Barchou de Penhoen. 
 
 Among all the pupils at Vendome, we are, I think, the 
 only ones who have met again in the career of letters — we 
 who are cultivating philosophy at an age when we ought to 
 be cultivating only the De Viris ! 
 
 Here is the book which I was making when we met, and 
 you were toiling at your noble work on German philosophy. 
 Thus, neither of us has missed his vocation. In seeing 
 your name here, you will perhaps feel as much pleasure as 
 the fact of thus inscribing it affords to 
 
 Your old friend and schoolmate, 
 
 De Balzac. 
 
 vy 
 
 96236 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 GOBSECK 1 
 
 THE SECRETS OF THE PRLNCESSE DE 
 
 CADIGNAN : 
 
 I. The Last Word of two Great Coquettes 97 
 
 II. Daniel D'Arthez 118 
 
 III. The Princess goes to Work 143 
 
 IV. The Confession of a Pretty Woman . . 157 
 V. A Trial of Faith » o . 176 
 
 UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS 189 
 
 ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN: 
 
 The Salon of Mademoiselle des Touches . 287 
 
 COMEDIES PLAYED GRATIS 351 
 

 
 ; 
 
 GOBSECK. 
 
 At eleven o'clock one evening, during the winter 
 of 1829-1830, two persons who were not members of 
 the family were still seated in the salon of the Vicom- 
 tesse de Grandlieu. One of them, a young and very 
 good-looking man, took leave on hearing the clock 
 strike the hour. When the sound of his carriage- 
 wheels echoed from the courtyard, the viscountess, 
 seeing no one present but her brother and a family 
 friend who were finishing their game of piquet, went 
 up to her daughter as she stood before the fireplace, 
 apparently examining a fire-screen of shaded porcelain 
 while she listened to the sound of the same wheels in 
 a manner to justify the mother's anxiety. 
 
 "Camille, if you continue to behave toward that 
 young Comte de Restaud as you have done this even- 
 ing, you will oblige me to close my doors to him. 
 Listen to me, my child; if you have confidence in 
 my affection, let me guide you in life. At seventeen 
 years of age, a girl is unable to judge of either the 
 future, or the past, or of certain social considerations. 
 
 l 
 
2 G-obseck. 
 
 I shall make only one remark to you: Monsieur de 
 Restaud has a mother who would squander millions, 
 — a woman ill-born, a Demoiselle Goriot, who, in her 
 youth, caused people to talk about her. She behaved 
 so badly to her father that she does not deserve to 
 have so good a son. The young count adores her, 
 and stands by her with a filial piety which is worthy 
 of all praise; he also takes the utmost care of his 
 brother and sister. However admirable such conduct 
 maybe," continued the viscountess, in a pointed man- 
 ner, "so long as the mother lives, all parents would 
 fear to trust the future and the fortune of a daughter 
 to young Restaud." 
 
 "I have overheard a few words which make me 
 desirous of intervening between you and Mademoi- 
 selle de Grandlieu," said the friend of the family, 
 suddenly. "I've won, Monsieur le comte,"he said, 
 turning to his adversary. "I leave you now and rush 
 to the succor of your niece." 
 
 "This is what is called having lawyer's ears," 
 cried the viscountess. "My dear Derville, how could 
 you overhear what I was saying in a low voice to 
 Camille?" 
 
 "I saw your look and understood it," replied 
 Derville, sitting down on a sofa at the corner of the 
 fireplace. 
 
 The uncle took a seat beside his niece, and Madame 
 
GohsecJc. 3 
 
 de Grandlieu placed herself on a low chair between 
 her daughter and Derville. 
 
 1 'It is high time, Madame la vicomtesse, that I 
 should tell you a little tale which will modify the 
 opinion you have formed as to the fortunes of Comte 
 Ernest de Restaud." 
 
 " A tale!" cried Cam ille. "Begin it, quick! mon- 
 sieur. " 
 
 Derville cast a look at Madame de Grandlieu which 
 signified that the story he was about to tell would 
 interest her. 
 
 The Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, by her fortune and 
 the antiquity of her name, was one of the most dis- 
 tinguished women of the faubourg Saint-Germain, and 
 it may not seem natural that a Parisian lawyer should 
 speak to her familiarly, and treat her in a manner so 
 apparently cavalier; but the phenomenon is easily 
 explained. Madame de Grandlieu, who returned to 
 France with the royal family, came to reside in Paris, 
 where she lived, at first, on a stipend granted by 
 Louis XVIII. from the Civil List, — a situation that 
 was quite intolerable. Derville, the lawyer, chanced 
 to discover certain legal blunders in the sale which 
 the Republic had made of the hotel de Grandlieu, and 
 he asserted that it ought to be restored to the vis- 
 countess. He undertook the case for a certain fee, 
 and won it. Encouraged by this success, he sued a 
 
4 Gobseck. 
 
 fraternity of monks, and harassed them legally, until 
 he obtained the restitution of the forest of Liceney. 
 He also recovered a number of shares in the Orleans 
 canal, and certain parcels of real estate with which 
 the Emperor had endowed a few public institutions. 
 
 In this way the fortune of Madame de Grandlieu, 
 restored to her by the care and ability of the young 
 lawyer, amounted to an income of sixty thousand 
 francs a year, before the law of indemnity (which 
 restored to her enormous sums of money) had been 
 passed. A man of the highest honor, learned, modest, 
 and excellent company, he became, henceforth, the 
 " friend of the family." Though his conduct to 
 Madame de Grandlieu had won him the respect and 
 the business of the best houses of the faubourg Saint- 
 Germain, he never profited by that favor as a more 
 ambitious man would have done. He resisted the pro- 
 posals of the viscountess to sell his practice and enter 
 the magistracy, a career in which, thanks to her influ- 
 ence, he would certainly have obtained a very rapid 
 advancement. With the exception of the hotel de 
 Grandlieu, where he sometimes passed an evening, he 
 never went into society unless to keep up his connec- 
 tions. It was fortunate for him that his talents had 
 been brought to light by his devotion to the interests 
 of Madame de Grandlieu, otherwise he would have 
 run the risk of losing his practice altogether. Derville 
 had not the soul of a pettifogger. 
 
t G-obseck. 5 
 
 Ever since Comte Ernest de Restaud had been re- 
 ceived in Madame de Grandlieu's salon and Derville 
 had discovered Carnille's sympathy for the young man, 
 he had become as assiduous in his own visits as any 
 dandy of the Chaussee-d'Antin newly admitted to the 
 circles of the noble faubourg. A few days before 
 the evening on which our story opens, he was standing 
 near Camille at a ball when he said to her, motioning 
 to the young count : — 
 
 "Isn't it a pity that young fellow hasn't two or 
 three millions? " 
 
 "Do you call it a pity? I don't think so," she 
 answered. "Monsieur de Restaud has great talent, 
 he is well-educated, and the minister with whom he is 
 placed thinks highly of him. I have no doubt he will 
 become a very remarkable man. Such a young fellow 
 will find all the fortune he wants whenever he comes 
 to power." 
 
 "Yes, but suppose he were rich now?" 
 
 "Suppose he were rich?" echoed Camille, coloring. 
 "Oh! then all the girls in society would be quarrelling 
 for him," she added, with a nod at the quadrilles. 
 
 "And then, perhaps," said the lawyer, slyly, "Made- 
 moiselle de Grandlieu would not be the only one on 
 whom his eyes would turn. Why do you blush ? You 
 have a liking for him, have n't you? Come, tell me." 
 
 Camille rose hastily. 
 
6 Gobseck. 
 
 " She loves him, " thought Derville. 
 
 Since that evening Camille had shown the lawyer 
 very unusual attentions, perceiving that he approved 
 of her inclination for the young count. Until then, 
 although she was not ignorant of the many obliga- 
 tions of her family to Derville, she had always shown 
 him more courtesy than real friendship, more civility 
 than feelings her manners, and also the tone of her 
 voice, had let him know the distance that conventions 
 placed between them. Gratitude is a debt which 
 children will not always accept as part of their inher- 
 itance. 
 
 "This affair," said Derville to the viscountess, on 
 the evening when our story opens, "recalls to me the 
 only romantic circumstances of my life — You are 
 laughing already," he said, interrupting himself, "at 
 the idea of a lawyer talking of romance. But I have 
 been twenty-five years of age as well as others; and 
 by that time of life I had already seen very strange 
 things. I shall begin by telling you about a person- 
 age whom you can never know, — a usurer. Imagine 
 vividly that pale, wan visage, to which I wish the 
 Academy would allow me to apply the word ; moon- 
 faced;' it looked like tarnished silver. My usurer's 
 hair was flat, carefully combed, and sandy-gray in 
 color. The features of his face, impassible as that of 
 Talleyrand, had apparently been cast in iron. His 
 
Gobseck. 7 
 
 little eyes, yellow as those of a weasel, had scarcely 
 any lashes and seemed to fear the light ; but the peak 
 of an old cap protected them. His pointed nose was 
 so pockmarked about the tip that you might have 
 compared it to a gimlet. He had the thin lips of those 
 little old men and alchemists painted by Rembrandt 
 or Metzu. The man spoke low, in a gentle voice, 
 and was never angry. His age was a problem: it 
 was impossible to say whether he was old before his 
 time, or whether he so spared his youth that it lasted 
 him forever. 
 
 "All things in his room were clean and shabby, 
 resembling, from the green cover of the desk to the 
 bedside carpet, the frigid sanctum of old maids who 
 spend their days in rubbing their furniture. (^ In win- 
 ter, the embers on his hearth, buried beneath a heap of 
 ashes, smoked, but never blazed.N His actions, from 
 the hour of his rising to his evening fits of coughing, 
 were subjected to the regularity of clock-work. He 
 was in some respects an automaton, whom sleep 
 wound up. If you touch a beetle crossing a piece of 
 paper, it will stop and feign to be dead ; just so this 
 man would interrupt his speech if a carriage passed, 
 in order not to force his voice* Imitating Fontenelle, 
 he economized the vital movement and concentrated 
 all human sentiments upon the I. Consequently, his 
 life flowed on without producing more noise than the 
 
8 Gfobseck. 
 
 sand of an ancient hour-glass. Occasionally, bis vic- 
 tims made great outcries, and were furious ; after which 
 a dead silence fell, as in kitchens after a duck's neck 
 is wrung. 
 
 "Towards evening the man-of -notes became an 
 ordinary mortal; his metals were transformed into a 
 human heart. If he was satisfied with his day he 
 rubbed his hands, and from the chinks and wrinkles 
 of his face a vapor of gayety exhaled, — for it is 
 impossible to otherwise describe the silent play of his 
 muscles, where a sensation, like the noiseless laugh of 
 Leather-Stocking, seemed to lie. In his moments of 
 greatest joy his words were always monosyllabic, and 
 the expression of his countenance invariably negative. 
 
 "Such was the neighbor whom chance bestowed 
 upon me at a house where I was living, in the rue des 
 Gres, when I was still a second clerk and had only just 
 finished my third year in the Law-school. This house, 
 which has no courtyard, is damp and gloomy. The 
 rooms get no light except from the street. The clois- 
 tral arrangement which divides the building into 
 rooms of equal size, with no issue but a long corridor 
 lighted from above, shows that the house was formerly 
 part of a convent. At this sad aspect the gayety of 
 even a dashing young blood would die away as he 
 entered the usurer's abode. The man and his house 
 resembled each other, like the rock and its barnacle. 
 
GobsecJc. 9 
 
 "The only being with whom he held communication, 
 socially speaking, was myself. He came to my room, 
 sometimes, to ask for tinder, or to borrow a book or a 
 newspaper, and at night he allowed me to enter his 
 cell, where we talked if he happened to be good- 
 humored. These marks of confidence were the results 
 of four years' vicinity and my virtuous conduct, 
 which, for want of money, very closely resembled his 
 own. Had he relations, or friends? Was he rich or 
 poor? No one could have answered those questions. 
 During these years I never saw any money in his pos- 
 session. His wealth was no doubt in the cellars of 
 the Bank of France. He collected his notes himself, 
 racing through Paris on legs as sinewy as those of a 
 deer. He was a martyr to his caution. One day, by 
 accident, he showed a bit of gold: a double napoleon 
 made its escape, heaven knows how! through his 
 waistcoat pocket; another tenant, who was following 
 him up the staircase, picked it up and gave it to him. 
 
 " 'That is not mine,' he answered, with a gesture 
 of surprise. 'Do you suppose that I have money? 
 Should I live as I do if I were rich? ' 
 
 "In the mornings he made his own coffee on a tin 
 heater which always stood in the dingy corner of his 
 fireplace. His dinner was brought from a cookshop. 
 Our old portress went up at a fixed hour and put his 
 room in order. And, to cap all, by a singularity 
 
10 Gobseck. 
 
 which Sterne would have called predestination, the 
 man was named Gobseck. 
 
 "Later, when I managed his affairs, I discovered 
 that when we first knew each other he was sixty-six 
 years old. He was born about 1740, in the suburbs 
 of Antwerp, of a Dutchman and a Jewess; his name 
 was Jean-Esther van Gobseck. You remember, of 
 course, how all Paris was excited about the murder 
 of a woman called La belle Hollanclaise ? When I 
 chanced to speak of it to my neighbor, he said, with- 
 out expressing the slightest interest or surprise: — 
 
 " ' That was my great-niece. ' 
 
 " He made no other comment on the death of his 
 only known heir, the granddaughter of his sister. 
 From the newspapers I learned that La belle Hollan- 
 daise was called Sarah van Gobseck. When I asked 
 him by what strange chance his great-niece bore his 
 name, he replied, with a smile: — 
 
 " ' The women of our family never marry. ' 
 
 " This singular man had always refused, through 
 four generations, to know, or even see, a single female 
 member of his family. He abhorred his heirs, and 
 could not conceive that his wealth would ever be pos- 
 sessed by others, even after his death. His mother 
 had despatched him as cabin-boy, when ten years old, 
 to the Dutch possessions in India, where he had lived 
 as he could for twenty years. The wrinkles of his 
 
Gulscclc. 11 
 
 yellow forehead covered the secrets of horrible even;-, 
 awful terrors, unhoped-for luck, romantic disappoint- 
 ment, and infinite joys; also there were signs of 
 
 hunger endured, love trodden underfoot, fortune com- 
 promised, lost, and refound. life many a time in danger, 
 and saved, perhaps, by sudden decisions, the urgency 
 for which excuses cruelty. He had known Monsieur 
 de Lallv. Admiral Simeuse. Monsieur de Kergarouet, 
 Monsieur d'Esiaing. the Bailli de Suffren. Monsieur 
 de Portenduere, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Hastings, the 
 father of Tippu Sahib, and Tippu Sahib himself; for 
 this Savoyard, who had served the King of Delhi, and 
 contributed not a little to found the power of the 
 Mahrattas, had done business with him. He also had 
 dealings with Victor Hughes, and several other famous 
 corsairs, for he lived for a long time on the island of 
 Saint Thomas. He had attempted so many things in 
 quest of fortune that he even tried to discover the 
 _ Id of that tribe of savages so celebrated nearBuen< - 
 Ayres. He was not a stranger to anv of the meat 
 events of the war of American Independence. But 
 when bespoke of India or America, which he never did 
 with others, and rarely with me. he seemed to think he 
 had committed an indiscretion, and regretted it. 
 
 "If humanity, if social fellowship, are a religion, he 
 must be considered an atheist. Though I set myself 
 to examine him. I must admit, to mv confusion, that 
 
12 Gobseck. 
 
 up to the very last moment his heart was impenetrable 
 to me. I sometimes asked myself to what sex he 
 belonged. If all usurers resemble him, I believe they 
 form a neutral species. Was he faithful to the religion 
 of his mother, and did he look upon all Christians 
 as his prey? Had he made himself a Catholic, a 
 Mohammedan, a Brahman, a Lutheran ? I never knew 
 his religious opinions, but he seemed to me more 
 indifferent than sceptical. 
 
 "One evening I entered the room of this man 
 transmuted to gold, whom his victims (he called them 
 clients) addressed either in jest or satire as ' Papa 
 Gobseck.' I found him in his armchair, motionless 
 as a statue, his eyes fixed on the mantel of the fire- 
 place, on which he seemed to be scanning memoranda 
 of accounts. A smoky lamp cast out a gleam which, 
 far from coloring his face, brought out its pallor. He 
 looked at me silently, and pointed to the chair which 
 awaited me. 4 Of what is this strange being think- 
 ing? ' I said to myself. 4 Does he know that God 
 exists? that there are feelings, women, happiness?' 
 I pitied him as 1 pity a sick man. And yet I also 
 understood that he possessed by thought the earth he 
 had travelled over, dug into, weighed, sifted, and 
 worked. 
 
 " ' Good-evening, papa Gobseck,' I said. 
 
 " He turned his head in my direction, his thick 
 
Gobseck. 13 
 
 black eyebrows slightly contracting; in him that 
 peculiar movement was equivalent to the gayest smile 
 of a Southerner. 
 
 " c You seem as gloomy,' I continued, ' as you were 
 the clay you heard of the bankruptcy of that publisher 
 whose cleverness you have always admired, though 
 you were made its victim.' 
 
 " ' Victim? ' he said, in a surprised tone. 
 
 "' Didn't he, in order to obtain his certificate of 
 insolvency, pay up your account with notes subject to 
 the settlement in bankruptcy, and when the business 
 was re-established didn't those notes come under the 
 reduction named in that settlement? ' 
 
 " ' He was shrewd,' replied the old man, ' but I 
 nipped him back.' 
 
 " ' Perhaps you hold a few protested notes? — this 
 is the thirtieth of the month, you know.' 
 
 "I had never before mentioned money to him. He 
 raised his eyes to me, satirically ; then, in his softest 
 voice, the tones of which were like the sounds a pupil 
 draws from his flute when he has no mouthpiece, he 
 said : — 
 
 " ' I am amusing myself.' 
 
 Then you do find amusement sometimes? ' 
 Do you think there are no poets but those who 
 scribble verses?' he asked, shrugging his shoulders, 
 and casting a look of pity on me. 
 
 
V 
 
 14 Gobseck. 
 
 "'Poesy in that head! ' I thought to myself; for at 
 that time I knew nothing of his life. 
 
 k4 ' What existence is there as brilliant as mine? ' he 
 continued, and his eyes brightened. ; You are young ; 
 you have the ideas of your blood; you see faces of 
 women in your embers, I see nothing but coals in 
 mine. You believe in everything, I believe in noth- 
 ing. Keep your illusions, if you can. I am going to 
 reckon up life to you. Whether you travel about the 
 world, or whether you stay in your chimney-corner 
 with a wife, there comes an age when life is nothing 
 more than a habit, practised in some preferred spot. 
 Happiness then consists in the exercise of our facul- 
 ties applied to real objects. Outside of those two 
 precepts all else is false. My principles have varied 
 like those of other men; I have changed with each 
 latitude in which I lived. What Europe admires, Asia 
 punishes. A vice in Paris is a necessity after you 
 pass the Azores. Nothing is a fixed fact here below; 
 conventions alone exist, and those are modified by 
 climate. To one who has flung himself forcibly into 
 every social mould, convictions and moralities are 
 nothing more than words without weight. There re- 
 mains within us but the one true sentiment which 
 Nature implanted there; namely, the instinct of pres- 
 ervation. In European societies this instinct is called 
 self-interest. If you had lived as long as I have, you 
 
Gobseck. 15 
 
 would know that there is but one material thing the 
 value of which is sufficiently certain to be worth a 
 man's while to care for it. That thing is — Gold. 
 Gold represents all human forces. I have travelled; I 
 have seen in all lands plains and mountains: plains 
 are tiresome, mountains fatiguing ; hence, places and 
 regions signify nothing. As for customs and morals, 
 man is the same everywhere; everywhere the struggle 
 between wealth and poverty exists ; everywhere it is 
 inevitable. Better, therefore, to be the one to take 
 advantage, than the one to be taken advantage of. 
 Everywhere you will find muscular folk who work 
 their way, and lymphatic folk who fret and worry. 
 Everywhere pleasures are the same; for all emotions 
 are exhausted, and nothing survives of them but the 
 single sentiment of vanity. Vanity is always I. 
 Vanity is never truly satisfied except by floods of 
 gold. Desires need time, or physical means, or care. 
 Well! gold contains all those things in the germ, and 
 will give them in reality. None but fools or sick men 
 can find pleasure in playing cards every night to see 
 if they can win a few francs. None but fools can 
 spend their time in asking each other what happens, 
 and whether Madame So-and-so occupies her sofa 
 alone or in company, or whether she has more blood 
 than lymph, more ardor than virtue. None but dupes 
 can think themselves useful to their fellow-men, by 
 
16 Gobseck. 
 
 laying down political principles to govern events 
 which are still unforeseen. None but ninnies can like 
 to go through the same routine, pacing up and down 
 like animals in a cage; dressing for others, eating for 
 others, glorifying themselves about a horse or a car- 
 riage which their neighbor can't copy for at least 
 three days! Isn't that the life of your Parisians, 
 reduced to a few sentences? Let us look at life on 
 a higher plane. There, happiness consists either in 
 strong emotions which wear out life, or in regular 
 occupations worked, as it were, by mechanism at 
 stated times. Above these forms of happiness there 
 exists the curiosity (said to be noble) of knowing the 
 secrets of Nature, or of producing a certain imitation 
 of her effects. Is n't that, in two words, art or knowl- 
 edge, passion or tranquillity? Well! all human pas- 
 sions, heightened by the play of social interests, 
 parade before me, who live in tranquillity. As for 
 your scientific curiosity, — a sort of combat in which 
 man is always worsted! — I substitute for that a pene- 
 tration into the secret springs that move humanity. 
 In a word, I possess the world without fatigue, and 
 the world has not the slightest hold upon me. 
 Listen to me,' he continued. ' I will tell you the 
 events of my morning, and you can judge by them of 
 my pleasures.' 
 
 u He rose, went to the door and bolted it, drew a 
 
GobsecJc. 17 
 
 curtain of old tapestry, the brass rings grinding on 
 the rod, and sat down again. 
 
 " ' This morning,' he said, ' I had only two notes to 
 collect; the others I had given last evening to clients 
 in place of ready money. So much made, you know ! 
 for in discounting them I deduct the cost of collec- 
 tion, taking forty sous for a street cab. A pretty 
 thing it would be if a client made me cross all Paris 
 for six francs discount, — I, who am under bonds to 
 no one ! — I, who pay no more than seven francs in 
 taxes! Well, the first note, for a thousand francs, 
 presented by a young man, a dashing fellow, with a 
 spangled waistcoat, eyeglass, tilbury, English horse, 
 etc., w r as signed by one of the prettiest women in 
 Paris, married to a rich man, — a count. Why should 
 this countess have signed that note (void in law but 
 excellent in fact) ? For such poor women fear the 
 scandal which a protested note would cause in their 
 homes; they'll even sell themselves rather than not 
 take up the note. I wanted to know the secret value 
 of that paper. Was it folly, imprudence, love, or 
 charity ? The second note, also for a thousand francs, 
 signed "Jenny Malvaut," was presented to me by a 
 linen-draper in a fair way to be ruined. No person 
 having credit at the Bank ever comes to me; the first 
 step taken from my door to my desk means despair, 
 bankruptcy on the verge of discovery, and, above all, 
 
 2 
 
18 Gobseck. 
 
 the refusal of aid from many bankers. That 's how it 
 is that I see none but stags at bay, hunted by the pack 
 of their creditors. The countess lived in the rue du 
 Helder, and Jenny in the rue Montmartre. How 
 many conjectures came into my mind as I went from 
 here this morning! If those two women were not 
 ready to pay, they would receive me with more respect 
 than if I had been their own father. What grimaces 
 that countess would play off upon me in place of her 
 thousand francs! She'd pretend to be cordial, and 
 speak in the coaxing voice such women reserve for 
 holders of notes; she'd shower cajoling words upon 
 me, perhaps implore me, and I — ' 
 
 " Here the old man cast his eye upon me. 
 
 " ' and I — immovable! ' he went on. ' I am there 
 as an Avenger; I appear as Remorse. But enough of 
 such fancies. I got there. 
 
 " ' " Madame la comtesse is still in bed," said the 
 lady's-maid. 
 
 " ' " When will she be visible? " 
 
 " ' " At noon." 
 
 " 4 " Is Madame la comtesse ill? " 
 
 " ' " No, monsieur, but she did not return from a 
 ball till three in the morning." 
 
 '"" My name is Gobseck; tell her my name, and 
 say I shall return at noon." 
 
 " ' And off I went, signing my presence on the carpet 
 

 Grohseck. 19 
 
 that covered the stairs. I like to muddy the floors of 
 rich men, not from petty meanness, but to let them 
 feel the claws of necessity. Reached the rue Mont- 
 martre, found a shabby sort of house, pushed open the 
 porte-cochere, and saw a damp, dark courtyard, where 
 the sun never penetrates. The porter's lodge was 
 dingy, the glass of the window looked like the sleeve 
 of a wadded dressing-gown worn too long; it was 
 greasy, cracked, and discolored. 
 
 Mademoiselle Jenny Malvaut? " 
 She 's out; but if you have come about a note, 
 the money is here." 
 
 " '"I'll come back," I said. 
 
 " l The moment I heard the porter had the money I 
 wanted to know that girl. I felt sure she was pretty. 
 I spent the morning looking at the engravings dis- 
 played on the boulevard. Then, as twelve o'clock 
 sounded, I entered the salon which adjoins the bed- 
 room of Madame la comtesse. 
 
 " ' " Madame has just this moment rung for me," 
 said the maid. " I don't think she will see you yet." 
 
 "'"I'll wait," I answered, seating myself in an 
 armchair. 
 
 " ' I heard the blinds open in madame's room; then 
 the maid came hurrying in, and said to me : — 
 
 " ' " Come in, monsieur." 
 
 By the softness of her voice I knew very well her 
 
 tt i 
 
20 G-obseck. 
 
 mistress was not ready to pay. What a beautiful 
 woman I then saw! She had flung a camel's-hair 
 shawl round her shoulders so hastily that her shape 
 could be guessed in all its nudity. She wore a night- 
 gown trimmed with frills as white as snow, which 
 showed an annual expense of over two thousand francs 
 for washing. Her black hair fell in heavy curls from 
 a silk handkerchief, carelessly knotted round her head 
 after the Creole fashion. Her bed was the picture 
 of disorder, caused, no doubt, by troubled sleep. A 
 painter would have paid a good deal to have stood 
 a few moments in the midst of this scene. Under 
 draperies voluptuously looped up were pillows on a 
 down quilt of sky-blue silk, the lace of their trimming 
 showing to advantage on that azure background. On 
 a bear's skin, stretched between the carved lion's 
 paws of the mahogany bedstead, lay white satin shoes, 
 tossed off with the carelessness that comes of the 
 fatigue of a ball. On a chair was a rumpled gown, 
 the sleeves touching the floor. Stockings which a 
 breath of wind might have blown away were twisted 
 round the legs of a chair. A fan of value, half- 
 opened, glittered on the chimney-piece. The drawers 
 of the bureau were open. Flowers, diamonds, gloves, 
 a bouquet, a belt, were thrown here and there about 
 the room. I breathed a vague odor of perfumes. All 
 was luxury and disorder, beauty without harmony. 
 
Gobseck. 21 
 
 Already for this woman, or for her lover, poverty, 
 crouching beneath these riches, raised its head and 
 made them feel its sharpened teeth. The tired face 
 of the countess was in keeping with that room strewn 
 with the fragments of a fete. Those scattered gew- 
 gaws were pitiful; collected on her person the night 
 before, they had brought her adoration. These vestiges 
 of love, blasted by remorse, that image of a life of dis- 
 sipation, of luxury, of tumult, betrayed the efforts of 
 Tantalus to grasp eluding pleasures. A few red spots 
 on the young woman's face showed the delicacy of 
 her skin; but her features seemed swollen, and the 
 brown circle beneath her eyes was more marked than 
 was natural. Still, nature was too vigorous within 
 her to let these indications of a life of folly injure her 
 beauty. Her eyes sparkled. Like an Herodias of 
 Leonardo da Vinci (I 've sold those pictures), she 
 was magnificent in life and vigor; there was nothing 
 paltry in her form or in her features; she inspired 
 love, and she seemed to me to be stronger than love. 
 She pleased me. It is long since my heart has beaten. 
 I was paid! I'd give a thousand francs any day for 
 a sensation that recalled to me my youth. 
 
 " ' " Monsieur," she said, pointing to a chair, "will 
 you have the kindness to wait for your money ? " 
 
 K ' " Until to-morrow, at noon, madame," I replied, 
 folding the note I had presented to her. "I have no 
 
22 Gobseck. 
 
 legal right to protest until then." In my own mind, 
 I was saying to myself: "Pay for your luxury, pay 
 for your name, pay for your pleasures, pay for the 
 monopoly you enjoy! To secure their property rights 
 the rich have invented courts and judges and the 
 guillotine, — candles, in which poor ignorant creatures 
 fly and singe themselves. But for you, who sleep in 
 silk and satin, there's something else: there's re- 
 morse, grinding of teeth behind those smiles of yours, 
 jaws of fantastic lions opening to craunch you! " 
 
 " ' "A protest! " she cried, looking me in the face; 
 ts you can't mean it! Would you have so little con- 
 sideration for me?" 
 
 " ' " If the king himself owed me money, madame, 
 and did not pay it, I 'd summons him even quicker 
 than another debtor." 
 
 44 ' At this moment some one knocked at the door. 
 
 U '"I am not visible," said the countess, imperi- 
 ously. 
 
 " ' " Anastasie, I want to see you very much." 
 
 " ' " Not just now, dear," she answered, in a milder 
 voice, but not a kind one. 
 
 • " ' " What nonsense! I hear you talking to some 
 one," said a man, who could be, of course, none other 
 than the count, as he entered the room. 
 
 " 'The countess looked at me; I understood her, 
 and from that moment she became my slave. There 
 
WW w .w 
 
 ww w 
 
 G-obseck. 23 
 
 was a time in my life, young man, when I might, per- 
 haps, have been fool enough not to protest. In 1763, 
 at Ponclicherry, I forgave a woman who swindled me 
 finely. I deserved it; why did I ever trust her! 
 
 " ' "What does monsieur want? " said the count. 
 
 " ' I saw that woman tremble from head to foot; the 
 white and satiny skin of her throat grew rough and 
 turned, as they say, to goose-flesh. As for me, I 
 laughed inwardly, without a muscle of my face 
 quivering. 
 
 Monsieur is one of my tradesmen," she said. 
 The count turned his back upon me. I pulled the 
 note half out of my pocket. Seeing that inexorable 
 action, the young woman came close up to me and 
 offered me a diamond ring. 
 
 " ' " Take it, and go! " she said. 
 
 " ' That was simply an exchange of properties. I 
 bowed, gave her the note, and left the room. The 
 diamond was worth fully twelve hundred francs. In 
 the courtyard I found a swarm of valets, brushing 
 their liveries, blacking their boots, or cleaning the 
 sumptuous equipages. "That," I said to myself, " is 
 what brings these people to me. That's what drives 
 them to steal millions decently, to betray their coun- 
 try. Not to soil his boots by going afoot, the great 
 lord — or he who imitates the lord — takes, once for 
 all, a bath of mud ! " I was thinking all that, when 
 
24 Grobseck. 
 
 the great gates opened, and in drove the cabriolet of 
 the young man who had brought me the note. 
 
 " ' "Monsieur," I said to him as he got out, "here 
 are two hundred francs, which I beg you to return to 
 Madame la comtesse; and you will please say to her 
 that I hold at her disposition the article she placed in 
 my hands this morning." 
 
 " ' He took the two hundred francs with a sarcastic 
 smile, which seemed to say: "Ha! she has paid! so 
 much the better!" I read upon that young man's 
 face the future of the countess. The pretty, fair 
 youth, a gambler without emotion, will ruin himself, 
 ruin her, ruin her husband, ruin her children, spend 
 their dowries, and cause greater devastation through 
 salons than a battery of grape-shot through a regi- 
 ment. Then I went to the rue Montmartre to find 
 Mademoiselle Jenny Malvaut. I climbed up a steep 
 little staircase. When I reached the fifth floor, I 
 entered a small apartment of two rooms only, where 
 all was as clean and bright as a new ducat. I 
 could n't see the slightest trace of dust on the furni- 
 ture of the first room, where I was received by Made- 
 moiselle Jenny, a true Parisian young woman, very 
 simply dressed ; head f res*h and elegant, prepossessing 
 manner, chestnut hair, well-combed, raised in two 
 puffs upon the temples, which gave a look of mischief 
 to the eyes, that were clear as crystals. The day- 
 
Grobseck. 25 
 
 light, coming through little curtains hanging at the 
 windows, threw a soft reflection on her modest face. 
 Round her were numerous bits of linen, cut in shapes 
 which showed me her regular occupation ; it was evi- 
 dently that of a seamstress. She sat there like the 
 genius of solitude. When I presented the note I said 
 that I had not found her at home that morning. 
 
 " ' " But," she said, "the money was with the 
 porter." 
 
 " ' I pretended not to hear. 
 
 " ' " Mademoiselle goes out earty, it seems? " 
 
 " * " I seldom go out at all; but if one works at 
 night one must take a bath in the daytime." 
 
 w. i 
 
 I looked at her. With one glance I could guess 
 the truth about her. Here was a girl condemned to 
 toil by poverty, belonging, no doubt, to a family of 
 honest farmers; for I noticed a certain ruddiness in 
 her face peculiar to those who are born in the country. 
 I can't tell you what air of virtue it was that breathed 
 from her features, but I seemed to have entered an 
 atmosphere of sincerity and innocence ; my lungs were 
 freshened. Poor child! she believed in something! 
 Her simple bedstead of painted wood was surmounted 
 by a crucifix wreathed by two branches of box. I was 
 half -touched. I felt disposed to offer her money at 
 twelve per cent, only to enable her to purchase some 
 good business. "But," I said to myself, "I daresay 
 
26 GohsecJc. 
 
 there 's some little cousin who would get money on her 
 signature and eat up all she has." So I went away, 
 being on my guard against such generous ideas, for 
 I 've often had occasion to notice that when benev- 
 olence does not injure the benefactor it is sure to 
 destroy the person benefited/ When you came in I 
 was thinking what a good little wife Jenny Malvaut 
 would make. I compared her pure and solitary life 
 with that of the countess, who, with one foot over 
 the precipice, is about to roll down into the gulf of 
 vice ! 
 
 "'Well!' he continued, after a moment of pro- 
 found silence, during which I examined him, ' do you 
 now think there is no enjoyment in penetrating thus 
 to the inner folds of the human heart, in espousing 
 the life of others, and seeing that life bared before 
 me? Sights forever varied! — hideous sores, mortal 
 sorrows, scenes of love, miseries which the waters of 
 the Seine await, joys of youth leading to the scaffold, 
 despairing laughter, sumptuous festivals! Yesterday, 
 a tragedy, — some good father of a family smothers 
 himself with charcoal because he cannot feed his chil- 
 dren. To-morrow, a comedy, — a young man trying 
 to play me the scene of Monsieur Dimanche, varied 
 to suit the times. You have heard the eloquence 
 of our modern preachers vaunted; I've occasionally 
 wasted my time listening to them; they have some- 
 
Gobseck. 27 
 
 times made me change my opinion, but my conduct, 
 — as some one, I forget who, says, — never! Well, 
 those good priests, and your Mirabeau and Vergniaud 
 and others are stutterers compared with my orators. 
 Often a young girl in love, an old merchant on the 
 downhill to bankruptcy, a mother trying to hide her 
 son's crime, an artist without food, a great man on 
 the decline of his popularity, who, for want of money, 
 is about to lose the fruit of his efforts, — such beings 
 have made me shudder by the power of their words. 
 Those splendid actors play for me only, but they do 
 not deceive me. My glance is like that of God; it 
 enters the heart. Nothing is hidden from me. Noth- 
 ing is denied to him who opens and closes the mouth 
 of the sack. I am rich enough to buy the consciences 
 of those who manage the ministers of the nation, — be 
 they ushers or mistresses: isn't that power? I can 
 have beautiful women and tender caresses: isn't that 
 love? Power and pleasure, — don't those two things 
 sum up the whole of your social order? There's a 
 dozen of us such as that in Paris; silent, unknown 
 kings, the arbiters of your destinies. Is n't life 
 itself a machine to which money imparts motion? 
 Know this: means are confounded with results; you 
 will never attain to separating the soul from the 
 senses, spirit from matter. Gold is the spirituality 
 of your present social being. Bound by one and the 
 
28 Gobseck. 
 
 same interest, we — that dozen men — meet together one 
 day in every week, at the cafe Themis, near the Pont 
 Neuf. There we reveal the mysteries of finance. No 
 apparent wealth can mislead us ; we possess the secrets 
 of all families. We keep a species of black book, in 
 which are recorded most important notes on the public 
 credit, on the Bank, on commerce. Casuists of the 
 Bourse, we form an Inquisition where the most indif- 
 ferent actions of men of any fortune are judged and 
 analyzed, and our judgment is always true. One of 
 us watches over the judiciary body; another, the finan- 
 cial body ; a third, the administrative body ; a fourth 
 the commercial body. As for me, I keep an eye on 
 eldest sons, on artists, men of fashion, gamblers, — 
 the most stirring part of Paris. Every one whom we 
 severally deal with tells us his neighbor's secrets: 
 betrayed passions and bruised vanities are garrulous ; 
 vices, vengeances, disappointments are the best police 
 force in the world. My brethren, like myself, have 
 enjoyed all things, are sated with all things, and have 
 come to love power and money solely for power and 
 money themselves. Here,' he added, pointing to his 
 cold and barren room, ' the fiery lover, insulted by a 
 look, and drawing his sabre at a word, kneels and 
 prays to me with clasped hands. Here the proudest 
 merchant, here the woman vain of her beauty, here 
 the dashing soldier, pray, one and all, with tears of 
 
G-obseck. 29 
 
 rage or anguish in their eyes. Here the most cele- 
 brated artists, here the writer whose name is promised 
 to posterity, pray, likewise. Here, too,' he added, 
 laying his hand upon his forehead, ' are the scales in 
 which are weighed the inheritances and the dividends 
 of all Paris. Do you think now that there are no 
 enjoyments beneath this livid mask whose immobility 
 has so often amazed you? ' he said, turning toward 
 me his wan face, which seemed to smell of money. 
 
 " I returned home stupefied. That shrunken old 
 man grew larger; he had changed, before my very 
 eyes, into some fantastic image personifying the 
 power of gold. Life, men, filled me with horror. 
 4 Are all things to be measured by money?' I asked 
 myself. I remember that I did not go to sleep that 
 night till very late. Mounds of gold rose up around 
 me. The beautiful countess filled my thoughts. I 
 confess, to my shame, that her image completely 
 eclipsed that of the simple aud chaste creature doomed 
 to toil and to obscurity. But on the morrow, through 
 the mists of waking, the gentle Jenny appeared to me 
 in all her beauty, and I thought of her alone." 
 
 " Will you have a glass of eau sucree" said the 
 viscountess, interrupting Derville. 
 
 " Gladly,"" he replied. 
 
 " But I don't see, in all this, anything that concerns 
 us," said Madame cle Grandlieu, ringing the bell. 
 
30 G-obsech 
 
 " Sardanapalus! " exclaimed Derville, launching his 
 favorite oath. ."I am going to wake up Mademoiselle 
 Camille presently by showing her that her happiness 
 has depended, until recently, on papa Gobseck. But 
 the old man is now dead, at the age of eighty-nine, 
 and the Comte de Restaud will soon come into posses- 
 sion of a noble fortune. This needs some explana- 
 ion. As for Jenny Malvaut, you know her; she is 
 now my wife." 
 
 " Poor boy! " exclaimed the viscountess, " he would 
 tell that before a score of people, with his usual 
 frankness." 
 
 " Yes, I 'd shout it to the universe," said the lawyer. 
 
 " Drink your water, my poor Derville. You '11 
 never be anything but the happiest and the best of 
 
 men." 
 
 " I left you in the rue clu Helder, with a countess," 
 cried the uncle, waking from a doze. " What did you 
 do there ? " 
 
 Y A few days after my conversation with the old 
 Dutchman," resumed Derville, " I took my licentiate's 
 degree and became, soon after, a barrister. The con- 
 fidence the old miser had in me increased greatly. He 
 consulted me, gratuitously, on the ticklish affairs in 
 which he embarked after obtaining certain data, — 
 affairs which, to practical minds, would have seemed 
 very dangerous. That man, over whom no human 
 
Grobseck. 31 
 
 being could have gained any power, listened to my 
 counsels with a sort of respect. It is true that they 
 usually helped him. At last, on the day when I was 
 made head-clerk of the office in which I had worked 
 three years, I left the house in the rue des Gres, and 
 went to live with my patron, who gave me board and 
 lodging, and one hundred and twenty francs a month. 
 That was a fine day for me ! When I said good-bye 
 to the old usurer, he expressed neither friendship nor 
 regret; he did not ask me to come and see him; he 
 merely gave me one of those glances which seemed to 
 reveal in him the gift of second-sight. At the end 
 of a week, however, I received a visit from him ; he 
 brought me a rather difficult affair, — a dispossession 
 
 case, — and he continued his gratuitous consultations 
 
 ( 
 with as much freedom as if he paid me. At the end 
 
 of the second year, from 1818 to 1819, my patron — 
 a man of pleasure, and very extravagant — became 
 involved, and was forced to sell his practice. Al- 
 though at that time a lawyer's practice had not 
 acquired the exorbitant value it now possesses, my 
 patron almost gave away his in asking no more than 
 one hundred and fifty thousand francs for it. An 
 active, intelligent, and well-trained lawyer might live 
 respectably, pay the interest on that sum, and free 
 himself of the debt in ten years, could he only inspire 
 confidence in some one who would lend him the pur- 
 
32 Gobseck. 
 
 chase-money. I, the seventh son of a small bourgeois 
 of Noyon, did not possess one penny, and I knew 
 but one capitalist; namely, papa Gobseck. A daring 
 thought, and some strange gleam of hope, gave me 
 courage to go to him. Accordingly, one evening, I 
 slowly walked to the rue cles Gres. My heart beat 
 violently as I knocked at the door of that gloomy 
 house. I remembered what the old miser had told me 
 in former days, when I was far, indeed, from imagin- 
 ing the violence of the agony which began on the 
 threshold of that door. I was now about to pray to 
 him like the rest! ' No, no! ' I said to myself, 4 an 
 honest man should keep his dignity under all circum- 
 stances; no fortune is worth a meanness; I'll make 
 myself as stiff as he.' Since my departure, papa 
 Gobseck had hired my room, in order to have no other 
 neighbor; he had also put a little grated peep-hole 
 into the middle of his door, which he did not open 
 till he recognized my face. 
 
 " ' Well ! ' he said, in his fluty little voice, ' so your 
 patron sells his practice.' 
 
 " ' How did you know that? He has not mentioned 
 it to a soul but me. ' 
 
 " The lips of the old man drew toward the corners 
 of his mouth precisely like curtains, and that mute 
 smile was accompanied by a frigid glance. 
 
 " ' It needed that fact to bring you here to me,' he 
 
U i 
 
 Gobseck. 33 
 
 said, in a dry tone, and after a pause, during which I 
 remained somewhat confounded. 
 
 " ' Listen to me, Monsieur Gobseck,' I said, with 
 as much calmness as I was able to muster in presence 
 of that old man, who fixed upon me his impassible 
 eyes, the clear flame of which disturbed me. 
 He made a gesture as if to say, ' Speak.' 
 I know how difficult it is to move you. I should 
 waste my eloquence in trying to make you see the 
 position of a clerk without a penny, whose only hope 
 is in you, and who has no other heart in the world but 
 yours in which his future is understood. Let us drop 
 the question of heart; business is business, and not 
 romance or sentimentality. Here are the facts: My 
 patron's practice brings him about twenty thousand 
 francs a year, but in my hands I think it would bring 
 forty thousand. He wants to sell it for one hundred 
 and fifty thousand. I feel, here,' I continued, striking 
 my forehead, ' that if you will lend me the purchase- 
 money I can pay it off in ten years.' 
 
 "' That's talking,' replied papa Gobseck, stretch- 
 ing out his hand and pressing mine. ' Never, since 
 I have been in business,' he went on, - has any 
 one declared more plainly the object of his visit. 
 Security? ' he said, looking me over from head to 
 foot. ' Naught ' — adding, after a pause, ' How old 
 are you?' 
 
 3 
 
34 Gobseck. 
 
 a t 
 
 Twenty-five in a few clays/ I replied; 'except 
 for that I couldn't purchase.' 
 
 "'True.' 
 
 " ' Well ? ' 
 
 " ' Possibly I may do it.' 
 
 "'There's no time to lose; I am likely to have 
 competitors who will put up the price.' 
 
 " ' Bring me the certificate of your birth to-morrow 
 morning, and we '11 talk the matter over. I '11 think 
 of it.' 
 
 " The next day, by eight o'clock, I was in the old 
 man's room. He took the official paper, put on his 
 spectacles, coughed, spat, wrapped his big coat round 
 him, and read the extracts from the register of the 
 mayor's office carefully. Then he turned the paper 
 and re-turned it, looked at me, coughed again, wriggled 
 in his chair, and said, finally : — 
 
 " ; This is a matter we will try to arrange.' 
 I quivered. ' I get fifty per cent for my money,' he 
 continued; ' sometimes one hundred, two hundred, 
 even five hundred per cent.' I turned pale at these 
 words. i But, in consideration of our acquaintance, 
 I shall content myself with twelve and a half per 
 cent interest per — ' He hesitated. ' Well, yes ! for 
 your sake I will be satisfied with thirteen per cent per 
 annum. Will that suit you? ' 
 
 "'Yes,' I replied. 
 
Grobseck. 35 
 
 "'But if it is too much,' he said, 'speak out, 
 Grotius ' (he often called me Grotius in fun). ' In 
 asking you thirteen per cent I ply my trade ; consider 
 whether you can pay it. I don't like a man who hob- 
 nobs to everything. Is it too much? ' 
 
 " ' No,' I said, ' I can meet it by rather more 
 privation.' 
 
 " 'Parbleu! ' he cried, casting his malicious, oblique 
 glance upon me; ' make your clients pay it.' 
 
 " ' No, by all the devils!' I cried; 'it will be I 
 who pay it. I 'd cut my hand off sooner than fleece 
 others. ' 
 
 " ' Fiddle! ' said papa Gobseck. 
 
 "'Besides, a lawyer's fees go by tariff,' I 
 continued. 
 
 "'They don't,' he said. 'Not for negotiations, 
 suits for recovery of funds, compromises. You can 
 make thousands of francs, according to the interests 
 involved, out of your conferences, trips, drafts of 
 deeds, memoranda, and other verbiage. You '11 have 
 to learn that sort of thing. I shall recommend you as 
 the cleverest and most knowing of lawyers ; I '11 send 
 you such a lot of such cases that all your brother- 
 lawyers will burst with jealousy. Werbrust, Palma, 
 Gigonnet, my friends, shall give you all their dispos- 
 session cases, — and God knows how many they are! 
 You '11 thus have two practices, — the one you buy, 
 
36 Gobseck. 
 
 and the one I make for you. You ought to give me 
 fifteen per cent, at least, for my hundred and fifty 
 thousand francs.' 
 
 " ' So be it, but not a penny more,' I said, with the 
 firmness of a man who will grant nothing further. 
 
 " Papa Gobseck relented at this, and seemed pleased 
 with me. 
 
 " ' I'll pay the price to your patron myself,' he 
 said, ' so as to secure myself a solid hold on the 
 security.' 
 
 " ' Oh! yes, take all the security you want.' 
 
 " 'Also, you must give me fifteen bills of exchange, 
 acceptances in blank, for ten thousand francs each. ' 
 
 " ' Provided that double value be distinctly 
 recorded — ' 
 
 "'No!' cried Gobseck, interrupting me. 'Why 
 do you want me to have more confidence in you than 
 you have in me?' I kept silence. 'And also,' he 
 went on, in a good-humored tone, ' you will do all my 
 business without asking fees, as long as I live; is 
 that agreed to ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes, provided there is no further demand made.' 
 
 " ' Right! ' he said. ' Ah gaf added the little old 
 man, after a momentary pause, his face taking, but 
 with difficulty, an air of good-humor, ' you '11 allow 
 me to go and see you sometimes?' 
 It will always give me pleasure.' 
 
 it i 
 
Grobseek. 37 
 
 44 ' Yes, but when? In the mornings it would be 
 impossible; you have your business and I have mine.' 
 
 " t Come in the evening. ' 
 
 44 4 Oh, no! ' he said hastily; 4 you ought to go into 
 society and meet your clients; I, too, I have my 
 friends at the cafe.' 
 
 44 ' His friends! ' thought I. 4 Well, then,' I said, 
 ' why not take the dinner-hour ? ' 
 
 44 4 That 's it,' said Gobseck. 4 After the Bourse, 
 about five o'clock. You '11 see me every Wednesday 
 and Saturday. We talk of our affairs like a couple 
 of friends. Ha! ha! I can be gay sometimes. Give 
 me the wing of a partridge and a glass of champagne, 
 and we '11 talk. I know many things that can be told 
 in these days ; things which will teach you to know 
 men and, above all, women.' 
 
 44 4 So be it for the partridge and the champagne,' I 
 said. 
 
 44 4 Don't be extravagant, or you '11 lose my confi- 
 dence. Get an old woman-servant, — only one, mind; 
 don't set up an establishment. I shall come and see 
 you to look after your health. I 've capital invested 
 on your head, he! he! and I ought to keep informed 
 about you. Come back this evening, and bring your 
 patron. ' 
 
 44 4 Might I be informed, if there is no indiscretion 
 in asking,' I said to the old man when we reached the 
 
38 Gobseck. 
 
 threshold of his door, ' of what possible importance 
 the certificate of my birth could be in this affair? ' 
 
 " Jean-Esther van Gobseck shrugged his shoulders, 
 smiled maliciously, and replied : ' How foolish youth 
 is ! Know this, my learned barrister, — you must 
 know it to keep from being cheated, — before the age 
 of thirty honesty and talent are still a sort of mortgage 
 to be taken on a man. After that age he is not to be 
 trusted. ' 
 
 " So saying, he shut the door. 
 
 " Three months later I became a barrister, and 
 soon after I had the great good-fortune, madame, of 
 being chosen to undertake the business concerning the 
 restitution of your property. The winning of that suit 
 made me known. In spite of the enormous interest I 
 paid Gobseck, I was able, in five years, to pay off my 
 indebtedness. I married Jenny Malvaut, whom I love 
 sincerely. The likeness between our two lives, our 
 toil, our successes, increased the tie between us. 
 Jenny's uncle, a rich farmer, died, leaving her seventy 
 thousand francs, which helped to pay off my debt. 
 Since that day my life has been nothing but happi- 
 ness and prosperity — no need, therefore, to say more 
 about myself; nothing is so intolerably dull as a happy 
 man. Let us go back to our personages. About a 
 year after I bought my practice, I was enticed, almost 
 against my will, to a bachelor's breakfast. The party 
 
G-obseck. 39 
 
 was the result of a wager lost by one of my legal 
 friends to a young man then much in vogue in the 
 world of fashion. Monsieur Maxime de Trailles, the 
 flower of dandyism in those days, enjoyed a great 
 reputation — " 
 
 4 'And still enjoys it," said the Comte de Born, 
 interrupting Derville. "No man wears a coat with 
 more style or drives a tandem better than he. Maxime 
 has the art of playing cards, and eating and drink- 
 ing with more grace than the rest of the world put 
 together. He knows what is what in horses, hats, and 
 pictures. The women dote upon him. He always 
 spends a hundred thousand francs a year, though no 
 one ever heard of his owning property or a single 
 coupon of interest. A type of the knight-errant of 
 salons, boudoirs, and the boulevards, — an amphibious 
 species, half-man, half-woman, — Comte Maxime de 
 Trailles is a singular being, good at everything and 
 good for nothing, feared and despised, knowing most 
 things, yet ignorant at bottom, just as capable of doing 
 a benefit as of committing a crime, sometimes base, 
 sometimes noble, more covered with mud than stained 
 with blood, having anxieties but no remorse, caring 
 more for digestion than for thought, feigning pas- 
 sions and feeling none. He 's a brilliant ring that 
 might connect the galleys with the highest society. 
 Maxime de Trailles is a man who belongs to that 
 
40 Grobseck. 
 
 eminently intelligent class from which sprang Mira- 
 beau, Pitt, Richelieu, but which more frequently 
 supplies the world with Comtes de Horn, Fouquier- 
 Tinvilles, and Coignards." 
 
 "Well!" resumed Derville, after listening to these 
 remarks of Madame de Grandlieu's brother. "I had 
 heard a great deal of that personage from poor Pere 
 Goriot, who was one of my clients ; but I had always 
 avoided, when I met him in society, the dangerous 
 honor of his acquaintance. However, my friend urged 
 me so strongly to go to his breakfast that I could not 
 escape doing so without being accused of austerity. 
 You can hardly conceive of a bachelor's breakfast, 
 madame. It is a magnificent show of the greatest 
 rarities, — the luxury of a miser who is sumptuous 
 for one day only. On entering, one is struck by the 
 order that reigns on a table so dazzling with silver 
 and glass and damasked linen. Life is there in its 
 flower; the young men are so graceful, so smiling, 
 they speak low, they resemble the newly wedded, — 
 all seems virgin about them. Two hours later you 
 would think that same room was a battlefield after the 
 battle. On all sides broken glasses, twisted and 
 soiled napkins; dishes half-eaten, and repugnant to 
 the eye ; shouts that split the ears, sarcastic toasts, a 
 fire of epigrams, malignant jests, purple faces, eyes 
 inflamed, no longer capable of expression, — involun- 
 
Qobseck. 41 
 
 tary confidences which tell all! In the midst of this 
 infernal racket, some break bottles, others troll songs, 
 they challenge each other, they kiss or fight; an odious 
 smell arises of a hundred odors, shouts on a hundred 
 tones ; no one knows what he eats, or what he drinks, 
 or what he says ; some are sad, others garrulous ; one 
 man is monomaniacal, and repeats the same word like 
 a clock with the striker going ; another man wants to 
 command the riot, and the wisest propose an orgy. If 
 any man entered the room in his senses he would think 
 it a Bacchanalian revel. It was in the midst of such a 
 tumult as this that Monsieur de Trailles attempted to 
 insinuate himself into my good graces. I had pre- 
 served my senses pretty well, for I was on my guard. 
 As for him, though he affected to be decently drunk, 
 he was perfectly cool, and full of his own projects. 
 I can't say how it was done, but by the time we left 
 Grignon's that evening, at nine o'clock, he had com- 
 pletely bewitched me, and I had promised to take 
 him, the next clay, to papa Gobseck. The words, 
 honor, virtue, countess, honest woman, adored woman, 
 misery, despair, shone, thanks to his gilded language, 
 like magic through his talk. When I awoke the next 
 morning, and tried to remember what I had done the 
 day before, I had much difficulty in putting my ideas 
 together. However, it seemed to me that the daughter 
 of one of my clients was in danger of losing her repu- 
 
42 Gobseck. 
 
 tation and the respect and love of her husband, if she 
 could not obtain some fifty thousand francs that morn- 
 ing. She had debts: losses at cards, coachmaker's 
 bill, money lost I knew not how. My fascinating 
 friend had assured me that she was rich enough to 
 repair, by a few years of economy, the damage she 
 was about to do to her fortune. Not until morning 
 did I perceive the insistency of my new friend; and 
 I certainly had no idea of the importance it was for 
 papa Gobseck to make peace with this dandy. Just 
 as I was getting out of bed Monsieur de Trailles came 
 to see me. 
 
 " ' Monsieur le comte,' I said, after the usual com- 
 pliments had passed, ' I do not see that you need my 
 introduction in presenting yourself to van Gobseck, 
 the most polite and harmless of all capitalists. He '11 
 give you the money if he has it, or, rather, if you can 
 present him with sufficient security.' 
 
 "' Monsieur,' he replied, l I have no wish what- 
 ever to force you into doing me a service, even though 
 you may have promised it.' 
 
 " ' Sardanapalus ! ' I said to myself; 'shall I let 
 this man think I go back on my word ? ' 
 
 " ' I had the honor to tell you yesterday,' he con- 
 tinued, ' that T have quarrelled, most inopportunely, 
 with papa Gobseck. Now, as there is no other money- 
 lender in Paris who can fork out at once, and the first 
 
G-obseck. 43 
 
 of the month too, a hundred thousand francs, I begged 
 you to make my peace with him. But let us say no 
 more about it.' 
 
 " Monsieur de Trailles looked at me with an air 
 that was politely insulting, and prepared to leave the 
 room. 
 
 " ' I am ready to take you to him/ I said. 
 
 " When we reached the rue des Gres the dandy 
 looked about him with an attention and an air of 
 anxiety which surprised me. His face became livid, 
 reddened and turned yellow in turn, and drops of 
 sweat stood on his forehead as he saw the door of 
 Gobseck's house. Just as we got out of his cabriolet, 
 a hackney-coach entered the rue des Gres. The fal- 
 con eye of the young man enabled him, no doubt, to 
 distinguish a woman in the depths of that vehicle. 
 An expression of almost savage joy brightened his 
 face; he called to a little urchin who was passing, 
 and gave him his horse to hold. We went up at once 
 to the money-lender. 
 
 " ' Monsieur Gobseck,' I said, * I bring you one of 
 my intimate friends (whom I distrust as I do the 
 devil,' I added in his ear). ' To oblige me, I am sure 
 you will restore him to your good graces (at the usual 
 cost), and you will get him out of his present trouble 
 (if you choose).' 
 
 "Monsieur de Trailles bowed to the usurer, sat 
 

 44 Gobseck. 
 
 down, and assumed, as if to listen to him, a courtier- 
 like attitude, the graceful lowliness of which would 
 have fascinated you. But my Gobseck sat still on 
 his chair, at the corner of his fire, motionless, impas- 
 sible. He looked like the statue of Voltaire seen at 
 night under the peristyle of the Theatre-Fran$ais. 
 He slightly lifted, by way of bow, the shabby cap 
 with which he covered his head, and the small amount 
 of yellow skull he thus exhibited completed his resem- 
 blance to that marble statue. 
 
 I have no money except for my clients,' he said. 
 That means that you are very angry with me 
 for going elsewhere to ruin myself?' said the count, 
 laughing. 
 
 " 4 Ruin yourself! ' said Gobseck, in a sarcastic 
 tone. 
 
 " ' Do you mean that a man can't be ruined if he 
 owns nothing ? I defy you to find in all Paris a finer 
 capital than this,' cried the dandy, rising, and twirling 
 round upon his heels. 
 
 " This buffoonery, which was partly serious, had 
 no power to move Gobseck. 
 
 " ' Am I not the intimate friend of Ronquerolles, de 
 Marsay, Franchessini, the two Vandenesses, Ajuda- 
 Pinto, — in short, all the young bloods in Paris? At 
 cards I 'm the ally of a prince and an ambassador 
 whom you know. I have my revenues in London, at 
 

 G-obseck. 45 
 
 Carlsbad, Baden, Bath, Spa. Don't you think that 
 the most brilliant of industries ? ' 
 
 " 'Surely.' 
 
 " ' You make a sponge of me, mordieu ! you encour- 
 age me to swell out in the great world only to squeeze 
 me at a crisis. But all you money-lenders are sponges 
 too, and death will squeeze you.' 
 Possibly.' 
 
 Without spendthrifts what would become of you ? 
 We are one, like body and soul.' 
 
 " 'True.' 
 
 " ' Come, shake hands, old papa Gobseck, and show 
 your magnanimity.' 
 
 " ' You have come to me,' said Gobseck, coldly, 
 ' because Girard, Palma, Werbrust, and Gigonnet have 
 their bellies full of your notes, which they are offering 
 everywhere at fifty per cent loss. Now as they prob- 
 ably only gave you one-half of their face value, those 
 notes are not worth twenty-five francs on the hundred. 
 No, I thank you! Could I, with any decency,' con- 
 tinued Gobseck, ' lend a single penny to a man who 
 owes thirty thousand francs, and does n't possess a 
 farthing ? You lost ten thousand francs night before 
 last at Baron de Nucingen's ball.' 
 
 "'Monsieur,' replied the count, with rare impu- 
 dence, looking at the old man haughtily, ' my doings 
 are none of your business. He whose notes are not 
 due owes nothiuii. ' 
 
46 Gobseck. 
 
 "'True.' 
 
 " ' My notes will be paid.' 
 
 " ' Possibly.' 
 
 " ' The question between us reduces itself, at this 
 moment, to whether I present you sufficient security 
 for the sum I wish to borrow.' 
 
 " ' Right. ' 
 
 " The noise of a carriage stopping before the door 
 echoed through the room. 
 
 " ' I will now fetch something that will probably 
 satisfy you,' said Monsieur de Trailles, rising, and 
 turning to leave the room. 
 
 " ' O my son! ' cried Gobseck, rising too, and 
 stretching out his arms to me as soon as the young 
 man had disappeared, ' if he only brings me good 
 security, you have saved my life ! I should have died ! 
 Werbrust and Gigonnet meant to play me a trick. 
 Thanks to you, I shall have a good laugh to-night at 
 their expense.' 
 
 " The old man's joy had something frightful about 
 it. It was the sole moment of expansion or feeling 
 I ever saw in him. Rapid and fleeting as it was, that 
 joy will never pass from my memory. 
 
 " 'Do me the pleasure to stay here,' he said. 
 1 Though I'm well-armed and sure of my shot, like a 
 man who has hunted tigers and boarded ships to con- 
 quer or die, I distrust that elegant scoundrel.' 
 
Gobseck. 47 
 
 "He sat clown again, this time in an armchair before 
 his desk. His face was once more calm and livid. 
 
 " ' Ho! ho! ' he said, suddenly turning round to 
 me; ' you are no doubt going to see that handsome 
 creature I once told you about. I hear an aristocratic 
 step in the passage.' 
 
 " Sure enough, the young man now returned, lead- 
 ing a lady, in whom I recognized that countess whom 
 Gobseck had once described to me, — a daughter of 
 Pere Goriot. The countess did not at first see me, 
 for I was standing back in the recess of a window, 
 my face to the glass. As she entered the damp and 
 gloomy room she cast a look of fear and distrust at 
 Maxime. She was so beautiful that in spite of her 
 faults I pitied her. Some terrible anguish shook her 
 heart; her proud and noble features wore a convulsive 
 expression, scarcely restrained. That young man 
 must by this time have become to her an evil genius. 
 I admired Gobseck, who, four years earlier, had fore- 
 seen the fate of these two beings at the time of their 
 first note. ' Probably, ' I said to myself, ' that mon- 
 ster with the face of an angel rules her in all pos- 
 sible ways, through vanity, jealousy, pleasure, the 
 triumphs of society. ' " 
 
 "But," cried Madame de Grandlieu, interrupting 
 Derville, " the very virtues of this woman have been 
 weapons for him ; he has made her weep tears of devo- 
 
48 Gobseck. 
 
 tion; he has roused in her soul the generosity of our 
 sex; he has abused her tenderness, and sold to her, 
 at a cruel price, her criminal joys." 
 
 " I confess to you," said Derville, who did not 
 understand the signs that Madame de Grandlieu was 
 making to him, "that I did not think of the fate of 
 that unhappy creature, so brilliant to the eyes of the 
 world, and so dreadful to those who could read her 
 heart. No, I shuddered with horror as I looked at 
 her slayer, that youth with a brow so pure, a mouth 
 so fresh, a smile so gracious, teeth so white; a man 
 in the semblance of an angel! They stood at this 
 moment before a judge who examined' them as an 
 old Dominican of the sixteenth century might have 
 watched the torturing of two Moors in the cellars of 
 the Inquisition. 
 
 " ' Monsieur, is there any way of obtaining the 
 value of these diamonds, reserving to myself the right 
 to redeem them ? ' she said, in a trembling voice, hold- 
 ing out to him a casket. 
 
 " ' Yes, madame,' I replied, interposing, and coming 
 forward. 
 
 " She looked at me, recognized me, gave a shudder, 
 and then cast upon me that glance which says, in 
 every country, i Silence! ' 
 
 " ' The matter you propose,' I continued, i consti- 
 tutes an act which we lawyers call sale with right of 
 
Gobseck. 49 
 
 redemption, — a transaction which consists in yielding 
 and conveying property, either real or personal, for a 
 given time, at the expiration of which the property 
 can be taken back at a previously fixed price.' 
 
 " She breathed more easily. Comte Maxime frowned ; 
 he thought the usurer would give a smaller sum for the 
 diamonds if subject to this condition. Gobseck, im- 
 movable, picked up his magnifier, and silently opened 
 the casket. Were I to live a hundred years I could 
 never forget the picture his face presented to our eyes. 
 His pale cheeks colored; his eyes, in which the glitter 
 of the stoues seemed to be reflected, sparkled with 
 unnatural fire. He rose, went to the light, held the 
 diamonds close to his toothless mouth as if he wanted 
 to devour them. He mumbled a few vague words, 
 lifting, one after the other, the bracelets, necklaces, 
 diadems, sprays, — all of which he held to the light to 
 judge of their water, their whiteness and cutting. He 
 took them from the casket, and he laid them back, he 
 played with them to make their fires sparkle, seeming 
 more of a child than an old man, — or, rather, a child 
 and an old man combined. 
 
 " ' Fine! they must have been worth three hundred 
 thousand francs before the Revolution. What water! 
 True diamonds of Asia! from Golconda orVisapur! 
 Do you know their value? No, no, Gobseck is the 
 only man in Paris who knows how to appraise them. 
 
 4 
 
50 Gobseck. 
 
 Under the Empire it would still have cost two hundred 
 thousand francs to collect that set, but now — ' He 
 made a gesture of disgust, and added, ' Now dia- 
 monds are losing value every day. Brazil is flooding 
 us with stones, — less white than those of India. 
 Women no longer wear them, except at court. Does 
 madame go to court? ' 
 
 "While delivering this verdict he was still examin- 
 ing, with indescribable delight, each stone in the 
 casket. 
 
 "'No blemish! ' he kept saying, 'One blemish! 
 Here 's a flaw — Beautiful stone! ' 
 
 " His pallid face was so illumined by the light of 
 these stones, that I compared it in my own mind io 
 those old greenish mirrors we find in provincial inns, 
 which receive the reflection of a light without return- 
 ing it, and give an appearance of apoplexy to the 
 traveller who is bold enough to look into them. 
 
 " ' Well?* said the count, striking Gobseck on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 " The old child quivered; he laid his toys on the 
 desk, sat down, and became once more a usurer, hard, 
 cold, polished as a marble column. 
 How much do you want? ' 
 
 One hundred thousand francs for three years,' 
 replied the count. ' Can we have them? ' 
 
 " ' Possibly,' answered Gobseck, taking from their 
 
 
Gobseck. 51 
 
 mahogany box a pair of scales of inestimable worth 
 for accuracy, — his jewel-case, as it were ! He weighed 
 the stones, valuing, at a glance, Heaven knows how! 
 the weight of the settings. During this time the 
 expression on the money-lender's face wavered between 
 joy and sternness. The countess was lost in a stupor, 
 which I noted carefully; she seemed to be measuring 
 the depth of the precipice down which she was falling. 
 There was still some lingering remorse in the soul of 
 that woman; it needed, perhaps, but a single effort, 
 a hand stretched charitably out, to save her. I would 
 try it. 
 
 " ' Are these diamonds yours, madame? ' I asked, 
 in a clear voice. 
 
 " ' Yes, monsieur, ' she replied, giving me a haughty 
 glance. 
 
 " 'Make out that redemption-deed, meddler,' said 
 Gobseck to me, pointing to his seat at the desk. 
 
 " ' Madame is no doubt married? ' I continued. 
 
 " She bowed her head quickly. 
 
 " ' I shall not make out the deed! ' I exclaimed. 
 
 " ' Why not? ' said Gobseck. 
 
 " ' Why not? ' I echoed, drawing the old man to the 
 window, and speaking in a low voice. ' Because, this 
 woman being femme couverte, the deed of redemption 
 would be null, and you could not claim ignorance of a 
 fact proved by the deed itself. You would be obliged 
 
52 Gobseck. 
 
 to produce the diamonds deposited in your hands, the 
 weight, value, or cutting of which are described in 
 the deed —   ' 
 
 "Gobseck interrupted rne by a nod, and then turned 
 to the two sinners. 
 
 " ' He is right,' he said. ' The terms are changed — 
 Eighty thousand francs down, and you leave the dia- 
 monds with me, ' adding, in a muffled tone, ' possession 
 is nine-tenths of the law — ' 
 
 " ' But — ' interposed the young man. 
 
 " ' Take it, or leave it,' said Gobseck, giving the 
 casket to the countess. ' I have too many risks to 
 run. ' 
 
 " i Madame,' I whispered in her ear, ' you would do 
 better to throw yourself on your husband's mercy.' 
 
 " The usurer no doubt guessed my words from the 
 movement of my lips, for he cast a severe look at me. 
 The young man's face became livid. The hesitation 
 of the countess was obvious. The count went closely 
 up to her ; and, though he spoke very low, I heard him 
 say: — 
 
 " ' Farewell, my Anastasie, be happy! As for me, 
 my troubles will be over to-morrow. ; 
 
 " 4 Monsieur,' cried the young woman, addressing 
 Gobseck, ' I accept your offer.' 
 
 " ' Well, well! ' replied the old man, ' it takes a 
 good deal to bring you to terms, fair lady.' 
 
Gobseck. 53 
 
 " He drew a check for fifty thousand francs on the 
 Bank of France, and gave it to the countess. 
 
 " 4 And now,' he said, with a smile like that of 
 Voltaire, ' I shall complete the sum with notes for 
 thirty thousand francs, the soundness of which can- 
 not be questioned. They are as good as gold itself. 
 Monsieur has just said to me: My notes will be 
 paid, ' 
 
 " So saying, he took out and handed to the countess 
 the notes of the young man, protested the night before 
 to several of his brother usurers, who had, no doubt, 
 sold them to Gobseck at a low price, as comparatively 
 worthless. The young man uttered a sort of roar, in 
 the midst of which could be heard the words: ' Old 
 scoundrel ! ' 
 
 " Papa Gobseck did not move one muscle of his 
 face, but he took from a box a pair of pistols, and 
 said, coldly : — 
 
 " ' As the insulted party, I fire first.' 
 
 " ; Maxime, you owe monsieur an apology,' cried 
 the trembling countess. 
 
 " ' I did not intend to offend you,' stammered the 
 young man. 
 
 " ' I know that,' replied Gobseck, tranquilly; ' you 
 merely intended not to pay your notes.' 
 
 " The countess rose, bowed, and left the room, 
 apparently horrified. Monsieur de Trailles was forced 
 
54 Grobseck. 
 
 to follow her; but before be did so he turned and 
 said : —   
 
 " ' If either of you betray one word of this, I shall 
 have your blood, or you miue. ' 
 
 " ' Amen! ' replied Gobseck, putting away his pis- 
 tols. ' To risk your blood, you must have some, my 
 lad, and there 's nothing but mud in your veins.' 
 
 " When the outer door was closed and the two car- 
 riages had driven away, Gobseck rose and began to 
 dance about the room, crying out : — 
 
 " ' I have the diamonds! I have the diamonds! the 
 fine diamonds! what diamonds! not dear! Ha! ha! 
 ha! Werbrust and Gigonnet, you thought you 'd catch 
 old papa Gobseck! Ego sum papa ! I 'm the master 
 of all of you! Paid in full! paid in full! What fools 
 they '11 look to-night when I tell 'em the affair over 
 the dominos ! ' 
 
 " This gloomy joy, this ferocity of a savage, excited 
 by the possession of a few white pebbles, made me 
 shudder. I was speechless and stupefied. 
 
 "'Ha! ha! there you are, my boy! We'll dine 
 together. We '11 amuse ourselves at your house, for I 
 haven't any home; and those eating-house fellows, 
 with their gravies and sauces and wines, are fit to 
 poison the devil ! ' 
 
 " The expression of my face seemed to bring him 
 back to his usual cold impassibility. 
 
Gobseck. 55 
 
 it i 
 
 You can't conceive it, can you? ' be said, sitting 
 down by the hearth, and putting a tin sauce-pan full 
 of milk on the hob. 'Will you breakfast with me? 
 There may be enough for two. ' 
 
 " ' Thank you, no,' I replied. ' I never breakfast 
 till twelve o'clock.' 
 
 " At that instant hasty steps were heard in the cor- 
 ridor. Some one stopped before Gobseck's door, and 
 rapped upon it several times, with a sort of fury. 
 The usurer looked through the peep-hole before he 
 opened the door, and admitted a man about thirty- 
 live years of age, who had, no doubt, seemed to him 
 inoffensive, in spite of his evident anger. The new- 
 comer, who was simply dressed, looked like the late 
 Due de Richelieu. It was the count, whom you have 
 often met, and who (if you will permit the remark) 
 has the haughty bearing of the statesmen of your 
 faubourg. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' he said to Gobseck, 'my wife has 
 just left this house. 
 Possibty. ' 
 
 Well, monsieur, don't you understand me?' 
 I have not the honor to know your wife, ' replied 
 the usurer. ' Many persons have called here this 
 morning: women, men, girls who looked like young 
 men, and young men who looked like girls. It would 
 be difficult foi me to — ' 
 
 a i 
 a i 
 
56 Gobseck. 
 
 " ' A truce to jesting, monsieur; I am talking of the 
 woman who has just left this house.' 
 
 " c How am I to know if she is your wife,' said the 
 usurer, ' inasmuch as I have never before had the 
 advantage of seeing you? ' 
 
 " ' You are mistaken, Monsieur Gobseck,' said the 
 count, in a tone of the deepest irony. ' We met one 
 morning in my wife's bedroom. You came for the 
 money of a note signed by her, — a note for which she 
 had not received the value.' 
 
 " ' It is not my affair to know whether she received 
 its value or not,' replied Gobseck, with a malicious 
 glance at the count. ' I had discounted her note for 
 one of my brethren in business. Besides, monsieur,' 
 he added, not excited or hurried in speech, and slowly 
 pouring some coffee into his pan of milk, ' you must 
 permit me to remark, I see no proof that you have any 
 right to make these remonstrances in my house. I 
 came of age in the year sixty-one of the last century. ' 
 
 " ' Monsieur, you have just bought family diamonds 
 which do not belong to my wife.' 
 
 " ' Without considering myself obliged to let you 
 into the secrets of my business, I must tell you, Mon- 
 sieur le comte, that if your diamonds have been taken 
 by Madame la comtesse, you should have notified all 
 jewellers by circular letter not to buy them; otherwise, 
 she may sell them piecemeal.' 
 
Grobseck. 57 
 
 a 
 
 c Monsieur,' cried the count, ' you know my wife.' 
 
 " 'Do I?' 
 
 " ' She is, in legal phrase, femme converted 
 
 44 ' Possibly.' 
 
 44 ' She has no legal right to dispose of those 
 diamonds.' 
 
 " 4 True. ' 
 
 " 4 Well, then, monsieur? ' 
 
 44 4 Well, monsieur, I know your wife; she is femme 
 couvevte, — that is, under your control ; so be it, and 
 she is under other controls as well ; but — I — know 
 nothing of — your diamonds. If Madame la comtesse 
 signs notes of hand, she can, no doubt, do other busi- 
 ness, — buy diamonds, receive diamonds to sell again. 
 That often happens.' 
 
 44 ' Adieu, monsieur,' said the count, pale with 
 anger; ' there are courts of justice.' 
 
 44 'True.' 
 
 44 ' Monsieur here,' continued the count, pointing 
 to me, ' must have witnessed the sale.' 
 
 44 ' Possibly.' 
 
 44 The count started to leave the room. Suddenly, 
 aware of the seriousness of the affair, I interposed 
 between the belligerent parties. 
 
 44 ' Monsieur le comte,' I said, ' you are right, and 
 Monsieur Gobseck is not wrong. You could not sue 
 him without bringing your wife into court, and all the 
 
58 Gob seek. 
 
 odium of this affair would fall on her. I am a bar- 
 rister, but I owe it to myself, persoually, even more 
 than to my official character, to tell you that the dia- 
 monds of which you speak were bought by Monsieur 
 Gobseck in my presence; I think, however, that you 
 would do wrong to contest the validity of that sale, 
 the articles of which are never easy to recognize. In 
 equity, you would be right; legally, you would fail. 
 Monsieur Gobseck is too honest a man to deny that 
 this sale has been made to his profit, especially when 
 my conscience and my duty oblige me to declare it. 
 But suppose you bring a suit, Monsieur le comte, the 
 issue would be very doubtful. I advise you, there- 
 fore, to compromise with Monsieur Gobseck, who 
 might withdraw of his own good-will, but to whom 
 you would, in any case, be obliged to return the 
 purchase-money. Consent to a deed of redemption in 
 six or eight months, a year even, a period of time 
 which will enable you to pay the sum received by 
 Madame la comtesse, — unless, indeed, you would 
 prefer to buy the diamonds back at once, giving 
 security for the payment.' 
 
 " The usurer was sopping his bread in his coffee, 
 and eating his breakfast with quiet indifference ; but 
 when I said the word compromise, he looked at me as 
 if to say : — 
 
 The scamp ! how he profits by my lessons ! ' 
 
 u i n 
 
Gobseck, 59 
 
 " I returned his look with a glance which he under- 
 stood perfectly well. The whole affair was doubtful 
 and base; it was necessary to compromise. Gobseck 
 could not take refuge in denial, because I should tell 
 the truth. The count thanked me with a friendly 
 smile. After a discussion, in which Gobseck's clever- 
 ness and greed would have put to shame the diplomacy 
 of a congress, I drew up a deed, by which the count 
 admitted having received from the money-lender the 
 sum of eighty-five thousand francs, including interest, 
 on repayment of which sum Gobseck bound himself 
 to return the diamonds. 
 
 "'What hopeless extravagance!' cried the hus- 
 band, as he signed the deed. ' How is it possible to 
 bridge that yawning gulf? ' 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' said Gobseck, gravely, ' have you 
 many children ? ' 
 
 " That question made the count quiver as if, like an 
 able surgeon, the usurer had laid his finger suddenly 
 on the seat of a disease. The husband did not 
 answer. 
 
 " * Well! ' resumed Gobseck, understanding that 
 painful silence. ' I know your history by heart. That 
 woman is a demon whom, perhaps, you still love; I 
 am not surprised ; she moved even me. But you may 
 wish to save your fortune, and secure it to one, or, 
 perhaps, two of your children. Well, cast yourself 
 
60 Gobseck. 
 
 into the vortex of society, gamble, appear to lose 
 your fortune, and come and see Gobseck frequently. 
 The world will say that I am a Jew, a usurer, a pirate, 
 and have ruined you. I don't care for that! If any 
 one openly insults me I can shoot him ; no one handles 
 sword or pistol better than your humble servant ; and 
 everybody knows it. But find a friend, if you can, to 
 whom you can make a fictitious sale of your property, 
 — don't you call that, in your legal tongue, making a 
 trust?' he said, turning to me. 
 
 " The count seemed entirely absorbed by his own 
 thoughts, and he left us, saying to Gobseck : — 
 
 " ' I shall bring you the money to-morrow; have 
 the diamonds ready for me ? ' 
 
 " ' He looks to me as stupid as an honest man,' 
 said Gobseck, when the count had gone. 
 
 " ; Say, rather, as stupid as a man who loves 
 passionately.' 
 
 " ' The count is to pay you for drawing that deed,' 
 said -the old man, as I left him. 
 
 " Some days after these scenes, which had initiated 
 me into the terrible mysteries in the lives of fashion- 
 able women, I was surprised to see the count enter my 
 own office early one morning. 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' he said, ' I have come to consult you 
 on very serious interests, assuring you that I feel the 
 most entire confidence in your character, — as I hope 
 
Gobseck. 61 
 
 to prove to yon. Your conduct towards Madame de 
 Grandlieu is above praise.' 
 
 " Thus you see, Madame la vicomtesse," said Der- 
 ville, interrupting bis narrative, " that I have received 
 from you a thousandfold the value of a very simple 
 action. I bowed respectfully, and told him I had 
 done no more than the duty of an honest man. 
 
 " ' Well, monsieur,' said the count, ' I have obtained 
 much information about the singular personage to 
 whom you owe your practice. From all I hear I judge 
 that Gobseck belongs to the school of cynical philos- 
 ophers. What do you think of his honesty? ' 
 
 " ' Monsieur le comte,' I replied, ' Gobseck is my 
 benefactor — at fifteen per cent, ' I added, laughing. 
 4 But that little avarice of his does not justify me in 
 drawing a likeness of him for the benefit of strangers.' 
 
 " i Speak out, monsieur; your frankness cannot 
 injure either Gobseck or yourself. I don't expect to 
 find an angel in a money-lender.' 
 
 u 'Papa Gobseck,' I then said, ' is profoundly con- 
 vinced of one principle, which rules his conduct. 
 According to him, money is merchandise which may, 
 in all security of conscience, be sold cheap or dear, 
 according to circumstances. A capitalist is, in his 
 eyes, a man who enters, by the rate of interest which 
 he claims for his money, as partner by anticipation in 
 all enterprises and all lucrative speculations. Apart 
 
62 Gobseck. 
 
 from these financial principles and his philosophical 
 observations on human nature, which lead him to 
 behave like a usurer, I am confidently persuaded that, 
 outside of his own particular business, he is the most 
 upright and the most scrupulous man in Paris. ( There 
 are two men in that man : he is miserly and philo- 
 sophical; great and petty. If I were to die, leaving 
 children, I should make him their guardian. That, 
 monsieur, is what experience has shown me of 
 Gobseck. > I know nothing of his past life. He may 
 have been a pirate ; he may have traversed the whole 
 earth, trafficking in diamonds or men, women or state 
 secrets; but I '11 swear that no human soul was ever 
 better tried or more powerfully tempered. The day 
 on which I took him the sum which paid off a debt I 
 had incurred to him at fifteen per cent interest, I asked 
 him (not without some oratorical precautions) what 
 motive had led him to make me pay such enormous 
 interest, and why, wishing, as he did, to oblige me, 
 his friend, he had not made the benefit complete. 
 " My son," he replied, " I relieved you of all gratitude 
 by giving you the right to think you owed me noth- 
 ing; consequently, we are the best friends in the 
 world." That speech, monsieur, will explain the man 
 to you better than any possible words of mine.' 
 
 " ' My decision is irrevocably made,' said the count. 
 ' Prepare the necessary deeds to transfer my whole 
 
Gobseck. 63 
 
 property to Gobseck. I can rely on none but you, 
 monsieur, to draw up the counter-deed, by which he 
 declares that this sale is fictitious, and that he binds 
 himself to place my fortune, administered as he knows 
 how to administer it, in the hands of my eldest son 
 when the lad attains his majority. Now, monsieur, I 
 am compelled to make a statement to you. I dare not 
 keep that deed in my own house. The attachment of 
 my son to his mother makes me fear to tell him of 
 that counter-deed. May I ask you to be its deposi- 
 tary? In case of his death, Gobseck is to make you 
 legatee of m} T property. All is thus provided for.' 
 
 " The count was silent for a few moments, and 
 seemed much agitated. 
 
 " ' Pardon me, monsieur,' he went on, l I suffer 
 terribly; my health causes me the greatest anxiety. 
 Recent troubles have shaken my vital powers cruelly, 
 and necessitate the great step I am now taking. ' 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' I replied, l allow me, in the first place, 
 to thank you for the confidence you have in me. But 
 I must justify it by pointing out to you that by this 
 action you disinherit, utterly, your — other children. 
 They bear your name. Were they only the children 
 of a woman once loved, now fallen, they have a right 
 to some means, at least, of existence. I declare to 
 you that I cannot accept the duty with which you 
 honor me, unless their future is secured.' 
 
64 Gobseclc. 
 
 " These words made the count tremble violently. 
 A few tears came to his eyes, and he pressed my 
 hand. 
 
 "'I did not wholly know you till this moment,' he 
 said ; ' you have just given me both pain and pleasure. 
 We will fix the share of those children in the counter- 
 deed.' 
 
 "I accompanied him to the door of my office, and 
 it seemed to me that I saw his features relax with 
 satisfaction at the sense that he was doing an act of 
 justice. You see, now, Camille, how young women 
 are led into fatal gulfs. Sometimes a mere dance, an 
 air sung to a piano, a day spent in the country, lead 
 to terrible disasters; vanity, pride, trust in a smile, 
 folly, giddiness, — all lead to it. Shame, Remorse, 
 and Misery are three Furies into whose hands all 
 women fall, infallibly, the moment they pass the 
 limits of — " 
 
 " My poor Camille is half -dead with sleep," said the 
 viscountess, interrupting Derville. " Go to bed, my 
 dear; your heart doesn't need such terrifying pictures 
 to keep it pure and virtuous." 
 
 Camille de Grandlieu understood her mother, and 
 left the room. 
 
 " You went a little too far, my dear Monsieur 
 Derville," said the viscountess. " Lawyers are not 
 mothers of families or preachers." 
 
Gobseck. 65 
 
 " But the newspapers tell — " 
 
 "My poor Derville! " said Madame de Grandlieu, 
 interrupting him, "I dou't know you! Do you sup- 
 pose that my daughter reads the newspapers? Go 
 on," she said, after a momentary pause. 
 
 " Three days later, the deeds were executed by the 
 count, in favor of Gobseck — " 
 
 " You can call him the Comte de Restaud, now that 
 my daughter is not here," said the viscountess. 
 
 "So be it," said the lawyer. " Well, a long time 
 passed after that scene, and I had not received the 
 counter-deed, which was to have been returned to me 
 for safe-keeping. In Paris, barristers are so hurried 
 along by the current of affairs that they cannot give 
 to their clients' interests any greater attention than 
 clients demand. Nevertheless, one day when Gobseck 
 was dining with me, I remembered to ask him if he 
 knew why I had not heard anything more from Mon- 
 sieur de Restaud. 
 
 " ' There 's a very good reason why,' he answered; 
 ' that gentleman is dying. He is one of those tender 
 souls who don't know how to kill grief, and so let 
 grief kill them. Life is a toil, a trade, and people 
 should take the trouble to learn it. When a man 
 knows life, having experienced its pains, his fibre 
 knits, and acquires a certain suppleness which enables 
 him to command his feelings; he makes his nerves 
 
 5 
 
6Q GobseeJc. 
 
 into steel springs which bend without breaking. If 
 his stomach is good, a man can live as long as the 
 cedars of Lebanon, which are famous trees.' 
 
 " ' Will the count die?' 
 
 " ' Possibly. You '11 have a juicy affair in that 
 legacy. ' 
 
 u I looked at my man, and said, in order to sound 
 him, ' Explain to me why the count and I are the only 
 two beings in whom you have taken an interest.' 
 
 " ' Because you and he are the only ones who have 
 trusted in me without reservations,' he replied. 
 
 "Although this answer induced me to suppose that 
 Gobseck would not take advantage of his position in 
 case the counter-deed was lost, I resolved to go and 
 see the count. After parting from the old man, I went 
 to the rue du Helcler, and was shown into a salon 
 where the countess was playing with her children. 
 When she heard my name announced, she rose hastily 
 and came to meet me ; then she sat down without a 
 word, and pointed to an armchair near the fire. She 
 put upon her face that impenetrable mask beneath 
 which women of the world know so well how to hide 
 their passions. Griefs had already faded that face; 
 the exquisite lines, which were always its chief merit, 
 alone remained to tell of her beauty. 
 
 " ' It is essential, madame,' I said, ' that I should 
 see Monsieur le comte.' 
 
GohsecTc. 67 
 
 " ' Then you would be more favored than I am,' 
 she said, interrupting me. i Monsieur de Kestaud 
 will see no one; he will scarcely allow the doctor to 
 visit him, and he rejects all attentions, even mine. 
 Such men are so fanciful! they are like children; they 
 don't know what they want.' 
 
 " ' Perhaps, like children, they know exactly what 
 they want.' 
 
 " The countess colored. I was almost sorry for 
 having made that speech, so worthy of Gobseck. 
 
 " ' But,' I continued, to change the conversation, 
 4 Monsieur de Restaud cannot be always alone, I 
 suppose. ' 
 
 " ' His eldest son is with him,' she said. 
 
 "I looked at her; but this time she did not color; 
 she seemed to have strengthened her resolution not to 
 give way. 
 
 " ' Let me say, madame, that my request is not 
 indiscreet,' I resumed; ' it is founded on important 
 interests — ' I bit my lips as I said the words, feeling, 
 too late, that I had made a false move. The countess 
 instantly took advantage of my heedlessness. 
 
 " ' My interests are not apart from those of my 
 husband,' she said. ' Nothing hinders you from 
 addressing yourself to me.' 
 
 " ' The affair which brings me here concerns Mon- 
 sieur le comte only,' I replied firmly. 
 
68 Gobseck. 
 
 " ' I will have him informed of your wish to see 
 him.' 
 
 " The polite toue and air she assumed, as she said 
 those words, did not deceive me. I saw plainly she 
 would never let me reach her husband. I talked for 
 a time on indifferent matters, in order to observe her; 
 but, like all women who have formed a plan, she could 
 dissimulate with that rare perfection which, in per- 
 sons of your sex, Madame la vicomtesse, is, in the 
 highest degree, treacherous. Dare I say it? I began 
 to apprehend the worst of her, — even crime. This 
 impression came from a glimpse into the future, 
 revealed by her gestures, her glance, her manner, and 
 even by the intonations of her voice. I left her — 
 
 "And now, madame," continued Derville, after a 
 slight pause, " I must give you a narrative of the 
 scenes which ended this affair, adding certain circum- 
 stances which time has revealed to me, and certain 
 details which Gobseck 's perspicacity, or my own, 
 have enabled me to divine — 
 
 "As soon as the Comte de Restaud appeared to 
 plunge into the pleasures of a gay life, and seemed 
 to squander his money, scenes took place between 
 husband and wife the secret of which was never 
 divulged, although the count found reason to judge 
 more unfavorably than ever of his wife's character. 
 He fell ill from the effects of this shock, and took to 
 
Gobseck. 69 
 
 his bed ; it was then that his aversion to the countess 
 and her two younger children showed itself. He for- 
 bade their entrance into his room, and when they 
 attempted to elude this order, their disobedience 
 brought on such dangerous excitement in Monsieur de 
 Restaud that the doctor conjured the countess not to 
 infringe her husband's orders. Madame de Restaud, 
 who by this time had seen the landed estates, the 
 family property, and even the house in which she 
 lived made over, successively, to Gobseck, no doubt 
 understood, in a measure, her husband's real inten- 
 tions. Monsieur de Trailles, then rather hotly pur- 
 sued by creditors, was travelling in England. He 
 alone could have made her fully understand the secret 
 precautions which Gobseck had suggested to the count 
 against her. It is said that she resisted affixing her 
 signature, as our laws require, to the sale of lands; 
 nevertheless, the count obtained it in every instance. 
 She appears to have thought that the count was cap- 
 italizing his fortune, and placing the total in the 
 hands of some notary, or, possibly, in the Bank. 
 According to her ideas, Monsieur de Restaud must 
 possess a deed of some kind to enable her eldest son 
 to recover a part at least of the landed estate, and 
 this deed was probably now in the count's own 
 custody. She therefore determined to establish a 
 close watch upon her husband's room. Outside of 
 
70 Crobseek. 
 
 that room she reigned despotically over the house- 
 hold, which she now subjected to the closest watch- 
 ing. She herself remained all day seated in the 
 salon adjoining her husband's bedroom, where she 
 could hear his every word and even his movements. 
 At night, she had a bed made up in the same room ; 
 but for most of the time she slept little. The 
 doctor was entirely in her interests. Such devo- 
 tion seemed admirable. She knew, with the shrewd- 
 ness natural to treacherous minds, how to explain the 
 repugnance Monsieur de Restaud manifested for her; 
 and she played grief so perfectly that her conduct 
 attained to a sort of celebrity. A few prudes were 
 heard to admit that she redeemed her faults by her 
 present behavior. She herself had constantly before 
 her eyes the poverty that awaited her at the count's 
 death should she lose her presence of mind even for 
 a moment. Consequently, repulsed as she was from 
 the bed of pain on which her husband lay, she drew 
 a magic ring around it. Far from him, but near 
 to him, deprived of her functions, but all powerful, a 
 devoted wife apparently, she sat there, watching for 
 death and fortune, as that insect of the fields, in the 
 depths of the spiral mound he has laboriously thrown 
 up, hearkens to every grain of dust that falls while 
 awaiting his inevitable prey. The severest censors 
 could not deny that the countess was carrying the 
 
G-obseck. 71 
 
 sentiment of motherhood to an extreme. The death 
 of her father had been, people said, a lesson to her. 
 Adoring her children, she had given them the best 
 and most brilliant of educations; the} T were too young 
 to understand the immoralities of her life; she had 
 been able to attain her end, and make herself adored 
 by them. I admit that I cannot entirely avoid a 
 sentiment of admiration for this woman, and a feel- 
 ing of compassion about which Gobseck never ceased 
 to joke me. At this period, the countess, who had 
 recognized, at last, the baseness of Maxime, was 
 expiating, in tears of blood, the faults of her past 
 life. I am sure of this. However odious were the 
 measures which she took to obtain her husband's for- 
 tune, they were dictated by maternal affection, and 
 the desire to repair the wrong she had done to her 
 younger children. Each time that Ernest left his 
 father's room, she subjected him to close inquiry on 
 all the count had said and done. The boy lent him- 
 self willingly to his mother's wishes, which he attrib- 
 uted to tender feelings, and he often forestalled her 
 questions. My visit was a flash of light to the coun- 
 tess, who believed she saw in ine the agent of the 
 count's vengeance; and she instantly determined not 
 to let me see the dying man. I myself, under a 
 strong presentiment of coining evil, was keenly desir- 
 ous to obtain an interview with Monsieur de Restaud, 
 
72 G-obseck. 
 
 for I was not without anxiety about the fate of the 
 counter-deed ; if it fell into the hands of the countess, 
 she might raise money on it, and the result would be 
 interminable law-suits between herself and Gobseck. 
 I knew the latter well enough to be certain he would 
 never restore the property to the countess, and there 
 were many elements of litigation in the construction 
 of these deeds, the carrying out of which could only 
 be done by me. Anxious to prevent misfortunes be- 
 fore it was too late, I determined to see the countess 
 a second time. 
 
 " I have remarked, madame," said Derville to 
 Madame de Grandlieu, in a confidential tone, " that 
 certain moral phenomena exist to which we do not 
 pay sufficient attention in social life. Being by nature 
 an observer, I have carried into the various affairs of 
 self-interest which come into my practice, and in 
 which passions play so vehement a part, a spirit of 
 involuntary analysis. Now, I have always noticed, 
 with ever-recurring surprise, that the secret ideas and 
 intentions of two adversaries are reciprocally divined. 
 We sometimes find, in two enemies, the same lucidity 
 of reasoning, the same power of intellectual sight as 
 there is between two lovers who can read each other's 
 souls. So, when the countess and I were once more 
 in presence of each other, I suddenly understood the 
 cause of her antipathy to me, although she disguised 
 
Gob seek. 73 
 
 her feelings under the most gracious politeness and 
 amenity. I was the confidant of her husband's affairs, 
 and it was impossible that any woman could avoid 
 hating a man before whom she was forced to blush. 
 On her part, she guessed that, although I was the 
 man to whom her husband gave his confidence, he 
 had not yet given the charge of his property into my 
 hands. Our conversation (which I will spare you) 
 remains in my memory as one of the most perilous 
 struggles in which I have ever been engaged. The 
 countess, gifted by nature w T ith the qualities neces- 
 sary for the exercise of irresistible seduction, became, 
 in turn, supple, haughty, caressing, confidential; she 
 even went so far as to attempt to rouse my curiosity, 
 and even to excite a sentiment of love in order to 
 master me ; but she failed. AVhen I took leave of her 
 I detected, in her eyes, an expression of hate and fury 
 which made me tremble. We parted enemies. She 
 would fain have annihilated me, while I felt pity for 
 her, — a feeling which, to certain natures, is the 
 deepest of all insults. That feeling showed itself 
 plainly in the last remarks I made to her. I left, as 
 I believe, an awful terror in her soul, by assuring her 
 that in whatever way she acted she would inevitably 
 be ruined. 
 
 " ' If I could only see Monsieur le comte,' I said to 
 her, ' the future of your children — ' 
 
74 GobsecTc. 
 
 " ' 1 should be at your mercy,' she said, interrupt- 
 ing me with a gesture of disgust. 
 
 " The questions between us being declared in so 
 frank and positive a manner, I determined to go for- 
 ward in my own way, and save that family from the 
 ruin that awaited it. Resolving to commit even legal 
 irregularities, if they were necessary to attain my 
 ends, I made the following preparations: First, I 
 sued the Comte de Restaud for a sum fictitiously due 
 to Gobseck, and obtained a judgment against him. 
 The countess concealed this proceeding; but it gave 
 me the legal right to affix seals to the count's room 
 on his death, which was, of course, my object. Next, 
 I bribed one of the servants of the house, and made 
 him promise to notify me the moment that his master 
 appeared to be dying, were it even in the middle of 
 the night; I did this, in order that I might reach the 
 house suddenly, frighten the countess by threatening 
 to affix the seals instantly, and so get possession of 
 the counter-deed. I heard, afterwards, that this 
 woman was studying the Code while she listened to 
 the moans of her dying husband. What frightful 
 pictures might be made of the souls of those who sur- 
 round some death-beds, if we could only paint ideas! 
 And money is always the mover of the intrigues there 
 elaborated, the plans there formed, the plots there 
 laid! Let us now turn from these details, irksome, 
 
Gobseck. 75 
 
 indeed, though they may have enabled you to see the 
 wretchedness of this woman, that of her husband, and 
 the secrets of other homes under like circumstances. 
 For the last two months, the Comte de Restaud, 
 resigned to die, lay alone on his bed, in his own 
 chamber. A mortal disease was slowly sapping both 
 mind and body. A victim to those sick fancies the 
 caprices of which appear inexplicable, he objected to 
 the cleaning of his room, refused all personal cares, 
 and even insisted that no one should make his bed. 
 A sort of apathy took possession of him ; the furni- 
 ture was in disorder, dust and cobwebs lay thick on 
 the delicate ornaments. Formerly choice and luxuri- 
 ous in his tastes, he now seemed to take pleasure 
 in the melancholy spectacle of his room, where the 
 chimney-piece and chairs and tables were encum- 
 bered with articles required by illness, — phials, empty 
 or full, and nearly all dirty, soiled linen, broken 
 plates; a warming-pan was before the fire, and a tub, 
 still full of some mineral water. The sentiment of 
 destruction was expressed in every detail of this 
 miserable chaos. Death loomed up in things before 
 it invaded the person. The count had a horror of 
 daylight ; the outer blinds of the windows were closed, 
 and this enforced darkness added to the gloom of the 
 melancholy place. The sick man was shrunken, but 
 his eyes, in which life appeared to have taken refuge, 
 
76 G-obseck. 
 
 were still brilliant. The livid whiteness of his face 
 had something horrible about it, increased by the 
 extraordinary length of his hair, which he refused to 
 have cut, so that it now hung in long, straight meshes 
 beside his face. He bore some resemblance to the 
 fanatical hermits of a desert. Grief had extinguished 
 all other human feelings in this man, who was barely 
 fifty years of age, and whom Paris had once known 
 so brilliant and so happy. One morning, about the 
 beginning of December, in the year 1824, he looked 
 at his son Ernest, who was sitting at the foot of his 
 bed, watching him sadly: — 
 
 " ' Are you in pain, papa? ' asked the lad. 
 
 " ' No,' he said, with a frightful* smile; ' it is all 
 here and there,' — he pointed first to his head, and 
 then pressed his fleshless fingers on his heart, with a 
 gesture that made Ernest weep. 
 
 " ' Why does not Mousieur Derville come to me? ' 
 he said to his valet, whom he thought attached to him, 
 but who was really in the interests of the countess. 
 4 Maurice,' cried the dying man, suddenly sitting up, 
 and seeming to recover his presence of mind, ' I 
 have sent you seven or eight times to my lawyer, 
 within the last fortnight; why does n't he come? Do 
 you think some one is tricking me? Go and get him 
 instantly, and bring him back with you. If you don't 
 execute my orders, I '11 get up myself and go — ' 
 
GobsecJc. 77 
 
 " ' Madame,' said the valet, going into the salon, 
 * you have heard Monsieur le comte ; what am I to 
 do?' 
 
 " [ Pretend to go to that lawyer, and then come 
 back and say to Monsieur le comte that his man of 
 business has gone a hundred miles into the country, 
 to try an important case. You can add that he 
 is expected back the last of the week. Sick men 
 always deceive themselves about their state,' she 
 thought; ; he will wait for the lawyer's return.' 
 
 " The doctor had that morning told her that the 
 count could scarcely survive the day. When, two 
 hours later, the valet brought back this discouraging 
 message, the count was greatly agitated. 
 
 " ' My God! my God! ' he repeated many times. 
 1 I have no hope but in thee ! ' 
 
 " He looked at his son for a long while, and said to 
 him, at last, in a feeble voice: — 
 
 " ' Ernest, my child, you are very young, but you 
 have a good heart, and you /will surely comprehend the 
 sacredness of a promise made to a dying man, — to a 
 father. Do you feel capable of keeping a secret? 
 of burying it in your own breast, so that even your 
 mother shall not suspect it? My son, there is no one 
 but you in this house whom I can trust. You will not 
 betray my confidence ? ' 
 
 " ' No, father.' 
 
78 Gobseek. 
 
 a i 
 
 Then, Ernest, I shall give you, presently, a 
 sealed package which belongs to Monsieur Derville; 
 you must keep it in such a way that no one can know 
 you have it; you must then manage to leave the house, 
 and throw the package into the post-office box at the 
 end of the street. ' 
 
 " ' Yes, father/ 
 
 " * Can I rely upon you? ' 
 
 " 'Yes, father.' 
 
 " ' Then kiss me. You make my death less bitter, 
 dear child. In six or seven years you will understand 
 the importance of this secret, — you will then be 
 rewarded for your faithfulness and dexterity, and you 
 will also know, my son, how much I have loved you. 
 Leave me now, for a moment, and watch that no one 
 enters this room.' 
 
 "Ernest went out, and found his mother standing: 
 in the salon. 
 
 " 4 Ernest,' she said, ' come here.' 
 
 "She sat down, and held her son between her knees, 
 pressing him to her heart, and kissing him. 
 
 " 'Ernest,' she said, ' your father has been talking 
 to you.' 
 
 " ' Yes, mamma.' 
 
 " ' What did he say to you? ' 
 
 '"I cannot repeat it, mamma.' 
 
 " ' Oh! my dear child,' cried the countess, kissing 
 
Gobseck. 79 
 
 him with enthusiasm, ' how much pleasure your dis- 
 cretion gives me. Tell the truth, and always be faith- 
 ful to your word: those are two principles you must 
 never forget.' 
 
 " ' Oh! how noble you are, mamma; you were never 
 false, you! — of that I am sure.' 
 
 " ' Sometimes, Ernest, I have been false. Yes, I 
 have broken my word under circumstances before 
 which even laws must yield. Listen, my Ernest, you 
 are now old enough and sensible enough to see that 
 your father repulses me, and rejects my care; this is 
 not natural, for you know, my son, how I love him.' 
 
 " ' Yes, mamma.' 
 
 " ' My poor child,' continued the countess, weeping, 
 1 this misfortune is the result of treacherous insinua- 
 tions. Wicked people have sought to separate me 
 from your father, in order to satisfy their own 
 cupidity. They want to deprive us of our property 
 and keep it themselves. If your father were well the 
 separation now between us would cease; he would 
 listen to me ; you know how good and loving he is ; 
 he would recognize his error. But, as it is, his mind 
 is weakened, the prejudice he has taken against me 
 has become a fixed idea, a species of mania, — the 
 effect of his disease. The preference your father 
 shows for you is another proof of the derangement of 
 his faculties. You never noticed before his illness, 
 
80 Gobseck. 
 
 that he cared less for Pauline and Georges than for 
 you. It is a mere caprice on his part. The tender- 
 ness he now feels for you may suggest to him to give 
 you orders to execute. If you do not wish to ruin 
 your family, my dear boy, if you would not see your 
 mother begging her bread like a pauper, you must tell 
 her everything — ' 
 
 " ' Ah! ah! ' cried the count, who, having opened 
 the door, appeared to them suddenly, half naked, 
 already as dry and fleshless as a skeleton. That hol- 
 low cry produced a terrible effect upon the countess, 
 who remained motionless, rigid, and half stupefied. 
 Her husband was so gaunt and pale, he looked as if 
 issuing from a grave. 
 
 " ' You have steeped my life in misery, and now 
 you seek to embitter my death, to pervert the mind of 
 my son, and make him a vicious man! ' cried the 
 count, in a hoarse voice. 
 
 " The countess flung herself at the feet of the dying 
 man, whom these last emotions of his waning life 
 made almost hideous, and burst into a torrent of 
 tears. 
 
 " ' Mercy! mercy! ' she cried. 
 
 " ' Have you had pity for me? ' he asked. ' I 
 allowed you to squander your own fortune; would 
 you now squander mine, and ruin my son?' 
 
 Ah ! yes, no pity for me! yes, be inflexible! but 
 
 U i 
 
GobsecJc. 81 
 
 the children ! Condemn your widow to a convent, and 
 I will obey you ; I will expiate my faults by doing all 
 you order ; but let the children prosper ! the children ! 
 the children ! ' 
 
 " ' I have but one child,' replied the count, stretch- 
 ing his fleshless arm, with a despairing gesture, to his 
 son. 
 
 " ' Pardon! I repent! I repent! ' cried the coun- 
 tess, clasping the cold, damp feet of her husband. 
 Sobs hindered her from speaking; only vague, inco- 
 herent words could force their way from her burning 
 throat. 
 
 " ' After what you have just said to Ernest do you 
 dare to talk of repentance? ' said the dying man, free- 
 ing his feet, and throwing over the countess in doing 
 so. ' You shock me,' he added, with an indifference 
 in which there was something awful. ( l You were a 
 bad daughter, you have been a bad wife, you will be 
 a bad mother.' 
 
 " The unhappy woman fainted as she lay there. 
 The dying man returned to his bed, lay down, and 
 lost consciousness soon after. The priests came to 
 administer the sacraments. He died at midnight, the 
 scene of the morning having exhausted his remaining 
 strength. I reached the house, together with papa 
 Gobseck, half an hour later. Thanks to the excite- 
 ment that prevailed, we entered the little salon, next 
 
 6 
 
82 Gobsech. 
 
 to the death-chamber, unnoticed. There we found the 
 three children in tears, between two priests, who were 
 to pass the night with the body. Ernest came to me, 
 and said that his mother wished to be alone, in the 
 count's chamber. 
 
 " ' Do not enter,' he said, with an exquisite expres- 
 sion of tone and gesture. ' She is praying.' 
 
 "Gobseck laughed, that silent laugh peculiar to 
 him. I was far too moved by the feeling that shone 
 on the boy's young face to share the old man's irony. 
 When Ernest saw us going to the door, he ran to it, 
 and called out: — 
 
 " * Mamma ! here are some black men looking for 
 you.' 
 
 " Gobseck lifted the child as if he were a feather, 
 and opened the door. What a sight now met our 
 eyes! Frightful disorder reigned in the room. Di- 
 shevelled by despair, her eyes flashing, the countess 
 stood erect, speechless, in the midst of clothes, papers, 
 articles of all kinds. Horrible confusion in the 
 presence of death ! Hardly had the count expired, 
 before his wife had forced the drawers and the desk. 
 Round her, on the carpet, lay fragments of all kinds, 
 torn papers, portfolios broken open, — all bearing the 
 marks of her daring hands. If, at first, her search had 
 been in vain, something in her attitude and the sort 
 of agitation that possessed her made me think she 
 
Gobseck. 83 
 
 had ended by discovering the mysterious papers. I 
 turned iny eyes to the bed, and, with the instinct that 
 practice in our profession gives me, I divined what 
 had happened. The count's body was rolled to the 
 wall, and lay half across the bed, the nose to the 
 mattress, disdainfully tossed aside, like the envelopes 
 lying on the floor. His inflexible, stiffening limbs 
 gave him an appearance grotesquely horrible. The 
 dying man had no doubt hidden the counter-deed 
 under his pillow, in order to preserve it from danger, 
 while he lived. The countess, baffled in her search, 
 must have divined her husband's thought at last; in 
 fact, it seemed revealed by the convulsive form of his 
 hooked fingers. The pillow was flung upon the ground ; 
 the imprint of the wife's foot was still upon it; beside 
 it, and just before her, where she stood, I saw an 
 envelope with many seals, bearing the count's arms. 
 This I picked hastily up, and read a direction, showing 
 that the contents of that envelope had been intended 
 for me. I knew what they were! I looked fixedly at 
 the countess, with the stern intelligence of a judge who 
 examines a guilty person. A fire on the hearth was 
 licking up the remains of the papers. When she saw 
 us enter, the countess had doubtless flung the deed into 
 it, believing (perhaps from its first formal words) that 
 she was destroying a will that deprived her younger 
 children of their property. A tortured conscience, 
 
84 Gobseek. 
 
 and the involuntary fear inspired by the commission 
 of a crime, had taken from her all power of reflection. 
 Finding herself caught almost in the act, she may 
 have fancied she already felt the branding iron of the 
 galleys. The woman stood there, panting, as she 
 awaited our first words, and looking at us with haggard 
 eyes. 
 
 " ' Ah! madame,' I said, taking from the hearth 
 a fragment which the fire had not wholly consumed, 
 ' you have ruined your younger children! These 
 papers secured their property to them.' 
 
 " Her mouth stirred, as if she were about to have a 
 paralytic fit. 
 
 " ' He ! he ! ' cried Gobseek, whose exclamation had 
 the effect produced by the pushing of a brass candle- 
 stick on a bit of marble. After a slight pause, he 
 said to me, calmly : > — 
 
 " ' Do you want to make Madame la comtesse be- 
 lieve that I am not the sole and legitimate possessor of 
 the property sold to me by Monsieur le comte ? This 
 house belongs to me henceforth.' 
 
 u The blow of a club applied suddenly to my head 
 could not have caused me greater pain ,or more sur- 
 prise. The countess observed the puzzled glance 
 which I cast on the old man. 
 
 " ' Monsieur! monsieur! ' she said to him; but she 
 could find no other words than those. 
 
G-obseck. 85 
 
 " ' Have you a deed of trust? ' I said to Mm. 
 
 "'Possibly.' 
 
 " ' Do you iuteud to take advantage of the crime 
 which madame has committed ? ' 
 
 " ' Precisely.' 
 
 " I left the house, leaving the countess sitting by 
 her husband's bedside, weeping hot tears. Gobseck 
 followed me. When we reached the street I turned 
 away from him ; but he came to me, and gave me one 
 of those piercing looks with which he sounded hearts, 
 and said, with his fluty voice, in its sharpest tone: — 
 
 " ' Do you pretend to judge me? ' 
 
 "After that I saw but little of him. He let the 
 count's house in Paris, and spent the summers on the 
 Restaud estates in the country, where he played 
 the lord, constructed farms, repaired mills, built 
 roads, and planted trees. I met him one day in the 
 Tuileries gardens. 
 
 " ' The countess is living an heroic life,' I said. 
 ' She devotes herself wholly to the education of her 
 children, whom she is bringing up admirably. The 
 eldest is a fine fellow.' 
 Possibly.' 
 
 But,' I said, ' don't you think you ought to help 
 Ernest? ' 
 
 "'Help Ernest!' he cried. 'No! Misfortune is 
 our greatest teacher. Misfortune will teach him the 
 
 
86 Gobseck. 
 
 value of money, of men, and of women, too. Let him 
 navigate the Parisian sea! When he has learned to 
 be a good pilot it will be soon enough to give him a 
 ship.' 
 
 "I left him without further explanation of the 
 meaning of those words. Though Monsieur de 
 Eestaud, to whom his mother has no doubt imparted 
 her own repugnance to me, is far, indeed, from tak- 
 ing me for his counsel, I went, two weeks ago, to 
 Gobseck, and told him of Ernest's love for Made- 
 moiselle Camille, and urged him to make ready to 
 accomplish his trust, inasmuch as the young count 
 has almost reached his majority. I found the old 
 man had been confined for a long time to his bed, 
 suffering from a disease which was about to carry him 
 off. He declined to answer until he was able to get up 
 and attend to business, — unwilling, no doubt, to give 
 up a penny while the breath of life was in him; his 
 delay could have no other motive. Finding him very 
 much worse than he thought himself, I stayed with 
 him for some time, and was thus able to observe the 
 progress of a passion which age had converted into a 
 species of mania. In order to have no one in the 
 house he occupied, he had become the sole tenant of 
 it, leaving all the other apartments unoccupied. Noth- 
 ing was changed in the room in which he lived. The 
 furniture, which I had known so well for sixteen years, 
 
Gobseck. 87 
 
 seemed to have been kept under glass, so exactly the 
 same was it. His old and faithful portress, married 
 to an old soldier who kept the lodge while she went 
 up to do her master's work, was still his housekeeper, 
 and was now fulfilling the functions of a nurse. Not- 
 withstanding his weak condition, Gobseck still re- 
 ceived his clients and his revenues; and he had so 
 carefully simplified his business that a few messages 
 sent by the old soldier were sufficient to regulate his 
 external affairs. At the time of the treaty by which 
 France recognized the republic of Hayti, the knowl- 
 edge possessed by Gobseck of the former fortunes of 
 San Domingo and the colonists, the assigns of whom 
 were claiming indemnity, caused him to be appointed 
 member of the commission instituted to determine these 
 rights, and adjust the payments due from the Haytian 
 government. Gobseck' s genius led him to establish 
 an agency for discounting the claims of the colonists 
 and their heirs and assigns under the names of 
 Werbrust and Gigonnet, with whom he shared all 
 profits without advancing any money, his knowledge 
 of these matters constituting his share in the enter- 
 prise. This agency was like a distillery, which threw 
 out the claims of ignorant persons, distrustful per- 
 sons, or those whose rights could be contested. As 
 member of the commission, Gobseck negotiated with 
 the large proprietors, who, either to get their claims 
 
88 Grobseck. 
 
 valued at a high figure, or to have them speedily 
 admitted, offered him gifts in proportion to the sums 
 involved. 
 
 These presents constituted a sort of discount 
 on the sums he could not lay hands on himself; 
 moreover, this agency gave him, at a low price, the 
 claims of petty owners, or timid owners, who pre- 
 ferred an immediate payment, small as the sum might 
 be, to the chance of uncertain payments from the 
 republic. Gobseck was therefore the insatiable boa- 
 constrictor of this great affair. Every morning he 
 received his tribute, and looked it over as the minister 
 of a pacha might have clone before deciding to sign a 
 pardon. Gobseck took all things, — from the game- 
 bag of some poor devil, and the pound of candles of 
 a timorous soul, to the plate of the rich, and the gold 
 snuff-boxes of speculators. No one knew what be- 
 came of these presents made to the old usurer. All 
 things went in to him, nothing came out : — 
 
 " ' On the word of an honest woman,' the portress, 
 an old acquantance of mine, said to me, * I believe he 
 swallows 'em! But that don't make him fat, for he 's 
 as lank as the pendulum of my clock.' 
 
 " Last Monday Gobseck sent the old soldier to 
 fetch me. 
 
 " ' Make haste, Monsieur Derville,' said the man as 
 he entered my office; ' the master is going to give in 
 
Gobseck. 89 
 
 his last account. He's as yellow as a lemon; and 
 he 's very impatient to see you. Death has got him; 
 the last rattle growls in his throat. ' 
 
 " When I entered the chamber of the dying man, I 
 found him on his knees before the fireplace, where, 
 though there was no fire, an enormous heap of ashes 
 lay. Gobseck had crawled to it from his bed, but 
 strength to return had failed him, also the voice with 
 which to call for assistance. 
 
 " ' My old friend,' I said, lifting him, and helping 
 him to regain his bed, ' you will take cold ; why don't 
 you have a fire? ' 
 
 " ' I 'm not cold,' he answered. * No fire! no fire! 
 
 — I'm going I don't know where, boy,' he went on, 
 
 giving me his last blank, chilling look; ' but it is 
 
 away from here! I've got the carphology ,' using a 
 
 J 
 
 term which made 7 me see how clear and precise his 
 intellect still was. ' I thought my room was full of 
 living gold, and I got up to get some. To whom will 
 mine go? I won't let the government get it. I've 
 made a will; find it, Grotius. The belle Hollandaise 
 had a daughter that I saw somewhere; I don't know 
 where — in the rue Vivienne, one evening. I think 
 they call her "La Torpille," — she's pretty; find her, 
 Grotius. You are the executor of my will; take what 
 you want; eat it; there 's pates de foie gras, bags of 
 coffee, sugar, gold spoons. Give the Odiot service to 
 
90 Gobseck. 
 
 your wife. But who's to have the diamonds? Do 
 you care for them, boy? There 's tobacco; sell it in 
 Hamburg; it will bring half as much again. I've got 
 everything ! and I must leave it all ! Come, come, 
 papa Gobseck,' he said to himself, ' no weakness! be 
 yourself. ' 
 
 " He sat up in bed, his face clearly defined against 
 the pillow like a piece of bronze; he stretched his 
 withered arm and bony hand upon the coverlet, which 
 he grasped as if to hold himself from going. [ He 
 looked at his hearth, cold as his own metallic eye ; and 
 he died with his mind clear, presenting to his portress, 
 the old soldier, and me, an image of those old Romans 
 standing behind the Consuls, such as Lethiere has 
 depicted them in his painting of the ' Death of the 
 Sons of Brutus.' 
 
 "'Hasn't he grit, that old Lascar!' said the 
 soldier, in barrack language. 
 
 "I still seemed to hear the fantastic enumeration 
 that the dying man had made of his possessions, and 
 my glance, which had followed his, again rested on 
 that heap of ashes, the immense size of which sud- 
 denly struck me. I took the tongs, and when I thrust 
 them into the mound, they struck upon a hoard of gold 
 and silver, — no doubt the fruit of his last receipts, 
 which his weakness had prevented him from hiding 
 elsewhere. 
 
GobsecJc. 91 
 
 r ' Go for the justice-of-peace,' I said, ' and let the 
 seals be put on at once. ' 
 
 " Moved by Gobseck's last -words, and by some- 
 thing the portress had told me, I took the keys of the 
 other apartments, in order to inspect them. In the 
 first room I entered I found the explanation of words 
 I had supposed delirious. Before my eyes were the 
 effects of an avarice in w r hich nought remained but 
 that illogical instinct of hoarding which we see in 
 provincial misers. J In the room adjoining that where 
 Gobseck lay were mouldy patties, a mass of eatables 
 of all kinds, shell-fish, and other fish, now rotten, the 
 various stenches of which almost asphyxiated me. 
 Maggots and insects swarmed there. These presents, 
 recently made, were lying among boxes of all shapes, 
 chests of tea, bags of coffee. On the fireplace, in a 
 silver soup tureen, were bills of lading of merchan- 
 dise consigned to him at Havre: bales of cotton, hogs- 
 heads of sugar, barrels of rum, coffees, indigos, tobacco, 
 — an absolute bazaar of colonial products! The 
 room was crowded with articles of furniture, silver- 
 ware, lamps, pictures, vases, books, fine engravings, 
 without frames or rolled up, and curiosities of various 
 descriptions. Possibly this enormous mass of prop- 
 erty of all kinds did not come wholly as gifts ; part of 
 it may have been taken in pledge for debts unpaid. 
 I saw jewel-cases stamped with armorial bearings, 
 
92 Gobseck. 
 
 sets of the finest damask, valuable weapons, but all 
 without names. Opening a book, which seemed to me 
 rather out of place, I found in it a number of thousand- 
 franc notes. I resolved, therefore, to examine the 
 most insignificant articles, — to search the floors, the 
 ceilings, the cornices, the walls, and find every frag- 
 ment of that gold so passionately loved by the old 
 Dutchman, who was worthy, indeed, of Rembrandt's 
 pencil. I have never seen, throughout my legal life, 
 such effects of avarice and originality. When I re- 
 turned to his own chamber, I found, on his desk, the 
 reason of this progressive heaping up of riches. 
 Under a paper-weight was a correspondence between 
 Gobseck and the merchants to whom, no doubt, he 
 habitually sold his presents. ) ; Now whether it was 
 that these dealers were the victims of his astuteness, 
 or that Gobseck wanted too high a price for his pro- 
 visions and manufactured articles, it was evident that 
 each negotiation was suspended. He had not sold 
 the comestibles to Chevet because Chevet would only 
 take them at a reduction of thirty per cent. Gobseck 
 haggled for a few extra francs, and, meantime, the 
 goods became damaged. As for the silver, he refused 
 to pay the costs of transportation; neither would he 
 make good the wastage on his coffees. In short, every 
 article had given rise to squabbles which revealed in 
 Gobseck the first symptoms of that childishness, that 
 
Gobseclc. 93 
 
 incomprehensible obstinacy which old men fall into 
 whenever a strong passion survives the vigor of their 
 minds. I said to myself, as he had said : — 
 
 " ' To whom will all this wealth go? ' 
 
 "Thinking over the singular information he had 
 given me about his only heiress, I saw that I should 
 be compelled to ransack every questionable house in 
 Paris, in order to cast this enormous fortune at the 
 feet of a bad woman. But — what is of far more 
 importance to us — let me now tell you, that, accord- 
 ing to deeds drawn up in due form, Comte Ernest de 
 Restaud will, in a few days, come into possession of a 
 fortune which will enable him to marry Mademoiselle 
 Camille, and also to give a sufficient dowry to his 
 mother, and to portion his brother and sister 
 suitably." 
 
 "Well, dear Monsieur Derville, we will think about 
 it," replied Madame de Grandlieu. "Monsieur Ernest 
 ought to be very rich to make a family like ours 
 accept his mother. Remember that my son will one 
 day be Due de Grandlieu, and will unite the fortunes 
 of the two Grandlieu houses. I wish him to have a 
 brother-in-law to his taste." 
 
 "But," said the Comte de Born, "Restaud bears 
 gules, a barre argent, with four inescutcheons or, 
 each charged with a cross sable. It is a very old 
 blazon." 
 
94 Gobseck. 
 
 " True," said the viscountess. "Besides, Camille 
 need never see her mother-in-law, who turned the Res 
 tuta — the motto of that blazon, brother — to a lie." 
 
 " Madame de Beauseant received Madame de 
 Restaud," said the old uncle. 
 
 "Yes, but only at her routs," replied the viscountess. 
 
THE 
 SECRETS OF THE PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN. 
 
THE SECRETS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PRINCESSE DE CADIGNAN. 
 
 TO THEOPHILE GAUTIER. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE LAST WORD OF TWO GREAT COQUETTES. 
 
 After the disasters of the revolution of July, which 
 destroyed so many aristocratic fortunes dependent 
 on the court, Madame la Princesse de Cadignan was 
 clever enough to attribute to political events the total 
 ruin she had caused by her own extravagance. The 
 prince left France with the royal family, and never 
 returned to it, leaving the princess in Paris, protected 
 by the fact of his absence; for their debts, which the 
 sale of all their salable property had not been able to 
 extinguish, could only be recovered through him. The 
 revenues of the entailed estates had been seized. In 
 
 7 
 
98 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 short, the affairs of this great family were in as bad a 
 state as those of the elder branch of the Bourbons. 
 
 This woman, so celebrated under her first name 
 of Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, very wisely decided 
 to live in retirement, and to make herself, if pos- 
 sible, forgotten. Paris was then so carried away by 
 the whirling current of events that the Duchesse de 
 Maufrigneuse, buried in the Princesse de Cadignan, 
 a change of name unknown to most of the new actors 
 brought upon the stage of society by the revolution of 
 July, did really become a stranger in her own city. 
 
 In Paris the title of duke ranks all others, even 
 that of prince; though, in heraldic theory, free of all 
 sophism, titles signify nothing; there is absolute 
 equality among gentlemen. This fine equality was 
 formerly maintained by the House of France itself; 
 and in our day it is so still, at least, nominally ; wit- 
 ness the care with which the kings of France give to 
 their sons the simple title of count. It was in virtue 
 of this system that Francis I. crushed the splendid 
 titles assumed by the pompous Charles the Fifth, by 
 signing his answer: "Frangois, seigneur de Vanves." 
 Louis XI. did better still by marrying his daughter to 
 an untitled gentleman, Pierre de Beaujeu. The feudal 
 system was so thoroughly broken up by Louis XIV. that 
 the title of duke became, during his reign, the supreme 
 honor of the aristocracy, and the most coveted. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 99 
 
 Nevertheless there are two or three families in 
 France in which the principality, richly endowed in 
 former times, takes precedence of the duchy. The 
 house of Cadignan, which possesses the title of Due 
 de Maufrigneuse for its eldest sons, is one of these 
 exceptional families. Like the princes of the house 
 of Rohan in earlier days, the princes of Cadignan had 
 the right to a throne in their own domain ; they could 
 have pages and gentlemen in their service. This 
 explanation is necessary, as much to escape foolish 
 •critics who know nothing, as to record the customs of 
 a world which, we are told, is about to disappear, and 
 which, evidently, so many persons are assisting to 
 push away without knowing what it is. 
 
 The Cadignans bear: or, five lozenges sable ap- 
 pointed, placed fess-wise, with the word Memini for 
 motto, a crown with a cap of maintenance, no sup- 
 porters or mantle. In these days the great crowd 
 of strangers nocking to Paris, and the almost universal 
 ignorance of the science of heraldry, are beginning to 
 bring the title of prince into fashion. There are no 
 real princes but those possessed of principalities, to 
 whom belongs the title of highness. The disdain 
 shown by the French nobility for the title of prince, 
 and the reasons which caused Louis XIV. to oive 
 supremacy to the title of duke, have prevented French- 
 men from claiming the appellation of " highness " for 
 
100 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 the few princes -who exist in France, those of Napoleon 
 excepted. This is why the princes of Cadignan hold 
 an inferior position, nominally, to the princes of the 
 continent. 
 
 The members of the society called the faubourg 
 Saint-Germain protected the princess by a respectful 
 silence due to her name, which is one of those that all 
 men honor, to her misfortunes, which they ceased to 
 discuss, and to her beauty, the only thing she saved 
 of her departed opulence. Society, of which she had 
 once been the ornament, was thankful to her for hav- 
 ing, as it were, taken the veil, and cloistered herself 
 in her own home. This act of good taste was for her, 
 more than for any other woman, an immense sacrifice. 
 Great deeds are always so keenly felt in France that 
 the princess gained, by her retreat, as much as she 
 had lost in public opinion in the days of her splendor. 
 
 She now saw only one of her old friends, the Mar- 
 quise d'Espard, and even to her she never went on 
 festive occasions or to parties. The princess and the 
 mqrquise visited each other in the forenoons, with a 
 certain amount of secrecy. When the princess went 
 to dine with her friend, the marquise closed her doors. 
 Madame d'Espard treated the princess charmingly; 
 she changed her box at the opera, leaving the first tier 
 for a baignoire on the ground-floor, so that Madame 
 de Cadignan could come to the theatre unseen, and 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 10.1 
 
   
 
 depart incognito. Few women would have been .can- 
 able of a delicacy which deprived them pj the pleasur? 
 of bearing in their train a fallen rival, and of publicly 
 being called her benefactress. Thus relieved of the 
 necessity for costly toilets, the princess could enjoy 
 the theatre, whither she went in Madame d'Espard's 
 carriage, which she would never have accepted openly 
 in the daytime. No one has ever known Madame 
 d'Espard's reasons for behaving thus to the Princesse 
 de Cadignan; but her conduct was admirable, and for 
 a long time included a number of little acts which, 
 viewed singly, seem mere trifles, but taken in the 
 mass become gigantic. 
 
 In 1832, three years had thrown a mantle of snow 
 over the follies and adventures of the Duchesse de 
 Maufrigneuse, and had whitened them so thoroughly 
 that it now required a serious effort of memory to 
 recall them. Of the queen once adored by so many 
 courtiers, and whose follies might have given a theme 
 to a variety of novels, there remained a woman still 
 adorably beautiful, thirty-six years of age, but quite 
 justified in calling herself thirty, although she was 
 the mother of Due Georges de Maufrigneuse, a young 
 man of eighteen, handsome as Antinous, poor as Job, 
 who was expected to obtain great successes, and for 
 whom his mother desired, above all things, to find a 
 rich wife. Perhaps this hope was the secret of the 
 
102 Secrets of the Prineesse de Cadignan. 
 
 intimacy she still kept up with the marquise, in whose 
 •sal'oiv T Vhich was oiw of the first in Paris, she might 
 eventually be able to choose among many heiresses for 
 Georges' wife. The princess saw five years between 
 the present moment and the period of her son's mar- 
 riage, — five solitary and desolate years; for, in order 
 to obtain such a marriage for her son, she knew that 
 her own conduct must be marked in the corner with 
 discretion. 
 
 The princess lived in the rue de Miromesnil, in a 
 small house, of which she occupied the ground-floor 
 at a moderate rent. There she made the most of the 
 relics of her past magnificence. The elegance of the 
 great lady was still redolent about her. She was still 
 surrounded by beautiful things which recalled her 
 former existence. On her chimney-piece was a fine 
 miniature portrait of Charles X., by Madame Mirbel, 
 beneath which were engraved the words, "Given by 
 the King;" and, as a pendant, the portrait of 
 Madame, who w-as always her kind friend. On a 
 table lay an album of costliest price, such as none of 
 the bourgeoises who now lord it in our industrial and 
 fault-finding society would have dared to exhibit. 
 This album contained portraits, about thirty in num- 
 ber, of her intimate friends, whom the world, first 
 and last, had given her as lovers. The number was a 
 calumny ; but had rumor said ten, it might have been, 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 103 
 
 as her friend Madame d'Espard remarked, good, 
 sound gossip. The portraits of Maxime de Trailles, 
 de Marsay, Eastignac, the Marquis d'Esgrignon, 
 General Montriveau, the Marquis de Ronquerolles 
 and d'Ajuda-Pinto, Prince Galathionne, the young 
 Dues de Grandlieu and de Rhetore, and the handsome 
 Lucien de Rubempre, had all been treated with the 
 utmost, coquetry of brush and pencil by celebrated 
 artists. As the princess now received only two or 
 three of these personages, she called the book, jok- 
 ingly, the collection of her errors. 
 
 Misfortune had made this woman a good mother. 
 During the fifteen years of the Restoration she had 
 amused herself far too much to think of her son ; but 
 on taking refuge in obscurity, this illustrious egoist 
 bethought her that the maternal sentiment, developed 
 to its extreme, might be an absolution for her past 
 follies in the eyes of sensible persons, who pardon 
 everything to a good mother. She loved her son all 
 the more because she had nothing; else to love. 
 
 CD 
 
 Georges de Maufrigneuse was, moreover, one of those 
 children who flatter the vanities of a mother; and the 
 princess had, accordingly, made all sorts of sacrifices 
 for him. She hired a stable and coach-house, above 
 which he lived in a little entresol with three rooms look- 
 ing on the street, and charmingly furnished ; she had 
 even borne several privations to keep a saddle-horse, 
 
104 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 a cab-horse, and a little groom for his use. For her- 
 self, she had only her own maid, and as cook, a 
 former kitchen-maid. The duke's groom had, there- 
 fore, rather a hard place. Toby, formerly tiger to the 
 late Beaudenord (such was the jesting term applied 
 by the gay world to that ruined gentleman), — Toby, 
 who at twenty-five j^ears of age was still considered 
 only fourteen, was expected to groom the horses, clean 
 the cabriolet, or the tilbury, and the harnesses, accom- 
 pany his master, take care of the apartments, and be 
 in the princess's antechamber to announce a visitor, 
 if, by chance, she happened to receive one. 
 
 When one thinks of what the beautiful Duchesse 
 de Maufrigneuse had been under the Eestoration, — 
 one of the queens of Paris, a dazzling queen, whose 
 luxurious existence equalled that of the richest women 
 of fashion in London, — there was something touching 
 in the sight of her in that humble little abode in the 
 rue de Miromesnil, a few steps away from her splen- 
 did mansion, which no amount of fortune had enabled 
 her to keep, and which the hammer of speculators 
 has since demolished. The woman who thought she 
 was scarcely well served by thirty servants, who pos- 
 sessed the most beautiful reception-rooms in all Paris, 
 and the loveliest little private apartments, and who 
 made them the scene of such delightful fetes, now 
 lived in a small apartment of five rooms, — an ante- 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 105 
 
 chamber, dining-room, salon, one bed-chamber, and a 
 dressing-room, with two women-servants only. 
 
 "Ah! she is devoted to her son," said that clever 
 creature, Madame d'Espard, "and devoted without 
 ostentation; she is happy. Who would ever have 
 believed so frivolous a woman was capable of such 
 persistent resolution! Our good archbishop has, con- 
 sequently, greatly encouraged her; he is most kind to 
 her, and has just induced the old Comtesse de Cinq- 
 Cygne to pay her a visit." 
 
 Let us admit a truth! One must be a queen to 
 know how to abdicate, and to descend with dignity 
 from a lofty position which is never wholly lost. 
 Those only who have an inner consciousness of 
 being nothing in themselves, show regrets in falling, 
 or struggle, murmuring, to return to a past which can 
 never returu, — a fact of which they themselves are 
 well aware. Compelled to do without the choice 
 exotics in the midst of which she had lived, and 
 which set off so charmingly her whole being (for it is 
 impossible not to compare her to a flower), the prin- 
 cess had wisely chosen a ground-floor apartment; there 
 she enjoyed a pretty little garden which belonged to 
 it, — a garden full of shrubs, and an always verdant 
 turf, which brightened her peaceful retreat. She had 
 about twelve thousand francs a year ; but that modest 
 income was partly made up of an annual stipend sent 
 
106 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 her by the old Duchesse de Navarreins, paternal aunt 
 of the young duke, and another stipend given by her 
 mother, the Duchesse d'Uxelles, who was living on 
 her estate in the country, where she economized as old 
 duchesses alone know how to economize ; for Harpagon 
 is a mere novice compared to them. The princess still 
 retained some of her past relations with the exiled 
 royal family ; and it was in her house that the marshal 
 to whom we owe the conquest of Africa had con- 
 ferences, at the time of Madame's attempt in La 
 Vendee, with the principal leaders of legitimist 
 opinion, — so great was the obscurity in which the 
 princess lived, and so little distrust did the govern- 
 ment feel for her in her present distress. 
 
 Beholding the approach of that terrible fortieth 
 year, the bankruptcy of love, beyond which there is 
 so little for a woman as woman, the princess had flung 
 herself into the kingdom of philosophy. She took to 
 reading, she who for sixteen years had felt a cordial 
 horror for serious things. Literature and politics are 
 to-day what piety and devotion once were to her sex, 
 — the last refuge of their feminine pretensions. In 
 her late social circle it was said that Diane was writ- 
 ing a book. Since her transformation from a queen 
 and beauty to a woman of intellect, the princess had 
 contrived to make a reception in her little house a 
 great honor which distinguished the favored person. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 107 
 
 Sheltered by her supposed occupation, she was able 
 to deceive oue of her former adorers, de Marsay, the 
 most influential personage of the political bourgeoisie 
 brought to the fore in July, 1830. She received him 
 sometimes in the evenings, and, occupied his atten- 
 tion while the marshal and a few legitimists were 
 talking, in a low voice, in her bedroom, about the 
 recovery of power, which could be attained only by a 
 general co-operation of ideas, — the one element of 
 success which all conspirators overlook. It was the 
 clever vengeance of a pretty woman, who thus in- 
 veigled the prime minister, and made him act as 
 screen for a conspiracy against his own government. 
 This adventure, worthy of the finest days of the 
 Fronde, was the text of a very witty letter, in which 
 the princess rendered to Madame an account of the 
 negotiations. The Due de Maufrisfneuse went to La 
 Vendee, and was able to return secretly without being 
 compromised, but not without taking part in Madame's 
 perils : the latter, however, sent him home the moment 
 she saw that her cause was lost. Perhaps, had he 
 remained, the eager vigilance of the young man might 
 have foiled that treachery. However great the faults 
 of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse may have seemed in 
 the eyes of the bourgeoisie, the behavior of her son 
 on this occasion certainly effaced them in the eyes of 
 the aristocracy. There was great nobility and gran- 
 
108 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 deur in thus risking her only son, and the heir of an 
 historic name. Some persons are said to intentionally 
 cover the faults of their private life by public ser- 
 vices, and vice versa; but the Princesse de Cadignan 
 made no such calculation. Possibly those who appar- 
 ently so conduct themselves make none. Events count 
 for much in such cases. 
 
 On one of the first fine days in the month of May, 
 1833, the Marquise d'Espard and the princess were 
 turning about — one could hardly call it walking — in 
 the single path which wound round the grass-plat in 
 the garden, about half past two in the afternoon, just 
 as the sun was leaving it. The rays reflected on the 
 walls gave a warm atmosphere to the little space, 
 which was fragrant with flowers, the gift of the 
 marquise. 
 
 u We shall soon lose de Marsay," said the marquise; 
 " and with him will disappear your last hope of for- 
 tune for your son. Ever since you played him that 
 clever trick, he has returned to his affection for you." 
 
 "My son will never capitulate to the younger 
 branch," returned the princess, "if he has to die of 
 hunger, or I have to work with my hands to feed 
 him. Besides, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne has no aversion 
 to him." 
 
 " Children don't bind themselves to their parents' 
 principles," said Madame d'Espard. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 109 
 
 "Don't let us talk about it," said the princess. 
 "If I can't coax over the Marquise de Ciuq-Cygne, I 
 shall marry Georges to the daughter of some iron- 
 founder, as that little d'Esgrignon did." 
 
 " Did you love Victurnien? " asked the marquise. 
 
 " No," replied the princess, gravely, " d'Esgrignon's 
 simplicity was really ouly a sort of provincial silli- 
 ness, which I perceived rather too late — or, if you 
 choose, too soon." 
 
 "And de Marsay?" 
 
 " De Marsay played with me as if I were a doll. 1 
 was so young at the time! We never love men who 
 pretend to teach us ; they rub up all our little vani- 
 ties. It is three years that I have lived in solitude," 
 she resumed, after a pause, "and this tranquillity has 
 nothing painful to me about it. To you alone can I 
 dare to say that I feel I am happy. I was surfeited 
 with adoration, weary of pleasure, emotional on the sur- 
 face of things, but conscious that emotion itself never 
 reached my heart. I have found all the men whom I 
 have known petty, paltry, superficial; none of them 
 ever caused me a surprise; they had no innocence, no 
 grandeur, no delicacy. I wish I could have met with 
 one man able to inspire me with respect." 
 
 "Then are you like me, my dear? " asked the mar- 
 quise; "have you never felt the emotion of love while 
 trying to love ? 
 
 >> 
 
110 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 " Never," replied the princess, laying her hand on 
 the arm of her friend. 
 
 They turned and seated themselves on a rustic 
 bench beneath a jasmine then coming into flower. 
 Each had uttered one of those sayings that are solemn 
 to women who have reached their age. 
 
 "Like you," resumed the princess, "I have re- 
 ceived more love than most women; but through all 
 my many adventures, I have never found happiness. 
 I committed great follies, but they had an object, and 
 that object retreated as fast as I approached it. I 
 feel to-day in my heart, old as it is, an innocence 
 which has never been touched. Yes, under all my 
 experience, lies a first love still intact, —just as I 
 myself, in spite of all my losses and fatigues, feel 
 young and beautiful. We may love and not be happy ; 
 we may be happy and never love; but to love and be 
 happy, to unite those two immense human experiences, 
 is a miracle. That miracle has not taken place for 
 
 me." 
 
 u 
 
 Nor for me," said Madame d'Espard. 
 
 " I own I am pursued in this retreat by a dreadful 
 regret: I have amused myself all through life, but I 
 have never loved." 
 
 " What an incredible secret! " cried the marquise. 
 
 " Ah! my dear," replied the princess, " such secrets 
 we can tell to ourselves, you and I, but nobody in 
 Paris would believe us." 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. Ill 
 
 u 
 
 Arsd," said the marquise, "if we were not both 
 over thirty-six years of age, perhaps we would not 
 tell them to each other." 
 
 "Yes; when women are young they have so many 
 stupid conceits," replied the princess. "We are like 
 those poor young men who play with a toothpick to 
 pretend they have dined." 
 
 "Well, at any rate, here we are!" said Madame 
 d'Esparcl, with coquettish grace, and a charming ges- 
 ture of well-informed innocence; "and, it seems to 
 me, sufficiently alive to think of taking our revenge." 
 
 " When you told me, the other day, that Be'atrix 
 had gone off with Conti, I thought of it all night 
 long," said the princess, after a pause. "I suppose 
 there was happiness in sacrificing her position, her 
 future, and renouncing society forever." 
 
 "She was a little fool," said Madame d'Espard, 
 gravely. "Mademoiselle des Touches was delighted 
 to get rid of Conti. Beatrix never perceived how 
 that surrender, made by a superior woman who never 
 for a moment defended her claims, proved Conti's 
 nothingness." 
 
 " Then you think she will be unhappy? " 
 
 " She is so now," replied Madame d'Esparcl. " Why 
 did she leave her husband? What an acknowledgment 
 of weakness! " 
 
 "Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was 
 
112 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 not influenced by the desire to enjoy a true love in 
 peace?" asked the princess. 
 
 "No; she was simply imitating Madame de Beau- 
 seant and Madame de Langeais, who, be it said, 
 between you and me, would have been, in a less vul- 
 gar period than ours, the La Valliere, the Diane de 
 Poitiers, the Gabrielle cTEs trees of history." 
 
 "Less the king, my dear. Ah! I wish I could 
 evoke the shades of those women, and ask them — " 
 
 "But," said the marquise, interrupting the princess, 
 "why ask the dead ? We know living women who have 
 been happy. I have talked on this very subject a 
 score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she 
 married that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the 
 happiest woman in the world; not an infidelity, not a 
 thought that turns aside from her; they are as happy 
 as they were the first day. These long attachments, 
 like that of your cousin, Madame de Camps, for her 
 Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I don't 
 know, my dear. The world has paid us the extreme 
 compliment of thinking we are two rakes worthy of 
 the court of the regent; whereas we are, in truth, as 
 innocent as a couple of school-girls." 
 
 "I should like that sort of innocence," cried the 
 princess, laughing; " but ours is worse, and it is very 
 humiliating. Well, it is a mortification we offer up 
 in expiation of our fruitless search; yes, my dear, 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 113 
 
 fruitless, for it is n't probable we shall find in our 
 autumn season the fine flower we missed in the spring 
 and summer." 
 
 "That's not the question," resumed the marquise, 
 after a meditative pause. " We are both still beauti- 
 ful enough to inspire love, but we could never convince 
 any one of our innocence and virtue." 
 
 " If it were a lie, how easy to dress it up with com- 
 mentaries, and serve it as some delicious fruit to be 
 eagerly swallowed ! But how is it possible to get a 
 truth believed? Ah! the greatest of men have been 
 mistaken there ! " added the princess, with one of 
 those meaning smiles which the pencil of Leonardo 
 da Vinci alone has rendered. 
 
 " Fools love well, sometimes," returned the marquise. 
 
 "But in this case," said the princess, "fools 
 wouldn't have enough credulity in their nature." 
 
 "You are right," said the marquise. "But what 
 we ous;ht to look for is neither a fool nor even a man 
 of talent. To solve our problem we need a man of 
 genius. Genius alone has the faith of childhood, the 
 religion of love, and willingly allows us to band its 
 eyes. Look atCanalis and the Duchesse de Chaulieu! 
 Though we have both encountered men of genius, they 
 were either too far removed from us or too busy, and 
 we too absorbed, too frivolous." 
 
 " Ah! how I wish I might not leave this world with- 
 
114 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 out knowing the happiness of true love," exclaimed 
 the princess. 
 
 " It is nothing to inspire it," said Madame d'Espard ; 
 "the thing is to feel it. I see many women who are 
 only the pretext for a passion without being both its 
 cause and its effect. " 
 
 " The last love I inspired was a beautiful and sacred 
 thing," said the princess. "It had a future in it. 
 Chance had brought me, for once in a way, the man 
 of genius who is due to us, and yet so difficult to 
 obtain; there are more pretty women than men of 
 genius. But the devil interfered with the affair." 
 
 " Tell me about it, my dear; this is all news to me." 
 
 " I first noticed this beautiful passion about the 
 middle of the winter of 1829. Every Friday, at the 
 opera, I observed a young man, about thirty years of 
 age, in the orchestra stalls, who evidently came there 
 for me. He was always in the same stall, gazing at 
 me with eyes of fire, but, seemingly, saddened by the 
 distance between us, perhaps by the hopelessness of 
 reaching me." 
 
 "Poor fellow! When a man loves he becomes 
 eminently stupid," said the marquise. 
 
 "Between every act he would slip into the cor- 
 ridor," continued the princess, smiling at her friend's 
 epigrammatic remark. " Once or twice, either to see 
 me or to make me see him, he looked through the 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 115 
 
 glass sash of the box exactly opposite to mine. If I 
 received a visit, I was certain to see him in the cor- 
 ridor close to my door, casting a furtive glance upon 
 me. He had apparently learned to know the persons 
 belonging to my circle; and he followed them when he 
 saw them turning in the direction of my box, in order 
 to obtain the benefit of the opening door. I also 
 found my mysterious adorer at the Italian opera-house; 
 there he had a stall directly opposite to my box, where 
 he could gaze at me in naive ecstasy — oh! it was 
 pretty ! On leaving either house I always found 
 him planted in the lobby, motionless; he was el- 
 bowed and jostled, but he never moved. His eyes 
 grew less brilliant if he saw me on the arm of some 
 favorite. But not a word, not a letter, no demonstra- 
 tion. You must acknowledge that was in good 
 taste. Sometimes, on getting home late at night, I 
 found him sitting upon one of the stone posts of 
 the porte-cochere. This lover of mine had very hand- 
 some eyes, a long, thick, fan-shaped beard, with a 
 moustache and side-whiskers; nothing could be seen 
 of his skin but his white cheek-bones, and a noble 
 forehead ; it was truly an antique head. The prince, 
 as you know, defended the Tuileries on the river- 
 side, during the July days. He returned to Saint- 
 Cloud that night, when all was lost, and said to me: 
 ' I came near being killed at four o'clock. I was 
 
116 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 aimed at by one of the insurgents, when a young man, 
 with a long beard, whom I have often seen at the 
 opera, and who was leading the attack, threw up the 
 man's gun, and saved me.' So my adorer was evi- 
 dently a republican! In 1831, after I came to lodge 
 in this house, I found him, one day, leaning with his 
 back against the wall of it; he seemed pleased with 
 my disasters ; possibly he may have thought they drew 
 us nearer together. But after the affair of Saint- 
 Merri I saw him no more; he was killed there. The 
 evening before the funeral of General Lamarque, I 
 had gone out on foot with my son, and my republican 
 accompanied us, sometimes behind, sometimes in front, 
 from the Madeleine to the Passage des Panoramas, 
 where I was going." 
 
 " Is that all ? " asked the marquise. 
 
 "Yes, all," replied the princess. "Except that on 
 the morning Saint-Merri was taken, a gamin came 
 here and insisted on seeiug me. He gave me a letter, 
 written on common paper, signed by my republican." 
 
 " Show it to me," said the marquise. 
 
 "No, my dear. Love was too great and too sacred 
 in the heart of that man to let me violate its secrets. 
 The letter, short and terrible, still stirs my soul when 
 I think of it. That dead man gives me more emo- 
 tions than all the living men I ever coquetted with; 
 he constantly recurs to my mind." 
 
Sec?*ets of the Prineesse de Cadignan. 117 
 
 " What was his name? " asked the marquise. 
 
 "Oh! a very common one : Michel Chrestien." 
 
 "You have done well to tell me," said Madame 
 d'Espard, eagerly. "I have often heard of him. 
 This Michel Chrestien was the intimate friend of a 
 remarkable man you have already expressed a wish to 
 see, — Daniel cV Arthez, who comes to my house some 
 two or three times a year. Chrestien, who was really 
 killed at Saint-Merri, had no lack of friends. I have 
 heard it said that he was one of those born statesmen 
 to whom, like de Marsay, nothing is wanting but 
 opportunity to become all they might be." 
 
 "Then he had better be dead," said the princess, 
 with a melancholv air, under which she concealed her 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Will you come to my house some evening and 
 meet d' Arthez? " said the marquise. " You can talk 
 of your ghost." 
 
 Yes, I will," replied the princess. 
 
 u V, 
 
118 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 II. 
 
 DANIEL D'ARTHEZ. 
 
 A few days after this conversation Blondet and 
 Rastignac, who knew d'Arthez, promised Madame 
 d'Espard that they would bring him to dine with her. 
 This promise might have proved rash had it not been 
 for the name of the princess, a meeting with whom 
 was not a matter of indiffereuce to the great writer. 
 
 Daniel d'Arthez, one of the rare men who, in our 
 day, unite a noble character with great talent, had 
 already obtained, not all the popularity his works 
 deserve, but a respectful esteem to which souls of his 
 own calibre could add nothing. His reputation will 
 certainly increase; but in the eyes of connoisseurs it 
 had already attained its full development. He is one 
 of those authors who, sooner or later, are put in their 
 right place, and never lose it. A poor nobleman, he 
 had understood his epoch well enough to seek per- 
 sonal distinction only. He had struggled long in the 
 Parisian arena, against the wishes of a rich uncle 
 who, by a contradiction which vanity must explain, 
 after leaving his nephew a prey to the utmost penury, 
 bequeathed to the man who had reached celebrity the 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 119 
 
 fortune so pitilessly refused to the unknown writer. 
 This sudden change in his position made no change 
 in Daniel d'Arthez's habits; he continued to work 
 with a simplicity worthy of the antique past, and even 
 assumed new toils by accepting a seat in the Chamber 
 of Deputies, where he took his seat on the Right. 
 
 Since his accession to fame he had sometimes gone 
 into society. One of his old friends, a now-famous 
 physician, Horace Bianchon, persuaded him to make 
 the acquaintance of the Baron de Rastignac, under- 
 secretary of State, and a friend of de Marsay, the 
 prime minister. These two political officials acqui- 
 esced, rather nobly, in the strong wish of d'Arthez, 
 Bianchon, and other friends of Michel Chrestien for 
 the removal of the body of that republican to the 
 church of Saint-Merri for the purpose of giving it 
 funeral honors. Gratitude for a service which con- 
 trasted with the administrative rigor displayed at a 
 time when political passions were so violent, had 
 bound, so to speak, d'Arthez to Rastignac. The 
 latter and de Marsay were much too clever not to 
 profit by that circumstance; and thus they won over 
 other friends of Michel Chrestien, who did not share 
 his political opinions, and who now attached them- 
 selves to the new government. One of them, Leon 
 Giraud, appointed in the first instance master of 
 petitions, became eventually a Councillor of State. 
 
120 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 The whole existence of Daniel d'Arthez is conse- 
 crated to work; he sees society only by snatches; it 
 is to him a sort of dream. His house is a convent, 
 where he leads the life of a Benedictine; the same 
 sobriety of regimen, the same regularity of occupa- 
 tion. His friends knew that up to the present time 
 woman had been to him no more than an always 
 dreaded circumstance; he had observed her too much 
 not to fear her; but by dint of studying her he had 
 ceased to understand her, — like, in this, to those deep 
 strategists who are always beaten on unexpected 
 ground, where their scientific axioms are either modi- 
 fied or contradicted. In character he still remains a 
 simple-hearted child, all the while proving himself an 
 observer of the first rank. This contrast, apparently 
 impossible, is explainable to those who know how to 
 measure the depths which separate faculties from feel- 
 ings; the former proceed from the head, the latter 
 from the heart. A man can be a great man and a 
 wicked one, just as he can be a fool and a devoted 
 lover. D'Arthez is one of those privileged beings in 
 whom shrewdness of mind and a broad expanse of the 
 qualities of the brain do not exclude either the strength 
 or the grandeur of sentiments. He is, by rare privi- 
 lege, equally a man of action and a man of thought. 
 His private life is noble and generous. If he care- 
 fully avoided love, it was because he knew himself, 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 121 
 
 and felt a premonition of the empire such a passion 
 would exercise upon him. 
 
 For several years the crushing toil by which he pre- 
 pared the solid ground of his subsequent works, and 
 the chill of poverty, were marvellous preservatives. 
 But when ease with his inherited fortune came to him, 
 he formed a vulgar and most incomprehensible con- 
 nection with a rather handsome woman, belonging to 
 the lower classes, without education or manners, 
 whom he carefully concealed from every eye. Michel 
 Chrestien attributed to men of genius the power of 
 transforming the most massive creatures into sylphs, 
 fools into clever women, peasants into countesses; 
 the more accomplished a woman was, the more 
 she lost her value in their eyes, for, according to 
 Michel, their imagination had the less to do. In his 
 opinion love, a mere matter of the senses to inferior 
 beings, was to great souls the most immense of all 
 moral creations and the most binding. To justify 
 d'Arthez, he instanced the example of Raffaele and 
 the Fornarina. He might have offered himself as an 
 instance for his theory, he who had seen an angel in 
 the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. This strange fancy 
 of d'Arthez might, however, be explained in other 
 ways ; perhaps he had despaired of meeting here below 
 with a woman who answered to that delightful vision 
 which all men of intellect dream of and cherish; per- 
 
122 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 haps bis heart was too sensitive, too delicate, to yield 
 itself to a woman of society ; perhaps he thought best 
 to let nature have her way, and keep his illusions by 
 cultivating his ideal; perhaps he had laid aside love 
 as being incompatible with his work and the regu- 
 larity of a monastic life which love would have wholly 
 upset. 
 
 For several months past d'Arthez had been sub- 
 jected to the jests and satire of Blondet and Rastignac, 
 who reproached him with knowing neither the world 
 nor women. According to them, his authorship was 
 sufficiently advanced, and his works numerous enough, 
 to allow him a few distractions; he had a fine fortune, 
 and here he was living like a student; he enjoyed 
 nothing, — neither his money nor his fame ; he was 
 ignorant of the exquisite enjoyments of the noble and 
 delicate love which well-born and well-bred women 
 could inspire and feel ; he knew nothing of the charm- 
 ing refinements of language, nothing of the proofs of 
 affection incessantly given by soul and intellect, noth- 
 ing of those desires ennobled by manners, nothing of 
 the angelic forms given by refined women to the com- 
 monest things. He might, perhaps, know woman; 
 but he knew nothing of the divinity. Why not take 
 his rightful place in the world, and taste the delights 
 of Parisian society? 
 
 "Why doesn't a man who bears party per bend 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 123 
 
 gules and or, a bezant and crab counterchanged," 
 cried Rastignac, " display that ancient escutcheon of 
 Picardy on the panels of a carriage ? You have thirty 
 thousand francs a year, and the proceeds of your pen ; 
 you have justified your motto: Ars THEsaurusque 
 virtus, that punning device our ancestors were always 
 seeking, and yet you never appear in the Bois de 
 Boulogne! We live in times when virtue ought to 
 show itself.'* 
 
 "If you read your works to that species of stout 
 Laforet, whom you seem to fancy, I would forgive 
 you," said Blondet. "But, my dear fellow, you are 
 living on dry bread, materially speaking; in the 
 matter of intellect you haven't even bread." 
 
 This friendly little warfare had been going on for 
 several months between Daniel and his friends, when 
 Madame d'Espard asked Rastignac and Blondet to 
 induce d'Arthez to come and dine with her, telling 
 them that the Princesse de Cadignan had a great 
 desire to see that celebrated man. Such curiosities 
 are to certain women what magic lanterns are to chil- 
 dren, — a pleasure to the eyes, but rather shallow and 
 full of disappointments. The more sentiments a man 
 of talent excites at a distance, the less he responds to 
 them on nearer view; the more brilliant fancy has 
 pictured him, the duller he will seem in reality. Con- 
 sequently, disenchanted curiosity is often unjust. 
 
124 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 Neither Blondet nor Rastignac could deceive 
 d'Arthez ; but they told him, laughing, that they now 
 offered him a most seductive opportunity to polish up 
 his heart and know the supreme fascinations which 
 love conferred on a Parisian great lady. The prin- 
 cess was evidently in love with him ; he had nothing 
 to fear but everything to gain by accepting the inter- 
 view; it was quite impossible he could descend from 
 the pedestal on which Madame de Cadignan had 
 placed him. Neither Blondet nor Rastignac saw any 
 impropriety in attributing this love to the princess; 
 she whose past had given rise to so many anecdotes 
 could very well stand that lesser calumny. Together 
 they began to relate to d'Arthez the adventures of 
 the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse: her first affair with 
 de Marsay; her second with d'Ajuda, whom she had, 
 they said, distracted from his wife, thus avenging 
 Madame de Beauseant; also her later connection with 
 young d'Esgrignon, who had travelled with her in 
 Italy, and had horribly compromised himself on her 
 account; after that they told him how unhappy she 
 had been with a certain celebrated ambassador, how 
 happy with a Russian general, besides becoming the 
 Egeria of two ministers of Foreign affairs, and vari- 
 ous other anecdotes. D'Arthez replied that he knew 
 a great deal more than they could tell him about her 
 through their poor friend, Michel Chrestien, who 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 125 
 
 adored her secretly for four years, and had well-nigh 
 gone mad about her. 
 
 "I have often accompanied him," said Daniel, "to 
 the opera. He would make me run through the streets 
 as fast as her horses that he might see the princess 
 through the window of her coupe." 
 
 "Well, there you have a topic all ready for you," 
 said Blondet, smiling. " This is the very woman you 
 need ; she '11 initiate you most gracefully into the 
 mysteries of elegance; but take care! she has wasted 
 many fortunes. The beautiful Diane is one of those 
 spendthrifts who don't cost a penny, but for whom a 
 man spends millions. Give yourself up to her, body 
 and soul, if you choose ; but keep your money in your 
 hand, like the old fellow in Girodet's ' Deluge.' " 
 
 From theteuor of these remarks it was to be inferred 
 that the princess had the depth of a precipice, the 
 grace of a queen, the corruption of diplomatists, the 
 mystery of a first initiation, and the dangerous quali- 
 ties of a siren. The two clever men of the world, 
 incapable of foreseeing the denouement of their joke, 
 succeeded in presenting Diane d'Uxelles as a consum- 
 mate specimen of the Parisian woman, the cleverest 
 of coquettes, the most enchanting mistress in the 
 world. Right or wrong, the woman whom they thus 
 treated so lightly was sacred to d' Arthez ; his desire 
 to meet her needed no spur ; he consented to do so at 
 
126 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 the first word, which was all the two friends wanted 
 of him. 
 
 Madame d'Espard went to see the princess as soon 
 as she had received this answer. 
 
 "My dear, do you feel yourself in full beauty and 
 coquetry? " she said. " If so, come and dine with nie 
 a few days hence, aud I '11 serve up d'Arthez. Our 
 man of genius is by nature, it seems, a savage; he 
 fears women, and has never loved ! Make your plans 
 on that. He is all intellect, and so simple that he '11 
 mislead you into feeling no distrust. But his pene- 
 tration, which is wholly retrospective, acts later, and 
 frustrates calculation. You may hoodwink him to-day, 
 but to-morrow nothing can dupe him." 
 
 "Ah!" cried the princess, " if I were only thirty 
 years old what amusement I might have with him! 
 The one enjoyment I have lacked up to the present 
 day is a man of intellect to fool. I have had only 
 partners, never adversaries. Love was a mere game 
 instead of being a battle." 
 
 "Dear princess, admit that I am very generous; 
 for, after all, you know! — charity begins at home." 
 
 The two women looked at each other, laughing, and 
 clasped hands in a friendly way. Assuredly they 
 both knew each other's secrets, and this was not the 
 first man nor the first service that one had given to 
 the other; for sincere and lasting friendships between 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 127 
 
 women of the world need to be cemented by a few 
 little crimes. When two friends are able to kill each 
 other reciprocally, and see a poisoned dagger in each 
 other's hand, they present a touching spectacle of 
 harmony, which is never troubled, unless, by chance, 
 one of them is careless enough to drop her weapon. 
 
 So, eight days later, a little dinner such as are 
 given to intimates by verbal invitation only, during 
 which the doors are closed to all other visitors, took 
 place at Madame d'Espard's house. Five persons were 
 invited, — Emile Blondet and Madame de Montcornet, 
 Daniel d'Arthez, Rastignac, and the Princesse de 
 Cadignan. Counting the mistress of the house, there 
 were as many men as women. 
 
 Chance never exerted itself to make wiser prepara- 
 tions than those which opened the way to a meeting 
 between d'Arthez and Madame de Cadisfnan. The 
 princess is still considered one of the chief authorities 
 on dress, which, to women, is the first of arts. On 
 this occasion she wore a gown of blue velvet with 
 flowing white sleeves, and a tulle guimpe, slightly 
 frilled and edged with blue, covering the shoulders, 
 and rising nearly to the throat, as we see in several of 
 Raffaelle's portraits. Her maid had dressed her hair 
 with white heather, adroitly placed among its blond 
 cascades, which were one of the great beauties to 
 which she owed her celebrity. 
 
128 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 Certainly Diane did not look to be more than 
 twenty-five years old. Four years of solitude and 
 repose had restored the freshness of her complexion. 
 Besides, there are moments when the desire to please 
 gives an increase of beauty to women. The will is 
 not without influence on the variations of the face. 
 If violent emotions have the power to yellow the white 
 tones of persons of bilious and melancholy tempera- 
 ment, and to green lymphatic faces, shall we not grant 
 to desire, hope, and joy, the faculty of clearing the 
 skin, giving brilliancy to the eye, and brightening the 
 glow of beauty with a light as jocund as that of a 
 lovely morning? The celebrated fairness of the prin- 
 cess had taken on a ripeness which now made her 
 seem more august. At this moment of her life, im- 
 pressed by her many vicissitudes and by serious reflec- 
 tions, her noble, dreamy brow harmonized delightfully 
 with the slow, majestic glance of her blue eyes. It 
 was impossible for the ablest physiognomist to 
 imagine calculation or self-will beneath that unspeak- 
 able delicacy of feature. There are faces of women 
 which deceive knowledge, and mislead observation by 
 their calmness and delicacy; it is necessary to examine 
 such faces when passions speak, and that is difficult, 
 or after they have spoken, which is no longer of any 
 use, for then the woman is old and has ceased to 
 dissimulate. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 129 
 
 The princess is one of those impenetrable women; 
 she can make herself what she pleases to be : playful, 
 childlike, distractingly innocent; or reflective, serious, 
 and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came to 
 Madame d'Espard's dinner with the intention of be- 
 ing a gentle, simple woman, to whom life was known 
 only through its deceptions: a woman full of soul, 
 and calumniated, but resigned, — in short, a wounded 
 angel. 
 
 She arrived early, so as to pose on a sofa near the 
 fire beside Madame d'Espard, as she wished to be 
 first seen : that is, in one of those attitudes in which 
 science is concealed beneath an exquisite naturalness; 
 a studied attitude, putting in relief the beautiful ser- 
 pentine outline which, starting from the foot, rises 
 gracefully to the hip, and continues with adorable 
 curves to the shoulder, presenting, in fact, a profile of 
 the whole body. With a subtlety which few women 
 would have dreamed of, Diane, to the great amaze- 
 ment of the marquise, had brought her son with her. 
 After a moment's reflection, Madame d'Espard pressed 
 the princess's hand, with a look of intelligence that 
 seemed to say : — 
 
 "I understand you! By making d'Arthez accept 
 all the difficulties at once you will not have to conquer 
 them later." 
 
 Rastignac brought d'Arthez. The princess made 
 
 9 
 
130 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 none of those compliments to the celebrated author 
 with which vulgar persons overwhelmed him ; but she 
 treated him with a kindness full of graceful respect, 
 which, with her, was the utmost extent of her conces- 
 sions. Her manner was doubtless the same with the 
 Kiug of France and the royal princes. She seemed 
 happy to see this great man, and glad that she had 
 sought him. Persons of taste, like the princess, are 
 especially distinguished for their manner of listening, 
 for an affability without superciliousness, which is to 
 politeness what practice is to virtue. When the cele- 
 brated man spoke, she took an attentive attitude, a 
 thousand times more flattering than the best-seasoned 
 compliments. The mutual presentation was made 
 quietly, without emphasis, and in perfectly good 
 taste, by the marquise. 
 
 At dinner d'Arthez was placed beside the princess, 
 who, far from imitating the eccentricities of diet 
 which many affected women display, ate her dinner 
 with a very good appetite, making it a point of honor 
 to seem a natural woman, without strange ways or 
 fancies. Between two courses she took advantage of 
 the conversation becoming general to say to d'Arthez, 
 in a sort of aside : — 
 
 "The secret of the pleasure I take in finding 
 myself beside you, is the desire I feel to learn 
 something of an unfortunate friend of yours, mon- 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 131 
 
 sieur. He died for another cause than ours; but I 
 was under the greatest obligations to hiin, although 
 unable to acknowledge or thank him for them. I 
 know that you were one of his best friends. Your 
 mutual friendship, pure and unalterable, is a claim 
 upon me. You will not, I am sure, think it extraor- 
 dinary, that I have wished to know all you could tell 
 me of a man so dear to you. Though I am attached 
 to the exiled family, and bound, of course, to hold 
 monarchical opinions, I am not among those who think 
 it is impossible to be both republican and noble in 
 heart. Monarchy and the republic are two forms of 
 government which do not stifle noble sentiments." 
 
 "Michel Chrestien was an angel, madame," replied 
 Daniel, in a voice of emotion. " I don't know among 
 the heroes of antiquity a greater than he. Be careful 
 not to think him one of those narrow-minded repub- 
 licans who would like to restore the Convention and 
 the amenities of the Committee of Public Safety. 
 No, Michel dreamed of the Swiss federation applied 
 to all Europe. Let us own, between ourselves, that 
 after the glorious government of one man only, 
 which, as I think, is particularly suited to our nation, 
 Michel's system would lead to the suppression of war 
 in this old world, and its reconstruction on bases other 
 than those of conquest, which formerly feudalized 
 it. From this point of view the republicans came 
 
132 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 nearest to his idea. That is why he lent them his 
 arm in July, and was killed at Saint-Merri. Though 
 completely apart in opinion, he and I were closely 
 bound together as friends." 
 
 "That is noble praise for both natures," said 
 Madame de Cadignan, timidly. 
 
 " During the last four years of his life," continued 
 Daniel, "he made to me alone a confidence of his 
 love for you, and this confidence knitted closer than 
 ever the already strong ties of our brotherly affection. 
 He alone, madam e, can have loved you as you ought 
 to be loved. Many a time I have been pelted with 
 rain as we accompanied your carriage at the pace of 
 the horses, to keep at a parallel distance, and see you 
 — admire you." 
 
 "Ah! monsieur," said the princess, '• how can I 
 repay such feelings ! " 
 
 "Why is Michel not here!" exclaimed Daniel, in 
 melancholy accents. 
 
 ''Perhaps he would not have loved me long/' said 
 the princess, shaking her head sadly. "Republicans 
 are more absolute in their ideas than we absolutists, 
 whose fault is indulgence. No doubt he imagined me 
 perfect, and society would have cruelly undeceived 
 him. "We are pursued, we women, by as many calum- 
 nies as you authors are compelled to endure in your 
 literary life; but we, alas! cannot defend ourselves 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 133 
 
 either by our works or by our fame. The world will 
 not believe us to be what we are, but what it thinks 
 us to be. It would soon have hidden from his eyes 
 the real but unknown woman that is in me, behind 
 the false portrait of the imaginary woman which the 
 world considers true. He would have come to think 
 me unworthy of the noble feelings he had for me, 
 and incapable of comprehending him." 
 
 Here the princess shook her head, swaying the 
 beautiful blond curls, full of heather, with a touch- 
 ing gesture. This plaintive expression of grievous 
 doubts and hidden sorrows is indescribable. Daniel 
 understood them all; and he looked at the princess 
 with keen emotion. 
 
 "And yet, the night on which I last saw him, after 
 the revolution of July, I was on the point of giving 
 way to the desire I felt to take his hand and press it 
 before all the world, under the peristyle of the opera- 
 house. But the thought came to me that such a proof 
 of gratitude would be misinterpreted; like so many 
 other little things done from noble motives which are 
 called to-day the follies of Madame de Maufrigneuse, 
 — things that I can never explain, for none but my 
 son and God have understood me." 
 
 These words, breathed into the ear of the listener, 
 in tones inaudible to the other guests, and with accents 
 worthy of the cleverest actress, were calculated to 
 
134 Secrets of the Princes se de Cadignan. 
 
 reach the heart; and they did reach that of d'Arthez. 
 There was no question of himself in the matter ; this 
 woman was seeking to rehabilitate herself in favor of 
 the dead. She had been calumniated; and she evi- 
 dently wanted to know if anything had tarnished her 
 in the eyes of him who had loved her; had he died 
 with all his illusions? 
 
 " Michel," replied d'Arthez, "was one of those men 
 who love absolutely, and who, if they choose ill, can 
 suffer without renouncing the woman they have once 
 elected.'* 
 
 "Was I loved thus?" she said, with an air of 
 exalted beatitude. 
 
 " Yes, madame." 
 
 " I made his happiness? " 
 
 "For four years." 
 
 "A woman never hears of such a thing without a 
 sentiment of proud satisfaction," she said, turning her 
 sweet and noble face to d'Arthez with a movement 
 full of modest confusion. 
 
 One of the most skilful manoeuvres of these actresses 
 is to veil their manner when words are too expressive, 
 and speak with their eyes when language is restrained. 
 These clever discords, slipped into the music of their 
 love, be it false or true, produce irresistible attractions. 
 
 "Is it not," she said, lowering her voice and her 
 eyes, after feeling well assured they had produced her 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 135 
 
 effect, — "is it not fulfilling one's destiny to have 
 rendered a great man happy ? " 
 
 "Did he not write that to you? " 
 
 "Yes; but I wanted to be sure, quite sure; for, 
 believe me, monsieur, in putting me so high he was 
 not mistaken." 
 
 Women know how to give a peculiar sacredness to 
 their words; they communicate something vibrant to 
 them, which extends the meaning of their ideas, and 
 gives them depth; though later their fascinated 
 listener may not remember precisely what they said, 
 their end has been completely attained, — which is the 
 object of all eloquence. The princess might at that 
 moment have been wearing the diadem of France, and 
 her brow could not have seemed more imposing than 
 it was beneath that crown of golden hair, braided like 
 a coronet, and adorned with heather. She was simple 
 and calm; nothing betrayed a sense of any necessity 
 to appear so, nor any desire to seem grand or loving. 
 D'Arthez, the solitary toiler, to whom the ways of the 
 world were unknown, whom study had wrapped in its 
 protecting veils, was the dupe of her tones and words. 
 He was under the spell of those exquisite manners; he 
 admired that perfect beauty, ripened by misfortune, 
 placid in retirement; he adored the union of so rare a 
 mind and so noble a soul; and he longed to become, 
 himself, the heir of Michel Chrestien. 
 
136 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 The beginning of this passion was, as in the case 
 of almost all deep thinkers, an idea. Looking at the 
 princess, studying the shape of her head, the arrange- 
 ment of those sweet features, her figure, her hand, so 
 finely modelled, closer than when he accompanied his 
 friend in their wild rush through the streets, he was 
 struck by the surprising phenomenon of the moral 
 second-sight which a man exalted by love invariably 
 finds within him. With what lucidity had Michel 
 Chrestien read into that soul, that heart, illumined by 
 the fires of love ! Thus the princess acquired, in 
 d'Arthez's eyes, another charm; a halo of poesy sur- 
 rounded her. 
 
 As the dinner proceeded, Daniel called to mind the 
 various confidences of his friend, his despair, his 
 hopes, the noble poems of a true sentiment sung to 
 his ear alone, in honor of this woman. It is rare that 
 a man passes without remorse from the position of 
 confidant to that of rival, and d'Arthez was free to do 
 so without dishonor. He had suddenly, in a moment, 
 perceived the enormous differences existing between 
 a well-bred woman, that flower of the great world, and 
 common women, though of the latter he did not know 
 beyond one specimen. He was thus captured on the 
 most accessible and sensitive sides of his soul and of 
 his genius. Impelled by his simplicity, and b}' the 
 impetuosity of his ideas, to lay immediate claim to 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 137 
 
 this woman, he found himself restrained by society, 
 also by the barrier which the manners and, let us say 
 the word, the majesty of the princess placed between 
 them. The conversation, which remained upon the 
 topic of Michel Chrestien until the dessert, was an 
 excellent pretext for both to speak in a low voice: 
 love, sympathy, comprehension! she could pose as a 
 maligned and misunderstood woman; he could slip 
 his feet into the shoes of the dead republican. Per- 
 haps his candid mind detected itself in regretting his 
 dead friend less. The princess, at the moment when 
 the dessert appeared upon the table, and the guests 
 were separated by a brilliant hedge of fruits and sweet- 
 meats, thought best to put an end to this flow of con- 
 fidences by a charming little speech, in which she 
 delicately expressed the idea that Daniel and Michel 
 were twin souls. 
 
 After this d'Arthez threw himself into the general 
 conversation with the gayety of a child, and a self- 
 conceited air that was worthy of a schoolboy. When 
 they left the dining-room, the princess took d'Arthez 's 
 arm, in the simplest manner, to return to Madame 
 d'Espard's little salon. As they crossed the grand 
 salon she walked slowly, and when sufficiently sep- 
 arated from the marquise, who was on Blondet's arm, 
 she stopped. 
 
 "I do not wish to be inaccessible to the friend of 
 
138 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 that poor man," she said to d'Arthez; "and though I 
 have made it a rule to receive no visitors, you will 
 always be welcome in my house. Do not think this a 
 favor. A favor is only for strangers, and to my mind 
 you and I seem old friends; I see in you the brother 
 of Michel." 
 
 D'Arthez could only press her arm, unable to make 
 other reply. 
 
 After coffee was served, Diane de Cadignan wrapped 
 herself, with coquettish motions, in a large shawl, and 
 rose. Blondet and Rastignac were too much men of 
 the world, and too politic to make the least remon- 
 strance, or try to detain her; but Madame d'Espard 
 compelled her friend to sit down again, whispering in 
 her ear : — 
 
 "Wait till the servants have had their dinner; the 
 carriage is not ready yet" 
 
 So saying, the marquise made a sign to the foot- 
 man, who was taking away the coffee-tray. Madame 
 de Montcornet perceived that the princess and Madame 
 d'Espard had a word to say to each other, and she 
 drew around her d'Arthez, Rastignac, and Blondet, 
 amusing them with one of those clever paradoxi- 
 cal attacks which Parisian women understand so 
 thoroughly. 
 
 " Well," said the marquise to Diane, " what do you 
 think of him ? " 
 
Secrets of the Prineesse de Cadignan. 139 
 
 " He is an adorable child, just out of swaddling- 
 clothes ! This time, like all other times, it will ouly 
 be a triumph without a struggle." 
 
 " Well, it is disappointing," said Madame d'Espard. 
 " But we might evade it." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " Let me be your rival." 
 
 " Just as you please," replied the princess. " I 've 
 decided on my course. Genius is a condition of the 
 brain; I don't know what the heart gets out of it; 
 we'll talk about that later." 
 
 Hearing the last few words, which were wholly in- 
 comprehensible to her, Madame d'Espard returned to 
 the general conversation, showing neither offence at 
 that indifferent "As you please," nor curiosity as to 
 the outcome of the interview. The princess stayed 
 an hour longer, seated on the sofa near the fire, in the 
 careless, nonchalant attitude of Guerin's Dido, listen- 
 ins: with the attention of an absorbed mind, and look- 
 ing at Daniel now and then, without disguising her 
 admiration, which never went, however, beyond due 
 limits. She slipped away when the carriage was 
 announced, with a pressure of the hand to the mar- 
 quise, and an inclination of the head to Madame de 
 Montcornet. 
 
 The evening concluded without any allusion to the 
 princess. The other guests profited by the sort of 
 
140 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 exaltation -which d'Arthez had reached, for he put 
 forth the treasures of his mind. In Blondet and 
 Rastignac he certainly had two acolytes of the first 
 quality to bring forth the delicacy of his wit and the 
 breadth of his intellect. As for the two women, they 
 had long been counted among the cleverest in society. 
 This evening was like a halt in the oasis of a desert, — 
 a rare enjoyment, and well appreciated by these four 
 persons, habitually victimized to the endless caution 
 entailed by the world of salons and politics. There 
 are beings wiio have the privilege of passing among 
 men like beneficent stars, whose light illumines the 
 mind, while its rays send a glow to the heart. 
 D'Arthez was one of those beings. A writer who 
 rises to his level, accustoms himself to free thought, 
 and forgets that in society all things cannot be said; 
 it is impossible for such a man to observe the restraint 
 of persons who live in the world perpetually; but as 
 his eccentricities of thought bore the mark of origi- 
 nality, no one felt inclined to complain. This zest, 
 this piquancy, rare in mere talent, this youthfulness 
 and simplicity of soul which made d'Arthez so nobly 
 original, gave a delightful charm to this evening. 
 He left the house with Rastignac, who, as they drove 
 home, asked him how he liked the princess. 
 
 "Michel did well to love her," replied d'Arthez; 
 "she is, indeed, an sxtraordinary woman.' 
 
 j> 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 141 
 
 "Very extraordinary," replied Rastignac, dryly. 
 "By the tone of your voice I should judge you were 
 in love with her already. You will be in her house 
 within three days; and I am too old a denizen of 
 Paris not to know what will be the upshot of that. 
 Well, my dear Daniel, I do entreat you not to allow 
 yourself to be drawn into any confusion of interests, 
 so to speak. Love the princess if you feel any love 
 for her in your heart, but keep an eye on your fortune. 
 She has never taken or asked a penny from any man 
 on earth, she is far too much of a d'Uxelles and a 
 Cadignan for that; but, to my knowledge, she has 
 not only spent her own fortune, which was very con- 
 siderable, but she has made others waste millions. 
 How? why? by what means? No one knows; she 
 does n't know herself. I myself saw her swallow up, 
 some thirteen years ago, the entire fortune of a charm- 
 ing young fellow, and that of an old notary, in twenty 
 months." 
 
 "Thirteen years ago!" exclaimed d'Arthez, — 
 
 why, how old is she now?" 
 
 Did n't you see, at dinner," replied Rastignac, 
 laughing, " her son, the Due de Maufrigneuse. That 
 young man is nineteen years old ; nineteen and seven- 
 teen make — " 
 
 "Thirty-six!" cried the amazed author. "I gave 
 her twenty." 
 
 
142 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 u 
 
 She'll accept them," said Rastignac; "but dou't 
 be uneasy, she will always be twenty to you. You 
 are about to enter the most fantastic of worlds. 
 Good-night, here you are at home," said the baron, 
 as they entered the rue de Belief ond, where d'Aithez 
 lived in a pretty little house of his own. "We shall 
 meet at Mademoiselle des Touehes's in the course of 
 the week." 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 143 
 
 III. 
 
 THE PRINCESS GOES TO WORK. 
 
 D'Arthez allowed love to enter his heart after the 
 manner of my Uncle Toby, without making the 
 slightest resistance; he proceeded by adoration with- 
 out criticism, and by exclusive admiration. The prin- 
 cess, that noble creature, one of the most remarkable 
 creations of our monstrous Paris, where all things are 
 possible, good as well as evil, became — whatever 
 vulgarity the course of time may have given to the 
 expression — the angel of his dream. To fully under- 
 stand the sudden transformation of this illustrious 
 author, it is necessary to realize the simplicity that 
 constant work and solitude leave in the heart ; all that 
 love — reduced to a mere need, and now repugnant, 
 beside an ignoble woman — excites of regret and long- 
 ings for diviner sentiments in the higher regions of the 
 soul. D'Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that 
 Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An illumina- 
 tion something like his own had taken place in the 
 beautiful Diane. At last she had met that superior 
 man whom all women desire and seek, if only to make 
 
144 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 a plaything of him, — that power which they consent to 
 obey, if only for the pleasure of subduing it ; at last 
 she had found the grandeurs of the intellect united 
 with the simplicity of a heart all new to love; and 
 she saw, with untold happiness, that these merits were 
 contained in a form that pleased her. She thought 
 d'Arthez handsome, and perhaps he was. Though he 
 had reached the age of gravity (for he was now thirty- 
 eight), he still preserved a flower of youth, due to the 
 sober and ascetic life which he had led. Like all 
 men of sedentary habits, and statesmen, he had ac- 
 quired a certainly reasonable embonpoint. When very 
 young, he bore some resemblance to Bonaparte; and 
 the likeness still continued, as much as a man with 
 black eyes and thick, dark hair could resemble a 
 sovereign with blue eyes and scanty, chestnut hair. 
 But whatever there once was of ardent and noble 
 ambition in the great author's eyes had been some- 
 what quenched by successes. The thoughts with 
 which that brow once teemed had flowered; the lines 
 of the hollow face were filling out. Ease now spread 
 its golden tints where, in youth, poverty had laid the 
 yellow tones of the class of temperament whose forces 
 band together to support a crushing and long-con- 
 tinued struggle. If you observe carefully the noble 
 faces of ancient philosophers, you will alwa} T s find 
 those deviations from the type of a perfect human 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 145 
 
 face which show the characteristic to which each 
 countenance owes its originality, chastened by the 
 habit of meditation, and by the calmness necessary 
 for intellectual labor. The most irregular features, 
 like those of Socrates, for instance, become, after a 
 time, expressive of an almost divine serenity. 
 
 To the noble simplicity which characterized his 
 head, d'Arthez added a naive expression, the natural- 
 ness of a child, and a touching kindliness. He did 
 not have that politeness tinged with insincerity with 
 which, in society, the best-bred persons and the most 
 amiable assume qualities in which they are often 
 lacking, leaving those they have thus duped wounded 
 and distressed. He might, indeed, fail to observe 
 certain rules of social life, owing to his isolated mode 
 of living ; but he never shocked the sensibilities, and 
 therefore this perfume of savagery made the peculiar 
 affability of a man of great talent the more agreeable; 
 such men know how to leave their superiority in their 
 studies, and come down to the social level, lending 
 their backs, like Henri IV., to the children's leap- 
 frog, and their minds to fools. 
 
 If d'Arthez did not brace himself against the spell 
 which the princess had cast about him, neither did 
 she herself argue the matter in her own mind, on 
 returning home. It was settled for her. She loved 
 with all her knowledge and all her ignorance. If she 
 
 10 
 
146 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 questioned herself at all, it was to ask whether she 
 deserved so great a happiness, and what she had done 
 that Heaven should send her such an angel. She 
 wanted to be worthy of that love, to perpetuate it, to 
 make it her own forever, and to gently end her career 
 of frivolity in the paradise she now foresaw. As for 
 coquetting, quibbling, resisting, she never once 
 thought of it. She was thinking of something very 
 different! — of the grandeur of men of genius, and the 
 certainty which her heart divined that they would 
 never subject the woman they chose to ordinary laws. 
 
 Here begins one of those unseen comedies, played 
 in the secret regions of the consciousness between two 
 beings of whom one will be the dupe of the other, 
 though it keeps on this side of wickedness; one of 
 those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe 
 is mere child's play, — dramas that do not enter the 
 scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, 
 and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may 
 be characterized as not vice, only the other side of it. 
 
 The princess began by sending for d'Arthez's 
 books, of which she had never, as yet, read a single 
 word, although she had managed to maintain a twenty 
 minutes' eulogium and discussion of them without a 
 blunder. She now read them all. Then she wanted 
 to compare these books with the best that contem- 
 porary literature had produced. By the time d'Arthez 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 147 
 
 came to see her she was having an indigestion of 
 mind. Expecting this visit, she had daily made a 
 toilet of what may be called the superior order; 
 that is, a toilet which expresses an idea, and makes it 
 accepted by the eye without the owner of the eye 
 knowing why or wherefore. She presented an harmoni- 
 ous combination of shades of gray, a sort of semi- 
 mourning, full of graceful renunciation, — the garments 
 of a woman who holds to life only through a few natu- 
 ral ties, — her child, for instance, — but who is weary 
 of life. Those garments bore witness to an elegant 
 disgust, not reaching, however, as far as suicide ; no, 
 she would live out her days in these earthly galleys. 
 
 She received d'Arthez as a woman who expected 
 him, and as if he had already been to see her a hun- 
 dred times; she did him the honor to treat him like 
 an old acquaintance, and she put him at his ease by 
 pointing to a seat on a sofa, while she finished a note 
 she was then writing. The conversation began in 
 a commonplace manner: the weather, the ministry, 
 de Marsay's illness, the hopes of the legitimists. 
 D'Arthez was an absolutist; the princess could not 
 be ignorant of the opinions of a man who sat in the 
 Chamber among the fifteen or twenty persons who 
 represented the legitimist party ; she found means to 
 tell him how she had fooled de Marsay to the top of 
 his bent; then, by an easy transition to the royal 
 
148 Sec7'ets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 family and to Madame, and the devotion of the Prince 
 de Cadignan to their service, she drew d'Arthez's 
 attention to the prince : — 
 
 " There is this to be said for him: he loved his mas- 
 ters, and was faithful to them. His public character 
 consoles me for the sufferings his private life has 
 inflicted upon me — Have you never remarked," she 
 went on, cleverly leaving the prince aside, " you who 
 observe so much, that men have two natures: one for 
 their homes, their wives, their private lives, — this is 
 their true self; here no mask, no dissimulation; they 
 do not give themselves the trouble to disguise a feel- 
 ing; they are what they are, and it is often horrible! 
 The other man is for others, for the world, for salons; 
 the court, the sovereign, the public often see them 
 grand, and noble, and generous, embroidered with 
 virtues, adorned with fine language, full of admirable 
 qualities. What a horrible jest it is! — and the world 
 is surprised, sometimes, at the caustic smile of certain 
 women, at their air of superiority to their husbands, 
 and their indifference — " 
 
 She let her hand fall along the arm of her chair, 
 without ending her sentence, but the gesture admirably 
 completed the speech. She saw d'Arthez watching 
 her flexible figure, gracefully bending in the depths of 
 her eas}7-chair, noting the folds of her gown, and the 
 pretty little ruffle which sported on her breast, — one 
 
Secrets of the P?'lncesse de Cadignan, 149 
 
 of those audacities of the toilet that are suited only 
 to slender waists, — aud she resumed the thread of her 
 thoughts as if she were speaking to herself: — 
 
 " But I will say no more. You writers have ended 
 by making ridiculous all women who think they are 
 misunderstood, or ill-mated, and who try to make 
 themselves dramatically interesting, — attempts which 
 seem to me, I must say, intolerably vulgar. There 
 are but two things for women in that plight to do, — 
 yield, and all is over; resist, and amuse themselves; 
 in either case they should keep silence. It is true 
 that I neither yielded wholly, nor resisted wholly ; but, 
 perhaps, that was only the more reason why I should 
 be silent. What folly for women to complain! If 
 they have not proved the stronger, they have failed in 
 sense, in tact, in capacity, and they deserve their 
 fate. Are they not queens in France? They can play 
 with you as they like, when they like, and as much 
 as they like." Here she danced her vinaigrette with 
 an airy movement of feminine impertinence and 
 mocking gayety. " I have often heard miserable little 
 specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, 
 wishing they were men; I have always regarded them 
 with pity. If I had to choose, I should still elect to 
 be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one's 
 triumph to force, and to all those powers which you 
 give yourselves by the laws you make! But to see 
 
150 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 you at our feet, saying and doing foolish things, — 
 ah! it is an intoxicating pleasure to feel within our 
 souls that weakness triumphs! But when we triumph, 
 we ought to keep silence, under pain of losing our 
 empire. Beaten, a woman's pride should gag her. 
 The slave's silence alarms the master." 
 
 This chatter was uttered in a voice so softly sarcas- 
 tic, so dainty, and with such coquettish motions of 
 the head, that d'Arthez, to whom this style of woman 
 was totally unknown, sat before her exactly like a 
 partridge charmed by a setter. 
 
 "I entreat you, madame," he said, at last, "to tell 
 me how it was possible that a man could make you 
 suffer? Be assured that where, as you say, other 
 women are common and vulgar, you can only seem 
 distinguished; your manner of saying things would 
 make a cook-book interesting." 
 
 "You go fast in friendship," she said, in a grave 
 voice which made d'Arthez extremely uneasy. 
 
 The conversation changed; the hour was late, and 
 the poor man of genius w r ent away contrite for having 
 seemed curious, and for wounding the sensitive heart 
 of that rare woman who had so strangely suffered. 
 As for her, she had passed her life in amusing herself 
 with men, and was another Don Juan in female attire, 
 with this difference: she would certainly not have 
 invited the Commander to supper, and would have 
 got the better of any statue. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 151 
 
 It is impossible to continue this tale without saying 
 a word about the Prince de Cadignan, better known 
 under the name of the Due de Maufrigneuse; other- 
 wise the spice of the princess's confidences would be 
 lost, and strangers would not understand the Parisian 
 comedy she was about to play for her man of genius. 
 
 The Due de Maufrigneuse, like a true son of the old 
 Prince de Cadignan, is a tall, lean man, of elegant 
 shape, very graceful, a sayer of witty things, colonel 
 by the grace of God, and a good soldier by accident; 
 brave as a Pole, which means without sense or dis- 
 cernment, and hiding the emptiness of his mind under 
 the jargon of good society. After the age of thirty- 
 six he was forced to be as absolutely indifferent to the 
 fair sex as his master Charles X., punished, like that 
 master, for having pleased it too well. For eighteen 
 years the idol of the faubourg Saint-Germain, he had, 
 like other heirs of great families, led a dissipated life, 
 spent solely on pleasure. His father, ruined by the 
 revolution, had somewhat recovered his position on 
 the return of the Bourbons, as governor of a royal 
 domain, with salary and perquisites; but this uncer- 
 tain fortune the old prince spent, as it came, in keep- 
 ing up the traditions of a great seigneur before the 
 revolution; so that when the law of indemnity was 
 passed, the sums he received were all swallowed up 
 in the luxury he displayed in his vast hotel. 
 
152 Secrets of the Prineesse de Cadignan. 
 
 The old prince died some little time before the rev- 
 olution of July, aged eighty-seven. He had ruined 
 his wife, and had long been on bad terms with the 
 Due de Navarreins, who had married his daughter for 
 a first wife, and to whom he very reluctantly rendered 
 his accounts. The Due de Maufrigueuse, early in 
 life, had had relations with the Duchesse d'Uxelles. 
 About the year 1814, when Monsieur de Maufrigneuse 
 was forty-six years of age, the duchess, pitying his 
 poverty, and seeing that he stood very well at court, 
 gave him her daughter Diane, then in her seventeenth 
 year, and possessing, in her own right, some fifty or 
 sixty thousand francs a year, not counting her future 
 expectations. Mademoiselle d'Uxelles thus became 
 a duchess, and, as her mother very well knew, she 
 enjoyed the utmost liberty. The duke, after obtain- 
 ing the unexpected happiness of an heir, left his wife 
 entirely to her own devices, and went off to amuse 
 himself in the various garrisons of France, returning 
 occasionally to Paris, where he made debts which 
 his father paid. He professed the most entire con- 
 jugal indulgence, always giving the duchess a week's 
 warning of his return ; he was adored by his regiment, 
 beloved by the Dauphin, an adroit courtier, somewhat 
 of a gambler, and totally devoid of affectation. Hav- 
 ing succeeded to his father's office as governor of one 
 of the royal domains, he managed to please the two 
 
Secrets of the Prlncesse de Cadignan. 153 
 
 kings, Louis XVIII. and Charles X., which proves he 
 made the most of his nonentity; and even the liberals 
 liked him; but his conduct and his life were covered 
 with the finest varnish; language, noble manners, and 
 deportment were brought by him to a state of per- 
 fection. But, as the old prince said, it was impossible 
 for him to continue the traditions of the Cadignans, 
 who were all well known to have ruined their wives, 
 for the duchess was running through her property on 
 her own account. 
 
 These particulars were so well understood in the 
 court circles and in the faubourg Saint-Germain, that 
 during the last five years of the Restoration they were 
 considered ancient history, and any one who men- 
 tioned them would have been laughed at. Women 
 never spoke of the charming duke without praising 
 him; he was excellent, they said, to his wife; could 
 a man be better? He had left her the entire disposal 
 of her own property, and had always defended her on 
 every occasion. It is true that, whether from pride, 
 kindliness, or chivalry, Monsieur de Maufrigneuse 
 had saved the duchess under various circumstances 
 which might have ruined other women, in spite of 
 Diane's surroundings, and the influence of her mother 
 and that of the Due de Navarreins, her father-in-law, 
 and her husband's aunt. 
 
 For several ensuing days the princess revealed her- 
 
154 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 self to d'Arthez as remarkable for her knowledge of 
 literature. She discussed with perfect fearlessness 
 the most difficult questions, thanks to her daily and 
 nightly reading, pursued with an intrepidity worthy 
 of the highest praise. D'Arthez, amazed, and incap- 
 able of suspecting that Diane d'Uxelles merely 
 repeated at night that which she read in the morning 
 (as some writers do), regarded her as a most superior 
 woman. These conversations, however, led away 
 from Diane's object, and she tried to get back to the 
 region of confidences from which d'Arthez had pru- 
 dently retired after her coquettish rebuff; but it was 
 not as easy as she expected to bring back a man of 
 his nature who had once been startled away. 
 
 However, after a month of literary campaigning 
 and the finest platonic discourses, d'Arthez grew 
 bolder, and arrived every day at three o'clock. He 
 retired at six, and returned at nine, to remain until 
 midnight, or one in the morning, with the regularity 
 of an ardent and impatient lover. The princess was 
 always dressed with more or less studied elegance 
 at the hour when d'Arthez presented himself. This 
 mutual fidelity, the care they each took of their appear- 
 ance, in fact, all about them expressed sentiments 
 that neither dared avow, for the princess discerned 
 very plainly that the great child with whom she had 
 to do shrank from the combat as much as she desired 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 155 
 
 it. Nevertheless d'Arthez put into his mnte declara- 
 tions a respectful awe which was infinitely pleasing 
 to her. Both felt, every day, all the more united 
 because nothing acknowledged or definite checked the 
 course of their ideas, as occurs between lovers when 
 there are formal demands on one side, and sincere or 
 coquettish refusals on the other. 
 
 Lik6 all men younger than their actual age, d'Arthez 
 was a prey to those agitating irresolutions which are 
 caused by the force of desires and the terror of dis- 
 pleasing, — a situation which a young woman does not 
 comprehend when she shares it, but which the princess 
 had too often deliberately produced not to enjoy its 
 pleasures. In fact, Diane enjoyed these delightful 
 juvenilities all the more keenly because she knew that 
 she could put an end to them at any moment. She 
 was like a great artist delighting in the vague, un- 
 decided lines of his sketch, knowing well that in a 
 moment of inspiration he can complete the master- 
 piece still waiting to come to birth. Many a time, 
 seeing d'Arthez on the point of advancing, she enjoyed 
 stopping him short, with an imposing air and man- 
 ner. She drove back the hidden storms of that still 
 young heart, raised them again, and stilled them with 
 a look, holding out her hand to be kissed, or saying 
 some trifling insignificant words in a tender voice. 
 
 These manoeuvres, planned in cold blood, but 
 
156 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 enchantingly executed, carved her image deeper and 
 deeper on the soul of that great writer and thinker 
 whom she revelled in making childlike, confiding, 
 simple, and almost silly beside her. And yet she had 
 moments of repulsion against her own act, moments 
 in which she could not help admiring the grandeur of 
 such simplicity. This game of choicest coquetry 
 attached her, insensibly, to her slave. At last, how- 
 ever, Diane grew impatient with an Epictetus of love; 
 and when she thought she had trained him to the 
 utmost credulity, she set to work to tie a thicker 
 bandage still over his eyes. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 157 
 
 IV, 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF A PRETTY WOMAN. 
 
 One evening Daniel found the princess thoughtful, 
 one elbow resting on a little table, her beautiful blond 
 head bathed in light from the lamp. She was toying 
 with a letter which lay on the table-cloth. When 
 d'Arthez had seen the paper distinctly, she folded it 
 up, and stuck it in her belt. 
 
 " What is the matter? " asked d'Arthez ; " you seem 
 distressed." 
 
 " I have received a letter from Monsieur de 
 Cadignan," she replied. "However great the wrongs 
 he has done me, I cannot help thinking of his exile 
 — without family, without son — from his native land." 
 
 These words, said in a soulful voice, betrayed 
 angelic sensibility. D'Arthez was deeply moved. 
 The curiosity of the lover became, so to speak, a 
 psychological and literary curiosity. He wanted to 
 know the height that woman had attained, and what 
 were the injuries she thus forgave ; he longed to know 
 how these women of the world, taxed with frivolity, 
 cold-heartedness, and egotism, could be such angels. 
 
158 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 Remembering how the princess had already repulsed 
 him when he first tried to read that celestial heart, his 
 voice, and he himself, trembled as he took the trans- 
 parent, slender hand of the beautiful Diane with its 
 curving finger-tips, and said . — 
 
 " Are we now such friends that you will tell me 
 what you have suffered ? " 
 
 u Yes," she said, breathing forth the syllable like 
 the most mellifluous note that Tulou's flute had ever 
 sighed. 
 
 Then she fell into a revery, and her eyes were 
 veiled. Daniel remained in a state of anxious expec- 
 tation, impressed with the solemnity of the occasion. 
 His poetic imagination made him see, as it were, 
 clouds slowly dispersing and disclosing to him the 
 sanctuary where the wounded lamb was kneeling at 
 the divine feet. 
 
 "Well?" he said, in a soft, still voice. 
 
 Diane looked at the tender petitioner; then she 
 lowered her eyes slowly, dropping their lids with a 
 movement of noble modesty. None but a monster 
 would have been capable of imagining hypocrisy in 
 the graceful undulation of the neck with which the 
 princess again lifted her charming head, to look once 
 more into the eager eyes of that great man. 
 
 " Can I? ought I? " she murmured, with a gesture of 
 hesitation, gazing at d'Arthez with a sublime expres- 
 
Secrets of the Prlncesse de Oadignan. 159 
 
 sion of dreamy tenderness. "Men have so little faith 
 in things of this kind ; they think themselves so little 
 bound to be discreet ! " 
 
 "Ah! if you distrust me, why am I here?" cried 
 d'Arthez. 
 
 "Oh, friend! " she said, giving to the exclamation 
 the grace of an involuntary avowal, "when a woman 
 attaches herself for life, think you she calculates ? It 
 is not a question of refusal (how could I refuse you 
 anything?), but the idea of what you may think of 
 me if I speak. I would willingly confide to you the 
 strange position in which I am at my age ; but what 
 would you think of a woman who could reveal the 
 secret wounds of her married life ? Turenne kept his 
 word to robbers; do I not owe to my torturers the 
 honor of a Turenne?" 
 
 " Have you passed your word to say nothing? " 
 
 " Monsieur de Cadignan did not think it necessary 
 to bind me to secrecy — You are asking more than 
 my soul! Tyrant! you want me to bury my honor 
 itself in your breast," she said, casting upon d'Arthez 
 a look, by which she gave more value to her coming 
 confidence than to her personal self. 
 
 "You must think me a very ordinary man, if you 
 fear any evil, no matter what, from me," he said, 
 with ill-concealed bitterness. 
 
 "Forgive me, friend," she replied, taking his hand 
 
160 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 in hers caressingly, and letting her fingers wander 
 gently over it. "I know your worth. You have 
 related to me your whole life ; it is noble, it is beau- 
 tiful, it is sublime, and worthy of your name; per- 
 haps, in return, I owe you mine. But I fear to lower 
 myself in your eyes by relating secrets which are not 
 wholly mine. How can you believe — you, a man of 
 solitude and poesy — the horrors of social life? Ah! 
 you little think when you invent your dramas that 
 they are far surpassed by those that are played in 
 families apparently united. You are wholly ignorant 
 of certain gilded sorrows." 
 
 " I know all! " he cried. 
 
 " No, you know nothing." 
 
 D'Arthez felt like a man lost on the Alps of a 
 dark night, who sees, at the first gleams of dawn, a 
 precipice at his feet. He looked at the princess with 
 a bewildered air, and felt a cold chill running down 
 his back. Diane thought for a moment that her man 
 of genius was a weakling, but a flash from his eyes 
 reassured her. 
 
 "You have become to me almost my judge," she 
 said, with a desperate air. "I must speak now, in 
 virtue of the right that all calumniated beings have 
 to show their innocence. I have been, I am still (if 
 a poor recluse forced by the world to renounce the 
 world is still remembered) accused of such light con- 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 161 
 
 duct, and so many evil things, that it may be allowed 
 me to find in one strong heart a haven from which I 
 cannot be driven. Hitherto I have always considered 
 self-justification an iusult to innocence; and that is 
 why I have disdained to defend myself. Besides, to 
 whom could I appeal? Such cruel things can be 
 confided to none but God or to one who seems to 
 us very near Him — a priest, or another self. 
 Well! I do know this, if my secrets are not as safe 
 there," she said, laying her hand on d'Arthez's heart, 
 " as they are here" (pressing the upper end of her 
 busk beneath her fingers)," then you are not the grand 
 d'Arthez I think you — I shall have been deceived." 
 
 A tear moistened d'Arthez's eyes, and Diane drank 
 it in with a side look, which, however, gave no motion 
 either to the pupils or the lids of her eyes. It was 
 quick and neat, like the action of a cat pouncing on 
 a mouse. 
 
 D'Arthez, for the first time, after sixty days of 
 protocols, ventured to take that warm and perfumed 
 hand, and press it to his lips with a long-drawn kiss, 
 extending from the wrist to the tip of the fingers, 
 which made the princess augur well of literature. 
 She thought to herself that men of genius must know 
 how to love with more perfection than conceited fops, 
 men of the world, diplomatists, and even soldiers, 
 although such beings have nothing else to do. She 
 
 11 
 
162 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 was a connoisseur, and knew very well that the 
 capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere noth- 
 ings. A woman well informed in such matters can 
 read her future in a simple gesture; just as Cuvier 
 could say from the fragment of a bone: This belonged 
 to an animal of such or such dimensions, with or 
 without horns, carnivorous, herbivorous, amphibious, 
 etc., age, so many thousand years. Sure now of 
 finding in d'Arthez as much imagination in love as 
 there was in his written style, she thought it wise to 
 bring him up at once to the highest pitch of passion 
 and belief. 
 
 She withdrew her hand hastily, with a magnificent 
 movement full of varied emotions. If she had said 
 in words: " Stop, or I shall die," she could not have 
 spoken more plainly. She remained for a moment with 
 her eyes in d'Arthez 's eyes, expressing in that one 
 glance happiness, prudery, fear, confidence, languor, a 
 vague longing, and virgin modesty. She was twenty 
 years old! but remember, she had prepared for this 
 hour of comic falsehood by the choicest art of dress ; 
 she was there in her armchair like a flower, ready to 
 blossom at the first kiss of sunshine. True or false, 
 she intoxicated Daniel. 
 
 If it is permissible to risk a personal opinion we 
 must avow that it would be delightful to be thus de- 
 ceived for a good long time. Certainly Talma on the 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Oadignan. 163 
 
 stage was often above and beyond nature, but the 
 Princesse de Cadignan is the greatest true comedian 
 of our day. Nothing was wanting to this woman but 
 an attentive audience. Unfortunately, at epochs per- 
 turbed by political storms, women disappear like water- 
 lilies which need a cloudless sky and balmy zephyrs 
 to spread their bloom to our enraptured eyes. 
 
 The hour had come; Diane was now to entangle 
 that great man in the inextricable meshes of a 
 romance carefully prepared, to which he was fated to 
 listen as the neophyte of early Christian times listened 
 to the epistles of an apostle. 
 
 " My friend," began Diane, " my mother, who still 
 lives at Uxelles, married me in 1814, when I was 
 seventeen years old (you see how old T am now!) to 
 Monsieur de Maufrigneuse, not out of affection for 
 me, but out of regard for him. She discharged her 
 debt to the only man she had ever loved, for the hap- 
 piness she had once received from him. Oh! you 
 need not be astonished at so horrible a conspiracy ; it 
 frequently takes place. Many women are more lovers 
 than mothers, though the majority are more mothers 
 than wives. The two sentiments, love and mother- 
 hood, developed as they are by our manners and cus- 
 toms, often struggle together in the hearts of women; 
 one or other must succumb when they are not of equal 
 strength; when they are, they produce some excep- 
 
164 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 tional women, the glory of our sex. A man of your 
 genius must surely comprehend many things that be- 
 wilder fools but are none the less true; indeed I may 
 go further and call them justifiable through difference 
 of characters, temperaments, attachments, situations. 
 I, for example, at this moment, after twenty years of 
 misfortunes, of deceptions, of calumnies endured, and 
 weary days and hollow pleasures, is it not natural that I 
 should incline to fall at the feet of a man who would love 
 me sincerely and forever? And yet, the world would 
 condemn me. But twenty years of suffering might 
 well excuse a few brief years which may still remain to 
 me of youth given to a sacred and real love. This will 
 not happen. I am not so rash as to sacrifice my hopes 
 of heaven. I have borne the burden and heat of the day, 
 I shall finish my course and win my recompense." 
 
 "Angel!" thought d'Arthez. 
 
 "After all, I have never blamed my mother; she 
 knew little of me. Mothers who lead a life like that 
 of the Duchesse d'Uxelles keep their children at a 
 distance.. I saw and knew nothing of the world until 
 my marriage. You can judge of my innocence! I 
 knew nothing; I was incapable of understanding the 
 causes of my marriage. I had a fine fortune; sixty 
 thousand francs a year in forests, which the Eevolu- 
 tion overlooked (or had not been able to sell) in the 
 Nivernais, with the noble chateau of d'Anzy. Mon- 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 165 
 
 sieur cle Maufrigneuse was steeped in debt. Later I 
 learned what it was to have debts, but then I was too 
 utterly ignorant of life to suspect my position; the 
 money saved out of my fortune went to pacify my 
 husband's creditors. Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was 
 forty-eight years of age when I married him; but 
 those years were like military campaigns, they ought 
 to count for twice what they were. Ah! what a life 
 I led for ten years ! If any one had known the suffer- 
 ings of this poor, calumniated little woman! To 
 be watched by a mother jealous of her daughter! 
 Heavens! You who make dramas, you will never 
 invent anything as direful as that. Ordinarily, 
 according to the little that I know of literature, 
 a drama is a suite of actions, speeches, movements 
 which hurry to a catastrophe; but what I speak of 
 was a catastrophe in action. It was an avalanche 
 fallen in the morning and falling again at night 
 only to fall again the next day. I am cold now as I 
 speak to you of that cavern without an opening, cold, 
 sombre, in which I lived. I, poor little thing that I 
 was! brought up in a convent like a mystic rose, 
 knowing nothing of marriage, developing late, I was 
 happy at first; I enjoyed the goodwill and harmony of 
 our family. The birth of my poor boy, who is all 
 me — you must have been struck by the likeness? 
 my hair, my eyes, the shape of my face, my mouth, 
 
166 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 » 
 
 my smile, my teeth! — well, his birth was a relief to 
 me; my thoughts were diverted by the first joys of 
 maternity from my husband, who gave me no pleasure 
 and did nothing for me that was kind or amiable; 
 those joys were all the keener because I knew no 
 others. It had been so often rung into my ears that 
 a mother should respect herself. Besides, a young 
 girl loves to play the mother. I was so proud of my 
 flower — for Georges was beautiful, a miracle, I 
 thought! I saw and thought of nothing but my son, 
 I lived with my son. I never let his nurse dress or 
 undress him. Such cares, so wearing to mothers who 
 have a regiment of children, were all my pleasure. 
 But after three or four years, as I was not an actual 
 fool, light came to my eyes in spite of the pains 
 taken to blindfold me. Can you see me at that 
 awakening, in 1819? The drama of i The Brothers 
 at enmity * is a rose-water tragedy beside that of a 
 mother and daughter placed as we then were. But I 
 braved them all, my mother, my husband, the world, 
 by public coquetries which society talked of, — and 
 heaven knows how it talked ! You can see, my friend, 
 how the men with whom I was accused of folly were 
 to me the dagger with which to stab my enemies. 
 Thinking only of my vengeance, I did not see or feel 
 the wounds I was inflicting on myself. Innocent as 
 a child, I was thought a wicked woman, the worst of 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 167 
 
 women, and I knew nothing of it! The world is very 
 foolish, very blind, very ignorant; it can penetrate 
 no secrets but those which amuse it and serve its 
 malice: noble things, great things, it puts its hand 
 before its eyes to avoid seeing. But, as I look 
 back, it seems to me that I had an attitude and aspect 
 of indignant innocence, with movements of pride, 
 which a great painter would have recognized. I must 
 have enlivened many a ball with my tempests of anger 
 and disdain. Lost poesy! such sublime poems are 
 only made in the glowing indignation which seizes 
 us at twenty. Later, we are wrathful no longer, we 
 are too weary, vice no longer amazes us, we are 
 cowards, we fear. But then — oh ! I kept a great 
 pace ! For all that I played the silliest personage in 
 the world ; I was charged with crimes by which I never 
 benefited. But I had such pleasure in compromising 
 myself. That was my revenge ! Ah ! I have played 
 many childish tricks ! I went to Italy with a thought- 
 less youth, whom I crushed when he spoke to me of 
 love, but later, when I heard that he was compromised 
 on my account (he had committed a forgery to get 
 money) I rushed to save him. My mother and hus- 
 band kept me almost without means ; but, this time, 
 I went to the king. Louis XVIII. , that man with- 
 out a heart, was touched; he gave me a hundred 
 thousand francs from his privy purse. The Marquis 
 
168 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 d'Esgrignon — you must have seen him in society for 
 he ended by making a rich marriage — was saved from 
 the abyss into which he had plunged for my sake. 
 That adventure, caused by my own folly, led me to 
 reflect. I saw that I myself was the first victim of 
 my vengeance. My mother, who knew I was too 
 proud, too d'Uxelles, to conduct myself really ill, 
 began to see the harm that she had done me and was 
 frightened by it. She was then fifty-two years of 
 age; she left Paris and went to live at Uxelles. 
 There she expiates her wrong-doing by a life of devo- 
 tion and expresses the utmost affection for me. After 
 her departure I was face to face, alone, with Monsieur 
 de Maufrigneuse. Oh! my friend, you men can never 
 know what an old man of gallantry can be. What a 
 home is that of a man accustomed to the adulation of 
 women of the world, when he finds neither incense nor 
 censer in his own house ! dead to all ! and yet, per- 
 haps for that very reason, jealous. I wished — when 
 Monsieur de Maufrigneuse was wholly mine — I 
 wished to be a good wife , but I found myself repulsed 
 with the harshness of a soured spirit by a man who 
 treated me like a child and took pleasure in humil- 
 iating my self-respect at every turn, in crushing me 
 under the scorn of his experience, and in convicting 
 me of total ignorance. He wounded me on all occa- 
 sions. He did everything to make me detest him 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 169 
 
 and to give me the right to betray him; but I was 
 still the dupe of my own hope and of my desire to 
 do right through several years. Shall I tell you the 
 cruel saying that drove me to further follies ? * The 
 Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has gone back to her hus- 
 band, ' said the world. ' Bah! it is always a triumph 
 to bring the dead to life; it is all she can now 
 do,' replied my best friend, a relation, she, at whose 
 house I met you — " 
 
 " Madame d'Espard ! " cried Daniel, with a gesture 
 of horror. 
 
 " Oh ! I have forgiven her. Besides, it was very 
 witty; and I have myself made just as cruel epigrams 
 on other poor women as innocent as myself." 
 
 D'Arthez again kissed the hand of that saintly 
 woman who, having hacked her mother in pieces, and 
 turned the Prince de Cadignan into an Othello, now 
 proceeded to accuse herself in order to appear in the 
 eyes of that innocent great man as immaculate as the 
 silliest or the wisest of women desire to seem at all 
 costs to their lovers. 
 
 " You will readily understand, my friend, that I 
 returned to society for the purpose of excitement and 
 I may say of notoriet} 7 . I felt that I must conquer 
 my independence. I led a life of dissipation. To 
 divert my mind, to forget my real life in fictitious 
 enjoyments I was gay, I shone, I gave fetes, I played 
 
170 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 the princess, and I ran in debt. At home I could 
 forget myself in the sleep of weariness, able to 
 rise the next day gay, and frivolous for the world ; 
 but in that sad struggle to escape my real life I 
 wasted my fortune. The revolution of 1830 came; 
 it came at the very moment when I had met, at the 
 end of that Arabian Nights' life, a pure and sacred 
 love which (I desire to be honest) I had longed to 
 know. Was it not natural in a woman whose heart, 
 repressed by many causes and accidents, was awaken- 
 ing at an age when a woman feels herself cheated if 
 she has never known, like the women she sees about 
 her, a happy love? Ah! why was Michel Chrestien 
 so respectful? Why did he not seek to meet me? 
 There again was another mockery! But what of that? 
 in falling, I have lost everything; I have no illusions 
 left; I had tasted of all things except the one fruit for 
 which I have no longer teeth. Yes, I found myself 
 disenchanted with the world at the very moment when 
 I was forced to leave it. Providential, was it not? 
 like all those strange insensibilities which prepare us 
 for death " (she made a gesture full of pious unction). 
 " All things served me then," she continued; " the dis- 
 asters of the monarchy and its ruin helped me to bury 
 myself. My sou consoles me for much. Maternal 
 love takes the place of all frustrated feelings. The 
 world is surprised at my retirement, but to me it 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 171 
 
 has brought peace. Ah ! if you knew how happy the 
 poor creature before you is in this little place. In 
 sacrificing all to my son I forget to think of joys of 
 which I am and ever must be ignorant. Yes, hope has 
 flown, I now fear everything ; no doubt I should repulse 
 the truest sentiment, the purest and most veritable 
 love, in memory of the deceptions and the miseries of 
 my life. It is all horrible, is it not? and yet, what I 
 have told you is the history of many women." 
 
 The last few words were said in a tone of easy 
 pleasantry which recalled the presence of the woman 
 of the world. D'Arthez was dumbfounded. In his 
 eyes convicts sent to the galleys for murder, or aggra- 
 vated robbery, or for putting a wrong name to checks, 
 were saints compared to the men and women of society. 
 This atrocious elegy, forged in the arsenal of lies, and 
 steeped in the waters of the Parisian Styx, had been 
 poured into his ears with the inimitable accent of 
 truth. The grave author contemplated for a moment 
 that adorable woman lying back in her easy-chair, her 
 two hands pendant from its arms like dewdrops from 
 a rose-leaf, overcome by her own revelation, living 
 over again the sorrows of her life as she told them — 
 in short an angel of melancholy. 
 
 " And judge," she cried, suddenly lifting herself 
 with a spring and- raising her hand, while lightning 
 flashed from eyes where twenty chaste years shone — 
 
172 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan, 
 
 a 
 
 judge of the impression the love of a man like Michel 
 must have made upon me. But by some irony of 
 fate — or was it the hand of God? — well, he died; 
 died in saving the life of, whom do you suppose? 
 of Monsieur de Cadignan. Are you now surprised to 
 find me thoughtful ? " 
 
 This was the last drop; poor d'Arthez could bear 
 no more. He fell upon his knees, and laid his head 
 on Diane's hand, weeping soft tears such as the angels 
 shed, — if angels weep. As Daniel was in that bent 
 posture, Madame de Cadignan could safely let a 
 malicious smile of triumph flicker on her lips, a 
 smile such as the monkeys wear after playing a sly 
 trick — if monkeys smile. 
 
 " Ah! I have him," thought she; and, indeed, she 
 had him fast. 
 
 " But you are — " he said, raising his fine head and 
 looking at her with eyes of love. 
 
 " Virgin and martyr," she replied, smiling at the 
 commonness of that hackneyed expression, but giv- 
 ing it a freshness of meaning by her smile, so full of 
 painful gayety. " If I laugh," she continued, " it is 
 that I am thinking of that princess whom the world 
 thinks it knows, that Duchesse de Maufrigneuse to 
 whom it gives as lovers de Marsay, that infamous de 
 Trailles (a political cutthroat), and that little fool of 
 a d'Esgrignon, and Bastignac, Rubempre, ambassa- 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 173 
 
 dors, ministers, Russian generals, heaven knows who! 
 all Europe! They have gossiped about that album 
 which I ordered made, believing that those who ad- 
 mired me were my friends. Ah ! it is frightful ! I 
 wonder that I allow a man at my feet ! Despise them 
 all, that should be my religion." 
 
 She rose and went to the window with a gait and 
 bearing magnificent in motifs. 
 
 D'Arthez remained on the low seat to which he had 
 returned not daring to follow the princess; but he 
 looked at her ; he heard her blowing her nose. Was 
 there ever a princess who blew her nose? but Diane 
 attempted the impossible to convey an idea of her 
 sensibility. D'Arthez believed his angel was in 
 tears ; he rushed to her side, took her round the waist, 
 and pressed her to his heart. 
 
 "No, no, leave me ! " she murmured in a feeble 
 voice. "I have too many doubts to be good for any- 
 thing. To reconcile me with life is a task beyond 
 the powers of any man." 
 
 "Diane ! I will love you for your whole lost life." 
 
 "No; don't speak to me thus," she answered. "At 
 this moment I tremble, I am ashamed as though I had 
 committed the greatest sins." 
 
 She was now entirely restored to the innocence of 
 little girls, and yet her bearing was august, grand, 
 noble as that of a queen. It is impossible to describe 
 the effect of these manoauvres, so clever that they 
 
174 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 acted like the purest truth on a soul as fresh and 
 honest as that of d'Arthez/ The great author re- 
 mained dumb with admiration, passive beside her in 
 the recess of that window awaiting a word, while the 
 princess awaited a kiss; but she was far too sacred to 
 him for that. Feeling cold, the princess returned to 
 her easy-chair; her feet were frozen. 
 
 "It will take a long time," she said to herself, 
 looking at Daniel's noble brow and head. 
 
 "Is this a woman?" thought that profound observer 
 of human nature. "How ought I to treat her? " 
 
 Until two o'clock in the morning they spent their 
 time in saying to each other the silly things that 
 women of genius, like the princess, know how to make 
 adorable. Diane pretended to be too worn, too old, 
 too faded; D'Arthez proved to her (facts of which 
 she was well convinced) that her skin was the most 
 delicate, the softest to the touch, the whitest to the 
 eye, the most fragrant; she was young and in her 
 bloom, how could she think otherwise? Thus they 
 disputed, beauty by beauty, detail by detail with 
 many: "Oh! do you think so? " — "You are 
 beside yourself!" — "It is hope, it is fancy!" — 
 "You will soon see me as I am. — I am almost forty 
 years of age. Can a man love so old a woman?" 
 
 D'Arthez responded with impetuous and school-boy 
 eloquence, larded with exaggerated epithets. When 
 the princess heard this wise and witty writer talking 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 175 
 
 the nonsense of an amorous sub-lieutenant she listened 
 with an absorbed air and much sensibility; but she 
 laughed in her sleeve. 
 
 When d'Arthez was in the street, he asked himself 
 whether he might not have been rather less respectful. 
 He went over in memory those strange confidences — 
 which have, naturally, been much abridged here, for 
 they needed a volume to convey their mellifluous abun- 
 dance and the graces which accompanied them. The 
 retrospective perspicacity of this man, so natural, so 
 profound, was baffled by the candor of that tale and 
 its poignancy, and by the tones of the princess. 
 
 "It is true," he said to himself, being unable to 
 sleep, "there are such dramas as that in society. 
 Society covers great horrors with the flowers of its 
 elegance, the embroidery of its gossip, the wit of its 
 lies. We writers invent no more than the truth. 
 Poor Diane ! Michel had penetrated that enigma; he 
 said that beneath her covering of ice there lay vol- 
 canoes ! Bianchon and Rastignac were right ; when a 
 man can join the grandeurs of the ideal and the 
 enjoyments of human passion in loving a woman of 
 perfect manners, of intellect, of delicacy, it must be 
 happiness beyond words." 
 
 So thinking, he sounded the love that was in him 
 and found it infinite. 
 
176 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 V. 
 
 A TRIAL OF FAITH. 
 
 The next day, about two in the afternoon, Madame 
 d'Espard, who had seen and heard nothing of the 
 princess for more than a month, went to see her under 
 the impulse of extreme curiosity. Nothing was ever 
 more amusing of its kind than the conversation of 
 these two crafty adders during the first half -hour of 
 this visit. 
 
 Diane d'Uxelles cautiously avoided, as she would 
 the wearing of a yellow gown, all mention of d' Arthez. 
 The marquise circled round and round that topic like 
 a Bedouin round a caravan. Diane amused herself; 
 the marquise fumed. Diane waited ; she intended to 
 utilize her friend and use her in the chase. Of these 
 two women, both so celebrated in the social world, 
 one was far stronger than the other. The princess 
 rose by a head above the marquise, and the marquise 
 was inwardly conscious of that superiority. In this, 
 perhaps, lay the secret of their intimacy. The weaker 
 of the two crouched low in her false attachment, 
 watching for the hour, long awaited by feeble beings, 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 177 
 
 of springing at the throat of the stronger and leaving 
 the mark of a joyful bite. Diane saw clear; but the 
 world was the dupe of the wily caresses of the two 
 friends. 
 
 The instant that the princess perceived a direct 
 question on the lips of her friend, she said : — 
 
 "Ah ! dearest, I owe you a most complete, immense, 
 infinite, celestial happiness." 
 "What can you mean? " 
 
 "Have you forgotten what we ruminated three 
 months ago in the little garden, sitting on a bench in 
 the sun, under the jasmine? Ah! there are none but 
 men of genius who know how to love ! I apply to my 
 grand Daniel d'Arthez the Duke of Alba's saying to 
 Catherine de' Medici: ' The head of a single salmon is 
 worth all the frogs in the world. ' " 
 
 "I am not surprised that I no longer see you," said 
 Madame d'Espard. 
 
 "Promise me, if you meet him, not to say to him one 
 word about me, my angel," said the princess, taking 
 her friend's hand. "I am happy, oh! happy beyond 
 all expression ; but you know that in society a word, 
 a mere jest can do such harm. One speech can kill, 
 for they put such venom into a single sentence ! Ah ! 
 if you knew how I long that you might meet with a 
 love like this ! Yes, it is a sweet, a precious triumph 
 for women like ourselves to end our woman's life in 
 
 12 
 
178 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 this way; to rest in an ardent, pure, devoted, com- 
 plete and absolute love; above all, when we have 
 sought it long." 
 
 "Why do you ask me to be faithful to my dearest 
 friend?" said Madame d'Espard. "Do you think me 
 capable of playiug you some villanous trick ? " 
 
 "When a woman possesses such a treasure the fear 
 of losing it is so strong that it naturally inspires a 
 feeling of terror. I am absurd, I know ; forgive me, 
 dear." 
 
 A few moments later the marquise departed; as 
 she watched her go the princess said to herself : — 
 
 "How she will pluck me ! But to save her the 
 trouble of trying to get Daniel away from here I '11 
 send him to her." 
 
 At three o'clock, or a few moments after, d'Arthez 
 arrived. In the midst of some interesting topic on 
 which he was discoursing eloquently, the princess 
 suddenly cut him short by laying her hand on his 
 arm. 
 
 "Pardon me, my dear friend," she said, interrupt- 
 ing him, "but I fear I may forget a thing which seems 
 a mere trifle but may be of great importance. You 
 have not set foot in Madame d'Espard's salon since 
 the ever-blessed day when I met you there. Pray go 
 at once ; not for your sake, nor by way of politeness, 
 but for me. You may already have made her an enemy 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 179 
 
 of mine, if by chance she has discovered that since 
 her dinner you have scarcely left my house. Besides, 
 my friend, I don't like to see you dropping your con- 
 nection with society, and neglecting your occupations 
 and your work. I should again be strangely calum- 
 niated. What would the world say ? That I held you 
 in leading-strings, absorbed you, feared comparisons, 
 and clung to my conquest knowing it to be my last ! 
 Who will know that you are my friend, my only friend ? 
 If you love me indeed, as you say you love me, you 
 will make the world believe that we are purely and 
 simply brother and sister — Go on with what you 
 were saying." 
 
 In his armor of tenderness, riveted by the knowl- 
 edge of so many splendid virtues, d'Arthez obeyed 
 this behest on the following day and went to see 
 Madame d'Espard, who received him with charming 
 coquetry. The marquise took very good care not to 
 say a single word to him about the princess, but she 
 asked him to dinner on a coming day. 
 
 On this occasion D'Arthez found a numerous com- 
 pany. The marquise had invited Rastignac, Blondet, 
 the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles, the 
 Marquis d'Esgrignon, the two brothers Vandenesse, 
 du Tillet, one of the richest bankers in Paris, the Baron 
 de Nucingen, Raoul Nathan, Lady Dudley, two very 
 treacherous secretaries of embassies and the Chevalier 
 
180 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 d'Espard, the wiliest personage in this assemblage 
 and the chief instigator of his sister-in-law's policy. 
 
 When dinner was well under way, Maxime de Trailles 
 turned to d'Arthez and said smiling: — 
 
 "You see a great deal, don't you, of the Princesse 
 de Cadignan?" 
 
 To this question d'Arthez responded by curtly nod- 
 ding his head. Maxime de Trailles was a bravo of 
 the social order, without faith or law, capable of 
 everything, ruining the women who trusted him, com- 
 pelling them to pawn their diamonds to give him 
 money, but covering this conduct with a brilliant var- 
 nish; a man of charming manners and satanic mind. 
 He inspired all who knew him with equal contempt 
 and fear; but as no one was bold enough to show him 
 any sentiments but those of the utmost courtesy he 
 saw nothing of this public opinion, or else he accepted 
 and shared the general dissimulation. He owed to 
 the Comte de Marsay the greatest degree of elevation 
 to which he could attain. De Marsay, whose knowl- 
 edge of Maxime was of long-standing, judged him 
 capable of fulfilling certain secret and diplomatic 
 functions which he confided to him aud of which 
 de Trailles acquitted himself admirably. D'Arthez 
 had for some time past mingled sufficiently in politi- 
 cal matters to know the man for what he was, and he 
 alone had sufficient strength and height of character 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 181 
 
 to express aloud what others thought or said iu a 
 whisper. 
 
 "Is it for her that you neglect the Chamber? " asked 
 Baron de Nucingen in his German accent. 
 
 "Ah ! the princess is one of the most dangerous 
 women a man can have anything to do with. I owe 
 to her the miseries of my marriage," exclaimed the 
 Marquis d'Esgrignon. 
 
 ''Dangerous? " said Madame d'Espard. "Don't 
 speak so of my nearest friend. I have never seen or 
 known anything in the princess that did not seem to 
 come from the noblest sentiments." 
 
 "Let the marquis say what he thinks," cried Ras- 
 tignac. "When a man has been thrown by a fine 
 horse he thinks it has vices and he sells it." 
 
 Piqued by these words, the Marquis d'Esgrignon 
 looked at d' Arthez and said : — 
 
 "Monsieur is not, I trust, on such terms with the 
 princess that we cannot speak freely of her ? " 
 
 D'Arthez kept silence. D'Esgrignon, who was not 
 wanting in cleverness, replied to Rastignac's speech 
 with an apologetic portrait of the princess, which 
 put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was 
 extremely obscure to d 'Arthez he leaned toward his 
 neighbor, Madame de Montcornet, and asked her, in a 
 whisper, what it meant. 
 
 "Excepting yourself — judging by the excellent 
 
182 Secrets of the Prineesse de Cadignan. 
 
 opinion you seem to have of the princess — all the 
 other guests are said to have been in her good graces." 
 
 "I can assure you that such an accusation is abso- 
 lutely false," said Daniel. 
 
 "And yet, here is Monsieur d'Esgrignon of an old 
 family of Alen^on, who completely ruined himself for 
 her some twelve years ago, and, if all is true, came 
 very near going to the scaffold." 
 
 "I know the particulars of that affair," said d'Arthez. 
 "Madame de Cadignan went to AlenQon to save Mon- 
 sieur d'Esgrignon from a trial before the court of 
 assizes; and this is how he rewards her to-day!" 
 
 Madame de Montcornet looked at d'Arthez with a 
 surprise and curiosity that were almost stupid, then 
 she turned her eyes on Madame d'Espard with a look 
 which seemed to say: "He is bewitched ! " 
 
 During this short conversation Madame de Cadignan 
 was protected by Madame d'Espard, whose protection 
 was like that of the lightning-rod which draws the 
 flash. When d'Arthez returned to the general con- 
 versation Maxime de Trailles was saying : — 
 
 "With Diane, depravity is not an effect but a 
 cause; perhaps she owes that cause to her exquisite 
 nature ; she does n't invent, she makes no effort, 
 she offers you the choicest refinements as the inspira- 
 tion of a spontaneous and naive love ; and it is abso- 
 lutely impossible not to believe her." 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 183 
 
 This speech, which seemed to have been prepared 
 for a man of d'Arthez 's stamp, was so tremendous an 
 arraignment that the company appeared to accept it as 
 a conclusion. No one said more; the princess was 
 crushed. D'Arthez looked straight at de Trailles and 
 then at d'Esgrignon with a sarcastic air, and said: — 
 
 "The greatest fault of that woman is that she has 
 followed in the wake of men. She squanders patri- 
 monies as they do ; she drives her lovers to usurers ; 
 she pockets dots ; she ruins orphans ; she inspires, 
 possibly she commits, crimes, but — " 
 
 Never had the two men, whom d'Arthez was chiefly 
 addressing, listened to such plain talk. At that but 
 the whole table was startled, every one paused, fork 
 in air, their eyes fixed alternately on the brave author 
 and on the assailants of the princess, awaiting the 
 conclusion of that horrible silence. 
 
 "But" said d'Arthez, with sarcastic airiness, 
 "Madame la Princesse de Cadignan has one advan- 
 tage over men: when they have put themselves in 
 danger for her sake, she saves them, and says no harm 
 of any one. Among the multitude, why should n't 
 there be one woman who amuses herself with men as 
 men amuse themselves with women? Why not allow 
 the fair sex to take, from time to time, its revenge?" 
 
 "Genius is stronger than wit," said Blondet to 
 Nathan. 
 
184 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 This broadside of sarcasms was in fact the dis- 
 charge of a battery of cannon against a platoon of 
 musketry. When coffee was served, Blondet and 
 Nathan went up to d'Arthez with an eagerness no one 
 else dared to imitate, so unable were the rest of the 
 company to show the admiration his conduct inspired 
 from the fear of making two powerful enemies. 
 
 "This is not the first time we have seen that your 
 character equals your talent in grandeur," said Blondet. 
 "You behaved just now more like a demi-god than a 
 man. Not to have been carried away by your heart 
 or your imagination, not to have taken up the defence 
 of a beloved woman — a fault they were enticing you 
 to commit, because it would have given those men of 
 society eaten up with jealousy of your literary fame 
 a triumph over you — ah ! give me leave to say you 
 have attained the height of private statesmanship." 
 
 "Yes, you are a statesman," said Nathan. "It is 
 as clever as it is difficult to avenge a woman without 
 defending her." 
 
 "The princess is one of the heroines of the legit- 
 imist party, and it is the duty of all men of honor to 
 protect her quand meme" replied d'Arthez, coldly. 
 "What she has done for the cause of her masters 
 would excuse all follies." 
 
 " He keeps his own counsel ! " said Nathan to 
 Blondet. 
 
Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 185 
 
 a- 
 
 ; Precisely as if the princess were worth it," said 
 Rastignac, joining the other two. 
 
 D'Arthez went to the princess, who was awaiting 
 him with the keenest anxiety. The result of this 
 experiment, which Diane had herself brought about, 
 misjht be fatal to her. For the first time in her life 
 this woman suffered in her heart. She knew not what 
 she should do in case d'Arthez believed the world 
 which spoke the truth, instead of believing her who 
 lied ; for never had so noble a nature, so complete a 
 man, a soul so pure, a conscience so ingenuous come 
 beneath her hand. Though she had told him cruel 
 lies she was driven to do so by the desire of knowing 
 a true love. That love — she felt it dawning in her 
 heart ; yes, she loved d'Arthez ; and now she was con- 
 demned forever to deceive him ! She must henceforth 
 remain to him the actress who had played that comedy 
 to blind his eyes. 
 
 When she heard Daniel's step in the dining-room a 
 violent commotion, a shudder which reached to her 
 very vitals came over her. That convulsion, never 
 felt during all the years of her adventurous existence, 
 told her that she had staked her happiness on this 
 issue. Her eyes, gazing into space, took in the whole 
 of d'Arthez's person; their light poured through his 
 flesh, she read his soul ; suspicion had not so much as 
 touched him with its bat's- wing. The terrible emo- 
 
186 Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 tion of that fear then came to its reaction ; joy almost 
 stifled her; for there is no human being who is not 
 more able to endure grief than to bear extreme felicity. 
 
 "Daniel, they have calumniated me, and you have 
 avenged me ! " she cried, rising, and opening her arms 
 to him. 
 
 In the profound amazement caused by these words, 
 the roots of which were utterly unknown to him, Daniel 
 allowed his head to be taken between her beautiful 
 hands, as the princess kissed him sacredly on the 
 forehead. 
 
 "But," he said, "how could you know — " 
 
 u Oh! illustrious ninny! do you not see that I love 
 you fondly ? " 
 
 Since that day nothing has been said of the Prin- 
 cesse de Cadignan, nor of d'Arthez. The princess 
 has inherited some fortune from her mother and she 
 spends all her summers in a villa on the lake of 
 Geneva, where the great writer joins her. She returns 
 to Paris for a few months in winter. D'Arthez is 
 never seen except in the Chamber. His writings are 
 becoming exceedingly rare. Is this a conclusion? 
 Yes, for people of sense; no, for persons who want 
 to know everything. 
 
UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS. 
 
UNCONSCIOUS COMEDIANS. 
 
 To Monsieur le Comte Jules de Castellane. 
 
 1. 
 
 Leon de Lora, our celebrated landscape painter, 
 belongs to one of the noblest families of the Roussillon 
 (Spanish originally) which, although distinguished 
 for the antiquity of its race, has been doomed for a 
 century to the proverbial poverty of hidalgos. Com- 
 ing, light-footed, to Paris from the department of the 
 Eastern Pyrenees, with the sum of eleven francs in 
 his pocket for all viaticum, he had in some degree 
 forgotten the miseries and privations of his childhood 
 and his family amid the other privations and miseries 
 which are never lacking to rapins, whose whole for- 
 tune consists of intrepid vocation. Later, the cares 
 of fame and those of success were other causes of 
 forgetfulness. 
 
190 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 If you have followed the capricious and meandering 
 course of these studies, perhaps you will remember 
 Mistigris, Schinner's pupil, one of the heroes of "A 
 Start in Life " {Scenes from Private Life), and his 
 brief apparitions in other Scenes. In 1845, this land- 
 scape painter, emulator of the Hobbemas, Ruysdaels, 
 and Lorraines, resembles no longer the shabby, frisky 
 rapin whom we then knew. Now an illustrious man, 
 he owns a charming house in the rue de Berlin, not 
 far from the hotel de Brambourg, where his friend 
 Brideau lives, and quite close to the house of Schinner, 
 his early master. He is a member of the Institute 
 and an officer of the Legion of honor; he is thirty- 
 six years old, has an income of twenty thousand 
 francs from the Funds, his pictures sell for their 
 weight in gold, and (what seems to him more ex- 
 traordinary than the invitations he receives occa- 
 sionally to court balls) his name and fame, mentioned 
 so often for the last sixteen years by the press of 
 Europe, has at last penetrated to the valley of the 
 Eastern Pyrenees, where vegetate three veritable 
 Loras : his father, his eldest brother, and an old pater- 
 nal aunt. Mademoiselle Urraca y Lora. 
 
 In the maternal line the painter has no relation left 
 except a cousin, the nephew of his mother, residing in 
 a small manufacturing town in the department. This 
 cousin was the first to bethink himself of Leon. But 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 191 
 
 it was not till 1840 that Leon de Lora received a let- 
 ter from Monsieur Sylvestre Palafox-Castel-Gazonal 
 (called simply Gazonal) to which he replied that he 
 was assuredly himself, — that is to say, the son of the 
 late Leonie Gazonal, wife of Comte Fernand Didas 
 y Lora. 
 
 During the summer of 1841 cousin Sjdvestre Gazonal 
 went to inform the illustrious unknown family of Lora 
 that their little Leon had not gone to the Rio de la 
 Plata, as they supposed, but was now one of the 
 greatest geniuses of the French school of painting ; a 
 fact the family did not believe. The eldest son, Don 
 Juan de Lora assured his cousin Gazonal that he was 
 certainly the dupe of some Parisian wag. 
 
 Now the said Gazonal was intending to go to Paris 
 to prosecute a lawsuit which the prefect of the Eastern 
 Pyrenees had arbitrarily removed from the usual juris- 
 diction, transferring it to that of the Council of State. 
 The worthy provincial determined to investigate this 
 act, and to ask his Parisian cousin the reason of such 
 high-handed measures. It thus happened that Mon- 
 sieur Gazonal came to Paris, took shabby lodgings 
 in the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, and was amazed 
 to see the palace of his cousin in the rue de Berlin. 
 Being told that the painter was then travelling in 
 Italy, he renounced, for the time being, the intention 
 of asking his advice, and doubted if he should ever 
 
192 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 find his maternal relationship acknowledged by so 
 great a man. 
 
 During the years 1843 and 1844 Gazonal attended 
 to his lawsuit. This suit concerned a question as to 
 the current and level of a stream of water and the 
 necessity of removing a dam, in which dispute the 
 administration, instigated by the abutters on the river 
 banks, had meddled. The removal of the dam threat- 
 ened the existence of Gazonal' s manufactory. In 
 1845, Gazonal considered his cause as wholly lost; 
 the secretary of the Master of Petitions, charged with 
 the duty of drawing up the report, had confided to 
 him that the said report would assuredly be against 
 him, and his own lawyer confirmed the statement. 
 Gazonal, though commander of the National Guard in 
 his own town and one of the most capable manufac- 
 turers of the department, found himself of so little 
 account in Paris, and he was, moreover, so frightened 
 by the costs of living and the dearness of even the 
 most trifling things, that he kept himself, all this time, 
 secluded in his shabby lodgings. The Southerner, 
 deprived of his sun, execrated Paris, which he called 
 a manufactory of rheumatism. As he added up the 
 costs of his suit and his living, he vowed within him- 
 self to poison the prefect on his return, or to minotau- 
 rize him. In his moments of deepest sadness he 
 killed the prefect outright; in gayer mood he con- 
 tented himself with minotaurizing him. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 193 
 
 One morning, as he ate his breakfast and cursed 
 his fate, he picked up a newspaper savagely. The 
 following lines, ending an article, struck Gazonal 
 as if the mysterious voice which speaks to gamblers 
 before they win had sounded in his ear: "Our cele- 
 brated landscape painter, Leon de Lora, lately re- 
 turned from Italy, will exhibit several pictures at the 
 Salon; thus the exhibition promises, as we see, to be 
 most brilliant." With the suddenness of action that 
 distinguishes the sons of the sunny South, Gazonal 
 sprang from his lodgings to the street, from the street 
 to a street-cab, and drove to the rue de Berlin to find 
 his cousin. 
 
 Leon de Lora sent word by a servant to his cousin 
 Gazonal that he invited him to breakfast the next 
 day at the Cafe de Paris, but he was now engaged in 
 a manner which did not allow him to receive his 
 cousin at the present moment. Gazonal, like a true 
 Southerner, recounted all his troubles to the valet. 
 
 The next day at ten o'clock, Gazonal, much too 
 well-dressed for the occasion (he had put on his bottle- 
 blue coat with brass buttons, a frilled shirt, a w r hite 
 waistcoat and } T ellow gloves), awaited his amphitiyon 
 a full hour, stamping his feet on the boulevard, after 
 hearing from the master of the cafe that "these gentle- 
 men " breakfasted habitually between eleven and twelve 
 o'clock. 
 
 13 
 
194 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 "Between eleven and half-past," he said when he 
 related his adventures to his cronies in the provinces, 
 "two Parisians in simple frock-coats, looking like 
 nothing at all, called out when they saw me on the 
 boulevard, ' There 's our Gazonal! ' " 
 
 The speaker was Bixiou, with whom Leon de Lora 
 had armed himself to "bring out" his provincial 
 cousin, in other words, to make him pose. 
 
 " ' Don't be vexed, cousin, I 'in at your service! ' 
 cried out that little Leon, taking me in his arms," 
 related Gazonal on his return home. "The break- 
 fast was splendid. I thought I was going blind when 
 I saw the number of bits of gold it took to pay that 
 bill. Those fellows must earn their weight in gold, 
 for I saw my cousin give the waiter thirty sous — the 
 price of a whole day's work! " 
 
 During this monstrous breakfast — advisedly so 
 called in view of six dozen Ostend oysters, six cutlets 
 a la Soubise, a chicken a la Marengo, lobster mayon- 
 naise, green peas, a mushroom pasty, washed down 
 with three bottles of Bordeaux, three bottles of Cham- 
 pagne, plus coffee and liqueurs, to say nothing of 
 relishes — Gazonal was magnificent in his diatribes 
 against Paris. The worthy manufacturer complained 
 of the length of the four-pound bread-loaves, the 
 height of the houses, the indifference of the passen- 
 gers in the streets to one another, the cold, the rain, 
 
Unconscious Comedians : 195 
 
 the cost of hackney-coaches, all of which and much 
 else he bemoaned in so witty a manner that the two 
 artists took a mighty fancy to cousin Gazonal, and 
 made him relate his lawsuit from beginning to end. 
 
 "My lawsuit," he said in his Southern accent and 
 rolling his r's, " is a very simple thing; they want my 
 manufactory. I 've employed here in Paris a dolt of 
 a lawyer, to whom I give twenty francs every time he 
 opens an eye, and he is always asleep. He 's a slug, 
 who drives in his coach, while I go afoot and he 
 splashes me. I see now I ought to have had a 
 carriage. Nobody is looked at unless he is hidden 
 in a carriage! On the other hand, that Council of 
 State are a pack of do-nothings, who leave their 
 duties to little scamps every one of whom is bought 
 up by our prefect. That's my lawsuit! They want 
 my manufactory ! Well, they '11 get it ! and they must 
 manage the best they can with my workmen, a hun- 
 dred of 'em, who '11 make them sing another tune 
 before they've done with them." 
 
 "How long have you been here, cousin?" asked 
 Leon de Lora. 
 
 " Two years. Ha! that meddling prefect! he shall 
 pay dear for this; I '11 have his life if I have to give 
 mine on the scaffold — " 
 
 " Which state councillor presides over your section? " 
 
 "A former newspaper man, — does n't pay ten sous 
 in taxes, — his name is Massol." 
 
196 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 The two Parisians exchanged glances. 
 
 " Who is the commissioner who is making the 
 report ? " 
 
 "Ha! that's still more queer; he's Master of 
 Petitions, professor of something or other at the 
 Sorbonne, — a fellow who writes things in reviews, 
 and for whom I have the profoundest contempt." 
 
 " Claude Vignon," said Bixiou. 
 
 " Yes, that's his name," replied Gazonal. " Massol 
 and Vignon — there you have Social Reason, in which 
 there's no reason at all." 
 
 " There must be some way out of it," said Leon de 
 Lora. "You see, cousin, all things are possible in 
 Paris for good as well as for evil, for the just as well 
 as the unjust. There 's nothing that can't be done, 
 undone, and redone." 
 
 " The devil take me if I stay ten days more in this 
 hole of a place, the dullest in all France ! " 
 
 The two cousins and Bixiou were at this moment 
 walking from one end to the other of that sheet of 
 asphalt on which, between the hours of one and three, 
 it is difficult to avoid seeing some of the personages 
 in honor of whom Fame puts one or other of her 
 trumpets to her lips. Formerly that locality was the 
 Place Royale; next it was the Pont Neuf; in these 
 days this privilege has been acquired by the Boulevard 
 des Italiens. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 197 
 
 "Paris," said the painter to his cousin, " is an in- 
 strument on which we must know how to play ; if we 
 stand here ten minutes I '11 give you your first lesson. 
 There, look ! " he said, raising his cane and point- 
 ing to a couple who were just then coming out from 
 the Passage de 1' Opera. 
 
 " Goodness ! who 's that? " asked Gazonal. 
 
 That was an old woman, in a bonnet which had 
 spent six months in a show-case, a very pretentious 
 gown and a faded tartan shawl, whose face had been 
 buried twenty years of her life in a damp lodge, and 
 whose swollen hand-bag betokened no better social 
 position than that of an ex-portress. "With her was 
 a slim little girl, whose eyes, fringed with black 
 lashes, had lost their innocence and showed great 
 weariness ; her face, of a pretty shape, was fresh and 
 her hair abundant, her forehead charming but auda- 
 cious, her bust thin, — in other words, an unripe fruit. 
 
 " That," replied Bixiou, "is a rat tied to its mother." 
 
 "A rat! — what's that?" 
 
 "That particular rat," said Leon, with a friendly 
 nod to Mademoiselle Ninette, " may perhaps win your 
 suit for you." 
 
 Gazonal bounded ; but Bixiou had held him by the 
 arm ever since they left the cafe, thinking perhaps 
 that the flush on his face was rather vivid. 
 
 " That rat, who is just leaving a rehearsal at the 
 
198 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 Opera-bouse, is going home to eat a miserable dinner, 
 and will return about three o'clock to dress, if she 
 dances in the ballet this evening — as she will, to-day 
 being Monday. This rat is already an old rat for she 
 is thirteen years of age. Two years from now that 
 creature may be worth sixty thousand francs; she will 
 be all or nothing, a great danseuse or a marcheuse, a 
 celebrated person or a vulgar courtesan. She has 
 worked hard since she was eight years old. Such as 
 you see her, she is worn out with fatigue; she ex- 
 hausted her body this morning in the dancing-class, 
 she is just leaving a rehearsal where the evolutions 
 are as complicated as a Chinese puzzle ; and she '11 go 
 through them again to-night. The rat is one of the 
 primary elements of the Opera; she is to the leading 
 danseuse what a junior clerk is to a notary. The rat 
 is — hope." 
 
 " Who produces the rat? " asked Gazonal. 
 
 "Porters, paupers, actors, dancers," replied Bixiou. 
 "Only the lowest depths of poverty could force a 
 child to subject her feet and joints to positive torture, 
 to keep herself virtuous out of mere speculation until 
 she is eighteen years of age, and to live with some 
 horrible old crone like a beautiful plant in a dressing 
 of manure. You shall now see a procession defiling 
 before you, one after the other, of men of talent, 
 little and great, artists in seed or flower, who are rais- 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 199 
 
 ing to the glory of France that every-day monument 
 called the Opera, an assemblage of forces, wills, and 
 forms of genius, nowhere collected as in Paris." 
 
 " I have already seen the Opera," saidGazonal, with 
 a self-sufficient air. 
 
 "Yes, from a three-francs-sixty-sous seat among 
 the gods," replied the landscape painter; " just as you 
 have seen Paris in the rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, 
 without knowing anything about it. What did they 
 give at the Opera when you were there ? " 
 " Guillaume Tell." 
 
 "Well," said Leon, " Matilde's grand duo must 
 have delighted you. What do you suppose that 
 charming singer did when she left the stage?" 
 "She — well, what?" 
 
 " She ate two bloody mutton-chops which her ser- 
 vant had ready for her." 
 "Pooh! nonsense ! " 
 
 "Malibran kept up on brandy — but it killed her in 
 the end. Another thing ! You have seen the ballet, 
 and you '11 now see it defiling past you in its every-day 
 clothes, without knowing that the fate of your lawsuit 
 depends on a pair of those legs." 
 "My lawsuit!" 
 
 " See, cousin, here comes what is called a marcheuse." 
 
 Leon pointed to one of those handsome creatures 
 
 who at twenty-five years of age have lived sixty, and 
 
200 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 whose beauty is so real and so sure of being culti- 
 vated that they make no display of it. She was tail, 
 and walked well, with the arrogant look of a dandy; 
 her toilet was remarkable for its ruinous simplicity. 
 
 " That is Carabine," said Bixiou, who gave her, as 
 did Leon, a slight nod to which she responded by a 
 smile. 
 
 " There 's another who may possibly get your prefect 
 turned out." 
 
 " A marcheuse ! — but what is that? " 
 
 "A marcheuse is a rat of great beauty whom 
 her mother, real or fictitious, has sold as soon as it 
 was clear she would become neither first, second, nor 
 third danseuse, but who prefers the occupation of 
 coryphee to any other, for the main reason that hav- 
 ing spent her youth in that employment she is unfitted 
 for any other. She has been rejected at the minor 
 theatres where they want danseuses ; she has not suc- 
 ceeded in the three towns in the provinces where 
 ballets are given ; she has not had the money, or per- 
 haps the desire to go to foreign countries — for per- 
 haps you don't know that the great school of dancing 
 in Paris supplies the whole world with male and female 
 dancers. Thus a rat who becomes a marcheuse, — that 
 is to say, an ordinary figurante in a ballet, — must have 
 some solid attachment which keeps her in Paris : either 
 a rich man she does not love or a poor man she loves 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 201 
 
 too well. The one you have just seen pass will prob- 
 ably dress and redress three times this evening, — as 
 a princess, a peasant-girl, a Tyrolese; by which she 
 will earn about two hundred francs a month." 
 
 " She is better dressed than my prefect's wife." 
 
 " If you should go to her house," said Bixiou, " you 
 would find there a chamber-maid, a cook, and a man- 
 servant. She occupies a fine apartment in the rue 
 Saint-Georges ; in short, she is, in proportion to French 
 fortunes of the present day compared with those of 
 former times, a relic of the eighteenth century i opera- 
 girl.' Carabine is a power; at this moment she 
 governs du Tillet, a banker who is very influential in 
 the Chamber of Deputies." 
 
 " And above these two rounds in the ballet ladder 
 what comes next?" asked Gazonal. 
 
 " Look ! " said his cousin, pointing to an elegant 
 caliche which was turning at that moment from the 
 boulevard into the rue Grange-Bateliere, "there's one 
 of the leading danseuses whose name on the posters 
 attracts all Paris. That woman earns sixty thousand 
 francs a year and lives like a princess ; the price of 
 your manufactory all told would n't suffice to buy you 
 the privilege of bidding her good-morning a dozen 
 times." 
 
 "Do you see," said Bixiou, "that young man who 
 is sitting on the front seat of her carriage? Well. 
 
202 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 he 's a viscount who bears a fine old name; he 's her 
 first gentleman of the bed-chamber; does all her busi- 
 ness with the newspapers; carries messages of peace 
 or war in the morning to the director of the Opera; 
 and takes charge of the applause which salutes her as 
 she enters or leaves the stage." 
 
 "Well, well, my good friends, that 's the finishing 
 touch ! I see now that I knew nothing of the ways of 
 Paris." 
 
 " At any rate, you are learning what you can see in 
 ten minutes in the Passage de l'Opera," said Bixiou. 
 "Look there." 
 
 Two persons, a man and a woman, came out of the 
 Passage at that moment. The woman was neither 
 plain nor pretty ; but her dress had that distinction of 
 style and cut and color which reveals an artist; the 
 man had the air of a singer. 
 
 "There," said Bixiou, " is a baritone and a second 
 danseuse. The baritone is a man of immense talent, 
 but a baritone voice being only an accessory to the 
 other parts he scarcely earns what the second danseuse 
 earns. The danseuse, who was celebrated before 
 Taglioni and Ellsler appeared, has preserved to our 
 day some of the old traditions of the character dance 
 and pantomime. If the two others had not revealed 
 in the art of dancing a poetry hitherto unperceived, 
 she would have been the leading talent; as it is, she 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 203 
 
 is reduced to the second line. But for all that, she 
 fingers her thirty thousand francs a year, and her 
 faithful friend is a peer of France, very influential in 
 the Chamber. And see ! there 's a danseuse of the 
 third order, who, as a dancer, exists only through the 
 omnipotence of a newspaper. If her engagement were 
 not renewed the ministry would have one more jour- 
 nalistic enemy on its back. The corps de ballet is a 
 great power ; consequently it is considered better form 
 in the upper ranks of dandyism and politics to have 
 relations with dance than with song. In the stalls, 
 where the habitues of the Opera congregate, the say- 
 ing ' Monsieur is all for singing ' is a form of 
 ridicule." 
 
 A short man with a common face, quite simply 
 dressed, passed them at this moment. 
 
 "There's the other half of the Opera receipts — 
 that man who just went by; the tenor. There is no 
 longer any play, poem, music, or representation of any 
 kind possible unless some celebrated tenor can reach 
 a certain note. The tenor is love, he is the Voice that 
 touches the heart, that vibrates in the soul, and his 
 value is reckoned at a much higher salary than that 
 of a minister. One hundred thousand francs for a 
 throat, one hundred thousand francs for a couple of 
 ankle-bones, — those are the two financial scourges of 
 the Opera." 
 
204 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 " I am amazed/' said Gazonal, " at the hundreds of 
 thousands of francs walking about here." 
 
 ""We'll amaze you a good deal more, my dear 
 cousin," said Leon de Lora. " We '11 take Paris as 
 an artist takes his violoncello, and show you how it is 
 played, — in short, how people amuse themselves in 
 Paris." 
 
 "It is a kaleidoscope with a circumference of 
 twenty miles," cried Gazonal. 
 
 "Before piloting monsieur about, I have to see 
 Gaillard," said Bixiou. 
 
 "But we can use Gaillard for the cousin," replied 
 Leon. 
 
 " What sort of machine is that? " asked Gazonal. 
 
 " He is n't a machine, he is a machinist. Gaillard 
 is a friend of ours who has ended a miscellaneous 
 career by becoming the editor of a newspaper, and 
 whose character and finances are governed by move- 
 ments comparable to those of the tides. Gaillard can 
 contribute to make you win your lawsuit — " 
 
 "It is lost." 
 
 " That 's the very moment to win it," replied Bixiou. 
 
 When they reached Theodore Gaillard's abode, which 
 was now in the rue de Menars, the valet ushered the 
 three friends into a boudoir and asked them to wait, 
 as monsieur was in secret conference. 
 
 " With whom? " asked Bixiou. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 205 
 
 " "With a man who is selling him the incarceration 
 of an unseizable debtor," replied a handsome woman 
 who now appeared in a charming morning toilet. 
 
 "In that case, my dear Suzanne," said Bixiou, "I 
 am certain we may go in." 
 
 "Oh! what a beautiful creature! " said Gazonal. 
 
 " That is Madame Gaillard," replied Leon cle Lora, 
 speaking low into his cousin's ear. " She is the most 
 humble-minded woman in Paris, for she had the public 
 and has contented herself with a husband." 
 
 "What is your will, messeigneurs?" said the face- 
 tious editor, seeing his two friends and imitating 
 Frederic Lemaitre. 
 
 Theodore Gaillard, formerly a wit, had ended by 
 becoming a stupid man in consequence of remaining 
 constantly in one centre, — a moral phenomenon fre- 
 quently to be observed in Paris. His principal 
 method of conversation consisted in sowing his 
 speeches with sayings taken from plays then in vogue 
 and pronounced in imitation of well-known actors. 
 
 " We have come to blague " said Leon. 
 
 " 'Again, young men ' " (Odry in the Saltimbanques). 
 
 "Well, this time, we've got him, sure," said Gail- 
 lard's other visitor, apparently by way of conclusion. 
 
 " Are you sure of it, pere Fromenteau?" asked 
 Gaillard. " This is the eleventh time you 've caught 
 him at night and missed him in the morning." 
 
206 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 u 
 
 How could I help it? I never saw such a debtor ! 
 he's a locomotive; goes to sleep in Paris and wakes 
 up in the Seine-et-Oise. A safety lock I call him'." 
 Seeing a smile on Gazonal's face he added: " That 's 
 a saying in our business. Pinch a man, means arrest 
 him, lock him up. The criminal police have another 
 term. Vidocq said to his man, ' You are served ;' 
 that's funnier, for it means the guillotine." 
 
 A nudge from Bixiou made Gazonal all eyes and 
 ears. 
 
 " Does monsieur grease my paws? " asked Fromen- 
 teau of Gaillard, in a threatening but cool tone. 
 
 " ' A question that of fifty centimes ' " (Les Saltim- 
 bauques), replied the editor, taking out five francs 
 and offering them to Fromenteau. 
 
 " And the rapscallions? " said the man. 
 
 "What rapscallions? " asked Gaillard. 
 
 " Those I employ," replied Fromenteau calmly. 
 
 "Is there a lower depth still? " asked Bixiou. 
 
 "Yes, monsieur," said the spy. "Some people 
 give us information without knowing they do so, and 
 without getting paid for it. I put fools and ninnies 
 below rapscallions." 
 
 "They are often original, and witty, your rap- 
 scallions ! " said Leon. 
 
 "Do you belong to the police? " asked Gazonal, 
 eying with uneasy curiosity the hard, impassible 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 207 
 
 little man, who was dressed like the third clerk in a 
 sheriff's office. 
 
 "Which police do you mean?" asked Fromenteau. 
 
 " Are there several? " 
 
 "As many as five," replied the man. "Criminal, 
 the head of which was Vidocq; secret police, which 
 keeps an eye on the other police, the head of it being 
 always unknown; political police, — that's Fouche's. 
 Then there 's the police of Foreign Affairs, and finally, 
 the palace police (of the Emperor, Louis XVIII., etc.), 
 always squabbling with that of the quai Malaquais. 
 It came to an end under Monsieur Decazes. I be- 
 longed to the police of Louis XVIII. ; I 'd been in it 
 since 1793, with that poor Contenson." 
 
 The four gentlemen looked at each other with one 
 thought: " How many heads he must have brought to 
 the scaffold ! " 
 
 " Now-a-days, they are trying to get on without us. 
 Folly ! " continued the little man, who began to seem 
 terrible. " Since 1830 they want honest men at the 
 prefecture ! I resigned, and I 've made myself a small 
 vocation by arresting for debt." 
 
 "He is the right arm of the commercial police," 
 said Gaillard in Bixiou's ear, " but you can never find 
 out who pa} T s him most, the debtor or the creditor." 
 
 "The more rascally a business is, the more honor 
 it needs. I 'm for him who pays me best," continued 
 
208 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 Fromenteau addressing Gaillard. "You want to re- 
 cover fifty thousand francs and you talk farthings to 
 your means of action. Give me five hundred francs 
 and your man is pinched to-night, for we spotted 
 him yesterday." 
 
 "Five hundred francs for you alone!" cried 
 Theodore Gaillard. 
 
 "Lizette wants a shawl," said the spy, not a muscle 
 of his face moving. "I call her Lizette because of 
 Beranger." 
 
 " You have a Lizette, and you stay in such a busi- 
 ness ! " cried the virtuous Gazonal. 
 
 "It is amusing! People may cry up the pleasures 
 of hunting and fishing as much as they like but to 
 stalk a man in Paris is far better fun." 
 
 " Certainly," said Gazonal, reflectively, speaking to 
 himself, " they must have great talent." 
 
 44 If I were to enumerate the qualities which make a 
 man remarkable in our vocation," said Fromenteau, 
 whose rapid glance had enabled him to fathom Gazonal 
 completely, " you'd think I was talking of a man of 
 genius. First, we must have the eyes of a lynx ; next, 
 audacity (to tear into houses like bombs, accost the 
 servants as if we knew them, and propose treachery — 
 always agreed to) ; next, memory, sagacity, inven- 
 tion (to make schemes, conceived rapidly, never the 
 same — for spying must be guided by the characters 
 
Unconscious Comedians, 209 
 
 and habits of the persons spied upon; it is a gift of 
 heaven) ; and, finalty, agility, vigor. All those facil- 
 ities and qualities, monsieur, are depicted on the door 
 of the Gyumase-Amoros as Virtue. Well, we must 
 have them all, under pain of losing the salaries given 
 us by the State, the rue de Jerusalem, or the minister 
 of Commerce." 
 
 " You certainly seem to me a remarkable man," said 
 Gazonal. 
 
 Fromenteau looked at the provincial without reply- 
 ing, without betraying the smallest sign of feeling, 
 and departed, bowing to no one, — a trait of real 
 genius. 
 
 " Well, cousin, you have now seen the police incar- 
 nate," said Leon to Gazonal. 
 
 " It has something the effect of a dinner-pill," said 
 the worthy provincial, while Gaillard and Bixiou were 
 talking together in a low voice. 
 
 "I'll give you an answer to-night at Carabine's," 
 said Gaillard aloud, re-seating himself at his desk 
 without seeing or bowing to Gazonal. 
 
 " He is a rude fellow ! " cried the Southerner as they 
 left the room. 
 
 "His paper has twenty-two thousand subscribers," 
 
 said Leon de Lora. "He is one of the five great 
 
 powers of the day, and he has n't, in the morning, the 
 
 time to be polite. Now," continued Leon, speaking 
 
 u 
 
210 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 to Bixiou, " if we are going to the Chamber to help 
 him with his lawsuit let us take the longest way 
 round. " 
 
 " Words said by great men are like silver-gilt 
 spoons with the gilt washed off; by dint of repetition 
 they lose their brilliancy," said Bixiou. " Where 
 shall we go ? " 
 
 " Here, close by, to our hatter," replied Leon. 
 
 "Bravo! " cried Bixiou. " If we keep on in this 
 way, we shall have an amusing day of it." 
 
 " Gazonal," said Leon, " I shall make the man pose 
 for you ; but mind that you keep a serious face, like 
 the king on a five-franc piece, for you are going to 
 see a choice original, a man whose importance has 
 turned his head. In these days, my clear fellow, 
 under our new political dispensation, every human 
 being tries to cover himself with glory, and most of 
 them cover themselves with ridicule; hence a lot of 
 living caricatures quite new to the world." 
 
 "If everybody gets glory, who can be famous?" 
 said Gazonal. 
 
 " Fame ! none but fools want that," replied Bixiou. 
 " Your cousin wears the cross, but I 'in the better 
 dressed of the two, and it is I whom people are 
 looking at." 
 
 After this remark, which may explain why orators 
 and other great statesmen no longer put the ribbon in 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 211 
 
 their buttonholes when in Paris, Leon showed Gazonal 
 a sign, bearing, in golden letters, the illustrious name 
 of Vital, successor to Finot, manufacturer of hats (no 
 longer "hatter" as formerly), whose advertisements 
 brought in more money to the newspapers than those 
 of any half-dozen vendors of pills or sugarplums, — the 
 author, moreover, of an essay on hats. 
 
 "My dear fellow," said Bixiou to Gazonal, point- 
 ing to the splendors of the show-window, "Vital 
 has forty thousand francs a year from invested 
 property." 
 
 " And he stays a hatter! " cried the Southerner, with 
 a bound that almost broke the arm which Bixiou had 
 linked in his. 
 
 "You shall see the man," said Leon. " Yt)u need 
 a hat and you shall have one gratis." 
 
 "Is Monsieur Vital absent? " asked Bixiou, seeing 
 no one behind the desk. 
 
 " Monsieur is correcting proof in his study,'' replied 
 the head clerk. 
 
 " Hein! what style! " said Leon to his cousin; then 
 he added, addressing the clerk: "Could we speak to 
 him without injury to his inspiration? " 
 
 "Let those gentlemen enter," said a voice. 
 
 It was a bourgeois voice, the voice of one eligible to 
 the Chamber, a powerful voice, a wealthy voice. 
 
 Vital deigned to show himself, dressed entirely in 
 
212 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 black cloth, with a splendid frilled shirt adorned with 
 one diamond. The three friends observed a young 
 and pretty woman sitting near the desk, working at 
 some embroidery. 
 
 Vital is a man between thirty and forty years of 
 age, with a natural joviality now repressed by ambitious 
 ideas. He is blessed with that medium height which 
 is the privilege of sound organizations. He is rather 
 plump, and takes great pains with his person. His 
 forehead is getting bald, but he uses that circum- 
 stance to give himself the air of a man consumed by 
 thought. It is easy to see by the way his wife looks 
 at him and listens to him that she believes in the 
 genius and glory of her husband. Vital loves artists, 
 not that he has any taste for art, but from fellowship ; 
 for he feels himself an artist, and makes this felt by 
 disclaiming that title of nobility, and placing himself 
 with constant premeditation at so great a distance 
 from the arts that persons may be forced to say to 
 him: " You have raised the construction of hats to the 
 height of a science." 
 
 "Have you at last discovered a hat to suit me?" 
 asked Leon de Lora. 
 
 "Why, monsieur! in fifteen days?" replied Vital, 
 "and for you! Two months would hardly suffice to 
 invent a shape in keeping with your countenance. 
 See, here is your lithographic portrait: I have studied 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 213 
 
 it most carefully. I would not give myself that 
 trouble for a prince; but you are more; you are an 
 artist, and you understand me." 
 
 " This is one of our greatest inventors," said Bixiou 
 presenting Gazonal. " He might be as great as 
 Jacquart if he would only let himself die. Our friend, 
 a manufacturer of cloth, has discovered a method of 
 replacing the indigo in old blue coats, and he wants 
 to see you as another great phenomenon, because he 
 has heard of your saying, ' The hat is the man.' That 
 speech of yours enraptured him. Ah ! Vital, you have 
 faith; you believe in something; you have enthusiasm 
 for your work." 
 
 Vital scarcely listened ; he grew pale with pleasure. 
 
 " Rise, my wife! Monsieur is a prince of science." 
 
 Madame Vital rose at her husband's gesture. 
 Gazonal bowed to her. 
 
 " Shall I have the honor to cover your head? " said 
 Vital, with joyful obsequiousness. 
 
 " At the same price as mine," interposed Bixiou. 
 
 " Of course, of course; I ask no other fee than to 
 be quoted by you, messieurs — Monsieur needs a 
 picturesque hat, something in the style of Monsieur 
 Lousteau's," he continued, looking at Gazonal with 
 the eye of a master. " I will consider it." 
 
 "You give yourself a great deal of trouble," said 
 Gazonal. 
 
214 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 " Oh! for a few persons only; for those who know 
 how to appreciate the value of the pains I bestow upon 
 them. Now, take the aristocracy — there is but one 
 man there who has truly comprehended the Hat ; and 
 that is the Prince de Bethune. How is it that men 
 do not consider, as women do, that the hat is the first 
 thing that strikes the eye? And why have they never 
 thought of changing the present system, which is, let 
 us say it frankly, ignoble? Yes, ignoble; and yet a 
 Frenchman is, of all nationalities, the one most per- 
 sistent in this folly! I know the difficulties of a 
 change, messieurs. I don't speak of my own writings 
 on the matter, which, as I think, approach it philo- 
 sophically, but simply as a hatter. I have myself 
 studied means to accentuate the infamous head-cover- 
 ing to which France is now enslaved until I succeed 
 in overthrowing it." 
 
 So saying he pointed to the hideous hat in vogue at 
 the present day. 
 
 "Behold the enemy, messieurs," he continued. 
 "How is it that the wittiest and most satirical people 
 on earth will consent to wear upon their heads a bit 
 of stove-pipe ? — as one of our great writers has called 
 it. Here are some of the inflections I have been able 
 to give to those atrocious lines," he added, pointing to 
 a number of his creations. "But, although I am able 
 to conform them to the character of each wearer — for, 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 215 
 
 as you see, here are the hats of a doctor, a grocer, a 
 dandy, an artist, a fat man, a thin man, and so forth 
 — the style itself remains horrible. Seize, I beg of 
 you, my whole thought — " 
 
 He took up a hat, low-crowued and wide-brimmed. 
 
 " This," he continued, "is the old hat of Claude 
 Vignon, a great critic, in the days when he was a free 
 man and a free-liver. He has lately come round to 
 the ministry; they've made him a professor, a 
 librarian; he writes now for the Debats only; they've 
 appointed him Master of Petitions with a salary of 
 sixteen thousand francs ; he earns four thousand more 
 out of his paper, and he is decorated. Well, now see 
 his new hat." 
 
 And Vital showed them a hat of a form and design 
 which was truly expressive of the juste-milieu, 
 
 " You ought to have made him a Punch and Judy 
 hat ! " cried Gazonal. 
 
 "You are a man of genius, Monsieur Vital," said 
 Leon. 
 
 Vital bowed. 
 
 " Would you kindly tell me why the shops of your 
 trade in Paris remain open late at night, — later than 
 the cafes and the wineshops? That fact puzzles me 
 very much," said Gazonal. 
 
 "In the first place, our shops are much finer when 
 lighted up than they are in the daytime; next, where 
 
216 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 we sell ten hats in the daytime we sell fifty at 
 night." 
 
 "Everything is queer in Paris," said Leon. 
 
 "Thanks to my efforts and my successes," said 
 Vital, returning to the course of his self-laudation, 
 " we are coming to hats with round headpieces. It is 
 to that I tend!" 
 
 " What obstacle is there ? " asked Gazonal. 
 
 "Cheapness, monsieur. In the first place, very 
 handsome silk hats can be built for fifteen francs, 
 which kills our business ; for in Paris no one ever has 
 fifteen francs in his pocket to spend on a hat. If a 
 beaver hat costs thirty, it is still the same thing — 
 When I say beaver, I ought to state that there are not 
 ten pounds of beaver skins left in France. That 
 article is worth three hundred and fifty francs a pound, 
 and it takes an ounce for a hat. Besides, a beaver 
 hat isn't really worth anything; the skin takes a 
 wretched dye; gets rusty in ten minutes in the sun, 
 and heat puts it out of shape as well. What we call 
 4 beaver ' in the trade is neither more nor less than 
 hare's-skin. The best qualities are made from the 
 back of the animal, the second from the sides, the 
 third from the belly. I confide to you these trade 
 secrets because you are men of honor. But whether a 
 man has hare's-skin or silk on his head, fifteen or 
 thirty francs in short, the problem is always insoluble. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 217 
 
 Hats must be paid for in cash, and that is why the 
 hat remains what it is. The honor of vestural France 
 will be saved on the day that gray hats with round 
 crowns can be made to cost a hundred francs. We 
 could then, like the tailors, give credit. To reach that 
 result men must resolve to wear buckles, gold lace, 
 plumes, and the brims lined with satin, as in the days 
 of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. Our business, which 
 would then enter the domain of fancy, would increase 
 tenfold. The markets of the world should belong to 
 France; Paris will forever give the tone to women's 
 fashions, and yet the hats which all Frenchmen wear 
 to-day are made in every country on earth! There 
 are ten millious of foreign money to be gained 
 annually for France in that question —   " 
 
 " A revolution ! " cried Bixiou, pretending enthu- 
 siasm. 
 
 "Yes, and a radical one; for the form must be 
 changed." 
 
 " You are happy after the manner of Luther in 
 dreaming of reform," said Leon. 
 
 " Yes, monsieur. Ah! if a dozen or fifteen artists, 
 capitalists, or dandies who set the tone would only 
 have courage for twenty-four hours France would gain 
 a splendid commercial battle! To succeed in this 
 reform I would give my whole fortune! Yes, my sole 
 ambition is to regenerate the hat and disappear." 
 
218 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 " The rrian is colossal," said Gazoual, as they left 
 the shop; " but I assure you that all your originals so 
 far have a touch of the Southerner about them." 
 
 ' Let us go this way," said Bixiou pointing to the 
 rue Saint-Marc. 
 
 " Do you want to show me something else? " 
 
 "Yes; you shall see the usuress of rats, ?narcheuses 
 and great ladies, — a woman who possesses more ter- 
 rible secrets than there are gowns hanging in her 
 window," said Bixiou. 
 
 And he showed Gazonal one of those untidy shops 
 which make an ugly stain in the midst of the dazzling 
 show-windows of modern retail commerce. This shop 
 had a front painted in 1820, which some bankrupt had 
 doubtless left in a dilapidated condition. The color 
 had disappeared beneath a double coating of dirt, the 
 result of usage, and a thick layer of dust; the window- 
 panes were filthy, the door-knob turned of itself, as 
 door-knobs do in all places where people go out more 
 quickly than they enter. 
 
 " What do you say of that? First cousin to Death, 
 isn't she?" said Leon in Gazonal's ear, showing 
 him, at the desk, a terrible individual. "Well, she 
 calls herself Madame Nourrisson." 
 
 "Madame, how much is this guipure?" asked the 
 manufacturer, intending to compete in liveliness with 
 the two artists. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 219 
 
 u 
 
 To yon, monsieur, who come from the country, it 
 will be only three hundred francs," she replied. Then, 
 remarking in his manner a sort of eagerness peculiar 
 to Southerners, she added, in a grieved tone, u It 
 formerly belonged to that poor Princesse de Lamballe." 
 
 " What! do you dare exhibit it so near the palace?" 
 cried Bixiou. 
 
 "Monsieur, they don't believe in it," she replied. 
 
 "Madame, we have not come to make purchases," 
 said Bixiou, with a show of frankness. 
 
 " So I see, monsieur," returned Madame Nourrisson. 
 
 "We have several things to sell," said the illustri- 
 ous caricaturist. " I live close by, rue de Richelieu, 
 112, sixth floor. If you will come round there for a 
 moment, you may perhaps make some good bargains." 
 
 Ten minutes later Madame Nourrisson did in fact 
 present herself at Bixiou' s lodgings, where by that time 
 he had taken Leon and Gazonal. Madame Nourrisson 
 found them all three as serious as authors whose col- 
 laboration does not meet with the success it deserves. 
 
 " Madame," said the intrepid hoaxer, showing her 
 a pair of women's slippers, " these belonged formerly 
 to the Empress Josephine." 
 
 He felt it incumbent on him to return change for 
 the Princesse de Lamballe. 
 
 "Those!" she exclaimed; "they were made this 
 year; look at the mark." 
 
220 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 u 
 
 Don't you perceive that the slippers are only by 
 way of preface?" said Leon; "though, to be sure, 
 they are usually the conclusion of a tale." 
 
 " My friend here," said Bixiou, motioning to 
 Gazonal, " has an immense family interest in ascer- 
 taining whether a young lady of a good and wealthy 
 house, whom he wishes to marry, has ever gone 
 
 wrong." 
 
 " How much will monsieur give for the informa- 
 tion," she asked, looking at Gazonal, who was no 
 longer surprised by anything. 
 
 "One hundred francs," he said. 
 
 "No, thank you!" she said with a grimace of 
 refusal worthy of a macaw. 
 
 " Then say how much you want, my little Madame 
 Nourrisson," cried Bixiou catching her round the 
 waist. 
 
 "In the first place, my dear gentlemen, I have 
 never, since I 've been in the business, found man or 
 woman to haggle over happiness. Besides," she said, 
 letting a cold smile flicker on her lips, and enforcing 
 it by an icy glance full of catlike distrust, "if it 
 does n't concern your happiness, it concerns your for- 
 tune ; and at the height where I find you lodging no 
 man haggles over a clot — Come," she said, "out 
 with it! What is it you want to know, my lambs? " 
 
 "About the Beunier family," replied Bixiou, very 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 221 
 
 glad to find out something in this indirect manner 
 about persons in whom he was interested. 
 
 "Oh! as for that," she said, "one louis is quite 
 enough." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Because I hold all the mother's jewels and she 's 
 on tenter-hooks every three months, I can tell you! It 
 is hard work for her to pay the interest on what I 've 
 lent her. Do you want to marry there, simpleton ? " 
 she added, addressing Gazonal; "then pay mc forty 
 francs and I '11 talk four hundred worth." 
 
 Gazonal produced a forty-franc gold-piece, and 
 Madame Nourrisson gave him startling details as to 
 the secret penury of certain so-called fashionable 
 women. This dealer in cast-off clothes, getting lively 
 as she talked, pictured herself unconsciously while 
 telling of others. Without betraying a single name 
 or any secret, she made the three men shudder by 
 proving to them how little so-called happiness existed 
 in Paris that did not rest on the vacillating founda- 
 tion of borrowed money. She possessed, laid away 
 in her drawers, the secrets of departed grandmothers, 
 living children, deceased husbands, dead granddaugh- 
 ters, — memories set in gold and diamonds. She 
 learned appalling histories by making her clients talk 
 of one another; tearing their secrets from them in 
 moments of passion, of quarrels, of anger, and during 
 
222 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 those cooler negotiations which need a loan to settle 
 difficulties. 
 
 "Why were you ever induced to take up such a 
 business?" asked Gazonah 
 
 "For my son's sake," she said naively. 
 
 Such women almost invariably justify their trade by 
 alleging noble motives. Madame Nourrisson posed 
 as having lost several opportunities for marriage, also 
 three daughters who had gone to the bad, and all her 
 illusions. She showed the pawn-tickets of the Mont- 
 de-Piete to prove the risks her business ran ; declared 
 she did not know how to meet the "end of the month; " 
 she was robbed, she said, — robbed. 
 
 The two artists looked at each other on hearing 
 that expression, which seemed exaggerated. 
 
 "Look here, my sons, I'll show you how we are 
 done. It is not about myself, but about my opposite 
 neighbor, Madame Mahuchet, a ladies' shoemaker. I 
 had loaned money to a countess, a woman who has too 
 many passions for her means, — lives in a fine apart- 
 ment filled with splendid furniture, and makes, as we 
 say, a devil of a show with her high and mighty airs. 
 She owed three hundred francs to her shoemaker, and 
 was giving a dinner no later than yesterday. The 
 shoemaker, who heard of the dinner from the cook, 
 came to see me; we got excited, and she wanted to 
 make a row ; but I said : ' My dear Madame Mahuchet, 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 223 
 
 what good will that do? you '11 only get yourself hated. 
 It is much better to obtain some security; and you 
 save your bile.' She wouldn't listen, but go she 
 would, and asked me to support her; so I went. 
 4 Madame is not at home.' — ' Up to that! we '11 wait,' 
 said Madame Mahuchet, ' if we have to stay all night,' 
 — and down we camped in the antechamber. Pres- 
 ently the doors began to open and shut, and feet and 
 voices came along. I felt badly. The guests were 
 arriving for dinner. You can see the appearance it 
 had. The countess sent her maid to coax Madame 
 Mahuchet: 'Pay you to-morrow!' in short, all the 
 snares ! Nothing took. The countess, dressed to the 
 nines, went to the dining-room. Mahuchet heard her 
 and opened the door. Gracious ! when she saw that 
 table sparkling with silver, the covers to the dishes 
 and the chandeliers all glittering like a jewel-case, 
 didn't she go off like soda-water and fire her shot: 
 1 When people spend the money of others they should 
 be sober and not give dinner-parties. Think of your 
 being a countess and owing three hundred francs to a 
 poor shoemaker with seven children! ' You can guess 
 how she railed, for the Mahuchet has n't any educa- 
 tion. When the couutess tried to make an excuse 
 ( 4 no money ') Mahuchet screamed out: ' Look at all 
 your fine silver, madame; pawn it and pay me!' — 
 Take some yourself,' said the countess quickly, 
 
 t T 
 
224 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 gathering up a quantity of forks and spoons and 
 putting them into her hands. Downstairs we rattled! 
 — heavens! like success itself. No, before we got 
 to the street Mahuchet began to cry — she's a kind 
 woman ! She turned back and restored the silver ; for 
 she now understood that countess's poverty — it was 
 plated ware ! " 
 
 "And she forked it over," said Leon, in whom the 
 former Mistigris occasionally reappeared. 
 
 "Ah! my dear monsieur," said Madame Nourrisson, 
 enlightened by the slang, "you are an artist, you 
 write plays, you live in the rue du Helder and are 
 friends with Madame Antonia; you have habits that 
 I know all about. Come, do you want some rarity in 
 the grand style, — Carabine or Mousqueton, Malaga or 
 Jenny Cadine? " 
 
 "Malaga, Carabine! nonsense!" cried Leon de 
 Lora. "It was we who invented them." 
 
 "I assure you, my good Madame Nourrisson," said 
 Bixiou, "that we only wanted the pleasure of making 
 your acquaintance, and we should like very much to 
 be informed as to how you ever came to slip into this 
 business." 
 
 " I was confidential maid in the family of a marshal 
 of France, Prince dTsembourg," she said, assuming 
 the airs of a Dorine. "One morning, one of the most 
 beplumed countesses of the Imperial court came to 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 225 
 
 the house and wanted to speak to the marshal pri- 
 vately- I put myself in the way of hearing what 
 she said. She burst into tears and confided to that 
 booby of a marshal — yes, the Conde of the Republic 
 is a booby ! — that her husband, who served under him 
 in Spain, had left her without means, aud if she 
 did n't get a thousand francs, or two thousand, that day 
 her children must go without food; she hadn't any for 
 the morrow. The marshal, who was always ready to 
 give in those days, took two notes of a thousand francs 
 each out of his desk, aud gave them to her. I saw 
 that fine countess going down the staircase where she 
 couldn't see me. She was laughing with a satisfac- 
 tion that certainly wasn't motherly, so I slipped after 
 her to the peristyle where I heard her say to the 
 coachman, 4 To Leroy's.' I ran round quickly to 
 Leroy's, and there, sure enough, was the poor mother. 
 I got there in time to see her order and pay for a 
 fifteen-hundred-franc dress ; you understand that in 
 those days people were made to pay when they 
 bought. The next day but one she appeared at an 
 ambassador's ball, dressed to please all the world and 
 some one in particular. That day I said to myself : 
 ' I 've got a career! When I 'm no longer young I '11 
 lend money to great ladies on their finery; for passion 
 never calculates, it pays blindly.' If you want sub- 
 jects for a vaudeville I can sell you plenty." 
 
 15 
 
226 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 She departed after delivering this tirade, in which 
 all the phases of her past life were outlined, leaving 
 Gazonal as much horrified by her revelations as by 
 the five yellow teeth she showed when she tried to 
 smile. 
 
 " What shall we do now? " he asked presently. 
 
 "Make notes, " replied Bixiou, whistling for his 
 porter; "for I want some money, and I'll show you 
 the use of porters. You think they only pull the gate- 
 cord ; whereas they really pull poor devils like me and 
 artists whom they take under their protection out of 
 difficulties. Mine will get the Montyon prize one of 
 these days." 
 
 Gazonal opened his eyes to their utmost roundness. 
 
 A man between two ages, partly a gray beard, partly 
 an office-boy, but more oily within and without, hair 
 greasy, stomach puffy, skin dull and moist, like that 
 of the prior of a convent, always wearing list shoes, a 
 blue coat, and grayish trousers, made his appearance. 
 
 " What is it, monsieur? " he said with an air which 
 combined that of a protector and a subordinate. 
 
 " Ravenouillet — His name is Ravenouillet," said 
 Bixiou turning to Gazonal. "Have you our note- 
 book of bills due with you?" 
 
 Ravenouillet pulled out of his pocket the greasiest 
 and stickiest book that Gazonal' s eyes had ever 
 beheld. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 227 
 
 " Write clown at three months' sight two notes of 
 five hundred francs each, which you will proceed to 
 sign." 
 
 And Bixiou handed over two notes already drawn 
 to his order by Ravenouillet, which Ravenouillet 
 immediately signed and inscribed on the greasy book, 
 in which his wife also kept account of the debts of the 
 other lodgers. 
 
 "Thanks, Ravenouillet," said Bixiou. " And here 's 
 a box at the Vaudeville for you." 
 
 "Oh! my daughter will enjoy that," said Rave- 
 nouillet, departing. 
 
 " There are seventy-one tenants in this house," said 
 Bixiou, "and the average of what they owe Rave- 
 nouillet is six thousand francs a month, eighteen thou- 
 sand quarterly for money advanced, postage, etc., not 
 counting the rents clue. He is Providence — at thirty 
 per cent, which we all pay him, though he never asks 
 for anything." 
 
 "Oh, Paris! Paris!" cried Gazonal. 
 
 " I'm going to take you now, cousin Gazonal," said 
 Bixiou, after indorsing the notes, "to see another 
 comedian, who will play you a charming scene gratis." 
 
 " Who is it? " said Gazonal. 
 
 " A usurer. As we go along I '11 tell you the debut 
 of friend Ravenouillet in Paris." 
 
 Passing in front of the porter's lodge, Gazonal 
 
228 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 saw Mademoiselle Lucierme Ravenouillet holding in 
 her hand a music score (she was a pupil of the Con- 
 servatoire), her father reading a newspaper, and 
 Madame Ravenouillet with a package of letters to be 
 carried up to the lodgers. 
 
 " Thanks, Monsieur Bixiou! " said the girl. 
 
 "She's not a rat," explained Leon to his cousin; 
 " she is the larva of the grasshopper." 
 
 "Here's the history of Ravenouillet," continued 
 Bixiou, when the three friends reached the boulevard. 
 "In 1831 Massol, the councillor of state who is deal- 
 ing with your case, was a lawyer-journalist who at 
 that time never thought of being more than Keeper of 
 the Seals, and deigned to leave King Louis-Philippe 
 on his throne. Forgive his ambition, he 's from Car- 
 cassonne. One morning there entered to him a young 
 rustic of his parts, who said: ' You know me very well, 
 Mossoo Massol; I'm your neighbor the grocer's little 
 boy; I 've come from clown there, for they tell me a 
 fellow is certain to get a place if he comes to Paris. ' 
 Hearing these words, Massol shuddered, and said to 
 himself that if he were weak enough to help this com- 
 patriot (to him utterly unknown) he should have the 
 whole department prone upon him, his bell-rope would 
 break, his valet leave him, he should have difficulties 
 with his landlord about the stairway, and the other 
 lodgers would assuredly complain of the smell of 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 229 
 
 garlic pervading the bouse. Consequently, he looked 
 at his visitor as a butcher looks at a sheep whose 
 throat he intends to cut. But whether the rustic com- 
 prehended the stab of that glance or not, he went on 
 to say (so Massol told rne), ' I 've as much ambition as 
 other men. I will never go back to my native place, 
 if I ever do go back, unless I am a rich man. Paris 
 is the antechamber of Paradise. They tell me that 
 you who write the newspapers can make, as they say, 
 "fine weather and foul;" that is, you have things all 
 your own way, and it 's enough to ask your help to 
 get any place, no matter what, under government. 
 Now, though I have faculties, like others, I know 
 myself: I have no education; I don't know how to 
 write, and that 's a misfortune, for I have ideas. I 
 am not seeking, therefore, to be your rival ; I judge 
 myself, and I know I could n't succeed there. But, 
 as you are so powerful, and as we are almost brothers, 
 having played together in childhood, I count upon you 
 to launch me in a career and to protect me — Oh, 
 you must; I want a place; a place suitable to my 
 capacit} T , to such as I am, a place where I can make 
 my fortune.' Massol was just about to put his com- 
 patriot neck and crop out of the door with some 
 brutal speech, when the rustic ended his appeal thus : 
 1 1 don't ask to enter the administration where people 
 advance like tortoises — there 's your cousin, who has 
 
230 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 stuck in one post for twenty years. No, I only want 
 to make my debut. ' — 'On the stage?' asked Massol 
 only too happy at that conclusion. — ' No ; though I 
 have gesture enough, and figure, and memory. But 
 there 's too much wear and tear; I prefer the career of 
 porter.' Massol kept his couutenance, and replied: 
 ' I think there 's more wear and tear in that, but as 
 your choice is made I '11 see what I can do; ' and he 
 got him, as Ravenouillet says, his first cordon." 
 
 " I was the first master," said Leon, " to consider 
 the race of porter. You '11 find knaves of morality, 
 mountebanks of vanity, modern sycophants, septem- 
 briseurs, disguised in philanthropy, inventors of palpi- 
 tating questions, preaching the emancipation of the 
 negroes, improvement of little thieves, benevolence to 
 liberated convicts, and who, nevertheless, leave their 
 porters in a condition worse than that of the Irish, in 
 holes more dreadful than a mud cabin, and pay them 
 less money to live on than the State pays to support a 
 convict. T have done but one good action in my life, 
 and that was to build my porter a decent lodge." 
 
 " Yes," said Bixiou, "if a man, having built a great 
 cage divided into thousands of compartments like 
 the cells of a beehive or the dens of a meuagerie, con- 
 structed to receive human beings of all trades and all 
 kinds, if that animal, calling itself the proprietor, 
 should go to a man of science and say : ' I want an 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 231 
 
 individual of the bimanous species, able to live in 
 boles full of old boots, pestiferous with rags, and ten 
 feet square : I want him such that he can live there all 
 his life, sleep there, eat there, be happy, get children 
 as pretty as little cupids, work, toil, cultivate flowers, 
 sing there, stay there, and live in darkness but see 
 and know everything,' most assuredly the man of 
 science could never have invented the porter to oblige 
 the proprietor; Paris, and Paris only could create 
 him, or, if you choose, the devil." 
 
 "Parisian creative powers have gone farther than 
 that," said Gazonal; " look at the workmen! Tou 
 don't know all the products of industry, though you 
 exhibit them. Our toilers fight against the toilers of 
 the continent by force of misery, as Napoleon fought 
 Europe by force of regiments." 
 
 "Here we are, at my friend the usurer's," said 
 Bixiou. " His name is Vauvinet. One of the greatest 
 mistakes made by writers who describe our manners 
 and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days 
 all trades change. The grocer becomes a peer of 
 France, artists capitalize their money, vaudevillists 
 have incomes. A few rare beings may remain what 
 they originally were, but professions in general have 
 no longer either their special costume or their formerly 
 fixed habits and ways. In the past we had Gobseck, 
 Gigonnet, Samonon, — the last of the Romans; to-day 
 
232 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 we rejoice in Vauvinet, the good-fellow usurer, the 
 dandy who frequents the greenroom and the lorettes, 
 and drives about in a little coupe with one horse. 
 Take special note of my man, friend Gazonal, and 
 you '11 see the comedy of money, the cold man who 
 won't give a penny, the hot man who snuffs a profit; 
 listen to him attentively ! " 
 
 All three went up to the second floor of a fine-look- 
 ing house on the boulevard des Italiens, where they 
 found themselves surrounded by the elegances then 
 in fashion. A young man about twenty-eight years 
 of as;e advanced to meet them with a smilino- face, for 
 he saw Leon de Lora first. Vauvinet held out his 
 hand with apparent friendliness to Bixiou, and bowed 
 coldly to Gazonal as he motioned them to enter his 
 office, where bourgeois taste was visible beneath the 
 artistic appearance of the furniture, and in spite of 
 the statuettes and the thousand other little trifles 
 applied to our little apartments by modern art, which 
 has made itself as small as its patrons. 
 
 Vauvinet was dressed, like other young men of our 
 day who go into business, with extreme elegance, 
 which many of them regard as a species of prospectus. 
 
 "I've come for some money," said Bixiou, laugh- 
 ing, and presenting his notes. 
 
 Vauvinet assumed a serious air, which made 
 Gazonal smile, such difference was there between the 
 
u 
 It 
 
 Unconscious Comedians. 233 
 
 smiling visage that received them and the coun- 
 tenance of the money-lender recalled to business. 
 
 My dear fellow," said Vauvinet, looking at Bixiou, 
 
 I should certainly oblige you with the greatest 
 pleasure, but I have n't any money to loan at the 
 present time. " 
 
 "Ah, bah!" 
 
 "No; I have given all I had to — you know who. 
 That poor Lousteau went into partnership for the 
 management of a theatre with an old vaudevillist who 
 has great influence with the ministry, Ridal ; and they 
 came to me yesterday for thirty thousand francs. 
 I 'm cleaned out, and so completely that I was just 
 in the act of sending to Cerizet for a hundred louis, 
 which I lost at lansquenet this morning, at Jenny 
 Cadine's." 
 
 u You must indeed be hard-up if you can't oblige 
 this poor Bixiou," said Leon de Lora; " for he can be 
 very sharp-tongued when he has n't a sou." 
 
 " Well," said Bixiou, " I never could say anything 
 but good of Vauvinet; he 's full of goods." 
 
 "My dear friend," said Vauvinet, "if I had the 
 money, I could n't possibly discount, even at fifty 
 per cent, notes which are drawn by your porter. 
 Ravenouillet's paper is n't in demand. He 's not a 
 Rothschild. I warn you that his notes are worn thin ; 
 you had better invent another firm. Find an uncle. 
 
234 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 As for a friend who '11 sign notes for us there 's no 
 such being to be found ; the matter-of-f actness of the 
 present age is making awful progress." 
 
 " I have a friend," said Bixiou, motioning to Leon's 
 cousin. "Monsieur here; one of the most distin- 
 guished manufacturers of cloth in the South, named 
 Gazonal. His hair is not very well dressed," added 
 Bixiou, looking at the touzled and luxuriant crop on 
 the provincial's head, "but I am going to take him to 
 Marius, who will make him look less like a poodle- 
 dog, an appearance so injurious to his credit, and to 
 
 ours." 
 
 " I don't believe in Southern securities, be it said 
 without offence to monsieur," replied Vauvinet, with 
 whom Gazonal was so entertained that he did not 
 resent his insolence. 
 
 Gazonal, that extremely penetrating intellect, thought 
 that the painter and Bixiou intended, by way of teach- 
 ing him to know Paris, to make him pay the thousand 
 francs for his breakfast at the Cafe de Paris, for this 
 son of the Pyrenees had never got out of that armor 
 of distrust which incloses the provincial in Paris. 
 
 " How can you expect me to have outstanding busi- 
 ness at seven hundred miles from Paris?" added 
 Vauvinet. 
 
 " Then you refuse me positively? " asked Bixiou. 
 
 " I have twenty francs, and no more," said the 
 young usurer. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 235 
 
 "I'm sorry for you," said the joker. "I thought 
 I was worth a thousand francs." 
 
 "You are worth two hundred thousand francs," 
 replied Vauvinet, " and sometimes you are worth your 
 weight in gold, or at least your tongue is; but I tell 
 you I have n't a penny." 
 
 "Very good," replied Bixiou; "then we won't say 
 anything more about it. I had arranged for this 
 evening, at Carabine's, the thing you most wanted — 
 you know ? " 
 
 Vauvinet winked an eye at Bixiou; the wink that 
 two jockeys give each other when they want to say: 
 " Don't try trickery." 
 
 "Don't you remember catching me round the waist 
 as if I were a pretty woman," said Bixiou, "and 
 coaxing me with look and speech, and saying, ' I '11 do 
 anything for you if you '11 only get me shares at par 
 in that railroad du Tillet and Nucingen have made an 
 offer for? ' Well, old fellow, du Tillet and Nucingen 
 are coming to Carabine's to-night, where they will 
 meet a number of political characters. You 've lost 
 a fine opportunity. Good-b}^e to you, old carrot." 
 
 Bixiou rose, leaving Vauvinet apparently indiffer- 
 ent, but inwardly annoyed by the sense that he had 
 committed a folly. 
 
 " One moment, my dear fellow," said the rnone} 7 - 
 lender. ''Though I have n't the money, I have credit. 
 
236 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 If your notes are worth nothing, I can keep them and 
 give you notes in exchange. If we can come to an 
 agreement about that railway stock we could share the 
 profits, of course in due proportion and I '11 allow 
 you that on — " 
 
 "No, no," said Bixiou, "I want money in hand, 
 and I must get those notes of Ravenouillet's cashed." 
 
 " Ravenouillet is sound," said Vauvinet. "He puts 
 money into the savings-bank; he is good security." 
 
 " Better than you," interposed Leon, " for he does n't 
 stipend lorettes; he hasn't any rent to pay; and he 
 never rushes into speculations which keep him dread- 
 ins: either a rise or fall." 
 
 "You think you can laugh at me, great man," 
 returned Vauvinet, once more jovial and caressing; 
 "you 've turned La Fontaine's fable of 'Le Chene et 
 le Roseau ' into an elixir — Come, Gubetta, my old 
 accomplice," he continued, seizing Bixiou round the 
 waist, " you want money; well, I can borrow three 
 thousand francs from my friend Cerizet instead of 
 two ; '" Let us be friends, Cinna ! ' hand over your 
 colossal cabbages, — made to trick the public like a 
 gardener' s s catalogue. If I refused you it was because 
 it is pretty hard on a man who can only do his poor 
 little business by turning over his money, to have to 
 keep your Ravenouillet notes in the drawer of his 
 desk. Hard, hard, very hard ! " 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 237 
 
 " "What discount do you want? " asked Bixiou. 
 
 "Next to nothing," returned Vauvinet. "It will 
 cost you a miserable fifty francs at the end of the 
 quarter." 
 
 "As Ernile Blondet used to say, you shall be my 
 benefactor," replied Bixiou. 
 
 "Twenty per cent! " whispered Gazonal to Bixiou, 
 who replied by a punch of his elbow in the provincial's 
 oesophagus. 
 
 "Bless me!" said Vauvinet opening a drawer in 
 his desk as if to put away the Kavenouillet notes, 
 " here 's an old bill of five hundred francs stuck in the 
 drawer! I didn't know I was so rich. And here's 
 a note payable at the end of the month for four hun- 
 dred and fifty; Cerizet will take it without much 
 diminution, and there 's your sum in hand. But no 
 nonsense, Bixiou! Hein? to-night, at Carabine's, 
 will you swear to me — " 
 
 "Haven't we re-friended?" said Bixiou, pocketing 
 the five-hundred-franc bill and the note for four hun- 
 dred and fifty. "I give you my word of honor that 
 you shall see du Tillet, and many other men who 
 want to make their way — their railway — to-night at 
 Carabine's." 
 
 Vauvinet conducted the three friends to the landing 
 of the staircase, cajoling Bixiou on the way. Bixiou 
 kept a grave face till he reached the outer door, listen- 
 
238 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 ing to Gazonal, who tried to enlighten him on his late 
 operation, and to prove to him that if Vauvinet's fol- 
 lower, Cerizet, took another twenty francs out of his 
 four hundred and fifty, he was getting money at forty 
 per cent. 
 
 When they reached the asphalt Bixiou frightened 
 Gazonal by the laugh of a Parisian hoaxer, — that 
 cold, mute laugh, a sort of labial north wind. 
 
 " The assignment of the contract for that railway is 
 adjourned, positively, by the Chamber; I heard this 
 yesterday from that marcheuse whom we smiled at 
 just now. If I win five or six thousand francs at 
 lansquenet to-night, why should I grudge sixty-five 
 francs for the power to stake, hey?" 
 
 " Lansquenet is another of the thousand facets of 
 Paris as it is," said Leon. "And therefore, cousin, 
 I intend to present you to-night in the salon of a 
 duchess, — a duchess of the rue Saint-Georges, where 
 you will see the aristocracy of the lorettes, and prob- 
 ably be able to win your lawsuit. But it is quite 
 impossible to present you anywhere with that mop of 
 Pyrenean hair; you look like a porcupine; and there- 
 fore we '11 take you close by, Place de la Bourse, to 
 Marius, another of our comedians — " 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 " I '11 tell you his tale," said Bixiou. " In the year 
 1800 a Toulousian named Cabot, a young wig-maker 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 239 
 
 devoured by ambition, came to Paris, and set up a 
 shop (I use your slang). This man of genius, — he 
 now has an income of twenty-four thousand francs a 
 year, and lives, retired from business, at Libourne, — 
 well, he saw that so vulgar and ignoble a name as 
 Cabot could never attain celebrity. Monsieur de 
 Parny, whose hair he cut, gave him the name of 
 Marius, infinitely superior, you perceive, to the Chris- 
 tian names of Armand and Hippolyte, behind which 
 patronymics attacked by the Cabot evil are wont to 
 hide. All the successors of Cabot have called them- 
 selves Marius. The present Marius is Marius V. ; 
 his real name is Mongin. This occurs in various 
 other trades ; for ' Botot water, ' and for ' Little- 
 Virtue ' ink. Names become commercial property in 
 Paris, and have ended by constituting a sort of eusign 
 of nobility. The present Marius, who takes pupils, 
 has created, he says, the leading school of hair-dressing 
 in the world." 
 
 "I've seen, in coming through France," said 
 Gazonal, "a great many signs bearing the words: 
 ' Such a one, pupil of Marius.' " 
 
 "His pupils have to wash their hands after every 
 head," said Bixiou; "but Marius does not take them 
 indifferently; they must have nice hands, and not be 
 ill-looking. The most remarkable for manners, ap- 
 pearance, and elocution are sent out to dress heads; 
 
240 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 and they come back tired to death. Marius himself 
 never turns out except for titled women ; he drives his 
 cabriolet and has a groom." 
 
 " But, after all, he is nothing but a barber! " cried 
 Gazonal, somewhat shocked. 
 
 "Barber!" exclaimed Bixiou; "please remember 
 that he is captain in the National Guard, and is deco- 
 rated for being the first to spring into a barricade in 
 1832." 
 
 "And take care what you say to him: he is neither 
 barber, hair-dresser, nor wig-maker; he is a director 
 of salons for hair-dressing," said Leon, as they went 
 up a staircase with crystal balusters and mahogany 
 rail, the steps of which were covered with a sumptuous 
 carpet. 
 
 "Ah ga ! mind you don't compromise us," said 
 Bixiou. "In the antechamber you'll see lacqueys 
 who will take off your coat, and seize your hat, to 
 brush them; and they'll accompany you to the door 
 of the salons to open and shut it. I mention this, 
 friend Gazonal," added Bixiou, slyly, "lest you 
 might think they were after your property, and cry 
 4 Stop thief ! ' " 
 
 "These salons," said Leon, "are three boudoirs 
 where the director has collected all the inventions of 
 modern luxury: lambrequins to the windows, jardi- 
 
 * 
 
 nieres everywhere, downy divans where each customer 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 241 
 
 can wait his turn and read the newspapers. You 
 might suppose, when you' first go in, that five francs 
 would be the least they 'd get out of your waistcoat 
 pocket; but nothing is ever extracted beyond ten sous 
 for combing and frizzing your hair, or twenty sous 
 for cutting and frizzing. Elegant dressing-tables 
 stand about among the jardinieres; water is laid on to 
 the washstands; enormous mirrors reproduce the whole 
 figure. Therefore don't look astonished. When the 
 client (that 's the elegant word substituted by Marius 
 for the ignoble word customer), — when the client 
 appears at the door, Marius gives him a glance which 
 appraises him: to Marius you are a head, more or less 
 susceptible of occupying his mind. To him there 's 
 no mankind; there are only heads." 
 
 "We let you hear Marius on all the notes of his 
 scale," said Bixiou, "and you know how to follow 
 our lead." 
 
 As soon as Gazonal showed himself, the glance was 
 given, and was evidently favorable, for Marius 
 exclaimed: "Regulus! yours this head! Prepare it 
 first with the little scissors." 
 
 "Excuse me," said Gazonal to the pupil, at a sign 
 from Bixiou. "I prefer to have my head dressed by 
 Monsieur Marius himself." 
 
 Marius, much flattered by this demand, advanced, 
 leaving the head on which he was engaged. 
 
 16 
 
242 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 a- 
 
 'I am with you in a moment; I am just finishing. 
 Pray have no uneasiness, my pupil will prepare you; 
 I alone will decide the cut." 
 
 Marius, a slim little man, his hair frizzed like that 
 of Rubini, and jet black, dressed also in black, with 
 long white cuffs, and the frill of his shirt adorned 
 with a diamond, now saw Bixiou, to whom he bowed 
 as to a power the equal of his own. 
 
 "That is only an ordinary head," he said to Leon, 
 pointing to the person on whom he was operating, — "a 
 grocer, or something of that kind. But if we devoted 
 ourselves to art only, we should die in Bicetre, mad! " 
 and he turned back with an inimitable gesture to his 
 client, after saying to Regulus, "Prepare monsieur, 
 he is evidently an artist." 
 
 "A journalist," said Bixiou. 
 
 Hearing that word, Marius gave two or three strokes 
 of the comb to the ordinary head and flung himself 
 upon Gazonal, taking Regulus by the arm at the instant 
 that the pupil was about to begin the operation of the 
 little scissors. 
 
 "I will take charge of monsieur. Look, monsieur," 
 he said to the grocer, "reflect yourself in the great 
 mirror — if the mirror permits. Ossian ! " 
 
 A lacquey entered, and took hold of the client to 
 dress him. 
 
 ; You pay at the desk, monsieur," said Marius 
 
 uv. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 243 
 
 to the stupefied grocer, who was pulling out his 
 purse. 
 
 "Is there any use, rny dear fellow," said Bixiou, "in 
 going through this operation of the little scissors? " 
 
 "No head ever comes to me unclean sed," replied 
 the illustrious hair-dresser; "but for your sake, I will 
 do that of monsieur myself, wholly. My pupils sketch 
 out the scheme, or my strength would not hold out. 
 Every one says as you do: 'Dressed by Marius! ' 
 Therefore, I can give only the finishing strokes. 
 What journal is monsieur on?" 
 
 "If I were you, I should keep three or four 
 Mariuses," said Gazonal. 
 
 "Ah! monsieur, I see, is a feuilletonist," said 
 Marius. "Alas! in dressing heads which expose us 
 to notice it is impossible. Excuse me!" 
 
 He left Gazonal to overlook Regulus, who was " pre- 
 paring " a newly arrived head. Tapping his tongue 
 against his palate, he made a disapproving«noise, which 
 may perhaps be written down as "titt, titt, titt." 
 
 "There, there! good heavens! that cut is not 
 square; your scissors are hacking it. Here! see 
 there! Regulus, you are not clipping poodles; these 
 are men — who have a character; if you continue to 
 look at the ceiling instead of looking only between the 
 glass and the head, you will dishonor my house." 
 
 "You are stern, Monsieur Marius." 
 
244 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 "I owe them the secrets of my art." 
 
 "Then it is an art? " said Gazonal. 
 
 Marius, affronted, looked at Gazonal in the glass, 
 and stopped short, the scissors in one hand, the comb 
 in the other. 
 
 "Monsieur, yon speak like a — child! and yet, from 
 your accent, I judge you are from the South, the birth- 
 place of men of genius." 
 
 "Yes, I know that hair-dressing requires some 
 taste," replied Gazonal. 
 
 44 Hush, monsieur, hush! I expected better things 
 of you. Let me tell you that a hair-dresser, — I don't 
 say a good hair-dresser, for a man is, or he is not, a 
 hair-dresser, — a hair-dresser, I repeat, is more diffi- 
 cult to find than — what shall I say? than — I don't 
 know what — a minister? — (Sit still!) No, for you 
 can't judge by ministers, the streets are full of them. 
 A Paganini? No, he's not great enough. A hair- 
 dresser, monsieur, a man who divines your soul and 
 your habits, in order to dress your hair conformably 
 with your being, that man has all that constitutes a 
 philosopher — and such he is. See the women! 
 Women appreciate us; they know our value; our value 
 to them is the conquest they make when they have 
 placed their heads in our hands to attain a triumph. 
 I say to you that a hair-dresser — the world does not 
 know what he is. I who speak to you, I am very 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 245 
 
 nearly all that there is of — without boasting I may say 
 I am known — Still, I think more might be done — The 
 execution, that is everything! Ah! if women would 
 onW give me carte blanche!   — if I might only execute 
 the ideas that come to me ! I have, you see, a hell of 
 imagination! — but the women don't fall in with it; 
 they have their own plaus; they '11 stick their fingers 
 or combs, as soon as my back is turned, through the 
 most delicious edifices — which ought to be engraved 
 and perpetuated; for our works, monsieur, last unfor- 
 tunately but a few hours. A great hair-dresser, hey! 
 he 's like Careme and Vestris in their careers. (Head 
 a little this way, if you please, so; I attend particu- 
 larly to front faces!) Our profession is ruined by 
 bunglers who understand neither the epoch nor their 
 art. There are dealers in wigs and essences who are 
 enough to make one's hair stand on end; they care 
 only to sell you bottles. It is pitiable ! But that 's 
 business. Such poor wretches cut hair and dress it as 
 they can. I, when I arrived in Paris from Toulouse, 
 my ambition was to succeed the great Marius, to be 
 a true Marius, to make that name illustrious. I 
 alone, more than all the four others, I said to myself, 
 * I will conquer, or die.' (There! now sit straight, I 
 am going to finish you.) I was the first to introduce 
 elegance ; I made my salons the object of curiosity. I 
 disdain advertisements; what advertisements would 
 
246 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 have cost, monsieur, I put into elegance, charm, com- 
 fort. Next year I shall have a quartette in one of the 
 salons to discourse music, and of the best. Yes, we 
 ought to charm away the ennui of those whose heads 
 we dress. I do not conceal from myself the annoy- 
 ances to a client. (Look at yourself !) To have one's 
 hair dressed is fatiguing, perhaps as much so as pos- 
 ing for one's portrait. Monsieur knows perhaps that 
 the famous Monsieur Humboldt (I did the best I 
 could with the few hairs America left him — science 
 has this in common with savages, that she scalps her 
 men clean), that illustrious savant, said that next to 
 the suffering of going to be hanged was that of going 
 to be painted; but I place the trial of having your 
 head dressed before that of being painted, and so do 
 certain women. Well, monsieur, my object is to 
 make those who come here to have their hair cut 
 or frizzed enjoy themselves. (Hold still, you have a 
 tuft which must be conquered.) A Jew proposed to 
 supply me with Italian cantatrices who, during the in- 
 terludes, were to depilate the young men of forty ; but 
 they proved to be girls from the Conservatoire, and 
 music-teachers from the Rue Montmartre. There 
 you are, monsieur; your head is dressed as that of a 
 man of talent ousjht to be. Ossian," he said to the 
 lacquey in livery, "dress monsieur and show him out. 
 Whose turn next?" he added proudly, gazing round 
 upon the persons who awaited him. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 247 
 
 "Don't laugh, Gazonal," said Leon as they reached 
 the foot of the staircase, whence his eye could take in 
 the whole of the Place de la Bourse. "I see over 
 there one of our great men, and you shall compare his 
 language with that of the barber, and tell me which of 
 the two you think the most original." 
 
 "Don't laugh, Gazonal," said Bixiou, mimicking 
 Leon's intonation. "What do you suppose is 
 Marius's business? " 
 
 "Hair-dressing." 
 
 7° 
 
 "He has obtained a monopoly of the sale of hair in 
 bulk, as a certain dealer in comestibles who is going 
 to sell us a pate for three francs has acquired a mon- 
 opoly of the sale of truffles; he discounts the paper of 
 that business; he loans money on pawn to clients when 
 embarrassed; he gives annuities on lives; he gambles 
 at the Bourse; he is a stockholder in all the fashion 
 papers; and he sells, under the name of a certain 
 chemist, an infamous drug which, for his share alone, 
 gives him an income of thirty thousand francs, and 
 costs in advertisements a hundred thousand yearly." 
 
 "Is it possible! " cried Gazonal. 
 
 "Remember this," said Bixiou, gravely.. "In Paris 
 there is no such thing as a small business ; all things 
 swell to large proportions, down to the sale of rags 
 and matches. The lemonade-seller who, with his 
 napkin under his arm, meets you as you enter his 
 
248 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 shop, may be worth his fifty thousand francs a year; 
 the waiter in a restaurant is eligible for the Chamber; 
 the man you take for a beggar in the street carries a 
 hundred thousand francs worth of unset diamonds in 
 his waistcoat pocket, and didn't steal them either." 
 
 The three inseparables (for one day at any rate) 
 now crossed the Place de la Bourse in a way to inter- 
 cept a man about forty years of age, wearing the 
 Legion of honor, who was coming from the boulevard 
 by way of the rue Neuve-Vivienne. 
 
 "Hey ! " said Leon, "what are you pondering over, 
 my dear Dubourdieu? Some fine symbolic composi- 
 tion? My dear cousin, I have the pleasure to present 
 to you our illustrious painter Dubourdieu, not less 
 celebrated for his humanitarian convictions than for 
 his talents in art. Dubourdieu, my cousin Palafox." 
 
 Dubourdieu, a small, pale man with melancholy blue 
 eyes, bowed slightly to Gazonal, who bent low as 
 before a man of genius. 
 
 "So you have elected Stidmann in place of — " he 
 beoan. 
 
 "How could I help it? I wasn't there," replied 
 Lora. 
 
 "You bring the Academy into disrepute," continued 
 the painter. "To choose such a man as that ! I don't 
 wish to say ill of him, but he works at a trade. 
 Where are you dragging the first of arts, — the art whose 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 249 
 
 works are the most lasting; bringing nations to light 
 of which the world ha's long lost even the memory ; an 
 art which crowns and consecrates great men? Yes, 
 sculpture is priesthood; it preserves the ideas of an 
 epoch, and you give its chair to a maker of toys and 
 mantelpieces, an ornamentationist, a seller of bric-a- 
 brac ! Ah ! as Chamfort said, one has to swallow a 
 viper every morning to endure the life of Paris. Well, 
 at any rate, Art remains to a few of us; they can't 
 prevent us from cultivating it — " 
 
 "And besides, my dear fellow, you have a consola- 
 tion which few artists possess; the future is yours," 
 said Bixiou. "When the world is converted to our 
 doctrine, you will be at the head of your art; for you 
 are putting into it ideas which people will understand 
 — when they are generalized ! In fifty years from now 
 you '11 be to all the world what you are to a few of us 
 at this moment, — a great man. The only question is 
 how to get along till then." 
 
 "I have just finished," resumed the great artist, his 
 face expanding like that of a man whose hobby is 
 stroked, "an allegorical figure of Harmony; and if you 
 ay ill come and see it, you will understand why it should 
 have taken me two years to paint it. Everything is 
 in it ! At the first glance one divines the destiny of 
 the globe. A queen holds a shepherd's crook in her 
 hand, — symbolical of the advancement of the races 
 
250 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 useful to mankind; she wears on her head the cap 
 of Liberty; her breasts are sixfold, as the Egyptians 
 carved them — for the Egyptians foresaw Fourier; 
 her feet are resting on two clasped hands which 
 embrace a globe, — symbol of the brotherhood of all 
 human races ; she tramples cannon under foot to sig- 
 nify the abolition of war; and I have tried to make her 
 face express the serenity of triumphant agriculture. 
 I have also placed beside her an enormous curled cab- 
 bage, which, according to our master, is an image of 
 Harmony. Ah ! it is not the least among Fourier's 
 titles to veneration that he has restored the gift of 
 thought to plants; he has bound all creation in one 
 by the signification of things to one another, and by 
 their special language. A hundred years hence this 
 earth will be much larger than it is now." 
 
 "And how will that, monsieur, come to pass? " said 
 Gazonal, stupefied at hearing a man outside of a 
 lunatic asylum talk in this way. 
 
 "Through the extending of production. If men will 
 apply The System, it will not be impossible to act 
 upon the stars.'" 
 
 "What would become of painting in that case?" 
 asked Gazonal. 
 
 "It would be magnified." 
 
 "Would our eyes be magnified too?" said Gazonal, 
 looking at his two friends significantly. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 251 
 
 "Man will return to what he was before he became 
 degenerate; our six-feet men will then be dwarfs." 
 
 "Is your picture finished? " asked Leon. 
 
 "Entirely finished," replied Dubourdieu. "I have 
 tried to see Hiclar, and get him to compose a sym- 
 phony for it; I wish that while viewing my picture the 
 public should hear music a la Beethoven to develop 
 its ideas and bring them within range of the intellect 
 by two arts. Ah ! if the government would only lend 
 me one of the galleries of the Louvre ! " 
 
 "I'll mention it, if you want me to do so c , you 
 should never neglect an opportunity to strike minds.'' 
 
 "Ah! my friends are preparing articles; but lam 
 afraid they '11 go too far." 
 
 "Pooh ! " said Bixiou, "they can't go as far as the 
 future." 
 
 Dubourdieu looked askance at Bixiou, and continued 
 his way. 
 
 "Why, he's mad," said Gazonal; "he is following 
 the moon in her courses." 
 
 "His skill is masterly," said Leon, "and he knows 
 his art, but Fourieristn has killed him. You have 
 just seen, cousin, one of the effects of ambition upon 
 artists. Too often, in Paris, from a desire to reach 
 more rapidly than by natural ways the celebrity which 
 to them is fortune, artists borrow the wings of circum- 
 stance ; they think they make themselves of more im- 
 
252 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 portance as men of a specialty, the supporters of some 
 ' system ; ' and they fancy they can transform a clique 
 into the public. One is a republican, another Saint- 
 Simonian; this one aristocrat, that one Catholic, others 
 juste-milieu, middle ages, or German, as they choose 
 for their purpose. Now, though opinions do not give 
 talent, they always spoil what talent there is , and the 
 poor fellow whom you have just seen is a proof 
 thereof. An artist's opinion ought to be: Faith in his 
 art, in his work ; and his only way of success is toil 
 when nature has given him the sacred fire." 
 
 "Let us get away," said Bixiou. "Leon is begin- 
 ning; to moralize." 
 
 "But that man was sincere," said Gazonal, still 
 stupefied. 
 
 "Perfectly sincere," replied Bixiou; "as sincere as 
 the king of barbers just now." 
 
 44 He is mad ! " repeated Gazonal. 
 
 "Aud he is not the first man driven mad by Fourier's 
 ideas," said Bixiou. "You don't know anything 
 about Paris. Ask it for a hundred thousand francs to 
 realize an idea that will be useful to humanity, — the 
 steam-engine for instance, — and you '11 die, like Salo- 
 mon de Caux, at Bicetre; but if the money is wanted 
 for some paradoxical absurdity, Parisians will anni- 
 hilate themselves and their fortune for it. It is the 
 same with systems as it is with material things. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 253 
 
 Utterly impracticable newspapers have consumed mil- 
 lions within the last fifteen years. What makes your 
 lawsuit so hard to win, is that you have right on your 
 side, and on that of the prefect there are (so you 
 suppose) secret motives." 
 
 "Do you think that a man of intellect having once 
 understood the nature of Paris could live elsewhere?" 
 said Leon to his cousin. 
 
 "Suppose we take Gazonal to old Mere Fontaine? " 
 said Bixiou, making a sign to the driver of a citadine 
 to draw up; "it will be a step from the real to the 
 fantastic. Driver, Vieille rue du Temple." 
 
 And all three were presently rolling in the direction 
 of the Marais. 
 
 "What are you taking me to see now?" asked 
 Gazonal. 
 
 "The proof of what Bixiou told you," replied Leon; 
 "we shall show you a woman who makes twenty 
 thousand francs a year by working a fantastic idea." 
 
 "A fortune-teller," said Bixiou, interpreting the 
 look of the Southerner as a question. "Madame 
 Fontaine is thought, by those who seek to pry into 
 the future, to be wiser in her wisdom than Made- 
 moiselle Lenormand." 
 
 'She must be very rich," remarked Gazonal. 
 
 "She was the victim of her own idea, as long as 
 otteries existed," said Bixiou; "for in Paris there are 
 
254 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 no great gains without corresponding outlays. The 
 strongest heads are liable to crack there, as if to give 
 vent to their steam. Those who make much money 
 have vices or fancies, — no doubt to establish an 
 equilibrium." 
 
 "And now that the lottery is abolished?" asked 
 Gazonal. 
 
 "Oh! now she has a nephew for whom she is 
 hoarding." 
 
 When they reached the Vieille rue du Temple the 
 three friends entered one of the oldest houses in that 
 street and passed up a shaking staircase, the steps of 
 which, caked with mud, led them in semi-darkness, 
 and through a stench peculiar to houses on an alley, 
 to the third story, where they beheld a door which 
 painting alone could render; literature would have to 
 spend too many nights in suitably describing it. 
 
 An old woman, in keeping with that door, and who 
 might have been that door in human guise, ushered the 
 three friends into a room which served as an ante- 
 chamber, where, in spite of the warm atmosphere 
 which fills the streets of Paris, they felt the icy chill 
 of crypts about them. A damp air came from an inner 
 courtyard which resembled a huge air-shaft; the light 
 that entered was gray, and the sill of the window was 
 filled with pots of sickly plants. In this room, which 
 had a coating of some greasy, fuliginous substance, 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 255 
 
 the furniture, the chairs, the table, were all most 
 abject. The floor tiles oozed like a water-cooler. 
 Iu short, every accessory was in keeping with the 
 fearful old woman of the hooked nose, ghastly face, 
 and decent rags who directed the ''consulters " to sit 
 down, informing them that only one at a time could 
 be admitted to Madame. 
 
 Gazonal, who played the intrepid, entered bravely, 
 and found himself in presence of one of those women 
 forgotten by Death, who no doubt forgets them inten- 
 tionally in order to leave some samples of Itself among 
 the living. He saw before him a withered face in 
 which shone fixed gray eyes of wearying immobility; 
 a flattened nose, smeared with snuff; knuckle-bones 
 well set up by muscles that, under pretence of being 
 hands, played nonchalantly with a pack of cards, like 
 some machine the movement of which is about to run 
 down. The body, a species of broom-handle decently 
 covered with clothes, enjoyed the advantages of death 
 and did not stir. Above the forehead rose a coif of 
 black velvet. Madame Fontaine, for it was really a 
 woman, had a black hen on her right hand and a huge 
 toad, named Astaroth, on her left. Gazonal did not at 
 first perceive them. 
 
 The toad, of surprising dimensions, was less 
 alarming in himself than through the effect of two topaz 
 eyes, large as a ten-sous piece, which cast forth vivid 
 
256 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 gleams. It was impossible to endure that look. The 
 toad is a creature as yet unexplained. Perhaps the 
 whole animal creation, including man, is comprised 
 in it; for, as Lassailly said, the toad exists indefinitely; 
 and, as we know, it is of all created animals the one 
 whose marriage lasts the longest. 
 
 The black hen had a cage about two feet distant 
 from the table, covered with a green cloth, to which 
 she came along a plank which formed a sort of draw- 
 bridge between the cage and the table. 
 
 When the woman, the least real of the creatures in 
 this Hoffmannesque den, said to Gazonal: "Cut!" 
 the worthy provincial shuddered involuntarily. That 
 which renders these beiugs so formidable is the im- 
 portance of what we want to know. People go to 
 them, as they know very well, to buy hope. 
 
 The den of the sibyl was much darker than the ante- 
 chamber; the color of the walls could scarcely be dis- 
 tinguished. The ceiling, blackened by smoke, far 
 from reflecting the little light that came from a window 
 obstructed by pale and sickly vegetations, absorbed 
 the greater part of it ; but the table where the sorceress 
 sat received what there was of this half-light fully. 
 The table, the chair of the woman, and that on which 
 Gazonal was seated, formed the entire furniture of the 
 little room, which was divided at one end by a sort of 
 loft where Madame Fontaine probably slept. Gazonal 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 257 
 
 heard through a half -opened door the bubbling murmur 
 of a soup-pot. That kitchen sound, accompanied by 
 a composite odor in which the effluvia of a sink pre- 
 dominated, mingled incongruous ideas of the necessi- 
 ties of actual life with those of supernatural power. 
 Disgust entered into curiosity. 
 
 Gazonal observed one stair of pine wood, the lowest 
 no doubt of the staircase which led to the loft. He 
 took in these minor details at a glance, with a sense of 
 nausea. It was all quite otherwise alarming than the 
 romantic tales and scenes of German drama lead one 
 to expect; here was suffocating actuality. The air 
 diffused a sort of dizzy heaviness, the dim light 
 rasped the nerves. When the Southerner, impelled by 
 a species of self-assertion, gazed firmly at the toad, he 
 felt a sort of emetic heat at the pit of his stomach, 
 and was conscious of a terror like that a criminal 
 might feel in presence of a gendarme. He endeavored 
 to brace himself by looking at Madame Fontaine; 
 but there he encountered two almost white eyes, the 
 motionless and icy pupils of which were absolutely 
 intolerable to him. The silence became terrifying. 
 
 " Which do you wish, monsieur, the five-franc for- 
 tune, the ten-franc fortune, or the grand game? " 
 
 "The five-franc fortune is dear enough," replied the 
 Southerner, making powerful efforts not to yield to the 
 influence of the surroundings in which he found himself. 
 
 17 
 
258 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 At the moment when Gazonal was thus endeavoring 
 to collect himself, a voice — an infernal voice — made 
 him bound in his chair; the black hen clucked. 
 
 "Go back, my daughter, go back; monsieur chooses 
 to spend only five francs." 
 
 The hen seemed to understand her mistress, for, 
 after coming within a foot of the cards, she turned 
 and resumed her former place. 
 
 "What flower do you like best?" asked the old 
 woman, in a voice hoarsened by the phlegm which 
 seemed to rise and fall incessantly in her bronchial 
 tubes. 
 
 "The rose." 
 
 "What color are you fond of?" 
 
 "Blue." 
 
 "What animal do you prefer?" 
 
 "The horse. Why these questions ? " he asked. 
 
 "Man derives his form from his anterior states," 
 she said sententiously. "Hence his instincts; and 
 his instincts rule his destiny. What food do you like 
 best to eat, — fish, game, cereals, butcher's meat, sweet 
 things, vegetables, or fruits ? " 
 
 "Game." 
 
 "In what month were you born? " 
 
 "September." 
 
 "Put out your hand." 
 
 Madame Fontaine looked attentively at the lines of 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 259 
 
 the hand that was shown to her. It was all done seri- 
 ously, with no pretence of sorcery; on the contrary, 
 with the simplicity a notary might have shown when 
 asking the intentions of a client about a deed. 
 Presently she shuffled the cards, and asked Gazonal 
 to cut them, and then to make three packs of them 
 himself. After which she took the packs, spread 
 them out before her, and examined them as a gambler 
 examines the thirty-six numbers at roulette before he 
 risks his stake. Gazonal's bones were freezing; he 
 seemed not to know where he was ; but his amazement 
 grew greater and greater when this hideous old woman 
 in a green bonnet, stout and squat, whose false front 
 was frizzed into points of interrogation, proceeded, in 
 a thick voice, to relate to him all the particular cir- 
 cumstances, even the most secret, of his past life : she 
 told him his tastes, his habits, his character; the 
 thoughts of his childhood; everything that had influ- 
 enced his life; a marriage broken off, why, with whom, 
 the exact description of the woman he had loved; and, 
 finally, the place he came from, his lawsuit, etc. 
 
 Gazonal at first thought it a hoax prepared by his 
 companions ; but the absolute impossibility of such a 
 conspiracy appeared to him almost as soon as the idea 
 itself, and he sat speechless before that truly infernal 
 power, the incarnation of which borrowed from human- 
 ity a form which the imagination of painters and poets 
 
260 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 has throughout all ages regarded as the most awful of 
 created things, — namely, a toothless, hideous, wheez- 
 ing hag, with cold lips, flattened nose, and whitish 
 eyes. The pupils of those eyes had brightened, 
 through them gushed a ray, — was it from the depths of 
 the future or from hell? 
 
 Gazonal asked, interrupting the old creature, of 
 what use the toad and the hen were to her. 
 
 "They predict the future. The consulter himself 
 throws grain upon the cards; Bilouche comes and 
 pecks it. Astaroth crawls over the cards to get the 
 food the client holds for him, and those two wonder- 
 ful intelligences are never mistaken. Will you see 
 them at work ? — you will then know your future. The 
 cost is a hundred francs." 
 
 Gazonal, horrified by the gaze of Astaroth, rushed 
 into the antechamber, after bowing to the terrible old 
 woman. He was moist from head to foot, as if under 
 the incubation of some evil spirit. 
 
 "Let. us get away! " he said to the two artists. 
 "Did you ever consult that sorceress? " 
 
 "I never do anything important without getting 
 Astaroth' s opinion," said Leon, "and I am always 
 the better for it." 
 
 "I 'm expecting the virtuous fortune which Bilouche 
 has promised me," said Bixiou. 
 
 I 've a fever," cried Gazonal. "If I believed 
 
 u 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 261 
 
 ■what you say I should have to believe in sorcery, in 
 some supernatural power." 
 
 "It may be only natural," said Bixiou. "One-third 
 of all the lorettes, one-fourth of all the statesmen, 
 and one-half of all artists consult Madame Fontaine; 
 and I know a minister to whom she is an Egeria." 
 
 "Did she tell you your future? " asked Leon. 
 
 "No; I had enough of her about my past. But," 
 added Gazonal, struck by a sudden thought, "if she 
 can, by the help of those dreadful collaborators, pre- 
 dict the future, how came she to lose in the lottery? " 
 
 " Ah ! you put your finger on one of the greatest 
 mysteries of occult science," replied Leon. "The 
 moment that the species of inward mirror on which 
 the past or the future is reflected to their minds be- 
 comes clouded by the breath of a personal feeling, by 
 an idea foreign to the purpose of the power they are 
 exerting, sorcerers and sorceresses can see nothing; 
 just as an artist who blurs art with political combina- 
 tions and systems loses his genius. Not long ago, 
 a man endowed with the gift of divining by cards, a 
 rival to Madame Fontaine, became addicted to vicious 
 practices, and being unable to tell his own fate from 
 the cards, was arrested, tried, and condemned at the 
 court of assizes. Madame Fontaine, who predicts the 
 future eight times out of ten, was never able to know 
 if she would win or lose in a lottery." 
 
262 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 "It is the same thing in magnetism," remarked 
 Bixiou. "A man can't magnetize himself. " 
 
 "Heavens! now we come to magnetism!" cried 
 Gazonal. "Ah gal do you know everything? " 
 
 "Friend Gazonal," replied Bixiou, gravely, "to be 
 able to laugh at everything one must know everything. 
 As for me, I 've been in Paris since my childhood ; 
 I've lived, by means of my pencil, on its follies and 
 absurdities, at the rate of five caricatures a month. 
 Consequently, I often laugh at ideas in which I have 
 faith." 
 
 "Come, let us get to something else," said Leon. 
 "We'll go to the Chamber and settle the cousin's 
 affair." 
 
 "This," said Bixiou, imitating Odry in "Les 
 Funambules," "is high comedy, for we will make the 
 first orator we meet pose for us, and you shall see that 
 in those halls of legislation, as elsewhere, the Parisian 
 language has but two tones, — Self-interest, Vanity." 
 
 As they got into their citadine, Leon saw in a 
 rapidly driven cabriolet a man to whom he made a 
 sign that he had something to say to him. 
 
 "There's Publicola Masson," said Le'on to Bixiou. 
 "I am going to ask for a sitting this evening at five 
 o'clock, after the Chamber. The cousin shall then 
 see the most curious of all the originals." 
 
 "Who is he?" asked Gazonal, while Leon went to 
 speak to Publicola Masson. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 263 
 
 (t 
 
 u 
 
 An artist-pedicure," replied Bixiou, "author of a 
 * Treatise on Corporistics, ' who cuts your corns by 
 subscription, and who, if the Republicans triumph 
 for six months, will assuredly become immortal." 
 Drives his carriage! " ejaculated Gazonal. 
 But, my good Gazonal, it is only millionnaires who 
 have time to go afoot in Paris." 
 
 "To the Chamber!" cried Leon to the coachman, 
 getting back into the carriage. 
 
 "Which, monsieur?" 
 
 "Deputies," replied Leon, exchanging a smile with 
 Bixiou. 
 
 "Paris begins to confound me," said Gazonal. 
 
 "To make you see its immensity, — moral, political 
 and literary, — we are now proceeding like the Roman 
 cicerone, who shows you in Saint Peter's the thumb of 
 the statue you took to be life-size, and the thumb 
 proves to be a foot long. You haven't yet measured 
 so much as a great toe of Paris." 
 
 "And remark, cousin Gazonal, that we take things 
 as they come; we haven't selected." 
 
 "This evening you shall sup as they feasted at 
 Belshazzar's; and there you shall see our Paris, our 
 own particular Paris, playing lansquenet, and risking 
 a hundred thousand francs at a throw without 
 winking. r? 
 
 A quarter of an hour later the citadine stopped at 
 
2G4 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 the foot of the steps going up to the Chamber of 
 Deputies, at that end of the Pont de la Concorde which 
 leads to discord. 
 
 "I thought the Chamber unapproachable? " said the 
 provincial, surprised to find himself in the great 
 lobby. 
 
 "That depends," replied Bixiou; "materially speak- 
 ing, it costs thirty sous for a citadine to approach it ; 
 politically, you have to spend rather more. The 
 swallows thought, so a poet says, that the Arc de 
 Triomphe was erected for them; we artists think that 
 this public building was built for us, — to compensate 
 for the stupidities of the Theatre-Francais and make 
 us laugh; but the comedians on this stage are much 
 more expensive; and they don't give us every day the 
 value of our money." 
 
 "So this is the Chamber! " said Gazonal, as he 
 paced the great hall in which there were then about 
 a dozen persons, and looked around him with an air 
 which Bixiou noted down in his memory and repro- 
 duced in one of the famous caricatures with which he 
 rivalled Gavarni. 
 
 Leon went to speak to one of the ushers who go 
 and come continually between this hall and the hall 
 of sessions, with which it communicates by a passage 
 in which are stationed the stenographers of the 
 "Moniteur" and persons attached to the Chamber. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 265 
 
 a 
 
 ; As for the minister," replied the usher to Leon as 
 Gazonal approached them, " he is there; but I don't 
 know if Monsieur Giraud has come. I '11 see." 
 
 As the usher opened one side of the double door 
 through which none but deputies, ministers, or mes- 
 sengers from the king are allowed to pass, Gazonal 
 saw a man come out who seemed still young, although 
 he was really forty-eight years old. and to whom the 
 usher evidently indicated Leon de Lora. 
 
 "Ha! you here!" he exclaimed, shaking hands 
 with both Bixiou and Lora. u Scamps! what are you 
 doing in the sanctuary of the laws ? " 
 
 " Parbleu! we've come to learn how to blague" 
 said Bixiou. "We might get rusty if we didn't." 
 
 " Let us go into the garden," said the young man, 
 not observing that Gazonal belonged to the party. 
 
 Seeing that this new-comer was well-dressed, in 
 black, the provincial did not know in which political 
 category to place him ; but he followed the others into 
 the garden contiguous to the hall which follows the 
 line of the quai Napoleon. Once in the garden the 
 ci-devant young man gave way to a peal of laughter 
 which he seemed to have been repressing since he 
 entered the lobby. 
 
 "What is it? " asked Leon de Lora. 
 
 " My dear friend, to prove the sincerity of the con- 
 stitutional government we are forced to tell the most 
 
266 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 frightful lies with incredible self-possession. But as 
 for me, I 'in freakish; some clays I can lie like a pro- 
 spectus; other days I can't be serious. This is one 
 of my hilarious days. Now, at this moment, the 
 prime minister, being summoned by the Opposition 
 to make known a certain diplomatic secret, is going 
 through his paces in the tribune. Being an honest 
 man who never lies on his own account, he whis- 
 pered to me as he mounted the breach: i Heaven 
 knows what I shall say to them.' A mad desire to 
 laugh overcame me, and as one mustn't laugh on the 
 ministerial bench I rushed out, for my youth does 
 come back to me most unseasonably at times." 
 
 "At last," cried Gazonal, "I've found an honest 
 man in Paris! You must be a very superior man," 
 he added, looking at the stranger. 
 
 "Ah caf who is this gentleman?" said the ci- 
 devant young man, examining Gazonal. 
 
 " My cousin," said Leon, hastily. " I '11 answer for 
 his silence and his honor as for my own. It is on 
 his account we have come here now; he has a case 
 before the administration which depends on your 
 ministry. His prefect evidently wants to ruin him, 
 and we have come to see you in order to prevent the 
 Council of State from ratifying a great injustice." 
 
 " Who brings up the case?" 
 
 "Massol." 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 267 
 
 "Good." 
 
 " And our friends Giraud and Claude Vignon are 
 on the committee," said Bixiou. 
 
 u Say just a word to them," urged Leon; "tell 
 them to come to-night to Carabine's, where du Tillet 
 gives a fete apropos of railways, — they are plunder- 
 ing more than ever on the roads." 
 
 " Ah ca! but is n't your cousin from the Pyrenees?" 
 asked the young man, now become serious. 
 
 "Yes," replied Gazonal, 
 
 " And you did not vote for us in the last elections?" 
 said the statesman, looking hard at Gazonal. 
 
 "No; but what you have just said in my hearing 
 has bribed me ; on the word of a commandant of the 
 National Guard I '11 have your candidate elected — " 
 
 "Very good; will you guarantee your cousin?" 
 asked the young man, turning to Leon. 
 
 "We are forming him," said Bixiou, in a tone irre- 
 sistibly comic. 
 
 "Well, I'll see about it," said the young man, 
 leaving his friends and rushing precipitately back to 
 the Chamber. 
 
 " Who is that? " saked Gazonal. 
 
 "The Comte de Rastignac; the minister of the 
 department in which your affair is brought up." 
 
 " A minister! Is n't a minister anything more than 
 that?" 
 
268 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 " He is an old friend of ours. He now has three 
 hundred thousand francs a year; he 's a peer of France ; 
 the king has made him a count; he married Nucingen's 
 daughter ; and he is one of the two or three statesmen 
 produced by the revolution of July. But his fame 
 and his power bore him sometimes, and he comes down 
 to laugh with us." 
 
 "Ah ga! cousin; why didn't you tell us you 
 belonged to the Opposition?" asked Leon, seizing 
 Gazonal by the arm. " How stupid of you ! One 
 deputy more or less to Right or Left and your bed is 
 made." 
 
 " We are all for the Others down my way." 
 
 "Let 'em go," said Bixiou, with a facetious look; 
 "they have Providence on their side, and Providence 
 will bring them back without you and in spite of 
 themselves. A manufacturer ought to be a fatalist." 
 
 "What luck! There's Maxime, with Canalis and 
 Giraud," said Leon. 
 
 " Come along, friend Gazonal, the promised actors 
 are mustering on the stage," said Bixiou. 
 
 And all three advanced to the above-named person- 
 ages, who seemed to be sauntering along with nothing 
 to do. 
 
 "Have they turned you out, or why are you idling 
 about in this way? ' said Bixiou to Giraud. 
 
 " No, while they are voting by secret ballot we have 
 come out for a little air," replied Giraud. 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 269 
 
 " How did the prime minister pull through? " 
 
 44 He was magnificent! " said Canalis. 
 
 "Magnificent!" repeated Maxime. 
 
 "Magnificent! " cried Giraud. 
 
 " So ! so ! Right, Left, and Centre are unanimous ! " 
 
 "All with a different meaning," observed Maxime 
 de Trailles. 
 
 Maxime was the ministerial deputy. 
 
 "Yes," said Canalis, laughing. 
 
 Though Canalis had already been a minister, he 
 was at this moment tending; toward the Right. 
 
 44 Ah! but you had a fine triumph just now," said 
 Maxime to Canalis; 4 ' it was you who forced the min- 
 ister into the tribune." 
 
 44 And made him lie like a charlatan," returned 
 Canalis. 
 
 44 A worthy victory," said the honest Giraud. "In 
 his place what would you have clone? " 
 
 " I should have lied." 
 
 "It isn't called lying," said Maxime de Trailles; 
 44 it is called protecting the crown." 
 
 So saying, he led Canalis away to a little distance. 
 
 "That's a great orator," said Leon to Giraud, 
 pointing to Canalis. 
 
 44 Yes and no," replied the councillor of state. " A 
 fine bass voice, and sonorous, but more of an artist in 
 words than an orator. In short, he 's a fine instrument 
 
270 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 but he is n't music, consequently he has not, and he 
 never will have, the ear of the Chamber ; in no case 
 will he ever be master of the situation." 
 
 Canalis and Maxime were returning toward the 
 little group as Giraud, deputy of the Left Centre, pro- 
 nounced this verdict. Maxime took Giraud by the 
 arm and led him off, probably to make the same confi- 
 dence he had just made Canalis. 
 
 " What an honest, upright fellow that is," said Leon 
 to Canalis, nodding toward Giraud. 
 
 "One of those upright fellows who kill administra- 
 tions," replied Canalis. 
 
 " Do you think him a good orator? " 
 
 " Yes and no," replied Canalis; " he is wordy; he 's 
 long-winded, a plodder in argument, and a good 
 logician; but he does n't understand the higher logic, 
 that of events and circumstances; consequently he 
 has never had, and never will have, the ear of the 
 Chamber." 
 
 At the moment when Canalis uttered this judgment 
 on Giraud, the latter was returning with Maxime to 
 the group; and forgetting the presence of a stranger 
 whose discretion was not known to them like that of 
 Leon and Bixiou, he took Canalis by the hand in a 
 very significant manner. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I consent to what Monsieur de 
 Trailles proposes. I '11 put the question to you in the 
 Chamber, but I shall do it with great severity." 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 271 
 
 "Then we shall have the house with us, for a man 
 of your weight and your eloquence is certain to have 
 the ear of the Chamber," said Canalis. " I '11 reply 
 to you; but I shall do it sharply, to crush you." 
 
 " You could bring about a chauge of the cabinet, 
 for on such ground you can do what you like with the 
 Chamber, and be master of the situation." 
 
 "Maxirne has trapped them both," said Leon to his 
 cousin; " that fellow is like a fish in water among the 
 intrigues of the Chamber." 
 
 " Who is he? " asked Gazonal. 
 
 "An ex-scoundrel who is now in a fair way to 
 become an ambassador," replied Bixiou. 
 
 "Giraud!" said Leon to the councillor of state, 
 " don't leave the Chamber without asking Eastignac 
 what he promised me to tell you about a suit you are 
 to render a decision on two days hence. It concerns 
 my cousin here ; I '11 go and see you to-morrow morn- 
 ing early about it." 
 
 The three friends followed the three deputies, at a 
 distance, into the lobbv. 
 
 " Cousin, look at those two men," said Leon, point- 
 ing out to him a former minister and the leader of the 
 Left Centre. " Those are two men who really have 
 4 the ear of the Chamber, ' and who are called in jest 
 ministers of the department of the Opposition. They 
 have the ear of the Chamber so completely that they 
 are always pulling it." 
 
272 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 " It is four o'clock," said Bixiou, " let us go back to 
 the rue cle Berlin." 
 
 "Yes; you've now seen the heart of the govern- 
 ment, cousin, and you must next be shown the asca- 
 rides, the taenia, the intestinal worm, — the republican, 
 since I must needs name him," said Leon. 
 
 When the three friends were once more packed into 
 their hackney-coach, Gazonal looked at his cousin and 
 Bixiou like a man who had a mind to launch a flood 
 of oratorical and Southern bile upon the elements. 
 
 "I distrusted with all my might this great hussy 
 of a town," he rolled out in Southern accents; "but 
 since this morning I despise her! The poor little 
 province you think so petty is an honest girl; but 
 Paris is a prostitute, a greedy, lying comedian ; and I 
 am very thankful not to be robbed of my skin in it." 
 
 "The day is not over yet," said Bixiou, sententi- 
 ously, winking at Leon. 
 
 "And why do you complain in that stupid way," 
 said Leon, " of a prostitution to which you will owe 
 the winning of your lawsuit? Do you think you are 
 more virtuous than we, less of a comedian, less greedy, 
 less liable to fall under some temptation, less con- 
 ceited than those we have been making dance for you 
 like puppets ? " 
 Try me!" 
 ; Poor lad!" said Leon, shrugging his shoulders, 
 
 (t 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 273 
 
 (i 
 
 have n't you already promised Rastignac your elec- 
 toral influence? " 
 
 " Yes, because be was the only one who ridiculed 
 himself." 
 
 "Poor lad!" repeated Bixiou, " why slight me, who 
 am always ridiculing myself? You are like a 
 pug-dog barking at a tiger. Ha ! if you saw us 
 really ridiculing a man, you 'd see that we can drive a 
 sane man mad." 
 
 This conversation brought Gazonal back to his 
 cousin's house, where the sight of luxury silenced him, 
 and put an end to the discussion. Too late he per- 
 ceived that Bixiou had been making him pose. 
 
 At half-past five o'clock, the moment when Leon de 
 Lora was making his evening toilet to the great 
 wonderment of Gazonal, who counted the thousand 
 and one superfluities of his cousin, and admired the 
 solemnity of the valet as he performed his functions, 
 the " pedicure of monsieur" was announced, and Pub- 
 licola Masson, a little man fifty years of age, made 
 his appearance, laid a small box of instruments on the 
 floor, and sat down on a small chair opposite to Leon, 
 after bowing to Gazonal and Bixiou. 
 
 u How are matters going with you?" asked Leon, 
 delivering to Publicola one of his feet, already washed 
 and prepared by the valet. 
 
 " I am forced to take two pupils, — two young 
 
 18 
 
274 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 fellows who, despairing of fortune, have quitted surgery 
 for corporistics ; they were actually dying of hunger; 
 and yet they are full of talent." 
 
 " I 'm not asking you about pedestrial affairs, I 
 want to know how you are getting on politically." 
 
 Masson gave a glance at Gazonal, more eloquent 
 than any species of question. 
 
 "Oh! you can speak out, that's my cousin; in a 
 way he belongs to you; he thinks himself legitimist." 
 
 44 Well! we are coming along, we are advancing! 
 In five years from now Europe will be with us. Switz- 
 erland and Italy are fermenting finely ; and when the oc- 
 casion comes we are all ready. Here, in Paris, we have 
 fifty thousand armed men, without counting two hundred 
 thousand citizens who have n't a penny to live upon." 
 
 " Pooh," said Leon, " how about the fortifications? " 
 
 " Pie-crust; we can swallow them," replied Masson. 
 
 "In the first place, we sha'n't let the cannon in, 
 and, in the second, we 've got a little machine more 
 powerful than all the forts in the world, — a machine, 
 due to a doctor, which cured more people during the 
 short time we worked it than the doctors ever killed." 
 
 "How you talk!" exclaimed Gazonal, whose flesh 
 began to creep at Publicola's air and manner. 
 
 "Ha! that's the thing we rely on! We follow 
 Saint- Just and Robespierre ; but we '11 do better than 
 they; they were timid, and you see what came of it; 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 215 
 
 an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch! 
 The Montagnards did n't lop the social tree enough." 
 
 "Ah ga! you, who will be, they tell me, consul, or 
 something of that kind, tribune perhaps, be good 
 enough to remember," said Bixiou, " that I have 
 asked your protection for the last dozen years." 
 
 " No harm shall happen to you; we shall need wags, 
 and you can take the place of Barere," replied the 
 corn-doctor. 
 
 " And I? " said Leon. 
 
 "Ah, you! you are my client, and that will save 
 you; for genius is an odious privilege, to which too 
 much is accorded in France; we shall be forced to 
 annihilate some of our greatest men in order to teach 
 others to be simple citizens." 
 
 The corn-cutter spoke with a semi-serious, semi- 
 jesting air that made Gazonal shudder. 
 
 " So," he said, " there 's to be no more religion? " 
 
 "No more religion of the state," replied the pedi- 
 cure, emphasizing the last words; " every man will 
 have his own. It is very fortunate that the govern- 
 ment is just now endowing convents ; they '11 provide 
 our funds. Everything, you see, conspires in our 
 favor. Those who pity the peoples, who clamor 
 in behalf of proletaries, who write works against 
 the Jesuits, who busy themselves about the ameliora- 
 tion of no matter what, — the communists, the human- 
 
276 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 itarians, the philanthropists, you understand, — all 
 those people are our advanced guard. While we are 
 storing gunpowder, they are making the tinder which 
 the spark of a single circumstance will ignite." 
 
 "But what do you expect will make the happiness 
 of France? " cried Gazonal. 
 
 " Equality of citizens and cheapness of provisions. 
 We mean that there shall be no persons lacking any- 
 thing, no millionnaires, no suckers of blood and 
 victims." 
 
 "That's it! — maximum and minimum," said 
 Gazonal. 
 
 "You've said it," replied the corn-cutter, deci- 
 sively. 
 
 " No more manufacturers? " asked Gazonal. 
 
 "The state will manufacture. We shall all be the 
 usufructuaries of France; each will have his ration as 
 on board ship ; and all the world will work according 
 to their capacity." 
 
 " Ah!" said Gazonal, "and while awaiting the time 
 when you can cut off the heads of aristocrats — " 
 
 "I cut their nails," said the radical republican, 
 putting up his tools and finishing the jest himself. 
 
 Then he bowed very politely and went away. 
 " Can this be possible in 1845? " cried Gazonal. 
 
 "If there were time we could show you," said his 
 cousin, " all the personages of 1793, and you could 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 277 
 
 talk with them. You have just- seen Marat; well! we 
 knowFouquier-Tinville, Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, 
 Chabot, Fouche, Barras; there is even a magnificent 
 Madame Roland." 
 
 " Well, the tragic is not lacking to your play," said 
 Gazonal. 
 
 "It is six o'clock. Before we take you to see Odry 
 in ' Les Saltimbanques ' to-night," said Leon to 
 Gazonal, " we must go and pay a visit to Madame 
 Cadine, — an actress whom your committee-man Massol 
 cultivates, and to whom you must therefore pay the 
 most assiduous court." 
 
 " And as it is all important that you conciliate that 
 power, I am going to give you a few instructions," 
 said Bixiou. " Do you employ workwomen in your 
 manufactory ? " 
 
 " Of course I do," replied Gazonal. 
 
 "That's all I want to know," resumed Bixiou. 
 "You are not married, and you are a great — " 
 
 "Yes!" cried Gazonal, "you've guessed my strong 
 point, I 'm a great lover of women." 
 
 " Well, then! if you will execute the little manoeuvre 
 which I am about to prescribe for you, you will taste, 
 without spending a farthing, the sweets to be found 
 in the good graces of an actress." 
 
 When they reached the rue de la Victoire where the 
 celebrated actress lived, Bixiou, who meditated a trick 
 
278 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 upon the distrustful provincial, had scarcely finished 
 teaching him his role; but Gazonal was quick, as we 
 shall see, to take a hint. 
 
 The three friends went up to the second floor of a 
 rather handsome house, and found Madame Jenny 
 Cadine just finishing dinner, for she played that night 
 in an afterpiece at the Gymnase. Having presented 
 Gazonal to this great power, Leon and Bixiou, in 
 order to leave them alone together, made the excuse 
 of looking at a piece of furniture in another room; 
 but before leaving, Bixiou had whispered in the actress's 
 ear: " He is Leon's cousin, a manufacturer, enormously 
 rich; he wants to win a suit before the Council of 
 State against his prefect, and he thinks it wise to fas- 
 cinate you in order to get Massol on his side." 
 
 All Paris knows the beauty of that young actress, 
 and will therefore understand the stupefaction of the 
 Southerner on seeing her. Though she had received 
 him at first rather coldly, he became the object of her 
 good graces before they had been many minutes alone 
 together. 
 
 "How strange! " said Gazonal, looking round him 
 disdainfully on the furniture of the salon, the door of 
 which his accomplices had left half open, " that a 
 woman like you should be allowed to live in such 
 an ill-furnished apartment." 
 
 "Ah, yes, indeed! but how can I help it? Massol 
 is not rich; I am hoping he will be made a minister." 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 279 
 
 u What a happy man ! " cried Gazonal, heaving the 
 sigh of a provincial. 
 
 "Good!" thought she. "I shall have new furni- 
 ture, and get the better of Carabine." 
 
 " Well, my dear! " said Leon, returning, " you '11 
 be sure to come to Carabine's to-night, won't you? — 
 supper and lansquenet.'" 
 
 "Will monsieur be there?" said Jenny Cadine, 
 looking artlessly and graciously at Gazonal. 
 
 "Yes, madame," replied the countryman, dazzled 
 by such rapid success. 
 
 " But Massol will be there," said Bixiou. 
 
 "Well, what of that?" returned Jenny. "Come, 
 we must part, my treasures ; I must go to the theatre." 
 
 Gazonal gave his hand to the actress, and led her to 
 the citadine which was waiting for her ; as he did so 
 he pressed hers with such ardor that Jenny Cadine 
 exclaimed, shaking her fingers : " Take care ! I have n't 
 any others." 
 
 When the three friends got back into their own 
 vehicle, Gazonal endeavored to seize Bixiou round 
 the waist, crying out: "She bites! You're a fine 
 rascal! " 
 
 " So women say," replied Bixiou. 
 
 At half-past eleven o'clock, after the play, another 
 citadine took the trio to the house of Mademoiselle 
 Seraphine Sinet, better known under the name of 
 
280 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 Carabine, — one of those pseudonyms which famous 
 lorettes take, or which are given to them; a name 
 which, in this instance, may have referred to the 
 pigeons she had killed. 
 
 Carabine, now become almost a necessity for the 
 banker du Til let, deputy of the Left, lived in a charm- 
 ing house in the rue Saint-Georges. In Paris there 
 are many houses the destination of which never varies ; 
 and the one we now speak of had already seen seven 
 careers of courtesans. A broker had brought there, 
 about the year 1827, Suzanne du Val-Noble, after- 
 wards Madame Gaillard. In that house the famous 
 Esther caused the Baron de Nucingen to commit the 
 only follies of his life. Florine, and, subsequently, a 
 person now called in jest " the late Madame Schontz," 
 had scintillated there in turn. Bored by his wife, 
 du Tillet bought this modern little house, and there 
 installed the celebrated Carabine, whose lively wit 
 and cavalier manners and shameless brilliancy were a 
 counterpoise to the dulness of domestic life, and the 
 toils of finance and politics. 
 
 Whether du Tillet or Carabine were at home or not 
 at home, supper was served, and splendidly served, 
 for ten persons every day. Artists, men of letters, 
 journalists, and the habitues of the house supped there 
 when they pleased. After supper they gambled. 
 More than one member of both Chambers came there 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 281 
 
 to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in gold, — 
 namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous 
 untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian 
 firmament who are so difficult to class. There wit 
 reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Cara- 
 bine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had 
 finally inherited the salon of Florine, now Madame 
 Raoul Nathan, and of Madame Schontz, now wife of 
 Chief -justice du Ronceret. 
 
 As he entered, Gazonal made one remark only, but 
 that remark was both legitimate and legitimist: "It 
 is finer than the Tuileries!" The satins, velvets, 
 brocades, the gold, the objects of art that swarmed 
 there, so filled the eyes of the war} 7 provincial that at 
 first he did not see Madame Jenny Cadine, in a toilet 
 intended to inspire respect, who, concealed behind 
 Carabine, watched his entrance observingly, while con- 
 versing with others. 
 
 "My dear child," said Leon to Carabine, "this is 
 my cousin, a manufacturer, who descended upon me 
 from the Pyrenees this morning. He knows nothing 
 of Paris, and he wants Massol to help him in a suit 
 he has before the Council of State. We have there- 
 fore taken the liberty to bring him — his name is 
 Gazonal — to supper, entreating you to leave him his 
 full senses." 
 
 "That's as monsieur pleases; wine is dear," said 
 
282 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 Carabine, looking Gazonal over from head to foot, and 
 thinking him in no way remarkable. 
 
 Gazonal, bewildered by the toilets, the lights, the 
 gilding, the chatter of the various groups whom he 
 thought to be discussing him, could only manage to 
 stammer out the words: " Madame — madame — is — 
 very good." 
 
 " What do you manufacture?" said the mistress of 
 the house, laughing. 
 
 " Say laces and offer her some guipure," whispered 
 Bixiou in Gazonal' s ear. 
 
 "La-ces," said Gazonal, perceiving that he would 
 have to pay for his supper. " It will give me the 
 greatest pleasure to offer you a dress — a scarf — a 
 mantilla of my make." 
 
 "Ah, three things! Well, you are nicer than you 
 look to be," returned Carabine. 
 
 "Paris has caught me!" thought Gazonal, now 
 perceiving Jenny Cadine, and going up to her. 
 
 " And I," said the actress, " what am I to have? " 
 
 "All I possess," replied Gazonal, thinking that to 
 offer all was to give nothing. 
 
 Massol, Claude Vignon, du Tillet, Maxime de 
 Trailles, Nucingen, du Bruel, Malaga, Monsieur and 
 Madame Gaillard, Vauvinet, and a crowd of other 
 personages now entered. 
 
 After a conversation with the manufacturer on the 
 
Unconscious Comedians. 283 
 
 subject of his suit, Massol, without making any prom- 
 ises, told him that the report was not yet written, and 
 that citizens could always rely upon the knowledge and 
 the independence of the Council of State. Receiving 
 that cold and dignified response, Gazonal, in despair, 
 thought it necessary to set about seducing the charm- 
 ing Jenny, with whom he was by this time in love. 
 Leon de Lora and Bixiou left their victim in the hands 
 of that most roguish and frolicsome member of the 
 anomalous society, — for Jenny Cadine is the sole 
 rival in that respect of the famous De'jazet. 
 
 At the supper-table, where Gazonal was fascinated 
 by a silver service made by the modern Benvenuto 
 Cellini, Froment-Meurice, the contents of which were 
 worthy of the container, his mischievous friends were 
 careful to sit at some distance from him ; but they 
 followed with cautious eye the manoeuvres of the 
 clever actress, who, being attracted by the insidious 
 hope of getting her furniture renewed, was playing 
 her cards to take the provincial home with her. No 
 sheep upon the day of the Fete-Dieu ever more meekly 
 allowed his little Saint John to lead him along than 
 Gazonal as he followed his siren. 
 
 Three days later, Leon and Bixiou, who had not 
 seen Gazonal since that evening, went to his lodgings 
 about two in the afternoon. 
 
 "Well, cousin," said Leon, "the Council of State 
 has decided in favor of your suit." 
 
284 Unconscious Comedians. 
 
 a 
 
 Maybe, but it is useless now, cousin," said 
 Gazonal, lifting a melancholy eye to his two friends. 
 " I 've become a republican. " 
 
 " What does that mean? " asked Leon. 
 
 "I have n't anything left; not even enough to pay 
 my lawyer," replied Gazonal. "Madame Jenny 
 Cadine has got notes of hand out of me to the amount 
 of more money than all the property I own — " 
 
 " The fact is Cadine is rather dear; but — " 
 
 " Oh, but I didn't get anything for my money," 
 said Gazonal. "What a woman! Well, I'll own 
 the provinces are not a match for Paris; I shall retire 
 to La Trappe." 
 
 "Good!" said Bixiou, "now you are reasonable. 
 Come, recognize the majesty of the capital." 
 
 "And of capital," added Leon, holding out to 
 Gazonal his notes of hand. 
 
 Gazonal gazed at the papers with a stupefied air. 
 
 " You can't say now that we don't understand the 
 duties of hospitality; haven't we educated you, saved 
 you from poverty, feasted you, and amused you?" 
 said Bixiou. 
 
 " And fooled you," added Leon, making the gesture 
 of gamins to express the action of picking pockets. 
 
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMAN. 
 
 TO LEON GOZLAN, 
 As a Testimony to Good Literary Brotherhood. 
 
 THE SALON OF MADEMOISELLE DES TOUCHES. 
 
 In Parisian society you will nearly always find two 
 distinct evenings in the balls and routs. First, the 
 official evening, at which all the invited guests are 
 present, — a gay world bored. Each person poses 
 for his or her neighbor. The majority of the young 
 women have come there to meet one person only. 
 When each is satisfied that she is the handsomest 
 woman present for that person, arid that his opinion is 
 probably shared by some others, she is ready to leave, 
 after the exchange of a few insignificant speeches, 
 such as: "Shall you go early to La Crampade?" — 
 " Madame de Portenduere sang very well, I think. " — 
 
288 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 "Who is that little woman over there, covered with 
 diamonds ? " Or, perhaps, after casting about a few 
 epigrams, which give momentary pleasure and lasting 
 wounds, the groups begin to thin, mere acquaintances 
 take leave, and then the mistress of the house stops 
 her personal friends, and a few artists and lively 
 fellows, saying, in a whisper: "Don't go, we shall 
 have supper presently." 
 
 Then the company gathers in a little salon. The 
 second, the real evening, begins, — an evening like 
 those of the old regime, when everybody understands 
 what is talked about, conversation is general, and 
 each person present is expected to show his or her wit 
 and to contribute to the general amusement. The scene 
 has changed ; frank laughter succeeds to the stiff arti- 
 ficial air which dulls in society the prettiest faces. In 
 short, pleasure begins as the . rout ends. The rout, 
 that cold review of luxury, the march-past of self- 
 loves in full costume, is one of those English inven- 
 tions which tend to turn all other nations into mere 
 machines. England seems desirous that all the world 
 should be as much and as often bored as herself. 
 This second party succeeding the first is therefore 
 in some French houses a lively protest of the former 
 spirits of our joyous land. But, unfortunately, few 
 houses thus protest; and the reason is plain: if sup- 
 pers are no longer in vogue it is because at no time, 
 
Another Study of Woman. 289 
 
 under any regime, were there ever so few persons in 
 France with settled positions, surroundings, fortunes, 
 families, and name as under the reign of Louis 
 Philippe, in which the Revolution was begun again 
 legally. All the world is on the march toward some 
 end, or it is trotting after wealth. Time has become 
 the most costly of all provisions; no one can allow 
 himself the monstrous prodigality of coming home 
 late and sleeping late the next morning. The second 
 party is therefore only found among women rich 
 enough to really entertain; and since July, 1830, such 
 women may be counted on the fingers. 
 
 In spite of the mute opposition of the faubourg 
 Saint-Germain, two or three women, among them the 
 Marquise d'Espard and Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 refused to renounce the influence they had held up to 
 that time over Paris, and did not close their salons. 
 
 The salon of Mademoiselle des Touches, which was 
 very celebrated in Paris, was the last asylum of the 
 true French wit of other days, with its hidden pro- 
 fundity, its thousand casuistries, and its exquisite 
 politeness. There you might observe the grace of 
 manner which underlay the conventions of politeness; 
 the easy flow of conversation in spite of the natural 
 reserve of well-bred persons; and above all, gener- 
 osity and largeness of ideas. There, no one dreamed 
 of reserving his thought for a drama ; no one saw a 
 
 19 
 
290 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 book to be made out of a narrative. In short, the 
 hideous skeleton of literature in want did not rise and 
 show itself apropos of some piquant sally or some 
 interesting topic. 
 
 During the evening of which we shall now speak, 
 chance had collected in the salon of Mademoiselle des 
 Touches a number of persons whose undeniable merits 
 had won for them European reputations. This is not 
 a flattery addressed to France, for several foreigners 
 were among us. The men who chiefly shone were 
 by no means the most distinguished. Ingenious 
 repartees, shrewd observations, capital satires, de- 
 scriptions given with brilliant clearness, sparkled and 
 flowed without preparation, lavished themselves with- 
 out reserve as without assumption, and were delight- 
 fully felt and delicately enjoyed. The men of the 
 world were particularly noticeable for a grace, a 
 warmth of fancy that was wholly artistic. You will 
 meet elsewhere in Europe elegant manners, cordiality, 
 good-fellowship and knowledge, but in Paris only, in 
 this salon and those I have just mentioned, will be 
 found in perfection that particular form of mind which 
 gives to these social qualities an agreeable and varied 
 harmony, a fluvial motion by which this wealth of 
 thoughts, of formulas, of narratives, of history itself, 
 winds easily along. 
 
 Paris, the capital of taste, alone knows the science 
 
Another Study of Woman. 291 
 
 which changes conversation to a joust in which the 
 quality of each mind is condensed into a flash, where 
 each tilter says his word and casts his experience into 
 it, where all are amused, refreshed, and have their 
 faculties exercised. There alone you can exchange 
 ideas; there you do not carry, like the dolphin in the 
 fable, a monkey on your back ; there you are under- 
 stood, and you run no risk of staking your gold against 
 false coin or copper. There, in short, talk, light and 
 deep, floats, undulates, and turns, changing aspect 
 and color at every sentence; there, too, secrets are 
 well betrayed. Lively criticism and pithy narrative 
 lead each other on. Eyes are listening as well as 
 ears; gestures put questions to which faces reply. 
 There, all is, in a word, thought and wit. Never had 
 the oral phenomenon, which, if well studied and 
 well-managed, makes the power of the orator and the 
 narrator, so completely bewitched me. 
 
 I was not the only one sensitive to these influences, 
 and we passed a delightful evening. The conversa- 
 tion finally turned to narrative, and led, in its rapid 
 course, to curious confidences, striking portraits, and 
 a multitude of fancies, which render that delight- 
 ful improvisation altogether untransferable to paper. 
 But, by leaving to a few things their tartness, their 
 abrupt naturalness, their sophistical sinuosities, per- 
 haps you will understand the charm of a true French 
 
292 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 soiree, taken at the moment when the pleasantest 
 familiarity has made every one forget his or her self- 
 interests, self-loves, or, if you prefer so to call them, 
 pretensions. 
 
 About two in the morning, when supper was over, 
 none, but a few intimates, all tried friends, tried by 
 an intercourse of fifteen years, and certain men of 
 the world, well-bred and gifted with taste, remained 
 around the table. A tone of absolute equality reigned 
 among them; and yet there was no one present who 
 did not feel proud of being himself. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches always obliged her guests 
 to remain at table until they took their leave, having 
 many times remarked the total change that takes place 
 in the minds of those present by removal to another 
 room. Between a dining-room and a salon, the charm 
 snaps. According to Sterne, the ideas of an author 
 are different after he has shaved from what they were 
 before. If Sterne is right, we may boldly aver that 
 the inclinations of persons still seated round a dinner- 
 table are not those of the same persons when returned 
 to the salon. The atmosphere is more heady, the eye 
 is no longer enlivened by the brilliant disorder of the 
 dessert; we have lost the benefits of that softening of 
 the spirit, that kindliness and good-will which per- 
 vaded our being in the pleasant condition of those 
 who have well eaten, and are sitting at their ease on 
 
Another Study of Woman. 293 
 
 chairs as comfortable as they make them in these 
 days. Perhaps we talk more willingly in presence of 
 the dessert and in company with choice wines, during 
 the delightful moments when we rest our elbow on the 
 table and lean our head on our hand. Certain it is 
 that people not only like to talk at such times, but they 
 like to listen. Digestion, nearly alwa}?s attentive, is, 
 according to characters, either talkative or silent. 
 Each person present then follows his bent. 
 
 This preamble was needed to introduce you to the 
 charms of a confidential narrative in which a cele- 
 brated man, since dead, depicted the innocent Jesuit- 
 ism of a woman with the crafty shrewdness of a man 
 who has seen many things, — a quality which makes 
 public men the most delightful narrators when, like 
 Talleyrand and Metternich, they deign to tell a tale. 
 
 De Marsay, who had now been prime minister for 
 more than six months, had already given proofs of 
 superior capacity. Though friends who had long 
 known him were not surprised to see him display both 
 the talents and aptitudes of a statesman, they were 
 still asking themselves whether he felt within him- 
 self a great political strength, or whether he had 
 simply developed in the heat of circumstances. This 
 question had just been put to him, with an evidently 
 philosophical intention, by a man of intellect and 
 observation whom he had made a prefect, — a man 
 
294 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 who was long a journalist, and who admired the prime 
 minister without mingling his admiration with that 
 touch of sour criticism by which, in Paris, one supe- 
 rior man excuses himself for admiring another. 
 
 "Has there been in your earlier life any fact, 
 thought, or desire, which made you foresee your voca- 
 tion?' asked Emile Blondet; "for we all have, like 
 Newton, our particular apple which falls, and takes 
 us to the sphere in which our faculties can develop." 
 
 "Yes," replied de Marsay, "and I '11 tell you about 
 it." 
 
 Pretty women, political dandies, artists, old men, 
 de Marsay's intimates, settled themselves comforta- 
 bly, each in his own way, and looked at the prime 
 minister. Is it necessary to say that the servants had 
 left the dining-room, that the doors were closed and 
 the portieres drawn? The silence which now fell was 
 so deep that the murmur of the coachmen's voices and 
 the stamping of the horses impatient for their stable 
 came up from the courtyard. 
 
 " A statesman, my friends, exists through one qual- 
 ity only," said the minister, playing with his pearl- 
 handled and gold dessert-knife. "To know how at 
 all moments to be master of himself; to be able, on 
 all occasions, to meet the failure of events, however 
 unexpected and fortuitous it may be; in short, to 
 have, in his inner self, a cold, detached being, which 
 
Another Study of Woman, 295 
 
 looks on as a spectator at all the movements of our 
 life, our passions, our sentiments, and which inspires 
 us, apropos of all things, with the decision of a species 
 of ready-reckoner." 
 
 " You are explaining to us why statesmen are so 
 rare in France," said old Lord Dudley. 
 
 "From a sentimental point of view it is certainly 
 horrible," said the minister, "and therefore when 
 this phenomenon appears in a young man (Richelieu, 
 warned of Concini's danger by a letter over-night, 
 slept till mid-day, when he knew his benefactor would 
 be killed at ten o'clock), that young man, be he 
 Pitt, or Napoleon if you like, is a monstrosity. I 
 became that monster very early in life, thanks to a 
 woman." 
 
 " I thought," said Madame de Montcornet (Virginie 
 Blondet), smiling, "that we unmade more statesmen 
 than we make." 
 
 "The monster of whom I speak is only a monster 
 inasmuch as he resists your sex," said the narrator, 
 with an ironical bow. 
 
 "If this tale relates to a love-affair," said the 
 Baronne de Nucingen, " I request that it may not be 
 interrupted by reflections." 
 
 "Reflection being so contrary to love," remarked 
 Joseph Bridau. 
 
 " I was nineteen years of age," resumed de Marsay; 
 
296 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 "the Restoration was becoming re-established; my 
 oldest friends know how impetuous and fiery I then was. 
 I was in love for the first time, and I may, at this late 
 day, be allowed to say that I was one of the hand- 
 somest young men in Paris. I had youth and beauty, 
 two advantages due to chance, of which we are as 
 proud as if we had won them. I say nothing about 
 the rest. Like all young men, I was in love with a 
 woman about six years older than myself. Only one 
 of you,'* he said, looking round the table, "will guess 
 her name or recognize her. Ronquerolles was the 
 only one in those days who fathomed my secret, and 
 he kept it carefully. I might fear his smile, but he 
 seems to be gone," said the minister, again looking 
 about him. 
 
 "He would not stay to supper," said his sister, 
 Madame de Serizy. 
 
 " For six months possessed by this love, but inca- 
 pable of suspecting that it mastered me," continued 
 the minister, "I gave myself up to that adorable 
 worship which is the triumph and the fragile happiness 
 of youth. I treasured her glove, I drank infusions of 
 the flowers she had worn, I rose from my bed to go 
 and stand beneath her windows. All my blood rushed 
 to my heart as I breathed the perfume that she pre- 
 ferred. I was then a thousand leagues from suspect- 
 ins that women are furnaces above and marble below." 
 
Another Study of Woman. 297 
 
 " Ob, spare us those horrible sentiments," said 
 Madame de Camps, laughing. 
 
 " I would then have blasted with contempt the philos- 
 opher who published to the world that terrible opin- 
 ion, so profoundly true," replied de Marsay. "You 
 are all too wise and witty to need me to say more on 
 that point; but perhaps the rest that I have to tell 
 may recall to you your own follies. Well, — a great 
 lady, if ever there was one, a widow without children 
 (oh! she had every advantage), my idol went so far as 
 to shut herself up to mark my handkerchiefs with her 
 own hair; in short, she responded to my follies with 
 follies of her own. How is it possible not to believe 
 in a passion when it is guaranteed by folly ? We had 
 put, each of us, all our wits into concealing so com- 
 plete and glorious a love from the eyes of the world ; 
 and we succeeded. Of her, I shall tell you nothing; 
 perfect in those days, she was considered until quite 
 recently one of the handsomest women in Paris*, at 
 the time of which I speak men would have risked 
 death to obtain her favor. She was left in a satis- 
 factory condition as to fortune, for a woman who loved 
 and was beloved; but the Restoration, to which she 
 was indebted for higher honors, made her wealth 
 insufficient to meet the requirements of her name and 
 rank. As for me, I had the self-conceit that conceives 
 no suspicions. Although my natural jealousy had in 
 
298 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 those days a hundred-and-twenty-Othello power, that 
 terrible sentiment slumbered in my breast like gold in 
 its nugget. I would have made my valet flog me had 
 I felt the baseness to doubt the purity and fidelity of 
 that angel, so frail, so strong, so fair, so naive, so 
 pure, so candid, whose blue eyes let me penetrate 
 with adorable submission to the bottom of her heart. 
 Never the least hesitation in pose, or look, or word; 
 always white and fresh and tender to her beloved 
 as the eastern lily of the Song of Songs. Ah, my 
 friends I" cried the minister, sorrowfully, becoming 
 for the moment a young man, "We must knock our 
 heads very hard against the marble to dispel that 
 poesy." 
 
 This cry of nature, which found its echo among the 
 guests, piqued their curiosity, already so cleverly 
 excited. 
 
 " Every morning, mounted on that splendid Sul- 
 tan you sent me from England," he said to Lord 
 Dudley, " I rode past her caleche and read my orders 
 for the day in her bouquet, prepared in case we were 
 unable to exchange a few words. Though we saw 
 each other nearly every evening in society, and she 
 wrote to me every day, we had invented, in order to 
 deceive the world and baffle observation, a system of 
 behavior. Not to look at each other, to avoid ever 
 being together, to speak slightingly of each other's 
 
Another Study of Woman. 299 
 
 qualities, all those well-worn manoeuvres were of little 
 value compared with our device of a mutual false 
 devotion to an indifferent person, and an air of indif- 
 ference to the true idol. If two lovers will play that 
 game they can always dupe society, but they must be 
 very sure of each other. Her substitute was a man 
 high in court favour, cold, devout, whom she did not 
 receive in her own house. Our. comedy was only 
 played for the profit of fools in salons. The question 
 of marriage had not been mooted between us; six 
 years' difference in our ages might cause her to reflect. 
 She knew nothing of the amount of my fortune, which, 
 on principle, I have always concealed. As for me, 
 charmed by her mind, her manners, the extent of her 
 information and her knowledge of the world, I would 
 fain have married her without reflection. And yet 
 her reserve pleased me. Had she been the first to 
 speak to me of marriage, I might have found some- 
 thing vulgar in that accomplished soul. Six full and 
 perfect months! a diamond of the purest water! That 
 was my allowance of love in this low world. One 
 morning, being attacked by one of those bone-fevers 
 which begin a severe cold, I wrote her a note putting 
 off the happiness of a meeting for another day. No 
 sooner was the letter gone than I regretted it. ' She 
 certainly will not believe that I am ill,' I said to 
 myself; for she was fond of seeming jealous and sus- 
 
300 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 picious. When jealousy is real," said cle Marsay, 
 interrupting himself, "it is the evident sign of a 
 single-minded love." 
 
 " Why? " asked the Princesse de Cadignan, eagerly. 
 
 "A true and single-minded love," said de Marsay, 
 "produces a sort of bodily apathy in harmony with 
 the contemplation into which the person falls. The 
 mind then complicates all things; it works upon itself, 
 it sets up fantasies in place of realities, which only 
 torture it; but this jealousy is as fascinating as it is 
 embarrassing." 
 
 A foreign minister smiled, recognizing by the light 
 of memory the truth of this remark. 
 
 "Besides, I said to myself, why lose a happy 
 clay?" continued de Marsay, resuming his narrative. 
 " Was n't it better to go, ill as I was ? for, if she thought 
 me ill I believed her capable of coming to see me and 
 so compromising herself. I made an effort; I wrote a 
 second letter, and as my confidential man was not on 
 hand, I took it myself. The river lay between us ; I 
 had all Paris to cross; when I came within suitable 
 distance of her house I called a porter and told him to 
 deliver the letter immediately; then the fine idea came 
 into my head of driving past the house in a hackney- 
 coach to see if the letter was delivered promptly. 
 Just as I passed in front of it, about two o'clock in 
 the afternoon, the great gate opened to admit the 
 
Another Study of Woman. 301 
 
 carriage of — whom do you suppose? The substi- 
 tute! It is fifteeu years since that happened; well! 
 as I tell you of it, this exhausted orator, this minister 
 dried to the core by contact with public business, still 
 feels the boiling of something in his heart and a fire 
 in his diaphragm. At the end of an hour I passed 
 again, — the carriage was still in the courtyard ; my 
 note had doubtless not been taken up to her. At last, 
 at half-past three o'clock, the carriage drove away 
 and I was able to study the face of my rival. He 
 was grave, he did not smile ; but he was certainly in 
 love, and no doubt some plan was in the wind. At the 
 appointed hour I kept my tryst ; the queen of my soul 
 was calm and serene. Here, I must tell you that I 
 have always thought Othello not only stupid, but guilty 
 of very bad taste. No man but one who was half a 
 negro would have behaved as he did. Shakespeare 
 felt that when he called his play the Moor of Venice. 
 The mere sight of the beloved woman has something 
 so healing to the heart, that it dissipates all vexa- 
 tions, doubts, sorrows; my wrath subsided and I 
 smiled again. This at my present age, would have 
 been horribly dissimulating, but then it was simply 
 the result of my youth and love. My jealousy thus 
 buried, I had power to observe. I was visibly ill; the 
 horrible doubts which had tortured me increased the 
 appearance of illness, and she showed me the most 
 
44 4 
 (4 4 
 
 302 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 tender solicitude. I found occasion however to slip 
 in the words: ' Had you any visitor this morning?' 
 explaining that I had wondered how she would amuse 
 herself after receiving my first note. 
 
 " 'I? ' she said, ' how could I think of any amuse- 
 ment after hearing of your illness ? Until your second 
 note came I was planning how to go to you.' 
 
 Then you were quite alone? ' 
 
 Quite,' she answered, looking at me with so per- 
 fect an expression of innocence that it rivalled that 
 which drove the Moor to kill his Desdemona. As she 
 alone occupied her house, that word was a shocking 
 falsehood. A single lie destroys that absolute confi- 
 dence which, for certain souls, is the basis itself of 
 love. To express to you what went on within me at 
 that moment, it is necessary to admit that we have an 
 inner being of which the visible man is the scabbard, 
 and that that being, brilliant as light itself, is deli- 
 cate as a vapor. Well, that glorious inward i" was 
 thenceforth and forever clothed in crape. Yes, I felt 
 a cold and fleshless hand placing upon me the shroud 
 of experience, imposing upon my soul the eternal 
 mourning which follows a first betrayal. Lowering 
 my eyes not to let her see my dazed condition, a 
 proud thought came into my mind which restored to 
 me some strength: ' If she deceives you she is un- 
 worthy of you.' I excused the flush in my face, and 
 
Another Study of Woman. 303 
 
 a few tears that came into my eyes, on the ground of 
 increased illness, and the gentle creature insisted on 
 taking me home in her carriage. On the way she was 
 tenderness itself; her solicitude would have deceived 
 the same Moor of Venice whom I take for my point of 
 comparison. In fact, if that big child had hesitated 
 two seconds longer he would, as any intelligent spec- 
 tator divines, have asked pardon of Desdemona. 
 Therefore, to kill a woman is the act of a child. She 
 wept as she left me at my own door, so unhappy was 
 she at not being able to nurse me herself! She 
 wished she were my valet, she was jealous of his cares! 
 All this was written to me the next day as a happy 
 Clarissa might have written it. There is always the 
 soul of a monkey in the sweetest and most angelic of 
 women ! " 
 
 At these words the women present lowered their 
 eyes as if wounded by a cruel truth so cruelly stated. 
 
 " I tell you nothing of the night, nor of the week 
 that I passed," continued de Marsay; " but it was 
 then that I saw myself a statesman." 
 
 Those words were so finely uttered that, one and all, 
 we made a gesture of admiration. 
 
 " While reflecting, with an infernal spirit, on all 
 the forms of cruel vengeance to which we can subject 
 a woman," continued de Marsay, — " and there were 
 many and irreparable ones in this case, — I suddenly 
 
304 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 despised rnyself ; I felt that I was commonplace, and I 
 formulated, insensibly, a dreadful code, that of Indul- 
 gence. To take revenge upon a woman, does not such 
 an act admit that there is but one woman in the world 
 for us, and that we cannot live without her? If so, is 
 vengeance a means to recover her? But if she is not 
 indispensable to us, if there are others for us, why 
 not allow her the same right to change that we arro- 
 gate to ourselves? This, you must fully understand, 
 applies only to passion; otherwise it would be anti- 
 social; nothing proves the necessity of indissoluble 
 marriage more than the instability of passion. The 
 two sexes need to be chained together like the wild 
 beasts that they are, in laws as mute and unchange- 
 able as fate. Suppress revenge, and betrayal becomes 
 nothing in love, its teeth are drawn. Those who 
 think that there exists but one woman in the world 
 for them, they may take to vengeance, and then there 
 is but one form for it, — that of Othello. Mine was 
 different; it was this: — " 
 
 The last three words produced among us that imper- 
 ceptible movement which journalists describe in par- 
 liamentary debates as " profound sensation." 
 
 " Cured of my cold and of pure, absolute, divinest 
 love, I let myself go into an adventure with another 
 heroine, who was charming, of a style of beauty ex- 
 actly opposite to that of my deceiving angel. I took 
 
Another Study of Woman. 305 
 
 good care, however, not to break with that very clever 
 creature and good comedian, for I don't know whether 
 a true love itself can give more graceful enjoyments 
 than accomplished treachery. Such hypocrisy equals 
 virtue. I don't say this for you Englishmen," added 
 the minister, gently, addressing Lady Barimore, daugh- 
 ter of Lord Dudley. "Well, I even tried to fall in 
 love. It happened that I wanted for this new angel a 
 little gift done with my own hair, and I went to a cer- 
 tain artist in hair, much in vogue in those days, who 
 lived in the rue Boucher. This man had a monopoly 
 of capillary gifts, and I give his address for the bene- 
 fit of those who have n't much hair of their own ; he 
 keeps locks of all kinds and all colors. After receiv- 
 ing my order, he showed me his work. I then saw 
 productions of patience surpassing those of fairy tales 
 and even of convicts; and he put me up to all the 
 caprices and fashions which reigned in the regions of 
 hair. 
 
 " 'For the last year,' he said to me, ' there has 
 been a rage for marking linen with hair; happily, I 
 had a fine collection on hand and excellent work- 
 women.' 
 
 "Hearing those words, a suspicion assailed me; I 
 drew out my handkerchief and said to him : — 
 
 " 'Probably this was done at your place, with false 
 hair?' 
 
 20 
 
306 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 "He looked attentively at the handkerchief and 
 said: — 
 
 " 'That lady was very difficult to suit; she insisted 
 on matching the very shade of her hair. My wife 
 marked those handkerchiefs herself. You have there, 
 monsieur, one of the finest things of the kind ever 
 executed.' 
 
 " Before this last flash of light I might still have 
 believed in something; I could still have given some 
 attention to a woman's word. I left that shop having 
 faith in pleasure, but, in the matter of love, as much 
 of an atheist as a mathematician. Two months later 
 I was seated beside my ethereal deceiver on a sofa in 
 her boudoir. I was holding one of her hands, which 
 were very beautiful, and together we were climbing 
 the Alps of sentiment, gathering flowers by the way, 
 plucking the leaves from the daisies (there is always 
 a moment in life when we pluck out the daisy leaves, 
 though it may be in a salon where daisies are not). 
 At the moment of deepest tenderness, when we seem to 
 love most, love is so conscious of its want of duration 
 that one feels an invincible need to ask: k Dost thou 
 love me? ' — ' Wilt thou love me always? ' I seized 
 that elegiac moment, so warm, so flowery, so expan- 
 sive, to make her tell her finest lies, with the ravish- 
 ing exaggerations of that Gascon poesy peculiar to 
 love. Charlotte then displayed the choicest flowers 
 
Another Study of Woman. 307 
 
 of her deception : she could not live without me ; I was 
 the only man in all the world to her; yet she feared 
 to weary me, for in my presence her mind forsook 
 her; near me her faculties became all love; she was 
 too loving not to have many fears; of late she had 
 sought a means to attach me forever to her side ; but 
 God alone could do that." 
 
 The women who were listening to de Marsay seemed 
 offended by his mimicry; for he accompanied these 
 words with pantomime, poses of the head, and affecta- 
 tions of manner, which conveyed the scene. 
 
 "At the moment when I was expected to believe 
 these adorable falsehoods, I said to her, still holding 
 her right hand in mine : — « 
 
 " 'When do you marry the duke?' 
 
 "The thrust was so direct, my glance met hers so 
 straight, that the quiver of her hand lying softly in 
 mine, slight as it was, could not be completely dis- 
 sembled ; her eyes fell before mine, and a slight flush 
 came into her cheeks. 
 
 " ' The duke! ' she said, feigning the utmost aston- 
 ishment. ' What can you mean? ' 
 
 " 'I know all,' I replied; ' in my opinion you had 
 better not delay the marriage. He is rich, he is a 
 duke ; but also, he is religious, — more than that, he is 
 a bigot! You don't seem aware how urgent it is that 
 you should make him commit himself in his own eyes 
 
308 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 and before God; if you don't do this soon you will 
 never attain your end.' 
 
 " 'Is this a dream? ' she said, pushing up her hair 
 from her forehead with Malibran's celebrated gesture, 
 fifteen years before Malibran ever made it. 
 
 " 'Come, don't play the babe unborn, my angel,' I 
 said, trying to take both her hands. But she crossed 
 them in front of her with an angry and prudish little 
 air. ' Marry him, I am willing,' I continued. ' In 
 fact, I strongly advise it.' 
 
 " ' But,' she said, falling at my feet, ' there 's some 
 horrible mistake here ; I love no man but you in this 
 world; you can ask me for any proof you like.' 
 
 " 'Rise, my dear,' I ^aid, ' and do me the honor 
 to be frank.' 
 
 " 'Yes, before Heaven.' 
 
 " ' Do you doubt my love? ' 
 
 " 'No.' 
 
 " 'My fidelity?' 
 
 "'No.' 
 
 "'Well, then, I have committed the greatest of 
 crimes, ' I went on. ' I have doubted your love and 
 your fidelity; and I have looked at the matter 
 calmly — ' 
 
 " 'Calmly! ' she cried, sighing. * Enough, Henri, 
 I see that you no longer love me.' 
 
 "You observe that she was quick to seize that way 
 
Another Study of Woman. 309 
 
 of escape. In such scenes an adverb is often very 
 dangerous. But luckily curiosity induced her to 
 add : — 
 
 " 'What have you seen or heard? Have I ever 
 spoken to the duke except in society ? Have you ever 
 noticed in my eyes — ' 
 
 " 'No,' I said, 'but I have in his. You have 
 made me go eight times to Saint-Thomas d'Aquin to 
 see you both hearing mass together.' 
 
 "'Ah!' she cried, 'at last I have made you 
 jealous!' 
 
 " 'I wish I could be,' I replied, admiring the sup- 
 pleness of that quick mind, and the acrobatic feats by 
 which she strove to blind me. ' But, by dint of going 
 to church, I have become an unbeliever. The day of 
 my first cold and your first deception you received the 
 duke when you thought me safe in bed, and you told 
 me you had seen no man.' 
 
 " ' Do you know that your conduct is infamous? ' 
 
 " 'How so? I think your marriage with the duke 
 an excellent affair; he gives you a fine name, the only 
 position that is really suitable for you, an honorable 
 and brilliant future. You will be one of the queens 
 of Paris. I should do you a great wrong if I placed 
 any obstacles in the way of this arrangement, this 
 honorable life, this superb alliance. Ah! some day, 
 Charlotte, you will do me justice by discovering how 
 
310 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 different my character is from that of other young 
 men. You are on the point of being forced to break 
 with me, and yet you would have found it very diffi- 
 cult to do so. The duke is watching you ; his virtue 
 is very stern, and it is high time that you and I should 
 part. You will have to be a prude, I warn you of 
 that. The duke is a vain man, and he wants to be 
 proud of his wife.' 
 
 "'Ah!' she said, bursting into tears, * Henri, if 
 you had only spoken ! ' (you see she was determined to 
 put the blame on me) — ' yes, if you had wished it we 
 could have lived all our lives together, married, happy 
 before the world, or in some quiet corner of it.' 
 
 " 'Well, it is too late now,' I said, kissing her 
 hands and assuming the airs of a victim. 
 
 " ' But I can undo it all,' she said. 
 
 " ' No, you have gone too far with the duke. I 
 shall even make a journey, to separate us from each 
 other more completely. We should each have to fear 
 the love of our own hearts.' 
 
 "'Do you think, Henri, that the duke has any 
 suspicions ? ' 
 
 " 'I think not,' I replied, ' but he is watching you. 
 Make yourself devote, attend to your religious duties, 
 for the duke is seeking proof s ; he is hesitating, and 
 you ought to make him come to a decision.' 
 
 "She rose, took two turns about the boudoir in a 
 
Another Study of Woman, 311 
 
 state of agitation either feigned or real; then she 
 found a pose and a glance which she no doubt felt 
 to be in harmony with the situation ; for she stopped 
 before me, held out her hand, and said in a voice of 
 emotion : — 
 
 "' Henri, you are a loyal, noble, charming man, 
 and I shall never forget you.' 
 
 "This was excellent strategy, She was enchanting 
 in this transition, which was necessary to the situa- 
 tion in which she wanted to stand towards me. I 
 assumed the attitude and manners of a man so dis- 
 tressed that she took me by the hand and led me, 
 almost cast me, though gently, on the sofa, saying, 
 after a moment's silence: 'I am deeply grieved, my 
 friend. You love me truly? ' 
 
 " 'Oh, yes.' 
 
 " ' Then what will become of you? ' " 
 
 Here all the women present exchanged glances. 
 
 " I have suffered once more in thus recalling her 
 treachery, but at any rate I still laugh at the air of 
 conviction and soft inward satisfaction which she felt, 
 if not at my death, at least at my eternal unhappi- 
 ness," continued de Marsay. " Oh! you needn't 
 laugh yet," he said to the guests; " the best is still to 
 come. I looked at her very tenderly after a pause, 
 and said : — 
 
 " 'Yes, that is what I have asked myself.' 
 
312 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 
 u 
 
 What will you do ? ' 
 
 I asked myself that question the morning after 
 the cold I told you of. ' 
 
 " 'And? — ' she said, with visible uneasiness. 
 
 " 'I began to pay court to that little lady whom I 
 had for my substitute.' 
 
 "Charlotte sprang up from the sofa like a frightened 
 doe; she trembled like a leaf, as she cast upon me 
 one of those looks in which a woman forgets her dig- 
 nity, her modesty, her craftiness, even her grace, — 
 the glittering glance of a hunted viper, forced to its 
 hole, — and said : — 
 
 I, who loved him ! I, who struggled ! I, who — ' 
 On that third idea, which I leave you to guess, 
 she made the finest organ pause ears ever listened to. 
 
 " ' Good heavens!' she cried, ' how wretched women 
 are! We are never truly loved. There is nothing real 
 to men in the purest sentiments. But, let me tell you, 
 though you trick us, you are still our dupes.' 
 
 '"Sol see,' I said with a contrite air. ' You have 
 too much wit in your anger for your heart to suffer 
 much.' 
 
 "This modest sarcasm redoubled her wrath; she 
 now shed tears of rage. 
 
 " 'You have degraded life and the world in my 
 eyes, ' she said ; ' you have torn away all my illusions, 
 you have depraved my heart — ' 
 
Another Study of Woman, 313 
 
 "In short, she said to me all that I had the right 
 to say to her, with a bare-faced simplicity, a naive 
 effrontery, which would certainly have got the better 
 of any man but me. 
 
 " 'What will become of us, poor hapless women, in 
 the social life which Louis XVIII. 's Charter has crea- 
 ted for us? Yes, we were born to suffer. As for 
 love, we are always above you, and you are always 
 below us in loyalty. None of you have honesty in 
 your hearts. For you, love is a game in which you 
 think it fair to cheat.' 
 
 "'Dear,' I said, 'to take things seriously in our 
 present social life would be to play at perfect love 
 with an actress.' 
 
 " 'What infamous treachery! ' she cried. ' So this 
 has all been reasoned out? ' 
 
 " ' No; it is simply reasonable.' 
 
 '"Farewell, Monsieur de Marsay,' she said,- 'you 
 have deceived me shamefully.' 
 
 " 'Will Madame la duchesse,' I asked in a submis- 
 sive manner, ' remember Charlotte's wrongs? ' 
 
 " 'Assuredly,' she said in a bitter tone. 
 
 '"So then, you detest me? ' 
 
 " She inclined her head; and I left her to a senti- 
 ment which allowed her to think that she had some- 
 thing to avenge. My friends, I have deeply studied 
 the lives of men who have had success with women ; 
 
314 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 and I feel sure that neither the Marechal de Richelieu, 
 nor Lauzun, nor Louis de Valois ever made, for the 
 first time, so able a retreat. As for my own heart 
 and mind, they were formed then and forever; and 
 the control I gained over the unreflecting impulses 
 which cause us to commit so many follies gave me the 
 coolness and self-possession which you know of." 
 
 " How I pity the second woman! " said the Baronne 
 de Nucingen. 
 
 An almost imperceptible smile which flickered for a 
 moment on de Marsay's pale lips made Delphine de 
 Nucingen color. 
 
 " How people forget! " cried the Baron de Nucingen. 
 
 The naivete of the celebrated banker had such suc- 
 cess that his wife, who had been that " second " of de 
 Marsay, could not help laughing with the rest of the 
 company. 
 
 "You are all disposed to condemn that woman," 
 said Lady Dudley, " but I can understand why she 
 should not consider her marriage in the light of an 
 inconstancy. Men never will distinguish between 
 constancy and fidelity. I knew the woman whose 
 history Monsieur de Marsay has just related ; she was 
 one of the last of your great ladies." 
 
 "Alas! you are right there," said de Marsay. 
 " For the last fifty years we have been taking part in 
 the steady destruction of all social distinctions. We 
 
Another Study of Woman, 315 
 
 ought to have saved women from the great shipwreck, 
 but the Civil Code has passed its level over their 
 heads. However terrible the words may be, they 
 must be said ; the duchess is disappearing, and so is 
 the marquise. As for baronesses (I ask pardon of 
 Madame de Nucingen, who will make herself a true 
 countess when her husband becomes peer of France), 
 the baronesses have never been regarded seriously." 
 
 "Aristocracy begins with the viscountess," re- 
 marked Blondet, smiling. 
 
 " Countesses will remain," said de Marsay. "An 
 elegant woman will always be more or less a countess, 
 — countess of the Empire, or of yesterday, countess 
 of the vieille roche, or, as they say in Italy, countess of 
 civility. But as for the great lady, she is dead, — dead 
 with the grandiose surroundings of the last century; 
 dead with her powder, moucJies, and high-heeled slip- 
 pers, and her busked corset adorned with its delta of 
 flowing ribbons. Duchesses in the present day can 
 pass through ordinary doors that are not widened to 
 admit a hoop. The Empire saw the last of the trained 
 gowns. Napoleon little imagined the effects of the 
 Code of which he was so proud. That man, by creat- 
 ing his duchesses, generated the race of comme ilfaut 
 women whom we see to-day, — the resulting product 
 of his legislation." 
 
 " Thought, used as a hammer by the lad leaving 
 
316 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 school and the nameless journalist, has demolished 
 the splendors of the social state," said the Comte de 
 Vandenesse. "To-day, any absurd fellow who can 
 hold his head above a collar, cover his manly breast 
 with half a yard of satin in the form of a waistcoat, 
 present a brow shining with apocryphal genius under 
 his frizzed hair, and blunder along in varnished pumps 
 and silk socks costing half a dozen francs, now wears 
 a glass in the arch of one eye by squeezing his cheek 
 against it and, — whether he 's a lawyer's clerk, the 
 son of a contractor, or a banker's bastard, — ogles 
 impertinently the prettiest duchess, rates her charms 
 as she comes down the staircase of a theatre, and says 
 to his friend (clothed by Buisson, like the rest of us), 
 'There, my dear fellow, is a comme ilfaut woman.' 
 
 "You have never made yourselves," said Lord 
 Dudley, "into a party; it will be long now before 
 you have any place politically. A great deal has 
 been said in France about organizing labor, but 
 property has never yet organized. Here is what is 
 happening to you : A duke, no matter who (there were 
 still a few under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. who 
 possessed two hundred thousand francs a year, a splen- 
 did mansion, and a retinue of servants), — that duke 
 could still behave like a great seigneur. The last of 
 these great French lords is the Prince de Talleyrand. 
 This duke dies, and, let us suppose, leaves four chil- 
 
Another Study of Woman. 317 
 
 dren, two of whom are daughters. Each of these 
 heirs, supposing that he has managed to marry them 
 well, will inherit, at most, sixty to eighty thousand 
 francs a year; each is father or mother of several 
 children, consequently obliged to live on one floor, 
 probably the ground-floor, of a house, with the strictest 
 economy, — it may be that they are even obliged to 
 borrow money. The wife of the eldest son, who is a 
 duchess in name only, has neither carriage, nor ser- 
 vants, nor opera-box, nor time of her own ; she has n't 
 even her own suite of rooms in a family mansion, nor 
 her own fortune, nor her personal baubles. She is 
 buried in marriage as a wife of the rue Saint Denis is 
 buried in commerce; she buys the socks of her dear 
 little babes, feeds and teaches her daughters, whom 
 she no longer puts to school in a convent. Your 
 women of rank simply sit upon their nests." 
 
 "Alas, yes!" said Joseph Bridau. "Our epoch 
 no longer possesses those exquisite feminine flowers 
 which adorned the great centuries of the French mon- 
 archy. The fan of the great lady is broken. Woman 
 no longer blushes, whispers sly malice, hides her face 
 behind her fan only to show it, — the fan serves merely 
 to fan her! When a thing is no longer anything but 
 what it is, it is too useful to belong to luxury." 
 
 "Everything in France has assisted in producing 
 the comme il faut woman," said Daniel d'Arthez. 
 
318 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 " The aristocracy has consented to this state of things 
 by retreating to its estates to hide and die, — emigrat- 
 ing to the interior before ideas as formerly it emi- 
 grated to foreign parts before the populace. Women 
 who could have founded European salons, controlled 
 opinion and turned it like a glove, who should have 
 ruled the world by guiding the men of art and thought 
 who outwardly ruled it, have committed the fatal 
 blunder of abandoning their ground, ashamed to have 
 to struggle with a bourgeoisie intoxicated by power 
 and making its debut on the world's stage only, per- 
 haps, to be hacked in pieces by the barbarians who 
 are at its heels. Where the bourgeois affects to see 
 princesses, there are none but so-called fashionable 
 women. Princes no longer find great ladies to distin- 
 guish ; they cannot even render famous a woman taken 
 from the ranks. The Due de Bourbon was the last 
 prince to use that privilege." 
 
 " And Heaven knows what it cost him! " said Lord 
 Dudley. 
 
 "The press follows suit," remarked Rastignac. 
 " Women no longer have the charm of spoken feuille- 
 tons, delightful satires uttered in choicest language. 
 In like manner we now-a-days read feuilletons written 
 in a patois which changes every three years, and 
 "little journals," as lively as undertakers, and as 
 light as the lead of their own type. French conversa- 
 
Another Study of Woman. 319 
 
 tion is now carried ou in revolutionary Iroquois from 
 end to end of France, where the long printed col-urnns 
 of the newspapers take the place in ancient mansions 
 of those brilliant coteries of men and women who con- 
 versed there in former days." 
 
 "The knell of Great Society has sounded, do you 
 know it?" said a Russian prince; "and the first 
 stroke of its iron tongue is your modern French term: 
 fe7?ime comme il faut." 
 
 "You are right, prince," said cle Marsay. "That 
 woman, issuing from the ranks of the nobility, or 
 growing from the bourgeoisie, coming from any and 
 every region, even the provinces, is the expression of 
 the spirit of our day, — a last image of good taste, wit, 
 intellect, grace, and distinction united, but all diminish- 
 ing. We shall see no more grandes dames in France, 
 but for a long time still to come there will be comme 
 il faut women, sent by public opinion to the Upper 
 Feminine Chamber, — women who will be to the fair 
 sex what the ' gentleman ' is among his fellows in 
 England." 
 
 "And they call that progress! " said Mademoiselle 
 des Touches. " I would like to know what progress 
 is." 
 
 u 
 
 This," said Madame de Nucingen: "Formerly a 
 woman might have the voice of a fish-wife, the walk 
 of a grenadier, the forehead of the boldest hussy, a 
 
320 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 fat foot, a thick band, but nevertheless that woman 
 was a ' great lady ' ; but now, be she a Montmorency, 
 — if the Demoiselles de Montmorency could ever have 
 such attributes, — she would not be a woman comme 
 il faut." 
 
 "What is meant by a woman comme il fairt?" 
 asked Comte Adam Laginski, naively. 
 
 " She 's a modern creation, a deplorable triumph of 
 the elective system applied to the fair sex," said de 
 Marsay. "Every revolution has its term, or saying, 
 in which it is summed up and described. Our social 
 revolution has ended in the comme il faut woman." 
 
 "You are right," said the Russian prince, who had 
 come to Paris to make himself a literary reputation. 
 " To explain certain terms or sayings added century 
 by century to your noble language, would be to write 
 a glorious history. Organize, for instance, is the 
 word of the Empire; it contains Napoleon — the whole 
 of him." 
 
 "But all that is not telling us what you mean by 
 the woman comme ilfaut" cried the young Pole, with 
 some impatience. 
 
 I'll explain her to you," said Emile Blondet. 
 
 On a fine morning you are lounging about Paris. It 
 is more than two o'clock, but not yet five. You see a 
 woman coming towards you; the first glance you cast 
 upon her is like the preface to a fine book; it makes 
 
 
Another Study of Woman. 321 
 
 you anticipate a world of refined and elegant things. 
 Like the botanist crossing hill and vale as he her- 
 borizes, among all varieties of Parisian commonness 
 you have found a rare flower. Either this woman is 
 accompanied by two very distinguished-looking men, 
 one of whom is decorated, or by a footman in undress 
 livery who follows her at a little distance. She wears 
 neither startling colors, nor open-worked stockings, 
 nor over-ornamental buckles, nor drawers with em- 
 broidered frills visible at her ancles. You notice 
 that her shoes are either prunella, with strings crossed 
 on the instep over thread stockings of extreme fine- 
 ness, or gray silk stockings that are perfectly plain; 
 or else she wears dainty little boots of exquisite sim- 
 plicity. Some pretty and not expensive stuff makes 
 you notice her gown, the shape of which surprises the 
 bourgeoises; it is almost always a pelisse, fastened 
 by knots of ribbon and delicately edged with a silken 
 cord or an almost imperceptible binding. The lady 
 has an art of her own in putting on a shawl or a man- 
 tle; she knows how to wrap it from her waist to her 
 throat, forming a sort of carapace which would make 
 a bourgeoise look like a tortoise, but under which the 
 comme it faut woman contrives to indicate a beautiful 
 figure while concealing it. How? by what means? 
 That is a secret which she keeps, without the protec- 
 tion of any patent. She walks with, a certain concen- 
 
 21 
 
322 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 trie and harmonious motion, which makes her sweet 
 alluring figure quiver under the stuffs as an adder at 
 mid-day makes the green turf above him move. Does 
 she owe to angel or devil that graceful undulation 
 which plays beneath the black silk mantle, sways the 
 lace of its border, and sheds a balmy air which I shall 
 venture to call the breeze-Parisian. You remark upon 
 her arms, about her waist, around her neck, a science of 
 folds draping even a restive stuff, which reminds you 
 of the antique Mnemosyne. Ah ! how well she under- 
 stands — forgive me the expression — the methods of 
 gait. Examine well the way in which she advances 
 her foot, moulding an outline beneath her gown with 
 a decent precision which excites the admiration, 
 restrained by respect, of those who pass her. If an 
 Englishwoman tried that walk she would look like a 
 grenadier marching to the assault of a redoubt. To 
 the woman of Paris belongs the genius of gait. The 
 municipality has long owed her our coming asphalt 
 pavements. You will observe that this lady jostles 
 no one. In order to pass, she stands still, waiting 
 with proud modesty until way is made for her. Her 
 attitude, both tranquil and disdainful, obliges the 
 most insolent dandy to step aside. Her bonnet, of 
 remarkable simplicity, has fresh strings. Possibly, 
 there may be flowers upon it; but the cleverest of 
 these women wear only ribbons. Feathers require a 
 
Another Study of Woman. 323 
 
 carriage, flowers attract the eye. Beneath the bonnet 
 yon see the cool and restful face of a woman who is 
 sure of herself, but without self-conceit; who looks 
 at nothing, but sees all; and whose vanity, lulled by 
 continual gratification, gives to her countenance an 
 expression of indifference which piques curiosity. 
 She knows she is being studied; she is well aware 
 that nearly every one, even women, turn round to look 
 at her. She passes through Paris like a film of gos- 
 samer, as white and as pearly. This beautiful species 
 of the sex prefers the warmest latitudes and the clean- 
 est longitudes in Paris; you will therefore find her 
 between the 10th and the 110th arcade of the rue de 
 Rivoli, along the line of the boulevards, from the 
 equator of the Panorama, where the productions of the 
 Indies flourish and the finest creations of industry are 
 blooming, to the cape of the Madeleine; you will find 
 her also in the least muddy regions of the bourgeoisie, 
 between number 30 and number 150 of the rue du 
 Faubourg-Saint-Honore. During the winter she takes 
 her pleasure on the terrace of the Feuillants, and not 
 upon the bituminous pavements which skirt it. Ac- 
 cording to weather, she glides through the alleys of 
 the Champs Elysees. Never will you meet this charm- 
 ing variety of womankind in the hyperboreal regions 
 of the rue Saint-Denis, never in the Kamtschatka of 
 muddy streets small and commercial, and never any- 
 
324 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 where in rainy weather. These flowers of Paris, open- 
 ing to the suu, perfume the promenades and fold their 
 leaves by five in the afternoon like a convolvulus. 
 The women whom you will see later having slightly 
 the same air and trying to imitate them are another 
 race. This fair unknown, the Beatrice of our day, 
 is the comme il faut woman. 
 
 " It is not always easy, my dear count," said Blonde t, 
 interrupting himself for a moment, " for foreigners to 
 perceive the differences by which a connoisseur emeri- 
 tus distinguishes the two species, for women are born 
 comedians. But those differences strike the e} 7 e of 
 all Parisians : hooks are visible, tapes show their yel- 
 lowish white through a gap at the back of the gown; 
 shoes are worn at heel, bonnet strings have been 
 ironed, the gown puffs out too much, the bustle is flat- 
 tened. You notice a sort of effort in the premeditated 
 lowering of the eyelids. The attitude is conventional. 
 As for the bourgeoise, it is impossible to confound 
 her with the woman who is comme il faut ; she makes 
 an admirable foil to her, she explains the charm the 
 unknown lady has cast upon you. The bourgeoise is 
 busy; she is out in all weathers; comes and goes and 
 trots; is undecided whether she will, or whether she 
 will not enter a shop. Where the comme il faut woman 
 knows perfectly well what she wants and what she 
 means to do, the bourgeoise is undecided, pulls up 
 
Another Study of Woman. 325 
 
 her gown to cross a gutter, drags a child after her, and 
 is forced to watch for carriages; she is a mother in 
 public and lectures her daughter; carries money in a 
 handbag and wears open-work stockings, a boa above 
 a fur cape in winter, and a shawl with a scarf in sum- 
 mer, — the bourgeoise is an adept at the pleonasms 
 of the toilet. As for your Beatrice, you will find her 
 in the evening at the Opera, or in a ballroom. She 
 then appears under an aspect so different that you 
 fancy her two creations without analogy. The woman 
 has issued from her morning vestments like a butter- 
 fly from its larva. She serves, as a dainty to your 
 raptured eyes, the form which her shawl scarce out- 
 lined in the morning. At the theatre the woman of 
 society never goes higher than the second tier of 
 boxes, unless at the Italian opera. You can therefore 
 study at your ease the judicious slowness of her move- 
 ments. This adorable manoeuvrer uses all the little 
 artifices of woman's policy with a natural ease that 
 precludes the idea of art and premeditation. Is her 
 hand royally beautiful, the most suspicious man would 
 believe' it absolutely necessary to roll, or fasten up, 
 or toss aside whichever ringlet or curl she may touch. 
 Has she nobility of profile, you will think she is 
 merely giving irony or charm to what she says to her 
 neighbor, by turning her head in a manner to produce 
 that magic effect, so dear to great painters, which 
 
326 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 draws the light to the cheek, defines the nose with a 
 clear outline, illumines the pink of the nostril, carves 
 the forehead with sharp prominence, and leaves a 
 touch of high light on the chin. If she has a pretty 
 foot she throws herself on a sofa with the coquetry of 
 a cat in the sunshine, her feet forward, without your 
 seeing anything more in that pretty pose than a 
 charming model for lassitude offered to a sculptor. 
 No other woman but the woman comme ilfaut is ever 
 perfectly at her ease in her clothes; nothing disturbs 
 her. You will never see her putting in place, like a 
 bourgeoise, a recalcitrant shoulder-knot, or looking to 
 see if the lace of her chemisette accomplishes its office 
 of unfaithful guardian to the sparkling whiteness of 
 her bosom; never will you find her looking in a mirror 
 to discover if her coiffure is perfectly intact. Her 
 toilet is always in harmony with her character; she 
 has had time to study herself and to decide what suits 
 her ; she has long known what does not suit her. You 
 never see her when the audience of a theatre disperses ; 
 she departs before the end of the play. If by chance 
 she is seen, calm and sedate, upon the steps of the 
 staircase, some powerful sentiment has prompted her. 
 She is there to order; she has some look to give, some 
 promise to receive. Perhaps she is descending slowly 
 to gratify the vanity of a slave whom she occasion- 
 ally obeys. If you meet her in society, at a ball or a 
 
Another Study of Woman. 327 
 
 soiree, you will gather the honey, real or affected, of 
 her practised voice; you will be enchanted with her 
 empty talk, to which she contrives to impart the sem- 
 blance of thought with inimitable skill — " 
 
 44 Then it is n't necessary for the comme il faut 
 woman to have intellect ?" said the young Polish 
 count. 
 
 "It is impossible to be that kind of woman without 
 taste," said the Princesse de Cadignan. 
 
 " And to have taste is, in France, to have more 
 than mind," said the Russian prince. 
 
 44 The mind of this woman is the triumph of an art 
 that is wholly plastic," replied Blondet. 44 You don't 
 know what she says, but you are charmed. She has 
 nodded her head or sweetly shrugged her handsome 
 shoulders, or gilded some meaningless phrase with a 
 smile or a charming pout, or put Voltaire's epigram 
 into an ' Oh ! ' an 'Ah! 'an 'Is it possible?' The 
 turn of her head is an active interrogation ; she gives 
 meaning of some kind to the movement with which 
 she dances a vinaigrette fastened by a chain to her 
 finger. These are artificial great effects obtained 
 by superlatively small ones: she lets her hand fall 
 nobly from the arm of her chair, and all is said ; she 
 has rendered judgment without appeal fit to move the 
 most insensible. She has listened to you, she has 
 given you an opportunity to show your wit; and — I 
 
328 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 appeal to your modesty — such momeuts in society are 
 
 rare." 
 
 The innocent air of the young Pole whom Blondet 
 was addressing made every one laugh heartily. 
 
 "You can't talk half an hour with a bourgeoise 
 before she brings to light her husband under one form 
 or another," continued Blondet, whose gravity did not 
 give way ; " but if your comme ilfaut woman is married 
 she has the tact to conceal her husband, and the labor 
 of Christopher Columbus would hardly enable you to 
 discover him. If you have not been able to question 
 others on this point, you will see her toward the end of 
 the evening fix her eyes steadily on a man of middle 
 age, who inclines his head and leaves the room ; she 
 has told her husband to call up the carriage, and she 
 departs. In her own house no comme il faut woman 
 is ever visible before four o'clock, the hour at which 
 she receives. She is wise enough to make you wait 
 even then. You will find good taste throughout her 
 house; her luxury is intended for use, and is renewed 
 when needful ; you will see nothing there under glass 
 cases, nor any swathings of protective gauze. The 
 staircase is warm; flowers gladden you everywhere; 
 flowers are the only presents she accepts, and those 
 from a few persons only ; bouquets give pleasure and 
 live for a single day and are then renewed. To her 
 they are, as in the East, a symbol and a promise. 
 
Another Study of Woman. 329 
 
 The costly trifles of fashion are spread about, but her 
 salons are not turned into a museum or an old curi- 
 osity shop. You will find her seated on a sofa at the 
 corner of the fireplace, whence she will bow to you 
 without rising. Her conversation is no longer that 
 of the ballroom; in her own house she is bound to 
 entertain you. The comme il faut woman possesses 
 all these shades of behaviour in perfection. She wel- 
 comes in you a man who will swell the circle of her 
 society, the great object of the cares and anxieties of 
 all women of the world. Consequently, to attach you 
 to her salon she will make herself charmingly coquet- 
 tish. You will feel above all, in that salon, how 
 isolated women are in the present day and why they 
 endeavor to have a little society about them in which 
 they can shine as constellations. But this is the 
 death of conversation; conversation is impossible 
 without generalities." 
 
 " Yes," said de Marsay, " you have seized upon the 
 great defect of our epoch. Epigram, that book in a 
 word, no longer falls, as in the eighteenth century, on 
 persons and on things, but on petty events and dies 
 with the day." 
 
 " The wit of the comme il faut woman, when she 
 has any," resumed Blondet, "consists in putting a 
 doubt on everything, while the bourgeoise uses hers 
 to affirm everything. There lies a great difference 
 
830 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 between the two women. The bourgeoise is certain 
 of her virtue; the comme il faut woman is not sure if 
 she has any yet, or if she has always had it. This 
 hesitation about all things is one of the last graces 
 our horrible epoch has granted her. She seldom goes 
 to church, but she will talk religion to you and try to 
 convert you, if you have the good sense to play the 
 free thinker, for that will open the way to the stereo- 
 typed phrases, the motions of the head and the ges- 
 tures which belong to such women: 'Ah, fy ! I thought 
 you had more intelligence than to attack religion. 
 Society is crumbling already and you remove its 
 prop. But religion at this moment is you and I, it is 
 property, it is the future of our children! Ah! let us 
 not be egotists. Individualism is the disease of our 
 epoch, and religion is the sole remedy; it unites the 
 families that your laws disunite,' etc., etc. She begins 
 in this way a neo-Christian sermon sprinkled with 
 political ideas, which is neither Catholic nor Protest- 
 ant, but moral (oh! devilishly moral), in which you 
 will find scraps of every stuff that modern doctrines 
 driven to bay have woven." 
 
 The women present could not help laughing at the 
 mincing affectations of their sex with which Emile 
 Blondet illustrated his sarcasms. 
 
 "Those remarks, my dear Comte Adam," said 
 Blondet, looking at the young Pole, " will show you 
 
Another Study of Woman. 331 
 
 that the comme il faut woman represents intellectual 
 hotch-potch as well as political jumble; just as she 
 lives surrounded by the brilliant but not lasting pro- 
 ducts of modern industry, which aims at the destruc- 
 tion of its work in order to replace it. You will leave 
 her house saying to yourself, ' She has, decidedly, 
 very superior ideas ; ' and you think so all the more 
 because she has sounded your heart and mind with a 
 delicate hand; she has sought your secrets, — for the 
 comme il faut woman feigns ignorance of everything, 
 in order to discover everything; but she is discreet; 
 there are things she never knows, however well she 
 may know them. Nevertheless you will feel uneasy, 
 you are ignorant of the real state of her heart. For- 
 merly the great ladies loved openly, banners dis- 
 played; now the woman comme il faut has her little 
 passion ruled like a sheet of music paper with its 
 crotchets and quavers, its minims, rests, and sharps 
 and flats. Always weak, she will neither sacrifice her 
 love, her husband, nor the future of her children. 
 She 's a woman of Jesuitical middle-paths, of squint- 
 eyed temporizing with conventions, of unavowed pas- 
 sions carried along between two breakwaters. She 
 fears her servants like an Englishwoman who sees 
 before her the perspective of a divorce suit. This 
 woman, so apparently at her ease in a ballroom, so 
 charming on the street, is a slave at home. She has 
 
332 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 no independence, unless locked in with her own ideas. 
 She is determined to remain outwardly the woman 
 comme il faut. That 's her theory of life. A woman 
 separated from her husband, reduced to a pittance, 
 without carriage or luxury or opera-box, is to-day 
 neither wife, maid, nor bourgeoise; she dissolves, 
 she becomes a thing. What is to become of her? 
 The Carmelites won't take married women; will her 
 lover always want her? that's a question. There- 
 fore the comme il faut woman may sometimes give 
 rise to calumny, but never to condemnation." 
 
 " That is all true, horribly true," said the Princesse 
 de Cadignan. 
 
 " Consequently, the comme il faut woman," con- 
 tinued Blondet, "lives between English hypocrisy 
 and the frankness of the eighteenth century, — a bas- 
 tard system emblematic of a period when nothing 
 that comes is like that which goes, when transitions 
 lead nowhere, when the great figures of the past are 
 blotted out, and distinctions are purely personal. In 
 my opinion it is impossible for a woman, even though 
 she be born on the steps of a throne, to acquire before 
 the age of twenty-five, the encyclopedic science of 
 nothings, the art of manoeuvring, the various great 
 little things, — music of the voice, harmonies of 
 color, angelic deviltries and innocent profligacy, the 
 language and the silence, the gravity and the folly, 
 
Another Study of Woman. 333 
 
 the wit and the dulness, the diplomacy and the igno- 
 rance which constitute the woman comme ilfaut." 
 
 " Accepting the description you have just given of 
 her," said Mademoiselle des Touches to Emile Blondet, 
 "where do you class the woman-author? Is she a 
 woman comme il faut ? " 
 
 " When she is not gifted with genius, she is a woman 
 comme il n*en faut pas," replied Emile Blondet, ac- 
 companying his answer with a glance which might 
 pass for a frank compliment to Camille Maupin. 
 "But that is not my saying; it belongs to Napoleon, 
 who hated women of genius," he added. 
 
 "Don't be too hard on Napoleon," said Canalis, 
 with an emphatic tone and gesture. " It was one of 
 his littlenesses — for he had them — to be jealous of 
 literary fame. Who can explain, or describe, or 
 comprehend Napoleon? — a man represented always 
 with folded arms, who yet did all things; who was 
 the greatest known Power, the most concentrated 
 power, the most corrosive and acid of all powers; a 
 strong genius which led an armed civilization through- 
 out the world and fixed it nowhere ; a man who could 
 do all because he willed all ; prodigious phenomenon 
 of Will ! — subduing disease by a battle, yet doomed 
 to die of disease in his bed after living unscathed 
 amid cannon-balls and bullets; a man who had in 
 his head a Code and a Sword, word and action; a 
 
334 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 clear-sighted mind which divined all except his own 
 fall; a capricious politician who played his soldiers 
 like pawns and yet respected three heads, Talleyrand, 
 Pozzo di Borgo, and Metternich, diplomatists whose 
 death would have saved the French Empire, but whose 
 life seemed to him of more value than that of thou- 
 sands of soldiers; a man to whom, by some rare 
 privilege nature had left a heart in his iron body ; a 
 man at midnight kind and laughing among women, 
 and the next day handling Europe without gloves; 
 hypocritical and generous; loving meretriciousness 
 and simplicity; without taste, but protecting Art; and, 
 in spite of these antitheses, grand in all things by in- 
 stinct or by organization; Caesar at twenty-five years 
 of age, Cromwell at thirty, but a good husband and 
 a good father like any bourgeois of Pere Lachaise ; a 
 man who improvised great public buildings, empires, 
 kings, codes, poems, and one romance, and all with 
 greater range than accuracy. Did he not attempt to 
 make Europe France; and after bearing our weight 
 upon the earth until it changed the laws of gravitation, 
 has he not left us poorer than the day he put his hand 
 upon us? He who made an empire with his name, 
 lost that name on the borders of his empire in a sea 
 of blood and slaughtered men. A man all thought 
 and action, who was able to comprehend both Desaix 
 and Fouche." 
 
Another Study of Woman. 335 
 
 " Despotic power and legal justice, each in due sea- 
 son, makes the true king," said de Marsay. 
 
 "But," said the Princesse de Cadignan, addressing 
 the other women with a smile both dubious and satiri- 
 cal, "have we women really deteriorated as these 
 gentlemen seem to think? Because to-day, under a 
 system which belittles everything, you men like little 
 dishes, little apartments, little paintings, little jour- 
 nals, little books, is that any reason why women 
 should be less grand than they have been ? Does the 
 human heart change because you change your habits ? 
 At all epochs passions remain the same. I know 
 splendid devotions, sublime endurances which lack 
 publicity, — fame if you prefer to call it so. Many 
 a woman is not less an Agnes Sorel because she never 
 saved a king of France. Do you think our Marquise 
 d'Espard worth less than Madame Doublet or Madame 
 clu Deffand, in whose salon so much harm was said 
 and done? Isn't Taglioni the equal of Camargo? 
 and Malibran of Saint-Huberti? Are not our poets 
 superior to those of the eighteenth century? If, at 
 this moment, thanks to the grocers who govern us, we 
 have no style of our own, didn't the Empire have a 
 style as fully its own as that of Louis XV. ? And its 
 splendor was surely fabulous. Have the arts and 
 sciences lost ground ? " 
 
 "I agree with you, madame," said General de 
 
336 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 Montriveau. "In my opinion the women of this 
 epoch are truly great. When posterity gives a verdict 
 upon us will not Madame Recamier's fame be equal to 
 that of the loveliest women of past ages ? We have 
 made history so fast that we lack historians to write it 
 down. The reign of Louis XIV. had but one Madame 
 de Sevigne, while we have a thousand to-day in Paris 
 who can write better letters, but do not publish them. 
 Whether the French woman calls herself femme comme 
 il faut or great lady, she will always be the pre- 
 eminent woman. Emile Blondet has made us a pic- 
 ture of the manners and charms of a woman of the 
 present day; but, if occasion offered, this mincing, 
 affected being, who plays a part and warbles out the 
 ideas of Monsieur this, that, and the other, would 
 show herself heroic ! Even your faults, mesdames, 
 seem the more poetic because they are and always 
 will be hedged about with great dangers. I have seen 
 much of the world, perhaps I have studied it too late; 
 but, under circumstances in which the illegality of 
 your sentiments might fiud excuse, I have always 
 observed the effects of some chance, — you may call it 
 Providence if you like, — which fatally overtake those 
 women whom we call frail." 
 
 "I hope," said Madame de Camps, "that we are 
 able to be great otherwise." 
 
 " Oh, let the Marquis de Montriveau preach to us! " 
 cried Madame de Serizy. 
 
Another Study of Woman. 337 
 
 " All the more because he has preached by example," 
 said the Baronne de Nucingen. 
 
 "Alas!" said General de Montriveau, "of the 
 many dramas, — that 's a word you are constantly 
 using," he said with a nod to Blondet, " in which to 
 my knowledge the finger of God has showed itself, 
 the most terrible was one that was partly my own 
 doing." 
 
 " Oh, tell it to us! " cried Lady Barimore. " I love 
 to shudder." 
 
 " The taste of a virtuous woman," said de Marsay 
 replying to the charming daughter of Lord Dudley. 
 
 "During the campaign of 1812," said General de 
 
 Montriveau, " I was the involuntary cause of a fearful 
 
 misfortune, which may serve you, Docteur Bianchon," 
 
 he said, turning to me, — " you, who take so much note 
 
 of the human mind while you study the human body, — 
 
 to solve certain of your enigmas concerning the will. 
 
 I was making my second campaign ; I liked the peril 
 
 and I laughed at everything, simple young lieutenant 
 
 of artillery that I was ! When we reached the Beresina 
 
 the army no longer kept, as you know, any discipline; 
 
 military obedience was at an end. A crowd of men 
 
 of all nations was making its way instinctively from 
 
 north to south. Soldiers drove their barefooted and 
 
 ragged general from their camp-fires if he brought 
 
 them neither wood nor provisions. After the passage 
 
 22 
 
338 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 of that famous river, the disorder was lessened. I 
 came out quietly, alone, without food, from the 
 marshes of Zembin, and I walked along looking for a 
 house where some one might be willing to admit me. 
 Finding none all day, being driven from those I came 
 to, I fortunately saw late in the evening a miserable 
 little Polish farmhouse, of which I can give you no 
 idea unless you have seen the wooden houses of lower 
 Normandy or the poorest hovels of La Beauce. These 
 Polish dwellings consist of a single room, one end of 
 which is divided off by a plank partition and serves as 
 a storehouse for forage. 1 saw in the twilight a light 
 smoke rising from this building, and hoping to find 
 comrades more compassionate than the persons I had 
 hitherto addressed, I marched boldly to the door. 
 Entering, I found a table spread. Several officers, 
 among whom was a woman (a not unusual sight), 
 were eating potatoes and horse-flesh broiled on the 
 embers, and frozen beetroot. I recognized two or 
 three captains of artillery belonging to the regiment in 
 which I had first served. I was received with a volley 
 of acclamations which would greatly have surprised 
 me on the other side of the Beresina; but at this 
 moment the cold was less intense, my comrades were 
 resting, they were warm, they were eating, and piles 
 of straw at the end of the room offered them the per- 
 spective of a delightful night. We did n't ask for 
 
Another Study of Woman. 389 
 
 much in those clays. My comrades could be philan- 
 thropic gratis, — a very common way of being philan- 
 thropic, by the bye. At the end of the table, near the 
 door which led into the small room filled with straw 
 and hay, I saw my former colonel, one of the most 
 extraordinary men I have ever met in the varied col- 
 lection of men it has been my lot to know. He was 
 an Italian. Whenever human beings are beautiful in 
 southern countries they are sublimely beautiful. Have 
 you ever remarked the singular whiteness of Italians 
 when they are white? It is magnificent, especially in 
 the light. When I read the fantastic portrait Charles 
 Nodier has given us of Colonel Oudet, I found my 
 own sensations expressed in every sentence. Italian, 
 like most of the officers of his regiment, — borrowed 
 by the Emperor from the army of Prince Eugene, — 
 my colonel was a man of great height, admirably pro- 
 portioned, possibly a trifle too stout, but amazingly 
 vigorous and light, agile as a greyhound. His black 
 hair, curling profusely, set into brilliant relief a clear 
 white skin like that of a woman. He had handsome 
 feet, small hands, a charming mouth, and an aquiline 
 nose with delicate lines, the tip of which contracted 
 naturally and turned white when he was angry, which 
 was often. His irascibility so passed all belief that I 
 shall tell you nothing about it; you shall judge for 
 yourself. No one was ever at ease in his presence. 
 
340 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 Perhaps I was the only man who did not fear him. 
 It is true that he had taken a singular liking to me; 
 he thought whatever I did was good. When anger 
 worked within him, his forehead contracted, his mus- 
 cles stood out in the middle of it like the horse-shoe 
 of Redgauntlet. That sign would have terrified you 
 more than the magnetic lightning of his blue eyes. 
 His whole body would then quiver, and his strength, 
 already so great in his normal condition, passed all 
 bounds. He rolled his r's excessively. His voice, 
 certainly as powerful as that of Charles Nodier's 
 Oudet, gave an indescribable richness of sound to the 
 syllable which contained that consonant. Though this 
 vice of pronunciation was, in him, and at all times, a 
 charm, you cannot imagine the power that accent, con- 
 sidered so vulgar in Paris, was capable of expressing 
 when he commanded a manoeuvre, or was in any way 
 excited. You must have heard it to understand it. 
 When the colonel was tranquil his blue eyes were full 
 of angelic sweetness; his pure brow sparkled with an 
 expression that was full of charm. At a parade of the 
 Army of Italy no man could compare with him. Even 
 d'Orsay himself, the handsome d'Orsay, was van- 
 quished by our colonel at the last review held by 
 Napoleon before his entrance into Russia. In this 
 gifted man all was contradiction. Passion lives by 
 contrasts. Therefore do not ask me whether he was 
 
Another Study of Woman. 341 
 
 conscious of those irresistible influences to which 
 our nature " (the general looked toward the Princesse 
 de Cadignan) "bends like molten glass beneath the 
 blower's pipe; but it so chanced that by some singular 
 fatality the colonel had had but few love-affairs, or 
 had neglected to have them. To give you an idea of 
 his violence, I will tell you in two words what I once 
 saw him do in a paroxysm of anger. We were march- 
 ing with our cannon along a very narrow road, bor- 
 dered on one side by woods and on the other by a 
 rather steep bank. Half way along this road we met 
 another regiment of artillery, its colonel marching 
 with it. This colonel wanted to make the captain of 
 our regiment at the head of the first battery give way 
 to his troop. Naturally our captain refused. But the 
 colonel of the other regiment made a sign to his first 
 battery to advance, and in spite of the care the first 
 driver took to keep close into the woods the wheel of 
 the gun carriage caught the right leg of our captain, 
 broke it, and flung him to the other side of his horse. 
 It was done in a moment. Our colonel, who happened 
 to be at a little distance, saw the quarrel, and galloped 
 x.a*iously up through the trees and among the wheels 
 at the risk of being flung with all his hoofs in the air, 
 reaching the spot in face of the other colonel just as 
 the captain cried out, 'To me ! ' and fell. No ! our 
 Italian colonel was no longer a man. Foam, like that 
 
342 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 of champagne, boiled from his mouth, he growled like 
 a lion. Incapable of uttering a word, even a ciy, he 
 made a dreadful sign to his adversary, pointing to the 
 wood, and drew his sabre. They entered it. In two 
 seconds we saw the other colonel on the ground with 
 his head split in two. The soldiers of that regiment 
 retreated, ha ! the devil ! and in quick time, too ! Our 
 captain, who just missed being killed, and who was 
 yelping in the ditch where the wheel of the gun- 
 carriage had flung him, had a wife, a charming Italian 
 woman from Messina, who was not indifferent to our 
 colonel. This circumstance had greatly increased his 
 fury. His protection was due to the husband ; he was 
 bound to defend him as well as the wife. Now, in 
 the miserable Polish cabin this side of Zembin, where, 
 as I told you, I received such cordial welcome, this 
 very captain sat opposite to me, and his wife was at 
 the other end of the table opposite to the colonel. 
 She was a little woman, named Rosina, very dark, 
 but bearing in her black eyes, shaped like almonds, 
 all the ardour of the sun of Sicily. At this moment 
 she was deplorably thin, her cheeks were covered 
 with dust like a peach exposed to the weather on a 
 high-road. Scarcely clothed and all in rags, wearied 
 by marches, her hair in disorder beneath the frag- 
 ment of a shawl tied across her head, there was still 
 all the presence of a woman about her; her move- 
 
Another Study of Woman. 343 
 
 merits were pretty, her rosy, dimpled mouth, her white 
 teeth, the lines of her face aud bust, — charms which 
 misery, cold, aud want of care had not entirely effaced, 
 — still told of love and sweetness to any one whose 
 mind could dwell upon a woman. Rosina evidently 
 possessed one of those natures which are fragile in 
 appearance, but are full of nervous strength. The 
 face of the husband, a Piedmontese nobleman, ex- 
 pressed a sort of jeering good-humor, if it is per- 
 missible to ally the two words. Brave, intelligent 
 and educated, he nevertheless seemed to ignore the 
 relations which had existed between his wife and the 
 colonel for nearly three years. I attributed this 
 indifference to the singular customs of Italy, or to 
 some secret in their own home ; but there was in the 
 man's face one feature which had always inspired me 
 with involuntary distrust. His underlip, thin and 
 very flexible, turned down at its two extremities 
 instead of turning up, which seemed to me to reveal 
 an underlying cruelty in a character apparently phleg- 
 matic and indolent. You can well imagine that the 
 conversation was not brilliant when I entered. My 
 weary comrades were eating in silence, but they nat- 
 urally asked me a few questions; and we related our 
 several misfortunes, mingling them with reflections 
 on the campaign, the generals, their blunders, the 
 Russians, and the cold. Soon after my arrival, the 
 
344 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 colonel, having finished his meagre meal, wiped his 
 moustache, wished us good-night, cast his black eye 
 toward the woman, and said, 'Rosina.' Then with- 
 out awaiting any reply he went into the space parti- 
 tioned off for forage. The meaning of his summons 
 was evident; and the youDg woman made an inde- 
 scribable gesture, which expressed both the annoyance 
 that she felt at seeing her dependence thus exhibited 
 without respect for human feelings, and her sense of 
 the affront offered to her dignity as a woman and to 
 her husband. And yet in the strained expression of 
 her features and in the violent contraction of her eye- 
 brows, there seemed to be a sort of foreboding ; per- 
 haps a presentiment of her fate came over her. Rosina 
 continued to sit tranquilly at the table; a moment 
 later the colonel's voice was heard repeating her 
 name, ' Rosina ! ' The tone of this new summon 
 was even more brutal than that of the first. The roll- 
 ing accent of the colonel's voice and the echo which 
 the Italian language gives to vowels and final letters 
 revealed in a startling manner the despotism, impa- 
 tience, and will of that man. Rosina turned pale, 
 but she rose, passed behind us, and joined the colonel. 
 All my comrades maintained a rigid silence ; but I, un- 
 happily, after looking round at them, began to laugh, 
 and the laugh was then repeated from mouth to mouth. 
 'You laugh? ' said the husband. 'Faith, comrade,' I 
 
Another Study of Woman. 345 
 
 replied, becoming serious, 'I did wrong, I admit it; I 
 ask ten thousand pardons; and if you are not content 
 with such excuses I am ready to give you satisfac- 
 tion.' * It is not you who have done wrong, it is I,' 
 he replied coldly. Thereupon we all shook down our 
 straw about the room and were soon lost in the sleep 
 of weariness. The next day each man, without awak- 
 ing his neighbor, without looking for a journeying 
 companion, started on his way with that utter egotism 
 which made our retreat from Russia one of the most 
 horrible dramas of personality, sadness, and horror 
 which ever took place beneath the heavens. Yet 
 after each man had gone some seven or eight hundred 
 yards from our night's lodging, we came together and 
 marched along like geese led in flocks by the uncon- 
 scious despotism of a child. A common necessity 
 was driving us along. When we reached a slight 
 elevation from which we could see the house where we 
 had passed the night, we heard sounds that resembled 
 the roaring of lions in the desert or the bellowing of 
 bulls ; but no ! that clamor could not be compared to 
 any known sound. Mingled with that horrible and 
 sinister roar came the feeble cry of a woman. We all 
 turned round, seized with a sensation — I know not 
 how to describe it — of fear; the house was no longer 
 visible, only a burning pile; the building, which 
 some one had barricaded, was in flames. Clouds of 
 
346 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 smoke, driven by the wind, rolled towards us, bring- 
 ing raucous sounds and a strong indescribable odor. 
 A few steps from us marched the captain, who had 
 quietly joined our caravan; we looked at him in 
 silence, for none of us dared question him. But he, 
 divining our curiosity, touched his breast with the 
 forefinger of his right hand and pointed with the left 
 to the conflagration. 'Son' io! ' he said. We con- 
 tinued our way without another word to him." 
 
 "There is nothing more fearful than the revolt of 
 sheep," said de Marsay. 
 
 " It would be too dreadful to let us part with that 
 horrible scene in our minds," said Madame de Mont- 
 cornet. "I shall dream of it." 
 
 "Tell us, before we go, what punishment befel 
 Monsieur de Marsay' s first love," said Lord Dudley, 
 smiling. 
 
 " When Englishmen jest their foils are buttoned," 
 remarked ^mile Blondet. 
 
 " Monsieur Bianchon can tell you that," replied de 
 Marsay, turning to me. " He saw her die." 
 
 " Yes," I said, " and her death was one of the most 
 beautiful I ever witnessed. The duke and I had 
 passed the night beside the pillow of the dying woman, 
 whose disease, consumption, was then in its final 
 stages; no hope remained, and she had received the 
 last offices of the Church the preceding evening. The 
 
A?iother Study of Woman. 347 
 
 duke bad fallen asleep. Madame la duchesse, wak- 
 ing about four in the morning, made me, in a touch- 
 ing manner and with a smile, a tender little sign to 
 let him sleep ; and yet she felt she was about to die ! 
 She had reached a stage of extraordinary thinness, but 
 her face preserved its features, and its outlines were 
 truly sublime. Her pallor made her skin resemble 
 porcelain behind which a light has been placed. Her 
 brilliant eyes and the color in her cheeks shone out 
 upon this skin so softly beautiful, while the whole 
 countenance seemed to breathe forth a commanding 
 tranquillity. Evidently she pitied the duke, and the 
 feeling took its rise in a lofty sentiment which seemed 
 to see no limit in the approach of death. The silence 
 was profound. The chamber, softly lighted by a 
 lamp, had the appearance of all sick-chambers at the 
 moment of death. At that instant the clock struck. 
 The duke awoke, and was in despair at having slept. 
 I did not see the gesture of impatience with which he 
 showed the regret he felt at having lost his wife from 
 sight during the few last moments granted to him; 
 but it is certain that any other person than the dying 
 woman might have been mistaken about him. A 
 statesman, preoccupied with the interests of France, 
 the duke had many of those apparent oddities which 
 often make men of genius pass for fools, though the 
 explanation may be found in the exquisite nature and 
 
348 Another Study of Woman. 
 
 requirements of their rnind. He now took a chair 
 beside the bed and looked fixedly at his wife. The 
 dying woman put out her hand and took that of her 
 husband which she pressed gently, saying in a soft 
 but trembling voice : — 
 
 " ' My poor friend, who will understand you in 
 future ? ' 
 
 " So saying, she died, looking at him." 
 
 u The doctor's stories," said the Due de Rhetore, 
 " always leave a deep impression." 
 
 " But a tender one," said Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
COMEDIES PLAYED GRATIS. 
 
COMEDIES PLAYED GRATIS. 
 
 To Madame la Princesse de Belgiojoso, nee 
 
 Trivulce. 
 
 To know how to sell, to be able to sell, and to sell! 
 The public has no conception of all that Paris owes of 
 grandeur to those three faces of one problem. The 
 dazzling brilliancy of shops, as rich as the salons 
 of the nobility before 1789, the splendor of cafes, 
 which often eclipses, and very easily, that of the 
 neo- Versailles ; the poems of show-windows, pulled to 
 pieces every night, reconstructed every morning ; the 
 elegance and grace of the young men communicating 
 with the female buyers ; the piquant faces and toilets 
 of the young girls whose busiuess it is to attract the 
 male customer; lastly, and recently, the vast spaces 
 and depths and Babylonian luxury of the galleries, 
 in which the shop-keepers monopolize specialties by 
 collecting them in one vast enterprise, — all these 
 
352 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 things are nothing. They have merely pleased the 
 most greedy and the most blase organ developed in 
 the human being since the days of the Romans, — an 
 organ whose exactions have now become boundless, 
 thanks to the efforts of refined civilization. That 
 organ is the Eye of a Parisian. 
 
 That eye receives and consumes fire-works costing 
 a hundred thousand francs ; palaces six thousand feet 
 long and sixty feet high in many-colored glass; the 
 fairy scenes of fourteen theatres every night; ever- 
 changing panoramas ; continual exhibitions of master- 
 pieces; worlds of sorrows, universes of joy, as they 
 wander along the boulevards or tread the streets; 
 encyclopedias of rags at the carnival; twenty illus- 
 trated works a year ; a thousand caricatures ; ten thou- 
 sand vignettes, lithographs, and engravings. That 
 eye drinks in over fifteen thousand francs' worth of 
 gas every evening. Moreover, to satisfy it, the city 
 of Paris spends annually several millions in landscape 
 gardening, points of view, and plantations. But all 
 this is nothing; it is only the material side of the 
 question. Yes, it is in our opinion a very small 
 matter compared with the efforts of intellect, the 
 wiles, worthy of Moliere's pen, practised by the sixty 
 thousand clerks and the forty thousand young women 
 who beset the purses of customers as whitebait swarm 
 about the scraps of food which float upon the waters 
 of the Seine. 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 353 
 
 The Gaudissart of the shop is fully equal in capac- 
 ity, mental powers, wit, humor, and philosophy to the 
 illustrious commercial traveller who has now become 
 the type of his tribe. Out of the shop, out of his line 
 of business, he is like a balloon without gas ; he owes 
 his faculties to his environment of goods to sell, just 
 as the actor is sublime only on the stage. Although, 
 judged by the other shopmen of Europe, the French 
 clerk has far more education thau they, — that is, he can 
 talk asphalt, Mabille, polka, literature, illustrated 
 books, railroads, politics, Chamber, and revolution, — 
 he is excessively dull-minded when he leaves his 
 counter, his yard-stick, and his selling graces. But 
 there, on his own ground, persuasion on his lip, his eye 
 on his customer, and shawl in hand, he eclipses the 
 great Talleyrand; he has more wit than Desaugiers, 
 more cunning than Cleopatra ; he is worth more than 
 Monrose with Moliere to boot. In his own house 
 Talleyrand would have tricked Gaudissart; but in the 
 shop Gaudissart would fool the prince. 
 
 Let us explain this paradox by a fact. 
 
 Two pretty duchesses were chattering in the room 
 where the above-mentioned illustrious statesman was 
 reading. They wanted a bracelet and they were 
 expecting some to be sent for selection from the shop 
 of the most celebrated jeweller in Paris. A Gaudis- 
 sart arrived, armed with three bracelets, three mar- 
 
 23 
 
354 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 vels, among which the two women hesitated. Choice! 
 that 's the lightning of the intellect. Do you hesitate, 
 unable to choose? Then you are certain to be mis- 
 taken. Taste never has two inspirations. At last, 
 after about ten minutes' discussion, they appealed 
 to the prince. He saw the two duchesses helplessly 
 undecided between the two finest of these ornaments, 
 — for the third had been put aside almost from the 
 beginning. The prince did not close his book, neither 
 did he look at the bracelets, he watched the clerk. 
 
 "Which would you choose for the girl you like 
 best?" he said addressing him. 
 
 The young man pointed to one of the two bracelets. 
 
 " In that case, take the other," said the craftiest of 
 modern diplomatists to the duchesses, "and make 
 two women happy; and you, young man, make your 
 friend happy by presenting to her the other in my 
 name." 
 
 The pretty women smiled and the shopman retired 
 gratified by the present of the prince ; but still more 
 by the good opinion he seemed to have of him. 
 
 A woman is seen getting out of a brilliant equipage 
 which has stopped in the rue Vivienne before the door 
 of one of those sumptuous establishments where they 
 sell shawls. She is accompanied by another woman. 
 Women almost always start in couples on these expe- 
 ditions. All, on such occasions, will go through ten 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 355 
 
 shops before they make up their minds, and as they 
 go from one to another, they laugh over the little 
 comedy the clerks have played to them. But let us 
 examine who played their part best, buyers or seller; 
 which of the two has carried off the honors of the 
 little vaudeville? 
 
 When it is a matter of describing the greatest fact 
 of Parisian commerce, namely, the Sale, it is neces- 
 sary to produce a type in summing up the question. 
 Now, as to this, a shawl or a chatelaine worth several 
 thousand francs would certainly seem to cause more 
 emotion than a piece of cambric or a gown for two or 
 three hundred francs. But, O foreigners of both hemi- 
 spheres, should you ever read this physiology of the 
 counter, know that such scenes are played in all shops 
 over a barege at two francs, or a printed muslin at four 
 francs a yard. 
 
 How can you, princesses or bourgeoises, it matters 
 not which, distrust that pretty and very young man 
 with velvet cheeks colored like a peach, ingenuous 
 eyes, and clothed very nearly as well as your — your 
   — cousin, let us say; a youth gifted with a voice as 
 soft as the fleecy fabric he displays to you? There 
 are three or four others like him. Here 's one with 
 black eyes and a decided expression of face, who says 
 to you with an imperious air, " This is what you want." 
 There 's another with blue eyes and timid man- 
 
356 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 ner and submissive phrases, and you say of him, 
 "Poor lad! he was never born to be a shopman." A 
 third has chestnut hair, and yellow, laughing eyes ; he 
 is pleasant of speech, and is gifted with wondrous 
 activity and meridional gayety. A fourth is tawny reel, 
 with his beard cut fan-shape, stiff as a communist, 
 stern, imposing, with a fatal cravat and curt speech. 
 
 These different species of shopmen, selected and 
 adapted as they are to the leading characteristics of 
 women, are the arms of their master, — a stout indi- 
 vidual with a cheery face, rather bald, possessing the 
 stomach of a ministerial deputy, and sometimes deco- 
 rated with the Legion of honor for having maintained 
 the dignity of French trade. His lines are those of 
 contented rotundity; he has a wife, several children, 
 a country-house, and a balance in the bank. This 
 personage descends into the arena like a Deas ex 
 machind when some too mixed intrigue requires 
 prompt conclusion. Thus the female purchaser is 
 environed by kindliness, courtesy, youth, smiles, 
 pleasantry, — all that civilized man can offer of what 
 is simplest and most deceiving, the whole arranged in 
 careful gradation to suit all tastes. 
 
 One word on the optical, architectural, and decora- 
 tive effects of this comedy, — a short, decisive word; 
 a word of history written on the spot. No. 76 rue de 
 Richelieu is an elegant shop, white and gold, draped 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 357 
 
 with crimson velvet, which now possesses an entresol, 
 through which the light comes full from the rue de 
 Menars as in a painter's studio, pure, clear, and 
 always equable. Where is the true Parisian lounger 
 who has not admired the Persian, King of Asia, who 
 bears himself so proudly at the angle of that shop in 
 the rue de Richelieu and the rue de la Bourse, charged 
 to say, urbi et orbi : "I reign more tranquilly here 
 than at Teheran." Five hundred years hence that 
 piece of carving at the corner of two streets might, 
 were it not for the present immortal analysis, occupy 
 the minds of archaeologists and give rise to volumes 
 in-quarto with diagrams (like those of Monsieur 
 Quatremere de Quincy on the Olympian Jupiter) in 
 which it would be demonstrated that Napoleon was a 
 Son of ancient Persia before he was Emperor of the 
 French. Well, the book in which you read this instruc- 
 tive page was kept and sold in that entresol ; but the 
 gorgeous shop laid siege to the poor little place, 
 and, by force of banknotes, seized upon it. The 
 Comedy of Human Life was forced to yield to the 
 comedy of cashmere shawls. The Persian sacrificed a 
 few diamonds in his crown to increase the much needed 
 light, the rays of ^vhich have increased the sales in 
 that shop one hundred per cent, on account of their 
 influence on the play of colors ; this light puts into relief 
 all shawl seductions ; it is an irresistible light, truly a 
 
358 Comedies Played Grratis. 
 
 golden ray! From that fact judge of the efforts after 
 scenic effect in the shops of Paris. 
 
 Let us return to those young shopmen and their 
 portly master (who is received by the King of the 
 French at his table), and to the head-clerk with the 
 ruddy beard and the autocratic manner. These 
 Gaudissarts emeriti measure swords with several 
 thousand caprices a week; they know all the vibra- 
 tions of the cashmere-chord in the feminine heart. 
 When a lorette, a respectable lady, the young mother 
 of a family, a lionne, a duchesse, a worthy bourgeoise, 
 a saucy danseuse, an innocent young girl, a too 
 innocent foreigner presents herself, she is instantly 
 anatyzed by these seven or eight men, who have 
 studied her from the moment she laid her hand on the 
 knob of the door, — men whom you will see stationed 
 at the windows, behind the counters, at the corners of 
 the shop, looking as if they dreamed of a Sunday's 
 outing ; in fact, if you examine them, you will say to 
 yourself, " What can they be thinking of? " 
 
 A woman's purse, her desires, her intentions, her 
 fancies are better searched in that one moment by 
 those apparently vacant minds than custom-house 
 officers can search a suspected carriage on the frontier 
 in seven quarters of an hour. These intelligent 
 scamps, serious as a noble father, have seen all, — the 
 details of the buyer's apparel, a spot of mud on her 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 359 
 
 boot, want of style in her motions, dirty or ill-chosen 
 bonnet-strings, the freshness of the gloves, the cut 
 and fashion of the gown betraying the intelligent 
 scissors of Victorine IV., the bauble of Frornent- 
 Meurice, in short, all that reveals to a knowing eye 
 the quality, fortune, and character of a woman. 
 Tremble! Never is this sanhedrim of Gaudissarts, 
 led by its master, mistaken. The ideas of each are 
 transmitted from one to another with telegraphic 
 rapidity, by the eye, b} T twitches of the body, by 
 smiles, by motions of the lips; observe them, and 
 you '11 be reminded of the lighting up of the grand 
 avenue of the Champs Elysees, where the gas flies 
 from lamp to lamp precisely as these ideas light up 
 the pupils of clerk after clerk. 
 
 If the entering customer be an English woman, the 
 gloomy Gaudissart, mysterious and darksome, like a 
 personage out of Lord Byron, advances. If it is a 
 bourgeoise, the oldest of the clerks is assigned to her. 
 He shows her a hundred shawls in a quarter of an 
 hour; he bewilders her with colors and designs; he 
 unfolds more shawls than a hawk makes circles over a 
 chicken; so, at the end of half an hour, dizzy, and not 
 knowing how to choose, the worth} 7 woman, flattered 
 and pleased, trusts to the shopman, who at once places 
 her between two hammers, — that of her dilemma, 
 and that of the equal seductions of two shawls. 
 
360 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 "This, madame," he says, "is very becoming; it 
 is apple-green, the color now in fashion, but fashions 
 change ; whereas this " (the black or white, the sale of 
 which is urgent) "goes well with all styles; you will 
 never find this out of fashion." 
 
 That is the mere A-B-C of the trade. 
 
 " You would hardly believe how much eloquence is 
 required in this devil of a business," said, not long 
 ago, the head Gaudissart of the establishment we have 
 already mentioned, to his two friends, du Ronceret 
 and Bixiou, who had gone to the shop to buy a shawl, 
 the choice of which they left to him. "You are both 
 discreet, and I don't mind speaking to you of the 
 tricks played off by our patron, who is certainly the 
 cleverest man at the business I 've ever seen. I don't 
 mean as manufacturer, for Monsieur Fritot is first 
 there, but as seller. He invented the Selim shawl, 
 that is, a shawl impossible to sell, which we sell con- 
 tinually. We keep in a cedar box, very plain, but 
 lined with satin, a shawl worth five or six hundred 
 francs, a shawl sent by the Sultan Selim to the 
 Emperor Napoleon. This shawl is our Imperial 
 guard; it is brought on the field when the cause is 
 nearly lost; il se vend et ne meurt pas." 
 
 At this instant an Englishwoman got out of a hired 
 carriage and entered the shop, presenting a fine ideal 
 of that phlegmatic coldness which characterizes Eng- 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 361 
 
 land and all her so-called living products. You might 
 have thought her the statue of the Commander advanc- 
 ing with slow hops of an ungainliness manufactured 
 in the families of England with national care. 
 
 "An Englishwoman," whispered the head-clerk in 
 Bixiou's ear, " is our battle of Waterloo. "We have 
 women who slip through our fingers like eels, but we 
 catch them again at the door; we have lorettes who 
 blague us ; with them we laugh, for we hold them by 
 credit; we have undecipherable foreign women, to 
 whom we carry shawls at their lodgings, and with whom 
 we come to an understanding through flattery; but the 
 Englishwoman ! it is like handling the bronze of Louis 
 XIV. 's statue. Those women regard it as an occupa- 
 tion, a duty, a pleasure to bargain. They put us 
 through all our paces, I can tell you." 
 
 The Byronic shopman had advanced. 
 
 " Does madame desire an India shawl, or one of 
 French manufacture ; high-priced, or — " 
 
 u I will see." 
 What sum does madame devote to the purchase ? " 
 
 "] 
 
 Turning round to take the shawls and show them, 
 the clerk cast a significant glance (" What a bore ! ") 
 at his colleagues, accompanied by an almost impercep- 
 tible shrug of the shoulders. 
 
 " These are our finest qualities in India shawls, — 
 
362 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 reel, blue, and the yellow-orange tint; they are all ten 
 thousand francs. Here are some at five thousand, and 
 we have others at three thousand." 
 
 The Englishwoman, with an expression of stolid 
 indifference, turned her eye-glass on all around her 
 before she looked at the shawls, and gave no sign of 
 approval or disapproval. 
 
 " Have you others? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, madame. But perhaps madame has not quite 
 decided that she wants a shawl ? " 
 
 "Haw! yes, quite decided." 
 
 The shopman then fetched three shawls of inferior 
 value, but he spread them forth solemnly, as things of 
 which to say, " Attention to these magnificences." 
 Here are some that are more expensive," he said. 
 
 They have not yet been offered for sale ; they came 
 by couriers and were bought direct from the merchants 
 of Lahore." 
 
 " I see," she said. " They suit me much best." 
 
 The clerk remained perfectly grave in spite of his 
 inward irritation, which now began to attack du 
 Ronceret and Bixiou. The Englishwoman, cold as a 
 water-cress, seemed to enjoy her own phlegm. 
 
 "What price?" she said, pointing to a sky-blue 
 shawl covered with birds sitting on pagodas. 
 
 " Seven thousand francs." 
 
 She took the shawl and wrapped it round her, looked 
 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 363 
 
 at herself in the glass and said, as she gave it back, 
 "No, I don't like it," 
 
 A long quarter of an hour passed in equally fruitless 
 essayals. 
 
 "We have nothing more, madame," said the shop- 
 man, looking at his master. 
 
 " Madame is difficult to suit, like all persons of 
 taste," said the head of the establishment, coming 
 forward with that shop-keeping grace which agreeably 
 mingles wheedling with assumption. 
 
 The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and looked 
 the merchant over from head to foot, unable, of 
 course, to comprehend that the man was eligible to 
 the Chamber and dined at the Tuileries. 
 
 " I have but one other shawl, and that I seldom 
 show," he continued; " no one has ever liked it; it is 
 very odd; only this morning I was thinking of 
 giving it to my wife. We have had it since 1805; 
 it came from the Empress Josephine." 
 
 " Show it to me." 
 
 " Go and fetch it," said the master to a clerk; "it 
 is in my house." 
 
 " I shall be glad to see it," said the Englishwoman. 
 
 This answer was to a certain extent a triumph, for 
 the peevish dame was evidently about to leave the 
 shop. She now made believe to look only at the 
 shawls, whereas she was really looking slyly at the 
 
364 Comedies Played Gratis, 
 
 shopmen and the two gentlemen, sheltering her eyes by 
 the frame of her glasses. 
 
 "It cost originally twenty thousaud francs in Tur- 
 key, madame." 
 
 "Haw!" 
 
 "It was one of seven shawls sent by the Sultan 
 Selim before his catastrophe to the Emperor Napoleon. 
 The Empress Josephine — a Creole, as my lady knows, 
 and therefore capricious — changed it for another of 
 those brought by the Turkish ambassador, which my 
 predecessor had in the meantime purchased. I have 
 never been able to recover the value of it, for in France 
 our ladies are not rich enough; it is not as it is in 
 England. The price of this shawl is seven thousand 
 francs, but its value is more than double if you take 
 into account the compound interest — " 
 
 " Compounded of what? " said the Englishwoman. 
 
 "Here it is, madame." 
 
 And the shopkeeper, with precautions which the 
 exhibitors of the Grune-gewcelbe of Dresden would 
 have admired, opened with a tiny key a square box of 
 cedar wood, the shape and simplicity of which ap- 
 peared to impress the Englishwoman. From this box, 
 which was lined with black satin, he lifted a shawl, 
 worth perhaps fifteen hundred francs, of a golden yel- 
 low with black designs, the startling colors being 
 surpassed only by the fantastic Oriental figures. 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 365 
 
 " Splendid ! " said the Englishwoman. "It is really 
 fine. That is my ideal of a shawl; it is very 
 magnificent — " 
 
 The rest of her remarks were lost in a Madonna- 
 like attitude taken to show off her cold eyes, which she 
 evidently thought handsome. 
 
 " The Emperor liked that shawl very much; he used 
 it himself — " 
 
 " Himself! " she repeated. 
 
 She took the shawl, draped it about her, and exam- 
 ined herself. The proprietor then took the shawl, 
 carried it to the light, handled it, shook it, made it 
 glisten; in short, he played upon it as Liszt plays on 
 the piano. 
 
 "It is very fine, beautiful, sweet! " said the Eng- 
 lishwoman, with a cool and tranquil air. 
 
 Du Ronceret, Bixiou, and the clerks exchanged 
 looks of satisfaction which signified, " The shawl is 
 sold." 
 
 "Well, madame?" said the shopkeeper interroga- 
 tively, seeing the Englishwoman absorbed in a sort of 
 contemplation which was far too prolonged. 
 
 Decidedly," she said at last, " I prefer a car- 
 
 et 
 
 riage." 
 
 One and the same start passed through the silent, 
 listening clerks, as if some electric fluid had touched 
 them. 
 
366 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 " I have a very fine one, madame," replied the mas- 
 ter of the shop, tranquilly. "I received it from a 
 Russian princess — the Princess Narzikoff — who left 
 it to me in payment of her bill. If madame would 
 like to see it she would, I am sure, be delighted with 
 it. It has been used only a few times; there's not 
 another like it in Paris." 
 
 The stupefaction of the clerks was equalled only by 
 their profound admiration. 
 
 " I will see it," she replied. 
 
 " If madame will wear the shawl," said the shop- 
 keeper, "she will see the effect in the carriage." 
 
 He went to get his hat and gloves. 
 
 " How will it end?" exclaimed the head-clerk as 
 he watched his patron handing the Englishwoman into 
 her hired carriage. 
 
 The matter now took on to du Ronceret and Bixiou 
 the attraction of the end of a novel, besides the 
 especial interest attaching to all struggles, even petty 
 ones, between France and England. 
 
 Twenty minutes later the master of the establish- 
 ment returned. 
 
 "Go to the Hotel Lawson," he said to a clerk; 
 " here 's the card: Mrs. Noswell. Take the bill I will 
 give you; you have six thousand francs to receive." 
 
 " But how did you do it? " said du Ronceret, bowing 
 to the king of shopkeepers. 
 
Comedies Played Gratis. 367 
 
 " Eh! monsieur, I saw I had to do with an eccentric 
 woman ; she likes to be remarked upon ; when she saw 
 that everybody we passed looked at that shawl, she 
 said to me: ' You can keep your carriage, monsieur; I 
 decide to take the shawl.' While Monsieur Bigor- 
 neau," he went on, pointing to the Byronic clerk, 
 "was showing her the shawls, I examined my lady; 
 she was looking askance at you to see what idea you 
 had of her; her mind was much more on you than on 
 the shawls. These Englishwomen have a peculiar 
 distaste — for I can't call it taste. They don't know 
 what they want, and some chance circumstance will 
 decide them to take a thing they have been haggling 
 over, rather than their own will. I recognized her as 
 one of those women bored with their husbands and 
 babies, regretfully virtuous, seeking emotions, and 
 always posing as weeping willows." 
 
 That is literally what the head of that establishment 
 said. 
 
 It proves that while in other lands a shopkeeper may 
 be nothing but a shopkeeper, in France, and above 
 all in Paris, he may be a college-bred man, educated, 
 loving either the arts, or sport, or the theatre, or 
 consumed with a desire to become the successor of 
 Monsieur Cunin-Gridaine, or colonel of the National 
 guard, or member of the Council of the Seine, or judge 
 of the Court of Commerce. 
 
368 Comedies Played Gratis. 
 
 "Monsieur Adolphe," said the wife of the shop- 
 keeper to the little blond clerk, ''step round to the 
 cabinet-maker's and order another cedar-box." 
 
 "And now," said the head-clerk, escorting du 
 Ronceret and Bixiou to the door after they had selected 
 a shawl for Madame Schontz, "we must hunt among 
 our old shawls for another that can play the part of 
 the Selim shawl." 
 
 THE END. 
 
BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 — • — 
 
 Fame and Sorrow, 
 
 &trtJ ©t!)cr Stories. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 
 
 i2mo. Half Russia. Uniform with our edition of Balzac's 
 Works. Price, $1.50. In addition to this remarkable story, 
 the volume contains the following, namely : " Colonel Chabert," 
 "The Atheist's Mass," " La Grande Breteche," "The Purse," and 
 " La Grenadiere." 
 
 The force and passion of the stories of Balzac are unapproachable. He had 
 the art of putting into half a dozen pages all the fire and stress which many 
 writers, who are still great, cannot compass in a volume. The present volume is 
 an admirable collection, and presents well his power of handling the short story. 
 That the translation is excellent need hardly be said — Boston Courier. 
 
 The six stories, admirably translated by Miss Wormeley, afford good examples 
 of Balzac's work in what not a few critics have thought his chief specialty. It is 
 certain that no writer of many novels wrote so many short stories as he ; and it is 
 equally as certain that his short stories are, almost without an exception, models 
 of what such compositions ought to be. . . No modern author, however, of any 
 school whatever, has succeeded in producing short stories half so good as Balzac's 
 best. Balzac did not, indeed, attempt to display his subtility and deftness by 
 writing short stories about nothing. Every one of his tales contains an episode, 
 not necessarily, but usually, a dramatic episode The first in the present collec- 
 tion, better known as "La Maison du Chat-qui-pelote," is really a short novel. 
 It has all the machinery, all the interest, all the detail of a regular story. The 
 difference is that it is compressed as Balzac only could compress ; that here and 
 there important events, changes, etc., are indicated in a few powerful lines instead 
 of being elaborated; that the vital points are thrown into strong relief. Take the 
 pathetic story of "Colonel Chabert " It begins with an elaboration of detail. 
 The description of the lawyer's office might seem to some too minute. But it is 
 the stage upon which the Colonel is to appear, and when he enters we see the 
 value of the preliminaries, for a picture is presented which the memory seizes and 
 holds. As the action progresses, detail is used more parsimoniously, because the 
 mise-en-scene has already been completed, and because, also, the characters once 
 clearly described, the development of character and the working of passion can 
 be indicated with a few pregnant strokes. Notwithstanding this increasing 
 economy of space, the action takes on a swifter intensity, and the culmination of 
 the tragedy leaves the reader breathless. 
 
 In "The Atheist's Mass" we have quite a new kind of story This is rather 
 a psychological study than a narrative of action. Two widely distinguished char» 
 acters are thrown on the canvas here, — that of the great surgeon and that of the 
 humble patron ; and one knows not which most to admire, the vigor of the 
 drawing, or the subtle and lucid psychical analysis. In both there is rare beauty of 
 soul, and perhaps, after all, the poor Auvergnat surpasses the eminent surgeon, 
 though this is a delicate and difficult question. But how complete the little story 
 is ; how much it tells ; with what skill, and in how delightful a manner ! Then 
 there is that tremendous haunting legend of " La Grande Breteche," a story which 
 has always been turned into more languages and twisted into more new forms than 
 almost any other of its kind extant. What author has equalled the continuing 
 horror of that unfaithful wife's agony, compelled to look on and assist at the slow 
 murder of her entrapped lover? . . Then the death of the husband and wife, — 
 the one by quick and fiercer dissipation, the other by simple refusal to live longer, 
 — and the abandonment of the accursed dwelling to solitude and decay, complete 
 a picture, which for vividness, emotional force, imaginative power, and compre- 
 hensiveness of effects, can be said to have few equals in its own class of fiction. — 
 Kansas City Journal. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
 Vie publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 An Historical Mystery. 
 
 Translated by KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 
 12mo. Half Russia. Uniform with Balzac's Works. Price, $1.50. 
 
 An Historical Mystery is the title given to " Une Tenebreuse Affaire," which 
 has just appeared in the series of translations of Honore de Balzac's novels, by 
 Katharine Prescott Wormeley This exciting romance is full of stirring interest, 
 and is distinguished by that minute analysis of character in which its eminent 
 author excelled. The characters stand boldly out from the surrounding incidents, 
 and with a fidelity as wonderful as it is truthful. Plot and counterplot follow 
 each other with marvellous rapidity; and around the exciting days when Na- 
 poleon was First Consul, and afterward when he was Emperor, a mystery is 
 woven in which some royalists are concerned that is concealed with masterly 
 ingenuity until the novelist sees fit to take his reader into his confidence. The 
 heroine, Laurence, is a remarkably strong character; and the love-story in which 
 she figures is refreshing in its departure from the beaten path of the ordinary 
 writer of fiction. Michu, her devoted servant, has also a marked individuality, 
 which leaves a lasting impression. Napoleon, Talleyrand, Fouche, and other 
 historical personages, appear in the tale in a manner that is at once natural and 
 impressive. As an addition to a remarkable series, the book is one that no 
 admirer of Balzac can afford to neglect. Miss Wormeley's translation reproduces 
 the peculiarities of the author's style with the faithfulness for which she has 
 hitherto been celebrated. — Saturday Evening Gazette. 
 
 It makes very interesting reading at this distance of time, however; and Balzac 
 has given to the legendary account much of the solidity of history by his adroit 
 manipulation. For the main story it must be said that the action is swifter and 
 more varied than in many of the author's books, and that there are not wanting 
 many of those cameo-like portraits necessary to warn the reader against slovenly 
 perusal of this carefully written story; for the complications are such, and the re- 
 lations between the several plots involved so intricate, that the thread might 
 easily be lost and much of the interest be thus destroyed The usual Balzac 
 compactness is of course present throughout, to give body and significance to the 
 work, and the stage is crowded with impressive figures. It would be impossible 
 to find a book which gives a better or more faithful illustration of one of the 
 strangest periods in French history, in short ; and its attraction as a story is at 
 least equalled by its value as a true picture of the time it is concerned with. The 
 translation is as spirited and close as Miss Wormeley has taught us to expect in 
 this admirable series. — New York Tribune. 
 
 One of the most intensely interesting novels that Balzac ever wrote is An 
 Historical Mystery, whose translation has just been added to the preceding 
 novels that compose the "Comedie Humaine " so admirably translated by Miss 
 Katharine Prescott Wormeley. The story opens in the autumn of 1803, in the 
 time of the Empire, and the motive is in deep-laid political plots, which are re- 
 vealed with the subtle and ingenious skill that marks the art of Balzac. . . The 
 story is a deep-laid political conspiracy of the secret service of the ministry of 
 the police. Talleyrand, M'lle de Cinq-Cygne, the Princess de Cadigan, Louis 
 XVII L, as well as Napoleon, figure as characters of this thrilling historic ro- 
 mance. An absorbing love-story is also told, in which State intrigue plays an 
 important part. The character-drawing is faithful to history, and the story illu- 
 minates French life in the early years of the century as if a calcium light were 
 thrown on the scene. 
 
 It is a romance of remarkable power and one of the most deeply fascinating 
 of all the novels of the '' Comedie Humaine." 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
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Balzac in English. 
 
 Albert Savarus, with Paz (La Fausse 
 Maitresse) and Madame Firmiani. By 
 
 Honore de Balzac. Translated by Katharine Prescott 
 Wormeley. 
 
 There is much in this, one of the most remarkable of his books, 
 which is synonymous with Balzac's own life. It is the story of a man's 
 £rst love for woman, his inspirer, the source from whom he derives 
 his power of action. It also contains many details on his habits of 
 life and work. 
 
 The three short stories in this volume,— ' Albert Savarus,' 'Paz' and 'Madame 
 Firmiani ' — are chips from that astounding workshop which never ceased its Hephces- 
 tian labors and products until Balzac was no more Short stories of this character 
 flew from his glowing forge like sparks from an anvil, the playthings of an idle hour, 
 the interludes of a more vivid drama. Three of them gathered here illustrate as 
 usual Parisian and provincial life, two in a very noble fashion, Balzacian to the core. 
 The third — 'Albert Savarus'— has many elements of tragedy and grandeur in it, 
 spoiled only by an abruptness in the conclusion and an accumulation of unnecessary 
 horrors that chill the reader. It is a block of tragic marble hewn, not to a finish, but 
 
 to a fine prophetic suggestion of what is to follow if ! The if never emerges 
 
 from conditionality tofulfilment. The beautiful lines and sinuous curves of the 
 nascent statue are there, not fully born of the encasing stone ; what sculptors call the 
 'tenons' show in all their visibility — the supports and scaffoldings reveal their 
 presence ; the forefront is finished as in a Greek metope or Olympian tympanum, 
 where broken Lapiths and Centaurs disport themselves; but the background is rude 
 and primitive. 
 
 In ' Madame Firmiani ' a few brilliant pages suffice to a perfect picture, — one of 
 the few spotless pictures of this superb yet sinning magician so rich in pictures. It is 
 French nature that Balzac depicts, warm with all the physical impulses, undisguised 
 in its assaults on the soul, ingeniously sensual, odiously loose in its views of marriage 
 and the marriage relation, but splendidly picturesque. In this brief romance noble 
 words are wedded to noble music. In ' Paz ' an almost equal nobility of thought — 
 the nobility of self-renunciation — is attained. Balzac endows his men and women 
 with happy millions and unhappy natures: the red ruby — the broken heart — blazes 
 in a setting of gold. ' Paz,' the sublime Pole who loves the wife of his best friend, 
 a Slav Croesus, is no exception to the rule. The richest rhetoric, the sunniest colors, 
 fail to counteract the Acherontian gloom of these lives and sorrows snatched from the 
 cauldron of urban and rural France, — a cauldron that burns hotter than any other 
 with its strange Roman and Celtic ardors. Balzac was perpetually dipping into it and 
 drawing from it the wonderful and extraordinary incidents of his novels, incidents often 
 monstrous in their untruth if looked at from any other than a French point of view. 
 Thus, the devilish ingenuity of the jealous woman in ' Albert Savarus' would seem 
 unnatural anywhere else than in the sombre French provinces of 1836, — a toadstool 
 sprung up in the rank moonlight of the religious conventual system of education for 
 women ; but there, and then, and as one result of this system of repression, it 
 seems perfectly natural. And so does the beautiful self-abnegation of Albert himself, 
 that high-strung soul that could have been born only in nervous and passionate 
 France. 
 
 As usual. Miss Wormeley's charming translation floats the reader over these 
 pages in the swiftest and airiest manner. — The Critic. 
 
 One handsome i2mo volume, uniform with " Pere Goriot," " The 
 Duchesse de Langeais," " Cesar Birotteau," " Eugenie Grandet," 
 " Cousin Pons," " The Country Doctor," " The Two Brothers," and 
 "The Alkahest." Half morocco, French style. Price, $1.50. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 A MEMOIR OF HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 
 Compiled and written by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, translator 
 of Balzac's works. With portrait of Balzac, taken one hour after 
 death, by Eugene Giraud, "and a Sketch of the Prison of the College 
 de Vendome. One volume, i2mo. Half Russia, uniform with our 
 edition of Balzac's works. Price, §1.50. 
 
 A complete life of Balzac can probably never be written. The sole object of 
 the present volume is to present Balzac to American readers. This memoir is 
 meant to be a presentation of the man, — and not of his work, except as it was a 
 part of himself, — derived from authentic sources of information, and presented in 
 their own words, with such simple elucidations as a close intercourse with Balzac's 
 mind, necessitated by conscientious translation, naturally gives. The portrait 
 in this volume was considered by Madame de Balzac the best likeness of her 
 husband. 
 
 Miss Wormeley's discussion of the subject is of value in many ways, and it ha« 
 long been needed as a help to comprehension of his life and character. Person- 
 ally, he lived up to his theory. His life was in fact austere. Any detailed ac- 
 count of the conditions under which he worked, such as are given in this volume, 
 will show that this must have been the case ; and the fact strongly reinforces the 
 doctrine. Miss Wormeley, in arranging her account of his career, has, almost 
 of necessity, made free use of the letters and memoir published by Balzac's sister, 
 Madame Surville. She has also, whenever it would serve the purpose of illus- 
 tration better, quoted from the sketches of him by his contemporaries, wisely 
 rejecting the trivialities and frivolities by the exaggeration of which many of his 
 first chroniclers seemed bent upon giving the. great author a kind of opera-bouffe 
 aspect. To judge from some of these accounts, he was flighty, irresponsible, 
 possibly a little mad, prone to lose touch of actualities by the dominance of his 
 imagination, fond of wild and impracticable schemes, and altogether an eccentric 
 and unstable person. But it is not difficult to prove that Balzac was quite a 
 different character ; that he possessed a marvellous power of intellectual organi- 
 zation ; that he was the most methodical and indefatigable of workers; that he 
 was a man of a most delicate sense of honor; that his life was not simply de- 
 voted to literary ambition, but was a martyrdom to obligations which were his 
 misfortune, but not his fault. 
 
 All this Miss Wormley has well set forth ; and in doing so she has certainly 
 relieved Balzac of much unmerited odium, and has enabled those who have not 
 made a study of his character and work to understand how high the place is in 
 any estimate of the helpers of modern progress and enlightenment to which his 
 genius and the loftiness of his aims entitle him. This memoir is a very modest 
 biography, though a very good one. The author has effaced herself as much as 
 possible, and has relied upon " documents " whenever they were trustworthy. — 
 N. Y. Tribune. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of 
 price, by the publishers, 
 
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Balzac tn English. 
 
 PIERRETTE 
 
 AND 
 
 The Vicar ok Tours. 
 
 BY HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 
 
 In Pierrette, which Miss Wormeley has added to her series of felicitous 
 translations from the French master-fictionists, Balzac has made within 
 brief compass a marvellously sympathetic study of the martyrdom of a 
 young girl. Pierrette, a flower of Brittany, beautiful, pale, and fair and 
 sweet, is taken as an undesired charge by sordid-minded cousins in Pro- 
 vins, and like an exotic transplanted into a harsh and sour so»l she withers 
 and fades under the cruel conditions of her new environment. Inciden- 
 tally Balzac depicts in vivid colors the struggles of two shop-keepers — a 
 brother and sister, who have amassed a little fortune in Paris — to gain a 
 foothold among the bourgeoisie of their native town. These two become 
 the prey of conspirators for political advancement, and the rivalries thus 
 engendered shake the small provincial society to its centre. Put the 
 charm of the tale is in the portrayal of the character of Pierretle, who 
 understands only how to love, and who cannot live in an atmosphere of 
 suspicion and ill-treatment. The story is of course sad, but its fidelity to 
 life and the pathos of it are elements of unfailing interest. Balzac brings 
 a score or more of people upon the stage, shows each one as he or she 
 really is both in outward appearance and inward nature, and then allows 
 motives and circumstances to work out an inevitable result. To watch 
 this process is like being present at some wonderful chemical experiment 
 where the ingredients are mixed with a deft and careful hand, and combine 
 to produce effects of astonishing significance. The social genesis of the 
 old maid in her most abhorrent form occupies much of Balzac's attention 
 in Pierrette, and this theme also has a place in the story of The Vicar of 
 Tours, bound up in this same volume. The vicar is a simple-minded 
 priest who is happy enough till he takes up his quarters with an old maid 
 landlady, who pesters and annoys him in many ways, and finally sends him 
 forth despoiled of his worldly goods and a laughing-stock for the country- 
 side. There is a great deal of humor in the tale, but one must confess 
 that the humor is of a rather heavy sort, it being weighed down by a domi- 
 nant satirical purpose. — The Beacon. 
 
 One handsome i2mo volume, uniform with " Pere Goriot," 
 " The Duchesse de Langeais," " Cesar Birotteau," " Eugenie 
 Grandet," " Cousin Pons," " The Country Doctor," " The Twa 
 Brothers." and " The Alkahest." Half morocco, French style 
 Price, $1.50. 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications, 
 
 BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 Lost Illusions : The Two Poets, anil Eve end Davii 
 
 By HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 
 Being the twenty-third volume of Miss Wormeley's translation of 
 Balzac's novels. i2mo. Half Russia. Price, $1.50. 
 
 For her latest translation of the Balzac fiction cycle, Miss Wormeley gives us 
 the first and third parts of "Illusion Perdue," under the caption of "Lost 
 Illusions," namely, "The Two Poets" and "Eve and David." This arrange- 
 ment is no doubt a good one, for the readers are thus enabled to follow the consecu- 
 tive fortunes of the Angouleme folk, while the adventures of Eve's poet-brother, 
 Lucien, which occur in Paris and make a tale by themselves, are thus left for a 
 separate publication. The novel, as we have it, then, belongs to the category of 
 those scenes from provincial life which Balzac found so stimulating to his genius. 
 This story, certainly, in some respects takes high rank among them. The 
 character-drawing is fine: Lucien, the ambitious, handsome, weak-willed, selfish, 
 and easily-sinning young bourgeois, is contrasted with David, — a touching picture 
 of the struggling inventor, born of the people and sublimely one-purposed and 
 pure in his life. Eve, the type of a faithful large-brained and larger-hearted wife, 
 who supports her husband through all his hardships with unfaltering courage and 
 kindness, is another noble creation. David inherits a poorish printing business 
 from his skin-flint of a father, neglects it while devoting all his time and energy to 
 his discovery of an improved method of making paper ; and through the evil 
 machinations of the rival printing firm of the Cointets, as well as the debts foisted 
 on him by Lucien in Paris, he is brought into money difficulties and even into 
 prison. But his invention, although sold at a sacrifice to the cunning Cointets, 
 gets him out of the hole at last, and he and his good wife retire on a comfortable 
 competency, which is augmented at the death of his father into a good-sized 
 fortune. The seamy side of law in the provinces is shown up in Balzac's keen, 
 inimitable way in the description of the winding of the coils around the unsuspect- 
 ing David and the depiction of such men as the brothers Cointets and the shrewd 
 little petifogging rascal, Petit Claud. The pictures of Angouleme aristocratic 
 circles, too, with Lucien as high priest, are vivacious, and show the novelist's 
 wonderful observation in all ranks of life. The bit of wild romance by which 
 Lucien becomes the secretary of a Spanish grandee lends a fairy-tale flavor to tne 
 main episodes. Balzac, in whom is united the most lynx-eyed realism and the 
 most extravagant romanticism, is ever and always one of the great masters in 
 fiction of our century. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, oil receipt of 
 the price by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publicatioiis. 
 
 BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 A Great Mm of the Provinces in Paris, 
 
 By HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 
 Being the second part of " Lost Illusions." Translated by Kath- 
 arine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. Half Russia. Price, $1.50. 
 
 We are beginning to look forward to the new translations of Balzac by Katha- 
 rine Wormeley almost as eagerly as to the new works of the best contemporary 
 writers. But, unlike the writings of most novelists, Balzac's novels cannot be 
 judged separately. They belong together, and it is impossible to understand the 
 breadth and depth of the great writer's insight into human life by reading any 
 one volume of this remarkable series. For instance, we rise from the reading of 
 this last volume feeling as if there was nothing high or noble or pure in life. But 
 what would be more untrue than to fancy that Balzac was unable to appreciate 
 the true and the good and the beautiful ! Compare " The Lily of the Valley " 
 or "Seraphita" or "Louis Lambert" with "The Duchesse of Langeais" and 
 " Cousin Bette," and then perhaps the reader will be able to criticise Balzac with 
 some sort of justice. — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Balzac paints the terrible verities of life with an inexorable hand. The siren 
 charms, the music and lights, the feast and the dance, are presented in voluptu- 
 ous colors — but read to the end of the book! There are depicted with equal 
 truthfulness the deplorable consequences of weakness and crime. Some have 
 read Balzac's "Cousin Bette" and have pronounced him immoral; but when 
 the last chapter of any of his novels is read, the purpose of the whole is clear, and 
 immorality cannot be alleged. Balzac presents life. His novels are as truthful 
 as they are terrible. — Springfield Union. 
 
 Admirers of Balzac will doubtless enjoy the mingled sarcasm and keen analy- 
 sis of human nature displayed in the present volume, brought out with even more 
 than the usual amount of the skill and energy characteristic of the author. — 
 Pittsburgh Post. 
 
 The art of Balzac, the wonderful power of his contrast, the depth of his 
 knowledge of life and men and things, this tremendous story illustrates. How 
 admirably the rise of the poet is traced ; the cresce?ido is perfect in gradation, yet 
 as inexorable as fate! As for the fall, the effect is more depressing than a 
 personal catastrophe. This is a book to read over and over, an epic of life in 
 prose, more tremendous than the blank verse of " Paradise Lost " or the 
 "Divine Comedy.'' Miss Wormeley and the publishers deserve not congratula- 
 tions alone, but thanks for adding this book and its predecessor, " Lost Illusions," 
 to the literature of English. — San Francisco Wave. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 
 Publishers , 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 BALZAC IN ENGLISH. 
 
 THE BROTHERHOOD OF CONSOLATION. 
 
 (L'ENVERS DE L'HISIOIRE CQNTEMPORAINE.) 
 
 By HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 
 i. Madame de la Chanterie. 2. The Initiate. Translated by 
 Katharine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. Half Russia. Price, 
 $1.50. 
 
 There is no book of Balzac which is informed by a loftier spirit than 
 " L'Envers de l'Histoire Contemporaine," which has just been added by Miss 
 Wormeley to her admirable series of translations under the title, " The Brother- 
 hood of Consolation." The title which is given to the translation is, to our 
 thinking, a happier one than that which the work bears in the original, since, after 
 all, the political and historical portions of the book are only the background of the 
 other and more absorbing theme, — the development of the brotherhood over 
 which Madame de la Chanterie presided. It is true that there is about it all 
 something theatrical, something which shows the French taste for making godli- 
 ness itself histrionically effective, that quality of mind which would lead a Parisian 
 to criticise the coming of the judgment angels if their entrance were not happily 
 arranged and properly executed ; but in spite of this there is an elevation such as 
 it is rare to meet with in literature, and especially in the literature of Balzac's age 
 and land. The story is admirably told, and the figure of the Baron Bourlac is 
 really noble in its martyrdom of self-denial and heroic patience. The picture of 
 the Jewish doctor is a most characteristic piece of work, and shows Balzac's 
 intimate touch in every line. Balzac was always attracted by the mystical side 
 of the physical nature ; and it might almost be said that everything that savored 
 of mystery, even though it ran obviously into quackery, had a strong attraction 
 for him. He pictures Halpersohn with a few strokes, but his picture of him has 
 a striking vitality and reality. The volume is a valuable and attractive addition to 
 the series to which it belongs ; and the series comes as near to fulfilling the ideal 
 of what translations should be as is often granted to earthly things. — Boston 
 Courier. 
 
 The book, which is one of rare charm, is one of the most refined, while at the 
 same time tragic, of all his works. — Public Opinion. 
 
 His present work is a fiction beautiful in its conception, just one of those 
 practical ideals which Balzac nourished and believed in. There never was greater 
 homage than he pays to the book of books, " The Imitation of Jesus Christ." 
 Miss Wormeley has here accomplished her work just as cleverly as in her other 
 volumes of Balzac. — N. Y. Times. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the 
 Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 m • • — .i i   .   - , -■■■ .- jtf 
 
 THE VILLAGE RECTOR. 
 
 By Honore de Balzac. 
 
 Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. 
 Half Russia. Price, $1.50. 
 
 Once more that wonderful acquaintance which Balzac had with all callings 
 appears manifest in this work. Would you get to the bottom of the engineer's 
 occupation in France ? Balzac presents it in the whole system, with its aspects, 
 disadvantages, and the excellence of the work accomplished. We write to-day 
 of irrigation and of arboriculture as if they were novelties ; yet in the waste lands 
 of Montagnac, Balzac found these topics ; and what he wrote is the clearest 
 exposition of the subjects. 
 
 But, above all, in "The Village Rector" is found the most potent of religious 
 ideas, — the one that God grants pardon to sinners. Balzac had studied and 
 appreciated the intensely human side of Catholicism and its adaptiveness to the 
 wants of mankind. It is religion, with Balzac, " that opens to us an inexhaustible 
 treasure of indulgence." It is true repentance that saves. 
 
 The drama which is unrolled in "The Village Rector " is a terrible one, and 
 perhaps repugnant to our sensitive minds. The selection of such a plot, pitiless 
 as it is, Balzac made so as to present the darkest side of human nature, and to 
 show how, through God's pity, a soul might be saved. The instrument of mercy 
 is the Rector Bonnet, and in the chapter entitled " The Rector at Work " he 
 shows how religion " extends a man's life beyond the world." It is not sufficient 
 to weep and moan. "That is but the beginning; the end is action." Th$ 
 rector urges the woman whose sins are great to devote what remains of her lifo 
 to work for the benefit of her brothers and sisters, and so she sets about reclaim- 
 ing the waste lands which surround her chateau. With a talent of a superlative 
 order, which gives grace to Veronique, she is like the Madonna of some old panel 
 of Van Eyck's Doing penance, she wears close to her tender skin a haircloth 
 vestment For love of her, a man has committed murder and died and kept his 
 secret. In her youth, Veronique's face had been pitted, but her saintly life had 
 obliterated that spotted mantle of smallpox. Tears had washed out every blemish. 
 If through true repentance a soul was ever saved, it was Veronique's. This 
 work, too, has afforded consolation to many miserable sinners, and showed them 
 the way to grace. 
 
 The present translation is to be cited for its wonderful accuracy and its literary 
 distinction. We can hardly think of a more difficult task than the Englishing of 
 Balzac, and a general reading public should be grateful for the admirable manner 
 in which Miss Wormeley has performed her task. — New York Times. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt 
 of price by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Mass. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 
 
 SMjac in <£ngli£fj. 
 
 Memoirs of Two Young Married Women. 
 
 By Honore de Balzac. 
 
 Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. i2mo. 
 Half Russia. Price, $1.50. 
 
 "There are," says Henry James in one of his essays, "two writers In 
 Balzac, — the spontaneous one and the reflective one, the former of 
 which is much the more delightful, while the latter is the more extraordi- 
 nary." It is the reflective Balzac, the Balzac with a theory, whom we 
 get in the "Deux Jeunes Mariees," now translated by Miss Wormeley 
 under the title of " Memoirs of Two Young Married Women." The 
 theory of Balzac is that the marriage of convenience, properly regarded, 
 is far preferable to the marriage simply from love, and he undertakes to 
 prove this proposition by contrasting the careers of two young girls who 
 have been fellow-students at a convent. One of them, the ardent and 
 passionate Louise de Chaulieu, has an intrigue with a Spanish refugee, 
 finally marries him, kills him, as she herself confesses, by her perpetual 
 jealousy and exaction, mourns his loss bitterly, then marries a golden- 
 haired youth, lives with him in a dream of ecstasy for a year or so, and 
 this time kills herself through jealousy wrongfully inspired. As for het 
 friend, Renee de Maucombe, she dutifully makes a marriage to please her 
 parents, calculates coolly beforehand how many children she will have and 
 how they shall be trained ; insists, however, that the marriage shall be 
 merely a civil contract till she and her husband find that their hearts are 
 indeed one ; and sees all her brightest visions realized, — her Louis an 
 ambitious man for her sake and her children truly adorable creatures. 
 The story, which is told in the form of letters, fairly scintillates with 
 brilliant sayings, and is filled with eloquent discourses concerning the 
 nature of love, conjugal and otherwise. Louise and Renee are both 
 extremely sophisticated young women, even in their teens ; and those 
 who expect to find in their letters the demure innocence of the Anglo- 
 Saxon type will be somewhat astonished. The translation, under the 
 circumstances, was rather a daring attempt, but it has been most felicit- 
 ously done. — The Beacon. 
 
 Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Mass. 
 
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