Produced by David Widger





THE IMMORTAL;

OR, ONE OF THE “FORTY.” (L’IMMORTEL.)

By Alphonse Daudet,

Translated From The French By A. W. Verrall And Margaret D. G. Verrall

Rand, McNally & Company, Publishers - 1889




IMMORTAL; OR, THE “FORTY.” (L’IMMORTEL)




CHAPTER I.

In the 1880 edition of Men of the Day, under the heading _Astier-Réhu_,
may be read the following notice:--

Astier, commonly called Astier-Réhu (Pierre Alexandre Léonard), Member
of the Académie Française, was born in 1816 at Sauvagnat (Puy-de-Dôme).
His parents belonged to the class of small farmers. He displayed from
his earliest years a remarkable aptitude for the study of history. His
education, begun at Riom and continued at Louis-le-Grand, where he
was afterwards to re-appear as professor, was more sound than is now
fashionable, and secured his admission to the Ecole Normale Supérieure,
from which he went to the Chair of History at the Lycée of Mende. It
was here that he wrote the Essay on Marcus Aurelius, crowned by
the Académie Française. Called to Paris the following year by M. de
Salvandy, the young and brilliant professor showed his sense of the
discerning favour extended to him by publishing, in rapid succession,
The Great Ministers of Louis XIV. (crowned by the Académie Française),
Bonaparte and the Concordat (crowned by the Académie Française), and
the admirable Introduction to the History of the House of Orleans, a
magnificent prologue to the work which was to occupy twenty years of his
life. This time the Académie, having no more crowns to offer him, gave
him a seat among its members. He could scarcely be called a stranger
there, having married Mlle. Rèhu, daughter of the lamented Paulin Réhu,
the celebrated architect, member of the Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres, and granddaughter of the highly respected Jean Réhu,
the father of the Académie Française, the elegant translator of Ovid and
author of the Letters to Urania, whose hale old age is the miracle of
the Institute. By his friend and colleague M. Thiers Léonard Astier-Réhu
was called to the post of Keeper of the Archives of Foreign Affairs.
It is well known that, with a noble disregard of his interests, he
resigned, some years later (1878), rather than that the impartial pen of
history should stoop to the demands of our present rulers. But deprived
of his beloved archives, the author has turned his leisure to good
account. In two years he has given us the last three volumes of his
history, and announces shortly New Lights on Galileo, based upon
documents extremely curious and absolutely unpublished. All the works of
Astier-Réhu may be had of Petit-Séquard, Bookseller to the Académie.

As the publisher of this book of reference entrusts to each person
concerned the task of telling his own story, no doubt can possibly be
thrown upon the authenticity of these biographical notes. But why must
it be asserted that Léonard Astier-Réhu resigned his post as Keeper of
the Archives? Every one knows that he was dismissed, sent away with no
more ceremony than a hackney-cabman, because of an imprudent phrase let
slip by the historian of the House of Orleans, vol. v. p. 327: ‘Then, as
to-day, France, overwhelmed by the flood of demagogy, etc.’ Who can see
the end of a metaphor? His salary of five hundred pounds a year, his
rooms in the Quai d’Orsay (with coals and gas) and, besides, that
wonderful treasure of historic documents, which had supplied the sap
of his books, all this had been carried away from him by this unlucky
‘flood,’ all by his own flood! The poor man could not get over it. Even
after the lapse of two years, regret for the ease and the honours of his
office gnawed at his heart, and gnawed with a sharper tooth on
certain dates, certain days of the month or the week, and above all on
‘Teyssèdre’s Wednesdays.’ Teyssèdre was the man who polished the floors.
He came to the Astiers’ regularly every Wednesday. On the afternoon
of that day Madame Astier was at home to her friends in her husband’s
study, this being the only presentable apartment of their third floor in
the Rue de Beaune, the remains of a grand house, terribly inconvenient
in spite of its magnificent ceiling. The disturbance caused to the
illustrious historian by this ‘Wednesday,’ recurring every week and
interrupting his industrious and methodical labours, may easily be
conceived. He had come to hate the rubber of floor, a man from his
own country, with a face as yellow, close, and hard as his own cake
of beeswax. He hated Teyssèdre, who, proud of coming from Riom, while
‘Meuchieu Achtier came only from Chauvagnat,’ had no scruple in pushing
about the heavy table covered with pamphlets, notes, and reports, and
hunted the illustrious victim from room to room till he was driven to
seek refuge in a kind of pigeon-hole over the study, where, though not
a big man, he must sit for want of room to get up. This lumber-closet,
which was furnished with an old damask chair, an aged card-table and a
stand of drawers, looked out on the courtyard through the upper circle
of the great window belonging to the room below. Through this opening,
much resembling the low glass door of an orangery, the travailing
historian might be seen from head to foot, miserably doubled up like
Cardinal La Balue in his cage. It was here that he was sitting one
morning with his eyes upon an ancient scrawl, having been already
expelled from the lower room by the bang-bang-bang of Teyssèdre, when he
heard the sound of the front door bell.

‘Is that you, Fage?’ asked the Academician in his deep and resonant
bass.

‘No, _Meuchieu Achtier_. It is the young gentleman.’

On Wednesday mornings the polisher opened the door, because Corentine
was dressing her mistress.

‘How’s _The Master?_’ cried Paul Astier, hurrying by to his mother’s
room. The Academician did not answer. His son’s habit of using
ironically a title generally bestowed upon him as a compliment was
always offensive to him.

‘M. Fage is to be shown up as soon as he comes,’ he said, not addressing
himself directly to the polisher.

‘Yes, _Meuchieu Achtier_.’ And the bang-bang-bang began again.

‘Good morning, mamma.’

‘Why, it’s Paul! Come in. Mind the folds, Corentine.’

Madame Astier was putting on a skirt before the looking-glass. She was
tall, slender, and still good-looking in spite of her worn features and
her too delicate skin. She did not move, but held out to him a cheek
with a velvet surface of powder. He touched it with his fair pointed
beard. The son was as little demonstrative as the mother.

‘Will M. Paul stay to breakfast?’ asked Corentine. She was a stout
countrywoman of an oily complexion, pitted with smallpox. She was
sitting on the carpet like a shepherdess in the fields, and was about
to repair, at the hem of the skirt, her mistress’s old black dress.
Her tone and her attitude showed the objectionable familiarity of the
under-paid maid-of-all-work.

No, Paul would not stay to breakfast. He was expected elsewhere. He had
his buggy below; he had only come to say a word to his mother.

‘Your new English cart? Let me look,’ said Madame Astier. She went to
the open window, and parted the Venetian blinds, on which the bright May
sunlight lay in stripes, just far enough to see the neat little vehicle,
shining with new leather and polished pinewood, and the servant in
spotless livery standing at the horse’s head.

‘Oh, ma’am, how beautiful!’ murmured Coren-tine, who was also at the
window. ‘How nice M. Paul must look in it!’

The mother’s face shone. But windows were opening opposite, and people
were stopping before the equipage, which was creating quite a sensation
at this end of the Rue de Beaune. Madame Astier sent away the servant,
seated herself on the edge of a folding-chair, and finished mending her
skirt for herself, while she waited for what her son had to say to her,
not without a suspicion what it would be, though her attention seemed
to be absorbed in her sewing. Paul Astier was equally silent. He leaned
back in an arm-chair and played with an ivory fan, an old thing which
he had known for his mother’s ever since he was born. Seen thus, the
likeness between them was striking; the same Creole skin, pink over a
delicate duskiness, the same supple figure, the same impenetrable
grey eye, and in both faces a slight defect hardly to be noticed;
the finely-cut nose was a little out of line, giving an expression of
slyness, of something not to be trusted. While each watched and
waited for the other, the pause was filled by the distant brushing of
Teyssèdre.

‘Rather good, that,’ said Paul.

His mother looked up. ‘What is rather good?’

He raised the fan and pointed, like an artist, at the bare arms and the
line of the falling shoulders under the fine cambric bodice. She began
to laugh.

‘Yes, but look here.’ She pointed to her long neck, where the fine
wrinkles marked her age. ‘But after all,’... you have the good looks, so
what does it matter? Such was her thought, but she did not express it.
A brilliant talker, perfectly trained in the fibs and commonplaces of
society, a perfect adept in expression and suggestion, she was left
without words for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced.
And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up
their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew--though indeed
there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out--all her
coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all
her aspirations towards fame or fashion or social success had been
transferred to the account of her son, this tall, good-looking young
fellow in the correct attire of the modern artist, with his slight beard
and close-cut hair, who showed in mien and bearing that soldierly grace
which our young men of the day get from their service as volunteers.

‘Is your first floor let?’ asked the mother at last.

‘Let! let! Not a sign of it! All the bills and advertisements no go!
“I don’t know what is the matter with them; but they don’t come,” as
Védrine said at his private exhibition.’

He laughed quietly, at an inward vision of Védrine among his enamels and
his sculptures, calm, proud, and self-assured, wondering without anger
at the non-appearance of the public. But Madame Astier did not laugh.
That splendid first floor empty for the last two years! In the Rue
Fortuny! A magnificent situation--a house in the style of Louis XII.--a
house built by her son! Why, what did people want? The same people,
doubtless, who did not go to Védrine. Biting off the thread with which
she had been sewing, she said:

‘And it is worth taking, too!’

‘Quite; but it would want money to keep it up.’

The people at the Crédit Foncier would not be satisfied. And the
contractors were upon him--four hundred pounds for carpenter’s work due
at the end of the month, and he hadn’t a penny of it.

The mother, who was putting on the bodice of her dress before the
looking-glass, grew pale and saw that she did so. It was the shiver that
you feel in a duel, when your adversary raises his pistol to take aim.

‘You have had the money for the restorations at Mousseaux?’

‘Mousseaux! Long ago.’

‘And the Rosen tomb?’

‘Can’t get on. Védrine still at his statue.’

‘Yes, and why must you have Védrine? Your father warned you against
him.’

‘Oh, I know. They can’t bear him at the Institute.’

He rose and walked about the room.

‘You know me, come. I am a practical man. If I took him and not some
one else to do my statue, you may suppose that I had a reason.’ Then
suddenly, turning to his mother:

‘You could not let me have four hundred pounds, I suppose?’ She had been
waiting for this ever since he came in; he never came to see her for
anything else.

‘Four hundred pounds? How can you think----’ She said no more; but the
pained expression of her mouth and eyes said clearly enough:

‘You know that I have given you everything--that I am dressed in
clothes fit for the rag-bag--that I have not bought a bonnet for three
years--that Corentine washes my linen in the kitchen because I should
blush to give such rubbish to the laundress; and you know also that my
worst misery is to refuse what you ask. Then why do you ask?’ And this
mute address of his mother’s was so eloquent that Paul Astier answered
it aloud:

‘Of course I was not thinking of your having it yourself. By Jove, if
you had, it would be the better for me. But,’ he continued, in his cool,
off hand way, ‘there is _The Master_ up there. Could you get it from
him? You might. You know how to get hold of him.’

‘That is over. There is an end of that.’

‘Well, but, you know, he works; his books sell; you spend nothing.’

He looked round in the subdued light at the reduced state of the old
furniture, the worn curtains, the threadbare carpet, nothing of later
date than their marriage thirty years ago. Where was it then that all
the money went?

‘I say,’ he began again, ‘I wonder whether my venerable sire is in the
habit of taking his fling?’

It was an idea so monstrous, so inconceivable, that of Léonard
Astier-Réhu ‘taking his fling,’ that his wife could not help smiling in
spite of herself. No, on that point she thought there was no need for
uneasiness. ‘Only, you know, he has turned suspicious and mysterious,
and “buries his hoard.” We have gone too far with him.’

They spoke low, like conspirators, with their eyes upon the carpet.

‘And grandpapa,’ said Paul, but not in a tone of confidence, ‘could you
try him?’

‘Grandpapa? You must be mad!’

Yet he knew well enough what old Réhu was. A touchy, selfish man all
but a hundred years old, who would have seen them all die rather than
deprive himself of a pinch of snuff or a single one of the pins that
were always stuck on the lapels of his coat. Ah, poor child! He must be
hard up indeed before he could think of his grandfather.

‘Well, you would not like me to try ---- ----.’ She paused.

‘To try where?’

‘In the Rue de Courcelles. I might get something in advance for the
tomb.’

‘There? Good Heavens! You had better not!’

He spoke to her imperiously, with pale lips and a disagreeable
expression in his eye; then recovering his self-contained and fleeting
tone, he said:

‘Don’t trouble any more about it. It is only a crisis to be got through.
I have had plenty before now.’

She held out to him his hat, which he was looking for. As he could get
nothing from her, he would be off. To keep him a few minutes longer,
she began talking of an important business which she had in hand--a
marriage, which she had been asked to arrange.

At the word _marriage_ he started and looked at her askance: ‘Who was
it?’ She had promised to say nothing at present. But she could not
refuse him. It was the Prince d’Athis.

‘Who is the lady?’ he asked.

It was her turn now to show him the side view of her crooked nose.

‘You do not know the lady. She is a foreigner with a fortune. If I
succeed I might help you. I have made my terms in black and white.’

He smiled, completely reassured.

‘And how does the Duchess take it?’

‘She knows nothing of it, of course.’

‘Her _Sammy_,’ Her dear prince! And after fifteen years!’

Madame Astier’s gesture expressed the utter carelessness of one woman
for the feelings of another.

‘What else could she expect at her age?’ said she.

‘Why, what is her age?’

‘She was born in 1827. We are in 1880. You can do the sum. Just a year
older than myself.’

‘The Duchess!’ cried Paul, stupefied.

His mother laughed as she said, ‘Why, yes, you rude boy! What are you
surprised at? I am sure you thought her twenty years younger. It’s a
fact, it seems, that the most experienced of you know nothing about
women. Well, you see, the poor prince could not have her hanging on to
him all his life. Besides, one of these days the old Duke will die, and
then where would he be? Fancy him tied to that old woman!’

‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘so much for your dear friend!’ She fired at this.
Her dear friend! The Duchess! A pretty friend! A woman who, with
twenty-five thousand a year--intimate as she was with her, and well
aware of their difficulties--had never so much as thought of helping
them! What was the present of an occasional dress? Or the permission
to choose a bonnet at her milliner’s? Presents for use! There was no
pleasure in them.

‘Like grandpapa Réhu’s on New Year’s day,’ put in Paul assenting. ‘An
atlas, or a globe!’

‘Oh, Antonia is, I really think, more stingy still. When we were at
Mousseaux, in the middle of the fruit season, if _Sammy_ was not there,
do you remember the dry plums they gave us for dessert? There is plenty
in the orchard and the kitchen garden, but everything is sent to market
at Blois or Vendôme. It runs in her blood, you know. Her father, the
Marshal, was famous for it at the Court of Louis Philippe; and it was
something to be thought stingy at the Court of Louis Philippe! These
great Corsican families are all alike; nothing but meanness and
pretension! They will eat chestnuts, such as the pigs would not touch,
off plate with their arms on it. And as for the Duchess--why, she makes
her steward account to her in person! They take the meat up to her every
morning; and every evening (this is from a person who knows), when
she has gone to her grand bed with the lace, at that tender moment she
balances her books!’

Madame Astier was nearly breathless. Her small voice grew sharp and
shrill, like the cry of a sea-bird from the masthead. Meanwhile Paul,
amused at first, had begun to listen impatiently, with his thoughts
elsewhere. ‘I am off,’ said he abruptly. ‘I have a breakfast with some
business people--very important.’

‘An order?’

‘No, not architect’s business this time.’

She wanted him to satisfy her curiosity, but he went on, ‘Not now;
another time; it’s not settled.’ And finally, as he gave his mother a
little kiss, he whispered in her ear, ‘All the same, do not forget my
four hundred.’

But for this grown-up son, who was a secret cause of division, the
Astier-Réhu would have had a happy household, as the world, and in
particular the Academic world, measures household happiness. After
thirty years their mutual sentiments remained the same, kept beneath the
snow at the temperature of what gardeners call a ‘cold-bed.’ When, about
‘50, Professor Astier, after brilliant successes at the Institute, sued
for the hand of Mademoiselle Adelaide Réhu, who at that time lived
with her grandfather at the Palais Mazarin, it was not the delicate and
slender beauty of his betrothed, it was not the bloom of her ‘Aurora’
face, which were the real attractions for him. Neither was it her
fortune. For the parents of Mademoiselle Adelaide, who died suddenly
of cholera, had left her but little; and the grandfather, a Creole from
Martinique, an old beau of the time of the Directory, a gambler, a
free liver, great in practical jokes and in duels, declared loudly and
repeatedly that he should not add a penny to her slender portion.

No, that which enticed the scion of Sauvagnat, who was far more
ambitious than greedy, was the Académie. The two great courtyards which
he had to cross to bring his daily offering of flowers, and the long
solemn corridors into which at intervals there descended a dusty
staircase, were for him rather the path of glory than of love. The
Paulin Réhu of the Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, the Jean Réhu of
the ‘Letters to Urania,’ the Institute complete with its lions and its
cupola--this was the Mecca of his pilgrimage, and all this it was that
he took to wife on his wedding day.

For this not transient beauty he felt a passion proof against the
tooth of time, a passion which took such hold of him that his permanent
attitude towards his wife was that of those mortal husbands on whom, in
the mythological age, the gods occasionally bestowed their daughters.
Nor did he quit this respect when at the fourth ballot he had himself
become a deity. As for Madame Astier, who had only accepted marriage as
a means of escape from a hard and selfish grandfather in his anecdotage,
it had not taken her long to find out how poor was the laborious peasant
brain, how narrow the intelligence, concealed by the solemn manners of
the Academic laureate and manufacturer of octavos, and by his voice with
its ophicleide notes adapted to the sublimities of the lecture room. And
yet when, by force of intrigue, bargaining, and begging, she had seated
him at last in the Académie, she felt herself possessed by a certain
veneration, forgetting that it was herself who had clothed him in that
coat with the green palm leaves, in which his nothingness ceased to be
visible.

In the dull concord of their partnership, where was neither joy, nor
intimacy, nor communion of any kind, there was but one single note of
natural human feeling, their child; and this note disturbed the harmony.
In the first place the father was entirely disappointed of all that he
wished for his son, that he should be distinguished by the University,
entered for the general examinations, and finally pass through the Ecole
Normale to a professorship. Alas! at school Paul took prizes for nothing
but gymnastics and fencing, and distinguished himself chiefly by a
wilful and obstinate perversity, which covered a practical turn of mind
and a precocious understanding of the world. Careful of his dress and
his appearance, he never went for a walk without the hope, of which he
made no secret to his schoolfellows, of ‘picking up a rich wife.’ Two or
three times the father had been ready to punish this determined idleness
after the rough method of Auvergne, but the mother was by to excuse and
to protect. In vain Astier-Réhu scolded and snapped his jaw, a prominent
feature which, in the days when he was a professor, had gained him the
nickname of _Crocodilus_. In the last resort, he would threaten to pack
his trunk and go back to his vineyard at Sauvagnat.

‘Ah, Léonard, Léonard!’ Madame Astier would say with gentle mockery;
and nothing further came of it. Once, however, he really came near to
strapping his trunk in good earnest, when, after a three years’ course
of architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paul refused to compete
for the Prix de Rome. The father could scarcely speak for indignation.
‘Wretched boy! It is the Prix de Rome! You cannot know; you do not
understand. The Prix de Rome! Get that, and it means the Institute!’
Little the young man cared. What he wanted was wealth, and wealth
the Institute does not bestow, as might be seen in his father, his
grandfather, and old Réhu, his great-grandfather! To start in life, to
get a business, a large business, an immediate income--this was what he
wanted for his part, and not to wear a green coat with palms on it.

Léonard Astier was speechless. To hear such blasphemies uttered by his
son and approved by his wife, a daughter of the house of Réhu! This time
his trunk was really brought down from the box room; his old trunk, such
as professors use in the provinces, with as much ironwork in the way
of nails and hinges as might have sufficed for a church door, and high
enough and deep enough to have held the enormous manuscript of ‘Marcus
Aurelius’ together with all the dreams of glory and all the ambitious
hopes of an historian on the high road to the Académie. It was in vain
for Madame Astier to pinch her lips and say, ‘Oh, Léonard, Léonard!’
Nothing would stop him till his trunk was packed. Two days it stood in
the way in the middle of his study. Then it travelled to the ante-room;
and there reposed, turned once and for ever into a wood-box.

And at first, it must be said, Paul Astier did splendidly. Helped by his
mother and her connection in good society, and further assisted by his
own cleverness and personal charm, he soon got work which brought him
into notice. The Duchess Padovani, wife of a former ambassador and
minister, trusted him with the restoration of her much admired country
house at Mousseaux-on-the-Loire, an ancient royal residence, long
neglected, which he succeeded in restoring with a skill and ingenuity
really amazing in an undistinguished scholar of the Beaux-Arts.
Mousseaux got him the order for the new mansion of the Ambassador of the
Porte; and finally the Princess of Rosen commissioned him to design the
mausoleum of Prince Herbert of Rosen, who had come to a tragic end
in the expedition of Christian of Illyria. The young man now thought
himself sure of success. Astier the elder was induced by his wife to put
down three thousand pounds out of his savings for the purchase of a site
in the Rue Fortuny. Then Paul built himself a mansion--or rather, a wing
to a mansion, which was itself arranged as a block of elegant ‘rooms
to let.’ He was a practical young fellow, and if he wanted a mansion,
without which no artist is _chic_, he meant it to bring him an income.

Unfortunately houses to let are not always so easy to let, and the young
architect’s way of life, with two horses in his stable (one for harness,
one for the saddle), his club, his visiting, his slow reimbursements,
made it impossible for him to wait. Moreover, the elder Astier suddenly
declared that he was not going to give any more; and all that the
mother could attempt or say for her darling son failed to shake
this irrevocable decision. Her will, which had hitherto swayed the
establishment, was now resisted. Thenceforward there was a continual
struggle. The mother used her ingenuity to make little dishonest profits
on the household expenses, that she might never have to say ‘no’ to her
son’s requests. Léonard suspected her and, to protect himself, checked
the accounts. In these humiliating conflicts the wife, who was the
better bred, was the first to tire; and nothing less than the desperate
situation of her beloved Paul would have induced her to make a fresh
attempt.

She went slowly into the dining room. It was a long, melancholy room,
ill lighted by tall, narrow windows, having in fact been used as a
_table d’hôte_ for ecclesiastics until the Astiers took it. There she
found her husband already at table, looking preoccupied and almost
grumpy. In the ordinary way ‘_the Master_’ came to his meals with a
smiling serenity as regular as his appetite, and with teeth which, sound
as a foxhound’s, were not to be discouraged by stale bread or leathery
meat, or by the miscellaneous disagreeables which are the everyday
flavouring of life.

‘Ah, it’s Teyssèdre’s day,’ thought Madame Astier, as she took her seat,
her best dress rustling as she did so. She was a little surprised at not
receiving the compliment with which her husband never failed to welcome
her ‘Wednesday’ costume, shabby as it was. Reckoning that this bad
temper would go off with the first mouthfuls, she waited before
beginning her attack. But, though _the Master_ went on eating, his ill
humour visibly increased. Everything was wrong; the wine tasted of the
cork; the balls of boiled beef were burnt.

‘And all because your M. Fage kept you waiting this morning,’ cried
Corentine angrily from the adjoining kitchen. She showed her shiny
pitted face for a moment at the hatch in the wall through which, in the
days of the _table d’hôte_, they used to pass the dishes. She shut
it with a bang; upon which Astier muttered, ‘Really that girl’s
impudence----’ He was in truth much annoyed that the name of Fage had
been mentioned before his wife. And sure enough at any other moment
Madame Astier would not have failed to say, ‘Oh, Fage the bookbinder
here again!’ and there would have followed a domestic scene; on all
which Corentine reckoned when she threw in her artful speech. To-day,
however, it was all-important that the master should not be irritated,
but prepared by skilful stages for the intended petition. He was talked
to, for instance, about the health of Loisillon, the perpetual
secretary of the Académie, who, it seemed, was getting worse and worse.
Loisillon’s post and his rooms in the Institute were to come to Léonard
Astier as a compensation for the office which he had lost; and though he
was really attached to his dying colleague, still the prospect of a good
salary, an airy and comfortable residence, and other advantages had its
attractions. He was perhaps ashamed to think of the death in this light,
but in the privacy of his household he did so without blinking. But
to-day even that did not bring a smile. ‘Poor M. Loisillon!’ said Madame
Astier’s thin voice; ‘he begins to be uncertain about his words. La
vaux was telling us yesterday at the Duchess’s, he can only say “a
cu-curiosity, a cu-curiosity,” and,’ she added, compressing her lips and
drawing up her long neck, ‘he is on the Dictionary Committee.’

Astier-Réhu did not move an eyebrow.

‘It is not a bad story,’ said he, clapping his jaw with a magisterial
air. ‘But, as I have said somewhere in my history, in France the
provisional is the only thing that lasts. Loisillon has been dying any
time this ten years. He’ll see every one of us buried yet--every one of
us,’ he repeated angrily, pulling at his dry bread. It was clear that
Teyssèdre had put him into a very bad temper indeed.

Madame Astier went to another subject, the special meeting of all the
five Académies, which was to take place within a few days, and to be
honoured by the presence of the Grand Duke Leopold of Finland. It so
happened that Astier-Réhu, being director for the coming quarter, was to
preside at the meeting and to deliver the opening speech, in which his
Highness was to receive a compliment. Skilfully questioned about this
speech, which he was already planning, Léonard described it in outline.
It was to be a crushing attack upon the modern school of literature--a
sound thrashing administered in public to these pretenders, these
dunces. And at this his eyes, big with his heavy meal, lighted up his
square face, and the blood rose under his thick bushy eyebrows. They
were still coal-black, and contrasted strangely with the white circle of
his beard.

‘By the way,’ said he suddenly, ‘what about my uniform coat? Has it been
seen to? The last time I wore it, at Montribot’s funeral----’

But do not women think of everything? Madame Astier had seen to the coat
that very morning. The silk of the palm leaves was getting shabby; the
lining was all to pieces. It was very old. Oh, dear, when did he wear
it first? Why, it was as long ago--as long ago--as when he was admitted!
The twelfth of October, eighteen-sixty-six! He had better order a new
one for the Meeting. The five Académies, a Royal Highness, and all
Paris! Such an audience was worth a new coat. Léonard protested, not
energetically, on the ground of expense. With a new coat he would want
a new waistcoat; knee-breeches were not worn now, but a new waistcoat
would be indispensable.

‘My dear, you really must!’ She continued to press him. If they did
not take care they would make themselves ridiculous with their economy.
There were too many shabby old things about them. The furniture of her
room, for instance! It made her feel ashamed when a friend came in, and
for a sum comparatively trifling.

‘Ouais! quelque sot,’ muttered Astier-Réhu, who liked to quote his
classics. The furrow in his forehead deepened, and under it, as under
the bar of a shutter, his countenance, which had been open for a minute,
shut up. Many a time had he supplied the means to pay a milliner’s bill,
or a dressmaker’s, or to re-paper the walls, and after all no account
had been settled and no purchase made. All the money had gone to that
Charybdis in the Rue Fortuny. He had had enough of it, and was not going
to be caught again. He rounded his back, fixed his eyes upon the huge
slice of Auvergne cheese which filled his plate, and said no more.

Madame Astier was familiar with this dogged silence. This attitude of
passive resistance, dead as a ball of cotton, was always put on when
money was mentioned. But this time she was resolved to make him answer.
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see you rolling up, Master Hedgehog. I know the
meaning of that. “Nothing to be got! nothing to be got! No, no, no!”
 Eh?’ The back grew rounder and rounder. ‘But you can find money for M.
Fage.’ Astier started, sat up, and looked uneasily at his wife. Money
for M. Fage? What did she mean?’ Why, of course,’ she went on, delighted
to have forced the barrier of his silence, ‘of course it takes money to
do all that binding. And what’s the good of it, I should like to know,
for all those old scraps?’

He felt relieved; evidently she knew nothing; it was only a chance shot.

But the term ‘old scraps’ went to his heart: unique autograph documents,
signed letters of Richelieu, Colbert, Newton, Galileo, Pascal, marvels
bought for an old song, and worth a fortune. ‘Yes, madam, a fortune.’ He
grew excited, and began to quote figures, the offers that had been
made him. Bos, the famous Bos of the Rue de l’Abbaye (and he knew his
business if any one did), Bos had offered him eight hundred pounds
merely for three specimens from his collection--three letters from
Charles the Fifth to François Rabelais. Old scraps indeed!

Madame Astier listened in utter amazement. She was well aware that for
the last two or three years he had been collecting old manuscripts.
He used sometimes to speak to her of his finds, and she listened in a
wandering absent-minded way, as a woman does listen to a man’s voice
when she has heard it for thirty years. But this was beyond her
conception. Eight hundred pounds for three letters! And why did he not
take it?’

He burst out like an explosion of dynamite.

‘Sell my Charles the Fifths! Never! I would see you all without bread
and begging from door to door before I would touch them--understand
that!’ He struck the table. His face was very pale, and his lips thrust
out This fierce maniac was an Astier-Réhu whom his wife did not know. In
the sudden glow of a passion human beings do thus take aspects unknown
to those who know them best The next minute the Academician was quite
calm, again, and was explaining, not without embarrassment, that these
documents were indispensable to him as an author, especially now that
he could not command the Records of the Foreign Office. To sell these
materials would be to give up writing. On the contrary, he hoped to make
additions to them. Then, with a touch of bitterness and affection, which
betrayed the whole depth of the father’s disappointment, he said, ‘After
my time, my fine gentleman of a son may sell them if he chooses; and
since all he wants is to be rich, I will answer for it that he will be.’

‘Yes; but meanwhile----’

This ‘meanwhile’ was said in a little flute-like voice so cruelly
natural and quiet that Léonard, unable to control his jealousy of this
son who left him no place in his wife’s heart, retorted with a solemn
snap of the jaw, ‘Meanwhile, madam, others can do as I do. I have no
mansion, I keep no horses and no English cart. The tramway does for
my going and coming, and I am content to live on a third floor over an
_entresol_, where I am exposed to Teyssèdre. I work night and day, I
pile up volume after volume, two and three octavos in a year. I am on
two committees of the Académie; I never miss a meeting; I never miss
a funeral; and even in the summer I never accept an invitation to the
country, lest I should miss a single tally. I hope my son, when he is
sixty-five, may be as indefatigable.’

It was long since he had spoken of Paul, and never had he spoken so
severely. The mother was struck by his tone, and in her look, as she
glanced sidelong, almost wickedly, at her husband, there was a shade of
respect, which had not been there before.

‘There is a ring,’ said Léonard eagerly, rising as he spoke, and
flinging his table napkin upon the back of his chair. ‘That must be my
man.’

‘It’s some one for you, ma’am; they are beginning early to-day,’ said
Corentine, as, with her kitchen-maid’s fingers wiped hastily on her
apron, she laid a card on the edge of the table. Madame Astier looked
at it. ‘The Vicomte de Freydet.’ A gleam came into her eyes. But her
delight was not perceptible in the calm tone in which she said, ‘So M.
de Freydet is in Paris?’

‘Yes, about his book.’

‘Bless me! His book! I have not even cut it. What is it about?’

She hurried over the last mouth fuls, and washed the tips of her white
fingers in her glass while her husband in an absent-minded way gave
her some idea of the new volume. ‘God in Nature,’ a philosophic poem,
entered for the Boisseau prize.

‘Oh, I do hope he will get it. He must, he must. They are so nice, he
and his sister, and he is so good to the poor paralysed creature. Do you
think he will?’

Astier would not commit himself. He could not promise, but he would
certainly recommend Freydet, who seemed to him to be really improving.
‘If he asks you for my personal opinion, it is this: there is still a
little too much for my taste, but much less than in his other books. You
may tell him that his old master is pleased.’

Too much of what? Less of what? It must be supposed that Madame Astier
knew, for she sought no explanation, but left the table and passed,
quite happy, into her drawing room--as the study must be considered for
the day. Astier, more and more absorbed in thought, lingered for some
minutes, breaking up with his knife what remained in his plate of the
Auvergne cheese; then, being disturbed in his meditations by Corentine,
who, without heeding him, was rapidly clearing the table, he rose
stiffly and went up, by a little staircase like a cat-ladder, to his
attic, where he took up his magnifying glass and resumed the examination
of the old manuscript upon which he had been busy since the morning.




CHAPTER II.

SITTING straight, with the reins well held up in the most correct
fashion, Paul Astier drove his two-wheeled cart at a stiff pace to the
scene of his mysterious breakfast ‘with some business people.’ ‘Tclk!
tclk!’ Past the Pont Royal, past the quays, past the Place de la
Concorde. The road was so smooth, the day so fine, that as terraces,
trees, and fountains went by, it would have needed but a little
imagination on his part to believe himself carried away on the wings of
Fortune. But the young man was no visionary, and as he bowled along
he examined the new leather and straps, and put questions about the
hay-merchant to his groom, a young fellow perched at his side looking as
cool and as sharp as a stable terrier. The hay-merchant, it seemed, was
as bad as the rest of them, and grumbled about supplying the fodder.

‘Oh, does he?’ said Paul absently; his mind had already passed to
another subject. His mother’s revelations ran in his head. Fifty-three
years old! The beautiful Duchess Antonia, whose neck and shoulders were
the despair of Paris! Utterly incredible! ‘Tclk! tclk!’ He pictured
her at Mousseaux last summer, rising earlier than any of her guests,
wandering with her dogs in the park while the dew was still on the
ground, with loosened hair and blooming lips; she did not look made up,
not a bit. Fifty-three years old? Impossible!

‘Tclk, tclk! Hi! Hi!’ That’s a nasty corner between the Rond Pont and
the Avenue d’Antin.--All the same, it was a low trick they were playing
her, to find a wife for the Prince. For let his mother say what she
would, the Duchess and her drawing-room had been a fine thing for them
all. Perhaps his father might never have been in the Académie but
for her; he himself owed her all his commissions. Then there was the
succession to Loisillon’s place and the prospect of the fine rooms under
the cupola--well, there was nothing like a woman for flinging you over.
Not that men were any better; the Prince d’Athis, for instance. To think
what the Duchess had done for him! When they met he was a ruined and
penniless rip; now what was he? High in the diplomatic service, member
of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, on account of a book
not a word of which he had written himself, ‘The Mission of Woman in
the World’. And while the Duchess was busily at work to fit him with an
Embassy, he was only waiting to be gazetted before taking French
leave and playing off this dirty trick on her, after fifteen years of
uninterrupted happiness. ‘The mission of woman in the world!’ Well, the
Prince understood what the mission of woman was. The next thing was to
better the lesson. ‘Tclk! tclk! Gate, please.’

Paul’s soliloquy was over, and his cart drew up before a mansion in the
Rue de Courcelles. The double gates were rolled, back slowly and heavily
as if accomplishing a task to which they had long been unused.

In this house lived the Princess Colette de Rosen, who had shut herself
up in the complete seclusion of mourning since the sad occurrence
which had made her a widow at twenty-six. The daily papers recorded the
details of the young widow’s sensational despair: how the fair hair was
cut off close and thrown into the coffin; how her room was decorated as
for a lying in state; how she took her meals alone with two places laid,
while on the table in the anteroom lay as usual the Prince’s walking
stick, hat, and gloves, as though he were at home and just going
out. But one detail had not been mentioned, and that was the devoted
affection and truly maternal care which Madame Astier showed for the
‘poor little woman’ in these distressing circumstances.

Their friendship had begun some years ago, when a prize for an
historical work had been adjudged to the Prince de Rosen by the
Académie, ‘on the report of Astier-Réhu.’ Differences of age and social
position had however kept them apart until the Princess’s mourning
removed the barrier. When the widow’s door was solemnly closed against
society, Madame Astier alone escaped the interdict. Madame Astier was
the only person allowed to cross the threshold of the mansion, or rather
the convent, inhabited by the poor weeping Carmelite with her shaven
head and robe of black; Madame Astier was the only person admitted
to hear the mass sung twice a week at St. Philip’s for the repose of
Herbert’s soul; and it was she who heard the letters which Colette wrote
every evening to her absent husband, relating her life and the way
she spent her days. All mourning, however rigid, involves attention to
material details which are degrading to grief but demanded by society.
Liveries must be ordered, trappings provided for horses and carriages,
and the heartbroken mourner must face the hypocritical sympathy of
the tradesman. All these duties were discharged by Madame Astier with
never-failing patience. She undertook the heavy task of managing the
household, which the tear-laden eyes of its fair mistress could no
longer supervise, and so spared the young widow all that could disturb
her despair, or disarrange her hours for praying, weeping, writing ‘to
him,’ and carrying armfuls of exotic flowers to the cemetery of Père
Lachaise, where Paul Astier was superintending the erection of a
gigantic mausoleum in commemorative stone brought at the express wish of
the Princess from the scene of the tragedy.

Unfortunately the quarrying of this stone and its conveyance from
Illyria, the difficulties of carving granite, and the endless plans and
varying fancies of the widow, to whom nothing seemed sufficiently huge
and magnificent to suit her dead hero, had brought about many hitches
and delays. So it happened that in May 1880, two years and more after
the catastrophe and the commencement of the work, the monument was still
unfinished. Two years is a long time to maintain the constant paroxysms
of an ostentatious grief, each sufficient to discharge the whole. The
mourning was still observed as rigidly as ever, the house was still
closed and silent as a cave. But in the place of the living statue
weeping and praying in the furthest recesses of the crypt was now a
pretty young woman whose hair was growing again, instinct with life in
every curl and wave of its soft luxuriance. The reappearance of this
fair hair gave a touch of lightness, almost of brightness, to the
widow’s mourning, which seemed now no more than a caprice of fashion. In
the movements and tones of the Princess was perceptible the stirring of
spring; she had the air of relief and repose noticeable in young widows
in the second period of their mourning. It is a delightful position. For
the first time after the restraints of girlhood and the restraints of
marriage, a woman enjoys the sweets of liberty and undisputed possession
of herself; she is freed from contact with the coarser nature of man,
and above all from the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the
young wife of the present day. In the case of the Princess Colette the
natural development of uncontrollable grief into perfect peacefulness
was emphasised by the paraphernalia of inconsolable widowhood with which
she was still surrounded. It was not hypocrisy; but how could she give
orders, without raising a smile on the servants’ faces, to remove the
hat always waiting in the ante-room, the walking stick conspicuously
handy, the place at table always laid for the absent husband; how
could she say, ‘The Prince will not dine to-night’? But the mystic
correspondence ‘with Herbert in heaven’ had begun to fall off, growing
less frequent every day, till it ended in a calmly written journal
which caused considerable, though unexpressed, amusement to Colette’s
discerning friend.

The fact was that Madame Astier had a plan. The idea had sprung up in
her practical little mind one Tuesday night at the Théâtre Français,
when the Prince d’Athis had said to her confidentially in a low voice:
‘Oh, my dear Adelaide, what a chain to drag! I am bored to death.’ She
at once planned to marry him to the Princess. It was a new game to play,
crossing the old game, but not less subtle and fascinating. She had
not now to hold forth upon the eternal nature of vows, or to hunt up
in Joubert or other worthy philosophers such mottoes as the following,
which the Princess had written out at the beginning of her wedding book:
‘A woman can be wife and widow with honour but once.’ She no longer went
into raptures over the manly beauty of the young hero, whose portrait,
full length and half length, profile and three quarters, in marble and
on canvas, met you in every part of the house.

It was her system now to bring him gradually and dexterously down. ‘Do
you not think, dear,’ she would say, ‘that these portraits of the Prince
make his jaw too heavy? Of course I know the lower part of his face
was rather pronounced, a little too massive.’ And so she administered
a series of little poisonous stabs, with an indescribable skill and
gentleness, drawing back when she went too far, and watching for
Colette’s smile at some criticism a little sharper than the rest.
Working in this way she at last brought Colette to admit that Herbert
had always had a touch of the boor; his manners were scarcely up to
his rank; he had not, for instance, the distinguished air of the Prince
d’Athis, ‘whom we met a few Sundays ago on the steps of St. Philip’s. If
you should fancy him, dear, he is looking for a wife.’ This last remark
was thrown out as a jest; but presently Madame Astier recurred to it and
put it more definitely. Well, why should the Princess not marry him?
It would be most suitable; the Prince had a good name, a diplomatic
position of some importance; the marriage would involve no alteration
of the Princess’s coronet or title--a practical convenience not to
be overlooked. ‘And, indeed, if I am to tell you the truth, dear, the
Prince entertains towards you an affection which’... &c. &c.

The word ‘affection’ at first hurt the Princess’s feelings, but she soon
grew used to hear it. They met the Prince d’Athis at church, then in
great privacy at Madame Astier’s in the Rue de Beaune, and Colette soon
admitted that he was the only man who might have induced her to
abandon her widowhood. But then poor dear Herbert had loved her so
devotedly--she had been his all.

‘Really,’ said Madame Astier with the quiet smile of a person who knows.
Then followed allusions, hints, and all the devices by which one woman
poisons the mind of another.

‘Why, my dear, there is no such thing in the world. A man of good
breeding--a gentleman--will take care, for the sake of peace, not to
give his wife pain or distress. But----’

‘Then you mean that Herbert----’

‘Was no better than the rest of them.’ The Princess, with an indignant
protest, burst into tears; painless, passionless tears, such as ease a
woman, and leave her as fresh as a lawn after a shower. But still she
did not give way, to the great annoyance of Madame Astier, who had no
conception of the real cause of her obduracy.

The truth was that frequent meetings to criticise the scheme of the
mausoleum, much touching of hands and mingling of locks over the plans
and sketches of cells and sepulchral figures, had created between Paul
and Colette a fellow feeling which had gradually grown more and more
tender, until one day Paul Astier detected in Colette’s eyes as she
looked at him an expression that almost confessed her liking. There rose
before him as a possibility the miraculous vision of Colette de Rosen
bringing him her million as a marriage gift. That might be in a short
time, after a preliminary trial of patience, a regularly conducted
beleaguering of the fortress. In the first place it was most important
to-betray no hint to ‘mamma,’ who, though very cunning and subtle, was
likely to fail through excess of zeal, especially when the interests of
her Paul were at stake. She would spoil all the chances in her eagerness
to hasten the successful issue. So Paul concealed his plans from Madame
Astier, in entire ignorance that she was running a countermine in the
same line as his. He acted on his own account with great deliberation.
The Princess was attracted by his youth and fashion, his brightness and
his witty irony, from which he carefully took the venom. He knew that
women, like children and the mob, and all impulsive and untutored
beings, hate a tone of sarcasm, which puts them out, and which they
perceive by instinct to be hostile to the dreams of enthusiasm and
romance.

On this spring morning it was with feelings of more confidence than
usual that young Astier reached the house. This was the first time that
he had been asked to breakfast at the Rosen mansion; the reason alleged
was a visit which they were to make together to the cemetery, in order
to inspect the works on the spot. With an unexpressed understanding they
had fixed on a Wednesday, the day when Madame Astier was ‘at home,’ so
as not to have her as a third in the party. With this thought in his
mind the young man, self-controlled as he was, let fall as he crossed
the threshold a careless glance which took in the large courtyard and
magnificent offices almost as if he were entering on the possession of
them. His spirits fell as he passed through the ante-room, where the
footmen and lacqueys in deep mourning were dozing on their seats. They
seemed to be keeping a funeral vigil round the hat of the defunct, a
magnificent grey hat, which proclaimed the arrival of spring as well
as the determination with which his memory was kept up by the Princess.
Paul was much annoyed by it; it was like meeting a rival. He did
not realise the difficulty which prevented Colette from escaping the
self-forged fetters of her custom. He was wondering angrily whether she
would expect him to breakfast in company with _him_, when the footman
who relieved him of his walking stick and hat informed him that the
Princess would receive him in the small drawing-room. He was shown at
once into the rotunda with its glass roof, a bower of exotic plants, and
was completely reassured by the sight of a little table with places
laid for two, the arrangement of which Madame de Rosen was herself
superintending.

‘A fancy of mine,’ she said, pointing to the table, ‘when I saw how fine
it was. It will be almost like the country.’

She had spent the night considering how she could avoid sitting down
with this handsome young man in the presence of _his_ knife and fork,
and, not knowing what to say to the servants, had devised the plan of
abandoning the situation and ordering breakfast, as a sudden whim, ‘in
the conservatory.’

Altogether the ‘business’ breakfast promised well. The _Romany blanc_
lay to keep cool in the rocky basin of the fountain, amidst ferns and
water plants, and the sun shone on the pieces of spar and on the bright
smooth green of the outspread leaves. The two young people sat opposite
one another, their knees almost touching: he quite self-possessed, his
light eyes cold and fiery; she all pink and white, her new growth of
hair, like a delicate wavy plumage, showing without any artificial
arrangement the shape of her little head. And while they talked on
indifferent topics, both concealing their real thoughts, young Astier
exulted each time that the silent servants opened the door of the
deserted dining-room, when he saw in the distance the napkin of the
departed, left for the first time cheerless and alone.




CHAPTER III.

     From the Vicomte de Freydet

          To Mademoiselle Germaine de Freydet,

               Clos Jallanges, near Mousseaux, Loir et Cher.

My dear Sister,--I am going to give you a precise account of the way I
spend my time in Paris. I shall write every evening, and send you the
budget twice a week, as long as I stay here.

Well, I arrived this morning, Monday, and took up my quarters as usual
in my quiet little hotel in the Rue Servandoni, where the only sounds
of the great city which reach me are the bells of Saint Sulpice, and
the continual noise from a neighbouring forge, a sound of the rhythmical
beating of iron, which I love because it reminds me of our village. I
rushed off at once to my publisher. ‘Well, when do we come out?’

‘Your book? Why, it came out a week ago.’

Come out, indeed, and gone in too--gone into the depths of that grim
establishment of Manivet’s, which never ceases to pant and to reek with
the labour of giving birth to a new volume. This Monday, as it happened,
they were just sending out a great novel by Herscher, called _Satyra_.
The copies struck off--how many hundreds of thousands of them I don’t
know--were lying in stacks and heaps right up to the very top of the
establishment. You can fancy the preoccupation of the staff, and the
lost bewildered look of worthy Manivet himself, when I mentioned my poor
little volume of verse, and talked of my chances for the Boisseau prize.
I asked for a few copies to leave with the members of the committee
of award, and made my escape through _streets_--literally streets--of
_Satyra_, piled up to the ceiling. When I got into my cab, I looked at
my volume and turned over the pages. I was quite pleased with the solemn
effect of the title, ‘God in Nature.’ The capitals are perhaps a trifle
thin, when you come to look at them, not quite as black and impressive
to the eye as they might be. But it does not matter. Your pretty name,
‘Germaine,’ in the dedication will bring us luck. I left a couple of
copies at the Astiers’ in the Rue de Beaune. You know they no longer
occupy their rooms at the Foreign Office. But Madame Astier has still
her ‘Wednesdays.’ So of course I wait till Wednesday to hear what my old
master thinks of the book; and off I went to the Institute.

There again I found them as busy as a steam factory. Really the industry
of this big city is marvellous, especially to people like us, who spend
all the year in the peace of the open country. Found Picheral--you
remember Picheral, the polite gentleman in the secretary’s office,
who got you such a good place three years ago, when I received my
prize--well, I found Picheral and his clerks in the midst of a wild
hubbub of voices, shouting out names and addresses from one desk to
another, and surrounded on all sides by tickets of every kind, blue,
yellow, and green, for the platform, for the outer circle, for the
orchestra, Entrance A, Entrance B, &c. They were in the middle of
sending out the invitations for the great annual meeting, which is to be
honoured this year by the presence of a Royal Highness on his travels,
the Grand Duke Leopold. ‘Very sorry, my lord’--Picheral always says ‘my
lord,’ having learnt it, no doubt, from Chateaubriand--’ but I must ask
you to wait.’ ‘Certainly, M. Picheral, certainly.’

Picheral is an amusing old gentleman, very courtly. He reminds me
of Bonicar and our lessons in deportment in the covered gallery at
grandmamma’s house at Jallanges. He is as touchy, too, when crossed, as
the old dancing master used to be. I wish you had heard him talk to the
Comte de Bretigny, the ex-minister, one of the grandees of the Académie,
who came in, while I was waiting, to rectify a mistake about the number
of his tallies. I must tell you that the tally attesting attendance is
worth five shillings, the old crown-piece. There are forty Academicians,
which makes two hundred shillings per meeting, to be divided among those
present; so, you see, the fewer they are, the more money each gets.
Payment is made once a month in crown-pieces, kept in stout paper bags,
each with its little reckoning pinned on to it, like a washing bill.
Bretigny had not his complete number of tallies; and it was the most
amusing sight to see this man of enormous wealth, director of Heaven
knows how many companies, come there in his carriage to claim his ten
shillings. He only got five, which sum, after a long dispute, Picheral
tossed to him with as little respect as to a porter. But the ‘deity’
pocketed them with inexpressible joy; there is nothing like money won by
the sweat of your brow. For, my dear Germaine, you must not imagine
that there is any idling in the Académie. Every year there are fresh
bequests, new prizes instituted; that means more books to read, more
reports to engross, to say nothing of the dictionary and the orations.
‘Leave your book at their houses, but do not go in,’ said Picheral, when
he heard I was competing for the prize. ‘The extra work, which people
are always putting on the members, makes them anything but gracious to a
candidate.’

I certainly have not forgotten the way Ripault-Babin and Laniboire
received me, when I called on them about my last candidature. Of course,
when the candidate is a pretty woman, it is another story. Laniboire
becomes jocose, and Ripault-Babin, still gallant in spite of his eighty
years, offers the fair canvasser a lozenge, and says in his quavering
voice, ‘Touch it with your lips, and I will finish it.’ So they told
me in the secretary’s office, where the deities are discussed with a
pleasing frankness. ‘You are in for the Boisseau prize. Let me see; you
have for awarders two Dukes, three Mouldies, and two Players.’ Such, in
the office, is the familiar classification of the Académie Française!
‘Duke’ is the name applied to all members of the nobility and
episcopacy; Mouldies’ includes the professors and the learned men
generally; while a ‘Player’ denotes a lawyer, dramatic author,
journalist, or novelist.

After ascertaining the addresses of my Dukes, Mouldies, and Players, I
gave one of my ‘author’s copies’ to the friendly M. Picheral, and,
for form’s sake, left another for poor M. Loisillon, the Permanent
Secretary, who is said to be all but dead. Then I set to work to
distribute the remaining copies all over Paris. The weather was
glorious. As I passed through the Bois de Boulogne on my way back from
the house of Ripault-Babin (which reminded me of the lozenges), the
place was sweet with may and violets. I almost fancied myself at home
again on one of those first days of early spring when the air is fresh
and the sun hot; and I was inclined to give up everything and come back
to you at Jallanges. Dined on the boulevard alone and gloomy, and then
spent the rest of my evening at the Comédie Française, where they were
playing Desminières’ ‘_Le Dernier Frontin_.’ Desminières is one of the
awarders of the Boisseau prize, so I shall tell no one but you how his
verses bored me. The heat and gas gave me a headache. The actors
played as if Louis XIV. had been listening; and while they spouted
alexandrines, suggestive of the unrolling of a mummy’s bands, I was
still haunted by the scent of the hawthorn at Jallanges, and repeated
to myself the pretty lines of Du Bellay, a fellow-countryman, or a
neighbour at least:

     More than your marbles hard I love the tender slate,
        Than Tiber more the Loire, and France than Rome,
        Mine own dear hills than Palatinus’ state,
     More than the salt sea breeze the fragrantair of home.


_Tuesday_.--Walked about the town all the morning, stopping in front
of the booksellers’ shops to look for my book in the windows. _Satyra,
Satyra, Satyra! Satyra_ and nothing else to be seen everywhere, with a
paper slip round it, ‘Just out.’ Here and there, but very seldom, there
would be a poor miserable _God in Nature_ tucked away out of sight. When
no one was looking I put it on the top of the heap, well in view; but
people did not stop. One man did, though, in the Boulevard des Italiens,
a negro, a very intelligent-looking fellow. He turned over the pages for
five minutes, and then went away without buying the book. I should have
liked to present it to him.

Breakfasted in the corner of an English eating-house, and read the
papers. Not a word about me, not even an advertisement. Manivet is so
careless, very likely he has not so much as sent the orders, though he
declared he had. Besides, there are so many new books. Paris is deluged
with them. But for all that it is depressing to think that verses,
which ran like fire through one’s fingers, which seemed, in the feverish
delight of writing them, beautiful enough to fill the world with
brightness, are more lost now that they are gone into circulation, than
when they were but a confused murmuring in the brain of their author.
It reminds one of a ball-dress. When it is tried on in the sympathetic
family circle, it is expected to outshine and eclipse every dress in
the room; but under the blaze of the gas it is lost in the crowd. Well,
Herscher is a lucky fellow. He is read and understood. I met ladies
carrying snugly under their arms the little yellow volume just issued.
Alas, for us poor poets! It is all very well for us to rank ourselves
above and beyond the crowd. It is for the crowd, after all, that we
write. When Robinson Crusoe was on his desert island, cut off from
all the world and without so much as the hope of seeing a sail on the
horizon, would he have written verses, even if he had been a poetic
genius? Thought about this a great deal as I tramped through the Champs
Elysées, lost, like my book, in an unregarding stream.

I was coming back to my hotel, pretty glum, as you may imagine, when on
the Quai d’Orsay, just in front of the grass-grown ruin of the Cour
des Comptes, I knocked against a big fellow, strolling along in a brown
study. ‘Hullo, Freydet!’ said he. ‘Hullo, Védrine!’ said I. You’ll
remember my friend Védrine who, when he was working at Mousseaux, came
with his sweet young wife to spend an afternoon at Clos-Jallanges. He
is not a bit altered, except that he is a trifle grey at the temples.
He held by the hand the fine boy with the beaming eyes, whom you used to
admire. His head was erect, his movements slow and eloquent, his whole
carriage that of a superior being. A little way behind was Madame
Védrine pushing a perambulator, in which was a laughing little girl,
born since their visit to Touraine.

‘That makes three for her, counting me,’ said Védrine, with a wave of
his hand towards his wife; and the look of Madame when her eye rests on
her husband really does express the tender satisfaction of motherhood;
she is like a Flemish Madonna contemplating her Divine Child. Talked a
long time, leaning against the parapet of the quay; it did me good to
be with these honest folk. That is a man, anyhow, who cares nothing
whatever for success, and the public, and the prizes! With his
connections (he is cousin to Loisillon and to the Baron d’Huchenard), if
he chose--if he just put a little water into his strong wine--he might
have orders, and get the Biennial Prize, and be in the Institute in no
time. But nothing tempts him, not even fame. ‘Fame,’ he said, ‘I have
had a taste of it. I know what it is. When a man’s smoking, he sometimes
gets his cigar by the wrong end. Well, that’s fame: just a cigar with
the hot end and ash in your mouth.’

‘But, Védrine,’ said I, ‘if you work neither for fame nor for money----
yes, yes; I know you despise it; but, that being so, I say, why do you
take so much trouble?’

‘For myself and my personal satisfaction. It’s the desire for creation
and self-expression.’

Clearly here is a man who would have gone on with his work in the desert
island. He is a true artist, ever in quest of a new type, and in the
intervals of his labour endeavours by change of material and change of
conditions to satisfy his craving for a fresh revelation. He has made
pottery, enamels, mosaics, the fine mosaics so much admired in the
guard-room at Mousscaux. When the thing is done, the difficulty
overcome, he goes on to something else. At the present moment his great
idea is to try painting; and the moment he has finished his warrior, a
great bronze figure for the Rosen tomb, he intends, as he says, ‘to put
himself to oil.’ His wife always gives her approval, and rides behind
him on each of his hobbies. The right wife for an artist taciturn,
admiring, saving the grown-up boy from all that might spoil his dream
or catch his feet as he goes star-gazing along. She is the sort of woman
dear Germaine, to make a man want to be married. If I knew another such,
I should certainly bring her to Clos-Jallanges, and I am sure you would
love her. But do not be alarmed. There are not many of them; and we
shall go on to the end, living just by our two selves, as we do now.

Before we parted we fixed another meeting for Thursday, not at their
house at Neuilly, but at the studio on the Quai d’Orsay, where the
whole family spend the day together. This studio would seem to be the
strangest place. It is in a corner of the old Cour des Comptes. He has
got permission to do his work there, in the midst of wild vegetation and
mouldering heaps of stone. As I went away I turned to watch them walking
along the quay, father, mother, and children, all enveloped in the
calm light of the setting sun, which made a halo round them like a Holy
Family. Strung together a few lines on the subject in the evening at my
hotel; but I am put out by having neighbours, and do not like to spout.
I want my large study at Jallanges, with its three windows looking out
oh the river and the sloping vineyards.

And now we come to _Wednesday_, the great day and the great event!
I will tell you the story in full. I confess that I had been looking
forward to my call on the Astiers with much trepidation, which increased
to-day as I went up the broad moist steps of the staircase in the Rue de
Beaune. What was I going to hear said about my book? Would my old master
have had time to glance at it? His opinion means for me so very much. He
inspires me still with the same awe as when I was in his class, and in
his presence I shall always feel myself a schoolboy. His unerring and
impartial judgment must be that of the awarders of the prize. So you may
guess the tortures of impatience which I underwent in the master’s large
study, which he gives up to his wife for her reception.

It’s sadly different from the room at the Foreign Office. The table
at which he writes is pushed away into a recess behind a great screen
covered in old tapestry, which also hides part of the bookshelves.
Opposite, in the place of honour, is a portrait of Madame Astier in
her young days, wonderfully like her son, and also like old Réhu, whose
acquaintance I have just had the honour of making. The portrait has a
somewhat depressing air of elegance, cold and polished, like the large
uncarpeted room itself, with its sombre curtains and its outlook on
a still more sombre courtyard. But in comes Madame Astier, and her
friendly greeting brightens all the surroundings. What is there in the
air of Paris which preserves the beauty of a woman’s face beyond the
natural term, like a pastel under its glass? The delicate blonde with
her keen eyes looked to me three years younger than when I saw her last.
She began by asking after you, and how you were, dearest, showing great
interest in our domestic life. Then suddenly she said: ‘But your book,
let us talk about your book. How splendid! You kept me reading all
night.’ And she showered upon me well-chosen words of praise, quoted two
or three lines with great appropriateness, and assured me that my old
master was delighted; he had begged her to tell me so, in case he should
not be able to tear himself from his documents.

Red as you know I always am, I must have turned as scarlet as after
a hunt dinner. But my joy soon passed away when I heard what the poor
woman was led on into confiding to me about their embarrassments. They
have lost money; then came Astier’s dismissal; now the master works
night and day at his historical books, which take so long to construct
and cost so much to produce, and then are not bought by the public. Then
they have to help old Réhu, the grandfather, who has nothing but his
fees for attendance at the Académie; and at his age, ninety-eight,
you may imagine the care and indulgence necessary. Paul is a good son,
hardworking, and on the road to success, but of course the initial
expenses of his profession are tremendous. So Madame Astier conceals
their narrow means from him as well as from her husband. Poor dear man!
I heard his heavy even step overhead while his wife was stammering out,
with trembling lips and hesitating, reluctant words, a request that if I
could----

Ah, the adorable woman! I could have kissed the hem of her dress!

Now, my dear sister, you will understand the telegram you must have
received a little while ago, and who the £400 were for that I asked
for by return of post. I suppose you sent to Gobineau at once. The only
reason I did not telegraph direct to him is that, as we ‘go shares’ in
everything, our freaks of liberality ought, like the rest, to be common
to both. But it is terrible, is it not, to think of the misery concealed
under these brilliant and showy Parisian exteriors?

Five minutes after she had made these distressing disclosures people
arrived and the room was full; Madame Astier was conversing with a
complete self-possession and an appearance of happiness in voice and
manner which made my flesh creep. Madame Loisillon was there, the wife
of the Permanent Secretary. She would be much better employed in looking
after her invalid than in boring society with the charms of their
delightful suite, the most comfortable in the Institute, ‘with three
rooms more than it had in Villemain’s time.’ She must have told us this
ten times, in the pompous voice of an auctioneer, and in the hearing of
a friend living uncomfortably in rooms lately used for a _table d’hôte!_

No fear of such bad taste in Madame Ancelin, a name often to be seen
in the Society papers. A good fat round lady, with regular features and
high complexion, piping out epigrams, which she picks up and carries
round: a friendly creature, it must be allowed. She too had sat up all
night reading me. I begin to think it is the regular phrase. She
begged me to come to her house whenever I liked. It is one of the three
recognised meeting-places of the Académie. Picheral would say that
Madame Ancelin, mad on the theatre, welcomes more especially the
‘Players,’ Madame Astier the ‘Mouldies,’ while the Duchess Padovani
monopolises the ‘Dukes,’ the aristocracy of the Institute. But really
these three haunts of fame and intrigue communicate one with another,
for on Wednesday in the Rue de Beaune I saw a whole procession of
deities of every description. There was Danjou the writer of
plays, Rousse, Boissier, Dumas, de Brétigny, Baron Huchenard of the
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and the Prince d’Athis of the Sciences
Morales et Politiques. There is a fourth circle in process of formation,
collected round Madame Eviza, a Jewess with full cheeks and long narrow
eyes, who flirts with the whole Institute and sports its colours; she
has green embroideries on the waistcoat of her spring costume, and
a little bonnet trimmed with wings _à la_ Mercury. She carries her
flirtations a little too far. I heard her say to Danjou, whom she was
asking to come and see her, ‘The attractions of Madame Ancelin’s house
are for the palate, those of mine for the heart.’

‘I require both lodging and board,’ was the cold reply of Danjou.
Danjou, I believe, covers the heart of a cynic under his hard
impenetrable mask and his black stiff thatch, like a shepherd of
Latium. Madame Eviza is a fine talker, and is mistress of considerable
information; I heard her quoting to the old Baron Huchenard whole
sentences from his ‘Cave Man,’ and discussing Shelley with a boyish
magazine writer, neat and solemn, with a pointed chin resting on the top
of a high collar.

When I was young it was the fashion to begin with verse-writing,
whatever was to follow, whether prose, business, or the bar. Nowadays
people begin with literary criticism, generally a study on Shelley.
Madame Astier introduced me to this young gentleman, whose views carry
weight in the literary world; but my moustaches and the colour of my
skin, as brown as that of a sapper-and-miner, probably failed to please
him. We spoke only a few words, while I watched the performance of the
candidates and their wives or relatives, who had come to show themselves
and to see how the ground lay. Ripault-Babin is very old, and Loisillon
cannot last much longer; and around these seats, which must soon be
vacant, rages a war of angry looks and poisoned words.

Dalzon the novelist, your favourite, was there; he has a kindly, open,
intellectual face, as you would expect from his books. But you would
have been sorry to see him cringing and sniggering before a nobody like
Brétigny, who has never done anything, but occupies in the Academic
the seat reserved for the man of the world, as in the country we keep
a place for the poor man in our Twelfth Night festivities. And not only
did he court Brétigny, but every Academician who came in. There he was,
listening to old Rehu’s stories, laughing at Danjou’s smallest jokes
with the ‘counterfeited glee’ with which at Louis-le-Grand we rewarded
what Védrine used to call ‘usher’s wit.’ All this to bring his twelve
votes of last year up to the required majority.

Old Jean Réhu looked in at his granddaughter’s for a few minutes,
wonderfully fresh and erect, well buttoned up in a long frock coat. He
has a little shrivelled face, looking as if it had been in the fire, and
a short cottony beard, like moss on an old stone. His eyes are bright
and his memory marvellous, but he is deaf, and this depresses him
and drives him into long soliloquies about his interesting personal
recollections, To-day he told us about the household of the Empress
Joséphine at Malmaison; his ‘compatriote,’ he calls her, both being
Creoles from Martinique. He described her, in her muslins and cashmere
shawls, smelling of musk so strongly as to take one’s breath away,
and surrounded with flowers from the colonies. Even in war time these
flowers, by the gallantry of the enemy, were allowed to pass the lines
of their fleet. He also talked of David’s studio, as it was under the
Consulate, and did us the painter, rating and scolding his pupils with
his mouth all awry and the remains of his dinner in his cheek. After
each extract from the long roll of his experience, the patriarch shakes
his head solemnly, gazes into space, and says in his firm tones, ‘That’s
a thing that I have seen.’ It is his signature, as it were, put at the
bottom of the picture to prove it genuine. I ought to say that, with the
exception of Dalzon, who pretended to be drinking in his words, I was
the only person in the room who attended to the old man’s tales. They
seemed to me much more worth hearing than the stories of a certain
Lavaux, a journalist, or librarian, or something--a dreadful retailer
of gossip, whatever else he may be. The moment he came in there was a
general cry, ‘Ah, here’s Lavaux!’ and a circle was formed round him at
once, all laughing and enjoying themselves. Even the frowning ‘deities’
revel in his anecdotes. He has a smooth-shaven, quasi-clerical face and
goggle eyes. He prefaces all his tales and witticisms with such remarks
as ‘I was saying to De Broglie,’ or ‘Dumas told me the other day,’ or ‘I
have it from the Duchess herself,’ backing himself up with the biggest
names and drawing his instances from all quarters. He is a pet of the
ladies, whom he posts up in all the intrigues of the Académie and the
Foreign Office, the world of letters and the world of fashion. He
is very intimate with Danjou, and a constant companion of the Prince
d’Athis, with whom he came in. Dalion and the young critic of Shelley
he patronises; and indeed he exercises a power and authority quite
inexplicable to me.

In the medley of stories which he produced from his inexhaustible
chops--most of them were riddles to a simple rustic like myself--one
only struck me as amusing. It was the mishap which occurred to a young
Count Adriani, of the Papal Guard. He was going through Paris, in
attendance upon a reverend personage, to take a cardinal’s hat and cap
to some one or other, and the story is that he left the insignia at the
house of some fair lady whom he met with as he left the train, and of
whom he knew neither the name nor the address, being, poor young man!
a stranger in Paris. So he had to write off to the Papal Court for new
specimens of the ecclesiastical headgear to replace the first, which the
lady must find entirely superfluous. The best part of the story is that
the little Count Adriani is the Nuncio’s own nephew, and that at the
Duchess’s last party--she is called ‘the Duchess’ in Academic circles
just as she is at Mousseaux--he told his adventure quite naively in his
broken French. Lavaux imitates it wonderfully.

In the midst of the laughter and the exclamations, ‘Charming! Ah, what
a man Lavaux is!’ etc., I asked Madame Ancelin, who was sitting near me,
who Lavaux was, and what he did. The good lady was amazed. ‘Lavaux? You
don’t know him? He is the Duchess’s zebra.’ Thereupon she departed in
pursuit of Danjou, and left me much the wiser! Really Parisian society
is a most extraordinary thing; its vocabulary alters every season.
Zebra--a zebra--what can it possibly mean? But I began to see that I was
staying much too long, and that my old master was not going to appear;
it was time I went. I made my way through the chairs to say good-bye to
my hostess, and as I passed saw Mademoiselle Moser whimpering before
Brétigny’s white waistcoat. Poor Moser became a candidate ten years ago,
and now has lost all hopes. So he goes nowhere himself, but sends his
daughter, a lady of a certain age, not at all pretty, who plays the part
of Antigone, climbs up to the top floors, makes herself general
messenger and drudge to the Academicians and their wives, corrects
proofs, nurses the rheumatic, and spends her forlorn maidenhood in
running after the Academic chair which her father will never get.
Dressed quietly in black, with an unbecoming bonnet, she stood in the
doorway; and near her was Dalzon, very much excited, between two members
of the Académie who looked judicial. He was protesting violently and
with a choking voice. ‘It’s not true, it’s a shame, I never wrote it!’
Here was a mystery; and Madame Astier, who might have enlightened me,
was herself engaged in close confabulation with Lavaux and the Prince
d’Athis. You must have seen the Prince d’Athis driving about Mousseaux
with the Duchess. ‘Sammy,’ as he is called, is a long, thin, bald man,
with stooping shoulders, a crinkled face as white as wax, and a black
beard reaching half down his chest, as if his hair, falling from his
head, had lodged upon his chin. He never speaks, and when he looks at
you seems shocked at your daring to breathe the same air as he. He is
high in the service, has a close, mysterious, English air which reminds
you that he is Lord Palmerston’s great-nephew, and is in high repute at
the Institute and on the Quai d’Orsay. He is said to be the only French
diplomatist whom Bismarck never dared to look in the face. It is
supposed that he will very shortly have one of the great Embassies. Then
what will become of the Duchess? To leave Paris and follow him would be
a serious thing for a leader of society. And then abroad the world might
refuse to accept their equivocal relations, which here are looked upon
almost as marriage, in consideration of the propriety of their conduct
and their respect for appearances, and considering also the sad state of
the Duke, half paralysed and twenty-years older than his wife, who is
also his niece.

The Prince, was no doubt discussing these grave matters with Lavaux and
Madame Astier when I drew near. A man just arrived in any society, no
matter where, soon finds how much he is ‘out of it,’ He understands
neither the phrases current nor the thoughts, and is a nuisance. I was
just leaving when that kind Madame Astier called me back, saying, ‘Will
you not go up and see him? He will be so glad.’ So I went up a narrow
staircase in the wall to see my old master. I heard his loud voice from
the end of the passage, ‘Is that you, Fage?’

‘No, sir,’ said I.

‘Why, it’s Freydet! Take care; keep your head down.’

It was in fact impossible to stand upright under the sloping roof. What
a different place from the Foreign Office, where I last saw him, in a
lofty gallery lined with portfolios.

‘A kennel, is it not?’ said the worthy man with a smile; ‘but if you
knew what treasures I have here,’--and he waved his hand towards a large
set of pigeonholes containing at least 10,000 important MS. documents,
collected by him during the last few years. ‘There is history in
those drawers,’ he went on, growing more animated and playing with his
magnifying glass; ‘history new and authentic, let them say what
they will.’ But in spite of his words he seemed to me gloomy and
uncomfortable. He has been treated very badly. First came that cruel
dismissal; and now, as he has continued to publish historical works
based on new documents, people say that he has plundered from the
Bourbon papers. This calumny was started in the Institute, and is traced
to Baron Huchenard, who calls his collection of MSS. ‘the first in
France,’ and hates to be outdone by that of Astier. He tries to revenge
himself by treacherous criticisms, launched, like an assegai, from the
bush. ‘Even my letters of Charles V.,’ said Astier, ‘even those they
want now to prove false. And on what ground if you please? For a mere
trifling error, “Maître Rabelais” instead of “Frère Rabelais.” As if
an emperor’s pen never made a slip! It’s dishonest, that’s what it is!’
And, seeing that I shared his indignation, my good old master grasped
me by both hands and said, ‘But there! enough of these slanders. Madame
Astier told you, I suppose, about your book? There is still a little too
much for my taste; but I am pleased with it on the whole.’ What there is
‘too much’ of in my poetry is what he calls ‘the weed’ of the fancy.
At school he was always at it, plucking it out, and rooting it up. Now,
dear Germaine, attend. I give you the last part of our conversation,
word for word.

_I._ Do you think, sir, that I have any chance of the Boisseau prize?

_M. A._ After such a book as that, my dear boy, it is not a prize you
deserve, but a seat. Loisillon is hard hit; Ripault cannot last much
longer. Don’t move; leave it to me; henceforward I look upon you as a
candidate.

I don’t know what I said in reply. I was so confused that I feel still
as if I were dreaming. Me, me, in the Académie Française! Take good care
of yourself, dearest, and get your naughty legs well again; for you
must come to Paris on the great occasion, and see your brother, with his
sword at his side and his green coat embroidered with palms, take his
place among all the greatest men of France! Why, it makes me dizzy now!
So I send you a kiss, and am off to bed.

                Your affectionate brother,

                           ABEL DE FREYDET.


You may imagine that among all these doings I have quite forgotten the
seeds, matting, shrubs, and all the rest of my purchases. But I will see
about them soon, as I shall stay here some time. Astier-Réhu advised me
to say nothing, but to go about in Academic society. To show myself and
be seen is the great point.




CHAPTER IV.

‘Don’t trust them, my dear Freydet. I know that trick; it’s the
recruiting trick. The fact is, these people feel that their day is
past, and that under their cupola they are beginning to get mouldy. The
Académie is a taste that is going out, an ambition no longer in fashion.
Its success is only apparent. And indeed for the last few years the
distinguished company has given up waiting at home for custom, and comes
down into the street to tout. Everywhere, in society, in the studios, at
the publishers’, in the greenroom, in every literary or artistic centre,
you will find the Recruiting-Academician, smiling on young budding
talent. “The Académie has its eye on you, my young friend.” If a man has
got some reputation, and has just written his third or fourth book, like
you, then the invitation takes a more direct form. “Don’t forget us, my
dear fellow; now’s your time.” Or perhaps, brusquely, with a friendly
scolding, “Well, so you don’t mean to be one of us.” When it’s a man
in society who is to be caught a translator of Ariosto or a writer of
amateur plays, there is a gentler and more insinuating way of playing
off the trick. And if our fashionable writer protests that he is not
a gun of sufficient calibre, the Recruiting-Academidan brings out the
regular phrase, that “the Académie is a club.” Lord bless us, how useful
that phrase has been! “The Académie is a club, and its admission is not
only for the work, but the worker.” Meantime the Recruiting-Academician
is welcomed everywhere, made much of, asked to dinner and other
entertainments. He becomes a parasite, fawned upon by those whose hopes
he arouses--and is careful to maintain.’

But at this point kind-hearted Freydet protested indignantly. Never
would his old master lend himself to such base uses. Védrine shrugged
his shoulders: ‘Why, the worst of the lot is the recruiter who is
sincere and disinterested. He believes in the Académie; his whole life
is centred in the Académie; and when he says to you, “If you only knew
the joy of it,” with a smack of the tongue like a man eating a ripe
peach, he is saying what he really means, and so his bait is the more
alluring and dangerous. But when once the hook has been swallowed and
struck, then the Academician takes no more notice of the victim, but
leaves him to struggle and dangle at the end of the line. You are an
angler; well, when you have taken a fine perch or a big pike, and you
drag it along behind your boat, what do you call that?’

‘Drowning your fish.’

‘Just so. Well, look at Moser! Does he not look like a drowned fish?
He has been carried along in tow for these ten years. And there’s De
Salèle, and Guérineau, and I don’t know how many others, who have even
given up struggling.’

‘But still people do get into the Académie sooner or later.’

‘Not those once taken in tow. And suppose a man does succeed, where’s
the good? What does it bring you? Money? Not as much as your hay-crop.
Fame? Yes, a hole-and-corner fame within a space no bigger than your
hat. It would be something if it gave talent, but those who have talent
lose it when once they get inside and are chilled by the air of the
place. The Académie is a club, you know; so there is a tone that must be
adopted, and things which must be left unsaid, or watered down. There’s
an end to originality, an end to bold neck-or-nothing strokes. The
liveliest spirits never move for fear of tearing their green coats. It
is like putting children into their Sunday clothes and saying
“Amuse yourselves, my dears, but don’t get dirty.” And they do amuse
themselves, I can tell you. Of course, they have the adulation of the
Academical taverns, and their fair hostesses. But what a bore it is!
I speak from experience, for I have let myself be dragged there
occasionally. I can say with old Réhu, “That’s a thing I have seen.”
 Silly pretentious women have favoured me with ill-digested scraps from
magazine articles, coming out of their little beaks like the written
remarks of characters in a comic paper. I have heard fat, good natured
Madame Ancelin, a woman as stupid as anything, cackle with admiration at
the epigrams of Danjou, regular stage manufacture, about as natural as
the curling of his wig.’

Here was a shock for Freydet: Danjou, the shepherd of Latium, had a wig!

‘A half-wig, what they call a _breton_. At Madame Astier’s,’ he went
on, ‘I have gone through lectures on ethnology enough to kill a
hippopotamus; and at the table of the Duchess, the severe and haughty
Duchess, I have seen that old monkey Laniboire, seated in the place of
honour, do and say things for which, if he had not been a “deity,” he
would have been turned out of the house, with a good-bye in her Grace’s
characteristic style. And the joke is, that it was she who got him into
the Académie. She has seen that very Laniboire at her feet, begging
humbly, piteously, importunately, to get himself elected, “Elect him,”
 she said to my cousin Loisillon, “elect him, do; and then I shall be rid
of him.” And now she looks up to him as a god; he is always next her
at table; and her contempt has changed into an abject admiration. It is
like a savage, falling down and quaking before the idol he has carved.
I know what Academic society is, with all its foolish, ludicrous, mean
little intrigues. You want to get into it! What for, I should like to
know? You have the happiest life in the world. Even I, who am not set
upon anything, was near envying you, when I saw you with your sister
at Clos-Jallanges: a perfect house on a hill-side, airy rooms,
chimney-corners big enough to get into, oakwoods, cornfields, vineyards,
river; the life of a country gentleman, as it is painted in the novels
of Tolstoi; fishing and shooting, a pleasant library, a neighbourhood
not too dull, the peasants reasonably honest; and to prevent you
from growing callous in the midst of such unbroken satisfaction, your
companion, suffering and smiling, full of life and keenness, poor thing,
in her arm-chair, delighted to listen, when you came in from a ride and
read her a good sonnet, genuine poetry, fresh from nature, which you
had pencilled on your saddle, or lying flat in the grass, as we are
now--only without this horrible din of waggons and trumpets.’

Védrine stopped perforce. Some heavy drays, loaded with iron, and
shaking ground and houses as they went by, a piercing alarum from the
neighbouring barracks, the harsh screech of a steam-tug’s whistle, an
organ, and the bells of Sainte-Clotilde, all united at the moment, as
from time to time the noises of a great town will do, in a thundering
_tutti_; and the outrageous babel, close to the ear, contrasted
strangely with the natural field of grass and weed, overshadowed by tall
trees, in which the two old classmates were enjoying their smoke and
their familiar chat.

[Illustration: At the corner of the Quai d’Orsay 082]

It was at the corner of the Quai d’Orsay and the Rue de Bellechasse, on
the ruined terrace of the old Cour des Comptes, now occupied by sweet
wild plants, like a clearing in the forest at the coming of spring.
Clumps of lilac past the flowering and dense thickets of plane and maple
grew all along the balustrades, which were loaded with ivy and clematis:
and within this verdant screen the pigeons lighted, the bees wandered,
and under a beam of yellow light might be seen the calm and handsome
profile of Madame Védrine, nursing her youngest, while the eldest threw
stones at the numerous cats, grey, black, yellow, and tabby, which might
be called the tigers of this Parisian jungle.

‘And as we are talking of your poetry, you will wish me to speak my
mind, won’t you, old boy? Well, I have only just looked into your last
book, but it has not that smell of bluebells and thyme that I found in
the others. Your “God in Nature” has rather a flavour of the Academic
bay; and I am much afraid you have made a sacrifice of your “woodnotes
wild,” you know, and thrown them, by way of pass-money, into the mouth
of _Crocodilus_.’

This nickname ‘Crocodilus,’ turning up at the bottom of Védrine’s
schoolboy recollections, amused them for a moment. They pictured once
more Astier-Réhu at his desk, with streaming brow, his cap well on the
back of his head, and a yard of red ribbon relieved against the black of
his gown, emphasising with the solemn movements of his wide sleeves the
well-worn joke from Racine or Molière, or his own rounded periods in the
style of Vic’t-d’Azir, whose seat in the Académie he eventually filled.
Then Freydet, vexed with himself for laughing at his old master, began
to praise his work as an historian. What a mass of original documents he
had brought out of their dust!

‘There’s nothing in that,’ retorted Védrine with unqualified contempt.
In his view, the most interesting documents in hands of a fool had no
more meaning than has the great book of humanity itself, when consulted
by a stupid novelist. The gold all turns into dead leaves. ‘Look
here,’ he went on with rising animation, ‘a man is not to be called an
historian because he has expanded unpublished material into great octavo
volumes, which are shelved unread among the books of information, and
should be labelled, “For external application only. Shake the
bottle.” It is only French frivolity that attaches a serious value
to compilations like those. The English and Germans despise us.
“Ineptissimus vir Astier-Réhu,” says Mommsen somewhere or other in a
note.’

‘Yes, and it was you, you heartless fellow, who made the poor man read
out the note before the whole class.’

‘And a terrible jaw he gave me. It was nearly as bad as when one day I
got so tired of hearing him tell us that the will was a lever, a lever
with which you might lift anything anywhere, that I answered him from my
place in his own voice: “Could you fly with it, sir--could you fly with
it?”’

Freydet, laughing, abandoned his defence of the historian, and began to
plead for Astier-Réhu as a teacher. But Védrine went off again.

‘A teacher! What is he? A poor creature who has spent his life in
“weeding” hundreds of brains, or, in plain terms, destroying whatever
in them was original and natural, all the living germs which it is the
first duty of an educator to nourish and protect. To think how the
lot of us were hoed, and stubbed, and grubbed! One or two did not take
kindly to the process, but the old fellow went at it with his tools
and his nails, till he made us all as neat and as flat as a schoolroom
bench. And see the results of his workmanship! A few rebels, like
Herscher, who, from hatred of the conventional, go for exaggeration and
ugliness, or like myself, who, thanks to that old ass, love roughness
and contortion so much, that my sculpture, they say, is “like a bag of
walnuts.” And the rest of them levelled, scraped, and empty!’

‘And pray, what of me?’ said Freydet, with an affected despair.

‘Oh, as for you, Nature has preserved you so far; but look out for
yourself if you let Crocodilus clip you again. And to think that we have
public schools to provide us with this sort of pedagogue, and that we
reward him with endowments, and honours, and a place (save the mark) in
the National Institute!’

Stretched at his ease in the long grass, with his head on his arm and
waving a fern, which he used as a sun-screen, Védrine calmly uttered
these strong remarks, without the slightest play of feature in his broad
face, pale and puffy like that of an Indian idol. Only the tiny laughing
eyes broke the general expression of dreamy indolence.

His companion was shocked at such treatment of what he was accustomed to
respect ‘But,’ he said, ‘if you are such an enemy of the father, how do
you manage to be such a friend of the son?’

‘I am no more one than the other. I look upon Paul Astier, with his
imperturbable _sang-froid_ and his pretty-miss complexion, as a problem.
I should like to live long enough to see what becomes of him.’

‘Ah, Monsieur de Freydet,’ said Madame Védrine, joining in the
conversation from the place where she sat, ‘if you only knew what a
tool he makes of my husband! All the restorations at Mousseaux, the new
gallery towards the river, the concert-room, the chapel, all were done
by Védrine. And the Rosen tomb too. He will only be paid for the statue;
but the whole thing is really his--conception, arrangement, everything.’

‘There, there, that will do,’ said the artist quietly. ‘As for
Mousseaux, the young fellow would certainly have been hard put to it to
rediscover a fragment of the design under the layers of rubbish that the
architects have been depositing there for the last thirty years. But the
neighbourhood was charming, the Duchess amiable and not at all tiresome,
and there was friend Freydet, whom I had found out at Clos-Jallanges.
Besides, the truth is I have too many ideas, and am just tormented with
them. To relieve me of a few is to do me a real service. My brain is
like a railway junction, where the engines are getting up steam on all
the lines at once. The young man saw that. He has not many ideas. So he
purloins mine, and brings them before the public, quite certain that I
shall not protest But he does not take me in. Don’t I know when he
is going to filch! He preserves his little indifferent air, with no
expression in his eyes, until suddenly there comes a little nervous
twitch at the corner of his mouth. Done! Nabbed! I have no doubt he
thinks to himself, “Good Lord, what a simpleton Védrine is!” He has not
the least notion that I watch him and enjoy his little game. Now,’ said
the sculptor as he got up, ‘I will show you my Knight, and then we will
go over the ruin. It is worth looking at, you will find.’

Passing from the terrace into the building, they mounted a semicircle
of steps and went through a square room, formerly the apartment of the
Secretary to the Conseil d’Etat. It had no floor and no ceiling, all
the upper storeys had fallen through and showed the blue sky between
the huge iron girders, now twisted by the fire, which had divided the
floors. In a corner, against a wall to which were attached long iron
pipes overgrown with creepers, lay in three pieces a model of the Rosen
tomb, buried in nettles and rubbish.

‘You see,’ said Védrine, ‘or rather you can’t see.’ And he began to
describe the monument. The little Princess’s conception of a tomb was
not easy to come up to. Several things had been tried--reminiscences of
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Ninevite monuments--before deciding on Védrine’s
plan, which would raise an outcry among architects, but was certainly
impressive. A soldier’s tomb: an open tent with the canvas looped back,
disclosing within, before an altar, the wide low sarcophagus, modelled
on a camp bedstead, on which lay the good Knight Crusader, fallen for
King and Creed; beside him his broken sword, and at his feet a great
greyhound.

The difficulty of the work and the hardness of the Dalmatian granite,
which the Princess insisted on having, had obliged Védrine to take
mallet and chisel himself and to work like an artisan under the
tarpaulin at the cemetery. Now, at last, after much time and trouble,
the canopy was up, ‘and that young rascal, Astier, will get some credit
from it,’ added the sculptor with a smile in which was no touch of
bitterness. Then he lifted up an old carpet hanging over a hole in the
wall, which had once been a door, and led Freydet into the huge ruined
hall which served him for a studio, roofed with planks and decorated
with mats and hangings.

It looked with all its litter like a barn, or rather a yard under
cover, for in a sun-lit corner climbed a fine fig-tree with its twining
branches and elegant leaves, while close by was the bulk of a broken
stove, garlanded with ivy and honeysuckle, so as to resemble an old
well. Here he had been working for two years, summer and winter, in
spite, of the fogs of the neighbouring river and the bitter cold winds,
without a single sneeze (his own expression), having the healthful
strength of the great artists of the Renaissance, as well as their large
mould of countenance and fertile imagination. Now he was as weary of
sculpture and architecture as if he had been writing a tragedy. The
moment his statue was delivered and paid for, wouldn’t he be off,
nursery and all, for a journey up the Nile in a dahabeeah, and paint and
paint from morning to night! While he spoke he moved away a stool and a
bench, and led his friend up to a huge block in the rough. ‘There’s my
warrior. Frankly now, what do you think of him?’

[Illustration: There’s my warrior 092]

Freydet was somewhat startled and amazed at the colossal dimensions of
the sleeping hero. The scale was magnified in proportion to the
height of the canopy, and the roughness of the plaster exaggerated the
anatomical emphasis characteristic of Védrine. Rather than smooth
away the force, he gives his work an unfinished earthy surface, as of
something still in the rock. But as the spectator gazed and began to
grasp, the huge form became distinct with that impressive and attractive
power which is the essence of fine art.

‘Splendid!’ he exclaimed, with the tone of sincerity. The other winked
his merry little eyes, and said:

‘Not at first sight, eh? My style does not take till you are accustomed
to it; and I do not feel sure of the Princess, when she comes to look at
this ugly fellow.’

Paul Astier was to bring her in a few days, as soon as it had been
rubbed down and smoothed and was ready to go to the foundry; and the
sculptor looked forward to the visit with some uncertainty, knowing the
taste of great ladies, as it is displayed in the stereotyped chatter,
which at the Salon on five-shilling days runs up and down the
picture-rooms, and breaks out round the sculpture. Oh, what hypocrisy it
is! The only genuine thing about them is the spring costume, which they
have provided to figure on this particular occasion.

‘And altogether, old fellow,’ continued Védrine, as he drew his friend
out of the studio, ‘of all the affectations of Paris, of all the
hypocrisies of society, the most shameless, the most amusing, is the
pretended taste for art. It’s enough to make you die of laughing;
everyone performing a mummery, which imposes on nobody. And music, the
same! You should just see them at the Pop!’

They went down a long arcaded passage, full of the same odd vegetation,
sown there by all the winds of heaven, breaking out in green from the
hard-beaten ground, and peeping among the paintings on the shrivelled
and smoke-blackened walls, Presently they came to the principal court,
formerly gravelled, but now a field, in which were mingled wild grasses,
plantain, pimpernel, groundsel, and myriads of tiny stems and heads.
In the middle, fenced off with boards, was a bed of artichokes,
strawberries, and pumpkins, looking like the garden of some squatter at
the edge of a virgin forest; and, to complete the illusion, beside it
was a little building of brick.

‘It’s the bookbinder’s garden, and that is his shop,’ said Védrine,
pointing to a board over the half-open door, displaying in letters a
foot long the inscription,

                ALBIN FAGE,

      Bookbinding in all its branches.

Fage had been bookbinder to the Cour des Comptes and the Conseil d’Etat,
and having obtained leave to keep his lodge, which had escaped the fire,
was now, with the exception of the caretaker, the sole tenant of the
building. ‘Let us go in for a minute,’ said Védrine; ‘you will find him
a remarkable specimen.’ He went nearer and called, ‘Fage! Fage!’ but
the humble workshop was empty. In front of the window was the binder’s
table, on which, among a heap of parings, lay his shears. Under a
press were some green ledgers capped with copper. Strange to remark,
everything in the room--the sewing-press, the tressel-table, the
empty chair in front of it, the shelves piled with books, and even the
shaving-mirror hung upon the latch--was on a diminutive scale, adapted
to the height and reach of a child of twelve years old. It might have
been taken for the house of a dwarf, or of a bookbinder of Lilliput.

‘He is a humpback,’ whispered Védrine to Frey-det, ‘and a lady’s
man into the bargain, all scent and pomade.’ A horrible smell like
a hairdresser’s shop, otto of roses and macassar, mingled with the
stifling fumes, of glue. Védrine called once more in the direction of
the back of the shop where the bedroom was; then they left, Freydet
chuckling at the idea of a humpbacked Lovelace.

‘Perhaps he’s at a tryst,’ he said.

‘You are pleased to laugh; but, my dear fellow, the humpback is on the
best of terms with all the beauties of Paris, if one may believe the
testimony of his bedroom walls, which are covered with photographs
bearing the owners’ names, and headed “To Albin,” “To my dear little
Fage.” There is never any lady to be seen here, but he sometimes comes
and tells me about his fine octavo, or his pretty little duodecimo, as
he calls his conquests, according to their height and size.’

‘And he is ugly, you say?’

‘A perfect monster.’

‘And no money?’

‘A poor little bookbinder and worker in cardboard, living on his work and
his bit of a garden, but very intelligent and learned, with a marvellous
memory. We shall probably find him wandering about in some corner of
the building. He is a great dreamer is little Fage, like all
sentimentalists.--This way, but look where you step; there are some
awkward places.’

They were going up a huge staircase, of which the lower steps still
remained, as did the balustrade, rusty, split, and in places twisted.
Then suddenly they turned off by a fragile wooden bridge, resting on
the supports of the staircase, between high walls on which were dimly
visible the remains of huge frescoes, cracked, decayed, and blackened
with soot, the hind legs of a horse, a woman’s torso undraped, with
inscriptions almost illegible on panels that had lost their gilding,
‘Meditation,’ ‘Silence,’ ‘Trade uniting the nations of the world.’

On the first floor a long gallery with a vaulted roof, as in the
amphitheatre at Aries or Nîmes, stretched away between smoke-stained
walls, covered with huge fissures, remains of plaster and iron work, and
tangled vegetation. At the entrance to this passage was inscribed on the
wall, ‘Corridor des Huissiers.’ On the next floor they found much the
same thing, only that here, the roof having given way, the gallery was
nothing but a long terrace of brambles climbing up to the undestroyed
arcades and falling down in disordered waving festoons to the level of
the courtyard. From this second floor could be seen the roofs of the
neighbouring houses, the whitewashed walls of the barracks in the Rue
de Poitiers, and the tall plane trees of the Padovani mansion, with the
rooks’ nests, abandoned till the winter, swinging in their top branches.
Below was the deserted court in full sunlight, with the little garden
and tiny house of the bookbinder.

‘Just look, old boy, there’s a good lot of it here,’ said Védrine to his
friend, pointing to the wild exuberant vegetation of every species which
ran riot over the whole building. ‘If Crocodilus saw all these weeds,
what a rage he would be in!’ Suddenly he started, and said, ‘Well, I
never!’

At this moment, near the bookbinder’s house below, came into sight
Astier-Réhu, recognisable by his long frock-coat of a metallic green and
his large wide ‘topper.’ Most people in the neighbourhood knew this hat,
which, set on the back of a grey curly head, distinguished, like a halo,
the hierarch of erudition. It was Crocodilus himself!

He was talking earnestly to a man of very small stature, whose bare head
shone with hair-oil, and whose tight-fitting, light-coloured coat showed
in all its elegance the deformity of his back. Their words were not
audible, but Astier seemed much excited. He brandished his stick and
bent himself forward over the face of the little creature, who for his
part was perfectly calm, and stood, as if his mind was made up, with his
two large hands behind him folded under his hump.

‘The cripple does work for the Institute, does he?’ said Freydet, who
remembered now that his master had uttered the name of Fage. Védrine
did not answer. He was watching the action of the two men, whose
conversation at this moment suddenly stopped, the humpback going into
his house with a gesture which seemed to say, ‘As you please,’ while
Astier with angry strides made for the gate of the building towards the
Rue de Lille, then paused, turned back to the shop, went in, and closed
the door behind him.

‘It’s odd,’ muttered the sculptor. ‘Why did Fage never tell me? What a
mysterious little fellow it is! But I dare say they have the same taste
for the “octavo” and the “duodecimo”!’

‘For shame, Védrine!’

The visit done, Freydet went slowly up the Quai d’Orsay, thinking about
his book and his aspirations towards the Académie, which had received a
severe shock from the home truths he had been hearing. How like the man
is to the boy! How soon the character is in its essence complete! After
an interval of twenty-five years, beneath the wrinkles and grey
hairs and other changes, with which life disguises the outer man,
the schoolfellows found each other just what they were when they sat
together in class: one wilful, high-spirited, rebellious; the other
obedient and submissive, with a tendency to indolence, which had been
fostered by his quiet country life. After all Védrine was perhaps right.
Even if he was sure of succeeding, was the thing worth the trouble? He
was particularly anxious about his invalid sister, who, while he went
about canvassing, must be left all alone at Clos-Jallanges. A few days’
absence had already made her feel nervous and low, and the morning’s
post had brought a miserable letter.

He was by this time passing before the dragoon barracks; and his
attention was caught by the appearance of the paupers, waiting on the
other side of the street for the distribution of the remains of the
soup. They had come long before for fear of missing their turn, and were
seated on the benches or standing in a line against the parapet of the
quay. Foul and grimy, with the hair and beard of human dogs, and dressed
in the filthiest rags, they waited like a herd, neither moving nor
speaking to each other, but peering into the great barrack-yard to catch
the arrival of the porringers and the adjutant’s signal to come up. It
was horrible to see in the brilliant sunlight the silent row of
savage eyes and hungry faces, fixed with the same animal look upon the
wide-open gate.

‘What are you doing there, my dear boy?’ said a voice, and Astier-Réhu,
in high spirits, took his pupil’s arm. The poet pointed to the pathetic
group on the opposite pavement. ‘Ah, yes,’ said the historian, ‘Ah,
yes.’ He had in truth no eyes for anything outside books, nor any direct
and personal perception of the facts of life. Indeed, from the way in
which he took Freydet off, saying as he did so, ‘You may as well go with
me as far as the Institute,’ it was clear that he did not approve the
habit of mooning in the streets when you ought to be better employed.
Leaning gently on his favourite’s arm, he began to tell him of his
rapturous delight at having chanced upon a most astonishing discovery, a
letter about the Académie from the Empress Catherine to Diderot, just in
time for his forthcoming address to the Grand-Duke. He meant to read the
letter at the meeting and perhaps to present his Highness, in the name
of the Society, with the original in the handwriting of his ancestress.
Baron Huchenard would burst with envy.

‘And, by the way, about my Charles the Fifths, you know! It’s absolutely
false. Here is something to confute the old backbiter,’ and he clapped
with his thick short hand a heavy leather pocket-book. He was so happy
that he tried to arouse an answering happiness in Freydet by leading the
conversation to the topic of yesterday--his candidature for the first
place in the Académie that should be vacant. It would be delightful when
the master and the scholar sat together under the dome! ‘And you will
find how pleasant it is, and how comfortable. It cannot be imagined till
you are there.’ The moment of entrance, he seemed to say, put an end
to the miseries of life. At that threshold they might beat in vain. You
soared into a region of peace and light, above envy, above criticism,
blessed for ever! All was won, and nothing left to desire. Ah, the
Académie! Those who spoke ill of it spoke in ignorance, or in jealousy,
because they could not get in. The apes, the dunces!

His strong voice rose till it made everyone turn as he went along the
quay. Some recognised him and mentioned his name. The booksellers and
the vendors of engravings and curiosities, standing at their stalls, and
accustomed to see him go by at his regular hours, stepped back and bowed
respectfully.

‘Freydet, look at that,’ said his master, pointing to the Palais
Mazarin, to which they had now come. ‘There it is! There’s the Institute
as I saw it on the Didot books when I was a lad. I said to myself then,
“I will get into that;” and I have got in. Now, my boy, it is your turn
to use your will. Good luck to you.’ He stepped briskly in at the gate
to the left of the main building, and went on into a series of large
paved courts, silent and majestic, his figure throwing a lengthening
shadow upon the ground.

He disappeared; but Freydet was gazing still, struck motionless. And
on his kindly round brown face and in his soft, full-orbed eyes was the
same expression as had been on the visages of the human dogs who waited
before the barracks for their soup. Henceforward, whenever he looked at
the Institute, that expression would always come over his face.




CHAPTER V.

[Illustration: A select reception, at the Padovani mansion 102]

It was the evening of a great dinner, to be followed by a select
reception, at the Padovani mansion. The Grand-Duke Leopold was
entertaining at the table of his ‘respected friend,’ as he called the
Duchess, some members selected from the various departments of the
Institute, and so making his return to the five Académies for their
courteous reception of him and for the complimentary harangue of the
President. Diplomatic society was, as usual, well represented at the
house of a lady whose husband had been Ambassador; but the Institute had
the chief place, and the arrangement of the guests showed the object
of the dinner. The Grand-Duke, seated opposite the hostess, had Madame
Astier on his right, and on his left the Countess Foder, wife of the
First Secretary of the Finnish Embassy, acting as Ambassador. On the
right of the Duchess sat Léonard Astier, and on her left Monsignor
Adriani, the Papal Nuncio. Then came successively Baron Huchenard,
representing the Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres; Mourad Bey, the
Ambassador of the Porte; Delpech the chemist, Member of the Académie des
Sciences; the Belgian Minister; Landry the musician, of the Beaux-Arts;
Danjou the dramatist, one of Picherals ‘Players’; and, lastly, the
Prince d’Athis, whose twofold claims to distinction as diplomatist and
Member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques combined the
characteristics of the two sets in the circle. At the ends of the table
were the General acting as Aide-de-camp to His Highness, the young
Count Adriani, nephew of the Nuncio, and Lavaux, whose presence was
indispensable at every social gathering.

The feminine element was lacking in charm. The Countess Foder,
red-haired, small, and lively, enveloped in lace to the tip of her
little pointed nose, looked like a squirrel with a cold in its head.
Baroness Huchenard, a lady of no particular age and with a moustache,
produced the effect of a very fat old gentleman in a low dress. Madame
Astier, in a velvet dress partly open at the neck, a present from the
Duchess, had sacrificed on the altar of friendship the pleasure she
would have had in displaying her arms and shoulders, the remains of her
beauty; and thanks to this delicate attention the Duchess Padovani
looked as if she were the only woman at dinner. The Duchess is elegantly
dressed, tall and fair, with a tiny head and fine eyes of a golden hazel
colour--eyes whose shifting haughty glance, from under long dark brows
almost meeting, shows their power of expressing kindness, affection,
or anger. Her nose is short, her mouth emotional and sensitive, and her
complexion has the brilliancy of a young woman’s, owing to her custom
of sleeping in the afternoon when she is going out in the evening or
receiving friends at her own house. A long residence abroad at Vienna,
St. Petersburg, and Constantinople, where as the wife of the French
Ambassador it had been her duty to set the fashion to French society,
has left in her manners a certain air of superior information, which the
ladies of Paris find it hard to forgive. She talks graciously to them
as though they were foreigners, and explains things to them which they
understand as well as she. In her house in the Rue de Poitiers the
Duchess still acts as though representing Paris among the Kurds. It is
the sole defect of this noble and splendid lady.

Though there were, so to speak, no women, no bright dresses showing arms
and shoulders and breaking the monotony of black coats with a blaze of
jewels and flowers, still the table was not without colour. There was
the violet cassock of the Nuncio with his broad silk sash, the purple
_Chechia_ of Mourad Bey, and the red tunic of the Papal Guard with its
gold collar, blue embroideries, and gold braid on the breast, decorated
also with the huge brilliant cross of the Legion of Honour, which the
young Italian had received that very morning, the President thinking
it proper to reward the successful delivery of the Cardinal’s hat.
Scattered about, too, were ribbons green, blue, and red, and the silvery
gleam and sparkling stars of decorations and orders.

Ten o’clock. The dinner is almost over, but not one of the flowers
elaborately arranged round plates and dishes has been disturbed,
there have been no raised voices or animated gestures. Yet the fare is
excellent at the Padovani mansion, one of the few houses in Paris where
they still have wine. The dinner betrays the presence in the house of
an epicure, and the epicure is not the Duchess, who, like all leaders
of French fashion, thinks the dinner good if she has on a becoming dress
and the table is carefully and tastefully decorated. No; the epicure
is the lady’s humble servant, the Prince d’Athis, a man of cultivated
palate and fastidious appetite, spoilt by club cooking and not to
be satisfied by silver plate or the sight of fine liveries and
irreproachable white calves. It is for his sake that the fair Antonia
admits among her occupations the care of the _menu_, it is for him that
she provides highly seasoned dishes and fiery wines of Burgundy, which
it must be admitted have not on this particular occasion dispelled the
coldness of the guests.

At dessert there is the same deadness, stiffness, and restraint that
marked the first course; hardly has a tinge of colour touched
the ladies’ cheeks or noses. It is a dinner of wax dolls,
official,-magnificent, with the magnificence which comes chiefly of
ample room, lofty ceilings, and seats placed so far apart as to preclude
all friendly touching of chairs. A gloomy chilly underground feeling
separates the guests, in spite of the soft breath of the June night
floating in from the gardens through the half-open shutters and gently
swelling the silk blinds. The conversation is distant and constrained,
the lips scarcely move and have an unmeaning smile. Not a remark is
real, not one makes its way to the mind of the hearer; they are as
perfectly artificial as the sweetmeats among which they are dropped. The
speeches, like the faces, are masked, and it is lucky they are, for
if at this moment the mask were to be taken off, and the true thoughts
disclosed, how dismayed the noble company would be!

The Grand-Duke, who has a broad pale face framed by extra-black trim
round whiskers, just such a royal personage as you see in an illustrated
paper, is questioning Baron Huchenard with much interest about his
recent book, and thinking to himself: ‘Oh dear, how this learned
gentleman does bore me with his primitive dwellings! How much better
off I should be at _Roxelane_, where sweet little Déa is dancing in
the ballet! The author of _Roxelane_ is here, I understand, but he is a
middle-aged man, very ugly and very dull. And to think of the ankles of
little Déa!’

The Nuncio, who has an intellectual face of the Roman type, large nose,
thin lips, black eyes and sallow complexion, has leant on one side to
listen to the history of the habitations of Man. He is looking at his
nails, which shine like shells, and is thinking: ‘At the Embassy this
morning I ate a delicious _misto fritto_ and I haven’t got rid of it.
Gioachimo has pulled my sash too tight; I wish I could get away from the
table.’

The Turkish Ambassador, thick-lipped, yellow, and coarse, with his fez
over his eyes and a poke in his neck, is filling the glass of Baroness
Huchenard and saying, ‘How disgusting in these Westerns to bring their
women into society, when they are as dilapidated as this! I had rather
be impaled right off than exhibit that fat creature as my wife.’ The
Baroness is thanking His Excellency with a mincing smile, which covers
the thought ‘This Turk is a revolting beast.’

Nor are Madame Astier’s spoken thoughts any more in harmony with her
internal reflections: ‘I only hope Paul will not have forgotten to go
for grandpapa. It will be an effective scene when the old man comes in,
supported on the arm of his great-grandson. Perhaps we may get an order
out of His Highness.’ Then, as she looks affectionately at the Duchess,
she thinks: ‘She is looking very handsome this evening. Some good news
no doubt about the promised Embassy. Make the best of your time, my
dear; in a month Sammy will be married.’

Madame Astier is not mistaken. The Grand-Duke on arriving announced to
his ‘respected friend’ the President’s promise to appoint D’Athis within
the next few days. The Duchess is filled with à repressed delight, which
shines through as it were, and gives her a marvellous brilliance. To
this height she has raised the man of her choice! And already she is
making plans for removing her own establishment to St. Petersburg, to
a mansion not too far from the Embassy; while the Prince, with his pale
sunk cheeks and rapt look--the look whose penetration Bismarck could
never sustain--checks upon his contemptuous lips the smile at once
mysterious and dogmatic, compounded of diplomacy and learning, and
thinks to himself: ‘Now Colette must make up her mind. She could come
out there, we could be married quietly at the Chapelle des Pages, and
all would be done and past recall before the Duchess heard of it.’

And thus many a reflection ludicrously inappropriate to the occasion
passes from guest to guest under the same safe wrapper. Here you have
the pleased beatitude of Léonard Astier, who has this very morning
received the order of Stanislas (second class), as a return for
presenting to His Highness a copy of his speech with the autograph
letter of Catherine pinned to the first page and very ingeniously worked
into the complimentary address. This letter was the great thing at the
meeting, had been mentioned in the papers two days running, and heard of
all over Europe, giving to the name of Astier, to his collection, and to
his work, that astounding and disproportionate echo with which the Press
now multiplies any passing event. Now Baron Huchenard might do his best
to bite, might mumble as he pleased in his insinuating tones, ‘I ask
you, my dear colleague, to observe.’ But no one would listen. And the
‘first collector in France’ was perfectly aware of it. See what a savage
look he casts at his dear colleague in the pauses of his scientific
harangue! What venom is in every deeply graven hollow of his porous,
pumice-stone face!

Handsome Danjou is also furious, but for other reasons than the Baron.
The Duchess has not asked his wife. The exclusion is painful to his
feelings as a husband, a part of a man no less sensitive than the
original _ego_; and in spite of his wish to shine before the Grand-Duke,
the witticisms as good as new, which he was prepared with, will not go
off. Another who does not feel comfortable is Delpech the chemist, whom
His Highness, when he was presented, congratulated on his interpretation
of the cuneiform character, confounding him with his colleague of the
Académie des Inscriptions. It should be said that, with the exception
of Danjou, whose comedies are popular abroad, the Grand-Duke has never
heard of any of the Academic celebrities introduced to him at this
dinner. Lavaux this very morning, in concert with the Aide-de-camp,
arranged a set of cards bearing each the name of a guest with the titles
of his principal works. The fact that His Highness did not get more
confused among the list than he did proves much presence of mind and
an Imperial memory. But the evening is not over, and other stars of
learning are about to appear. Already may be heard the muffled rolling
of wheels and the slamming of carriages putting down at the door. The
Prince will have more chances yet.

Meanwhile, in a weak, slow voice, seeking for words and losing half of
them in his nose, His Highness is discussing with Astier-Réhu a point
of history suggested by the letter of Catherine II. The ewers have long
completed the round, no one is eating or drinking any more, no one
is even breathing, for fear of interrupting the conversation; all
the company are in a hypnotic trance, and--a remarkable effect of
lévitation--are literally hanging upon the Imperial lips. Suddenly
the august nose is silent, and Léonard Astier, who has made a show of
resistance in order to improve the effect of his opponent’s victory,
throws up his arms like broken foils and says with an air of surrender,
‘Ah, Your Highness has mated me!’ The charm is broken, the company
feel the ground under them again, everyone rises in a slight flutter of
applause, the doors are thrown open, the Duchess takes the arm of the
Grand-Duke, Mourad Bey that of the Baroness, and while, with a sound of
sweeping-dresses and chairs pushed Lack, the assembly files out, Firmin,
the _maître d’hôtel_, solemn and dignified, is privately doing a sum.
‘In any other house this dinner would have been worth to me forty
pounds: with her, I’ll warrant, it won’t be a dozen;’ to which he adds
aloud, as if he would spit his anger upon Her Grace’s train, ‘Grr! you
hag!’

‘With Your Highness’s permission--my grandfather, M. Jean Réhu, the
oldest member in the whole Institute.’

The high notes of Madame Astier’s voice ring in the great drawing-room,
not nearly filled, though the guests invited to the reception have
already arrived.

She speaks very loud to make grandpapa understand to whom he is being
introduced and answer accordingly. Old Réhu looks grand, drawing up his
tall figure and still carrying high his little Creole face darkened and
cracked with age. Paul, graceful and pleasing, supports him on one side,
his granddaughter on the other; Astier-Réhu is behind. The family makes
a sentimental group in the style of Greuze. It would look well on one
of the pale-coloured tapestries with which the room is decorated,
tapestries--a strange thing to think of--scarcely older than Réhu
himself. The Grand-Duke, much affected, tries to say something happy,
but the author of the Letters to Urania is not upon his cards. He gets
out of it by a few vague complimentary phrases, in answer to which old
Réhu, supposing that he is being asked as usual about his age, says,
‘Ninety-eight years in a fortnight, Sir.’ His next attempt does not fit
much better with His Highness’s gracious congratulations. ‘Not since
1803, Sir; the town must be much changed.’ During the progress of this
singular dialogue, Paul is whispering to his mother, ‘You may see him
home if you like; I won’t have anything more to do with him; he’s in
an awful temper. In the carriage he was kicking me all the time in the
legs, to work off his fidgets, he said.’ The young man himself had an
unpleasant ring in his voice this evening, and in his charming face
something set and hard, which his mother knew well, and noticed
immediately on coming into the room. What is the matter? She watched
him, trying to read the meaning in his light eyes, which, however,
harder and keener than usual, revealed nothing.

But the chill, the ceremonious chill, prevailed here no less than at
the dinner-table. The guests kept apart in groups, the few ladies in a
circle upon low chairs, the gentlemen standing or walking about with a
pretence of serious conversation, but obviously engaged in attracting
His Highness’s attention. It was for His Highness that Landry the
musician stood pensive by the chimney-piece, gazing upward with his
inspired brow and his apostolic beard; for him that on the other side
Delpech the chemist stood meditative with his chin upon his hand, poring
intently with gathered brows as if watching the precipitation of a
compound.

Laniboire the philosopher, famous for his likeness to Pascal, was
wandering round, perpetually passing before the sofa, where, unable
to escape from Jean Réhu, sat the Prince. The hostess had forgotten to
present him, and his fine nose looked longer than usual and seemed to
be making a desperate appeal: ‘Cannot you see that this is the nose of
Pascal?’

At the same sofa Madame Eviza was shooting between her scarcely parted
eyelids a look which asked His Highness to name his own price if he
would but be seen at her reception next Monday. Ah! change the scene
as you will, it is always the same performance--pretension, meanness,
readiness to bow down, the courtier’s appetite for self-humiliation
and self-abasement. We need not decline the visits of majesty; we are
provided with all the properties required for the occasion.

‘General.’

‘Your Highness.’

‘I shall never be in time for the ballet.’

‘But why are we staying, Sir?’

‘I don’t know; there’s to be a surprise when the Nuncio is gone.’

While these few words passed in an undertone between the pair, they
neither looked at each other nor changed a muscle of their ceremonial
countenances. The Aide-de-camp had copied from his master the nasal
intonation, the absence of gesture, the fixed attitude on the edge of
the seat with the bowed arm against the side. He was rigid as on parade
or in the Imperial box at the Théâtre Michel. Old Réhu stood before
them, he would not sit down; he was still talking, still exhibiting the
dusty stores of his memory, the people he had known, the many fashions
in which he had dressed. The more distant the time, the clearer his
recollection. ‘That is a thing I have seen,’ says he, as he pauses at
the end of a story, with his eyes fixed, as it were, upon the flying
past, and then off upon a fresh subject. He had been with Talma at
Brunoy, he had been in the drawing-room of Josephine, full of musical
boxes and artificial humming-birds covered with jewels, which sang and
clapped their wings.

Out of doors on the terrace, in the warm darkness of the garden, was
heard low conversation and stifled laughter, coming from the place
where the cigars were visible as a ring of red dots. Lavaux was amusing
himself by getting the young Guardsman to tell Danjou and Paul Astier
the story of the Cardinal’s hat. ‘And the lady, Count--the lady at
the station.’ ‘Cristo, qu’elle était bella!’ said the Italian in a
low voice, and added correctively, ‘sim-patica, surtout, simpatica.’
Charming and responsive--this was his general idea of the ladies of
Paris. He only wished he need not go back. The French wine had loosed
his tongue, and he began describing his life in the Guards, the
advantages of the profession, the hope which they all had on entering
it that they might find a rich wife--that at one of His Holiness’s
audiences they would dazzle some wealthy English Catholic or a fanatical
Spaniard from South America come to bring her offering to the Vatican.
‘L’ouniforme est zouli, comprenez; et pouis les en-fortounes del
Saint Père, cela nous donne à nous autres ses soldats oun prestigio
roumanesque, cava-leresque, qualque sose qui plaît aux dames
zénérale-menté.’ It must be allowed that with his youthful manly face,
his gold braid shining softly in the moonlight, and his white leather
breeches, he did recall the heroes of Artosto or Tasso.

‘Well, my dear Pepino,’ said fat Lavaux, in his mocking and disagreeable
tone, ‘if you want a good match, here it is at your elbow.’

‘How so? Where?’

Paul Astier started and became attentive. The mention of a good match
always made him fear that some one was stealing his.

‘The Duchess, of course. Old Padovani can’t stand another stroke.’

‘But the Prince d’Athis?’

‘He’ll never marry her.’

Lavaux was a good authority, being the friend of the Prince, and of the
Duchess, too, for that matter; though, seeing that the establishment
must shortly split, he stood on the side which he thought the safest
‘Go in boldly, my dear Count; there’s money, lots of it, and a fine
connection, and a lady still well enough.’

‘Cristo, qu’elle est bella!’ said the Italian, with a sigh.

‘E simpatica,’ said Danjou, with a sneer. At which the Guardsman after
a moment’s amazement, delighted to find an Academician with so much
perception, exclaimed: ‘Si, simpatica, précisamenté!’

‘And then,’ continued Lavaux, ‘if you are fond of dyes, and enamel, and
padding, you’ll get it. I believe she’s a marvel of construction, the
best customer that Charrière has.’

He spoke out loud and quite freely, right in front of the dining-room.
The garden door was slightly open, and through the crack the light
fell upon the broad red impudent face of the parasite, and the warm air
floated laden with the rich smell of the dinner which he had eaten and
was repaying in mean dirty slanders. There’s for your _truffes farcies_;
there’s for your _gelinottes_, and your ‘_chateaux_’ at fifteen
shillings a glass! Danjou and he have got together on purpose to play
this popular game of running-down; and a great deal they know and a
great deal they tell. Lavaux serves the ball and Danjou returns. And the
simple Guardsman, not knowing how much to believe, tries to laugh, with
a horrid fear lest the Duchess should catch them, and is much relieved
when he hears his uncle calling him from the other end of the terrace.
The Papal Embassy shuts up early, and since his little misfortune he has
been kept strictly to hours.

‘Good night, gentlemen.’

‘Good luck to you, young man.’

The Nuncio is gone; now for the surprise. At a signal from the Duchess,
the author of _Roxelane_ took his place at the piano and swept his beard
over the keys as he struck two penetrating chords. Immediately at the
far end of the rooms the curtains were drawn from the door, and down the
vista of brilliant apartments, tripping along on the tips of her little
gilt slippers, came a charming brunette in the close bodice and puffed
skirts of the ballet, conducted at arm’s-length by a gloomy person
with hair in rolls and a cadaverous countenance divided by a dead black
moustache. It is Déa! Déa, the folly of the hour, the fashionable toy,
accompanied by her instructor, Valère, the ballet-master at the opera.
_Roxelane_ was taken first this evening; and the girl, warm from her
triumphant performance, had come to give her dance again for the
benefit of the Duchess’s Imperial guest. A more delightful surprise his
respected friend could not have devised. What more exquisite than to
have all to yourself, close to yourself, and within an inch of your
face, the pretty whirl of muslin and the panting of the fresh young
breath, and to hear the sinews of the little creature strain like the
sheets of a sail! His Highness was not alone in this opinion. The moment
the dance began the men drew together, selfishly making a close ring of
black coats and leaving the few ladies present to see what they could
from outside. Even the Grand-Duke is hustled and shoved in the press:
for as the dance quickens the circle narrows, till there is scarcely
room for the movement. Men of letters and of politics, breathing
hard, thrust their heads forward, while their decorations swing like
cow-bells, and grinning from ear to ear show their watery lips and
toothless jaws with grotesque animal cachinnations. Even the Prince
d’Athis stoops with less contempt for humanity, as he gazes upon this
marvel of youth and fairy grace, who with the tips of her toes takes off
the masks of convention; and the Turk, Mourad Bey, who has sat the
whole evening without a word in the depths of an armchair, is now
gesticulating in the front row with open nostrils and staring eyes.

[Illustration: Seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly 120]

In the midst of the wild shouts of applause the girl springs and leaps
with so harmonious a concealment of the muscular working of her frame,
that her dance might seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly, but
for the few drops on her firm rounded neck and the smile, forced,
tense, and almost painful, at the corner of her mouth, which betray the
exhausting effort of the exquisite little creature, Paul Astier, who did
not care for dancing, had stayed on the terrace to smoke. The applause
and the thin sounds of the piano, audible in the distance, made an
accompaniment to his reflections, which took shape little by little,
even as his outward eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, made out
by degrees in the garden the trunks of the trees and their quivering
leaves, and far away at the end the delicate tracery of an old-fashioned
trellis against the wall. It was so hard to succeed; one must hold on
so long to reach the desired point, always close at hand and always
receding. Why was it that Colette seemed every moment on the point of
falling into his arms, and yet when he went back he had to begin
again from the beginning? It looked as if in his absence some one for
amusement pulled down his work. Who was it? It was that dead fellow,
confound him! He ought to be at her side from morning to night; but how
could he, with the perpetual necessity of running after money?

There came a light step, a soft sound of velvet. It was his mother
looking for him. Why did he not come into the drawing-room with all the
rest? She leaned over the balustrade beside him and wanted to know what
he was thinking about.

‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’ But further pressed he came out with it. Well,
the fact was--the fact was--that he had had enough of starving. Dun,
dun, dun. One hole stopped and another opened. He would not stand any
more of it, so there!

From the drawing-room came loud exclamations and wild laughter, together
with the expressionless voice of Valère, directing the dancer in the
imitation of an old-fashioned ballet figure.

‘How much do you want?’ whispered the mother trembling. She had never
seen him like this before.

‘No, it’s no use; it’s more than you could possibly manage.’

‘How much?’ she asked again.

‘Eight hundred.’ And the agent must have it tomorrow by five o’clock,
or else he would take possession. There would be a sale and all sorts
of horrors. Sooner than that--and here he ground his cigar between
his teeth as he said the last words--‘better make a hole in my
frontispiece.’

The mother had heard enough. ‘Hush! hush!’ she said. ‘By five o’clock
to-morrow? Hush!’ And she flung herself upon him, and she pressed her
hands in agony upon his lips, as if she would arrest there the appalling
sentence of death.




CHAPTER VI.

That night she could not sleep. Eight hundred pounds! eight hundred
pounds! The words went to and fro in her head. Where were they to be
found? To whom could she apply? There was so little time. Names and
faces flashed before her, passing for a moment where the pale gleam of
the night-light fell on the ceiling, only to disappear and be replaced
by other names and other faces, which vanished as quickly in their
turn. Freydet? She had just made use of him. Sammy? Had nothing till he
married. Besides, did anybody do such a thing as to borrow or lend eight
hundred pounds? No one but a poet from the country. In Parisian society
money never appears on the scene; it is assumed that you have it and are
above these details, like the people in genteel comedy. A breach of this
convention would banish the transgressor from respectable company.

And while Madame Astier pursued her feverish thoughts she saw beside her
the round back of her husband rising and falling peacefully. It was one
of the depressing incidents of their joint life that they had lain thus
side by side for thirty years, having nothing in common but the bed. But
never had the isolation of her surly bedfellow so strongly aroused her
indignation. What was the use of waking him, of talking to him about the
boy and his desperate threat? She knew perfectly well that he would
not believe her, nor so much as move the big back which protected his
repose. She was inclined for a minute to fall upon him, to pummel him,
and scratch him, and rouse him out of his selfish slumbers by shouting
in his ear: ‘Léonard, your papers are on fire!’ And as the thought of
the papers flashed madly across her mind she almost leaped out of bed.
She had got her eight hundred! The drawers upstairs! How was it she
had not thought of them before? There she lay, till day dawned and the
night-light went out with a sputter, content and motionless, arranging
what she should do, with the look of a thief in her open eyes.

Before the usual hour she was dressed, and all the morning prowled about
the rooms, watching her husband. He talked of going out, but changed his
mind, and went on with his sorting till breakfast. Between his study
and the attic he went to and fro with armfuls of pamphlets, humming a
careless tune. He had not feeling enough to perceive the constrained
agitation which surcharged the air with nervous electricity and played
among the furniture in the cupboards, and upon the handles of the
doors. He worked on undisturbed. At table he was talkative, told
idiotic stories, which she knew by heart, interminable as the process
of crumbling with his knife his favourite cheese. Piece after piece of
cheese he took, and still one anecdote followed another. And when the
time came for going to the Institute, where the Dictionary Committee
was to sit before the regular meeting, how long he took to start! and in
spite of her eagerness to get him off quick, what an age he spent over
every little thing!

The moment he turned the corner of the street, without waiting to shut
the window, she darted to the serving-hatch, crying, ‘Corentine, call a
cab, quick!’ He was gone at last, and she flew up the little staircase
to the attic.

Crouching down to keep clear of the low ceiling she began to try a bunch
of keys in the lock which fastened the bar of the drawers. She could not
fit it. She could not wait. She would have forced away, without scruple,
a side of the frame, but her fingers gave way and her nails broke. She
wanted something to prise with. She opened the drawer of the card-table:
and there lay three yellow scrawls. They were the very things she
was looking for--the letters of Charles V.! Such miracles do happen
sometimes!

She bent down to the low-arched window to make sure, and read: ‘François
Rabelais, maître en toutes sciences et bonnes lettres.’ Enough! She
started up, hitting her head hard as she did so, and was not aware of it
till she was in the cab and on her way to the shop of the famous Bos in
the Rue de l’Abbaye.

She got down at the corner of the street. It is a short quiet street,
overshadowed by St. Germain des Près and by the old red brick buildings
of the School of Surgery. A few of the surgeons’ carriages, professional
broughams with splendid liveries, were in waiting. Scarcely anyone was
about. Pigeons were feeding on the pavement, and flew away as she came
to the shop opposite the school. It offers both books and curiosities,
and exhibits an archaic inscription, highly appropriate to such a nook
of Old Paris: ‘Bos: Antiquary and Palaeographer.’

The shop-front displayed something of all sorts: old manuscripts,
ancient ledgers with mould spots on the edges, missals with damaged
gilding, book-clasps and book-covers. To the upper panes were fastened
assignats, old placards, plans of Paris, ballads, military franks with
spots of blood, autographs of all ages, some verses by Madame Lafargue,
two letters from Chateaubriand to ‘Pertuzé, Boot-maker, names of
celebrities ancient and modern at the foot of an invitation to dinner,
or perhaps a request for money, a complaint of poverty, a love letter,
&c, enough to cure anyone of writing for ever. All the autographs were
priced; and as Madame Astier paused for a moment before the window she
might see next to a letter of Rachel, price 12L., a letter from Léonard
Astier-Réhu to Petit Séquard, his publisher, price 2s. But this was
not what she came for: she was trying to discover, behind the screen
of green silk, the face of her intended customer, the master of the
establishment. She was seized with a sudden fear: suppose he was not at
home after all!

The thought of Paul waiting gave her determination, and she went into
the dark, close, dusty room. She was taken at once into a little closet
behind, and began to explain her business to M. Bos, who, with his large
red face and disordered hair, looked like a speaker at a public meeting.
A temporary difficulty--her husband did not like to come himself--and
so---- But before she could finish her lie, M. Bos, with a ‘Pray,
madame, pray,’ had produced a cheque on the Crédit Lyonnais, and was
accompanying her with the utmost politeness to her cab.

‘A very genteel person,’ he said to himself, much pleased with his
acquisition, while she, as she took the cheque out of the glove into
which it had been slipped, and looked again at the satisfactory figure,
was thinking What a delightful man!’ She had no remorse, not even the
slight recoil which comes from the mere fact that the thing is done. A
woman has not these feelings. She wears natural blinkers, which prevent
her from, seeing anything but the thing which she desires at the moment,
and keep her from the reflections which at the critical moment embarrass
a man. She thought at intervals, of course, of her husband’s anger
when he discovered the theft, but she saw it, as it were, dim in the
distance. Nay, it was rather a satisfaction to add this to all she had
gone through since yesterday, and say to herself, ‘I can bear it for my
child!’

For beneath her outward calm, her external envelope as a woman of
Academic fashion, lay a certain thing that exists in all women,
fashionable or not, and that thing is passion. It is the pedal which
works the feminine instrument, not always discovered by the husband or
the lover, but always by the son. In the dull story with no love in it,
which makes up the life of many a woman, the son is the hero and the
principal character. To her beloved Paul, especially since he had
reached manhood, Madame Astier owed the only genuine emotions of her
life, the delightful anguish of the waiting, the chill in the pale
cheeks and the heat in the hollow of the hand, the supernatural
intuitions which, before the carriage is at the door, give the
infallible warning that ‘he comes,’--things which she had never known
even in the early years of her married life or in the days when people
called her imprudent, and her husband used to say with simplicity, ‘It’s
odd; I never smoke, and my wife’s veils smell of tobacco.’

When she reached her son’s, and the first pull of the bell was not
answered, her anxiety rose to distraction. The little mansion showed no
sign of life from the ground to the ornamental roof-ridge, and, in spite
of its much-admired style, had to her eyes a sinister appearance,
as also had the adjoining lodging-house, not less architecturally
admirable, but showing bills all along the high mullioned windows of its
two upper storeys, ‘To let; To let; To let.’ At the second pull, which
produced a tremendous ring, Stenne, the impudent little man-servant,
looking very spruce in his close-fitting sky-blue livery, appeared at
last at the door, rather confused and hesitating: ‘Oh yes, M. Paul was
in, but--but--’

The unhappy mother, haunted ever since yesterday by the same horrible
idea, pictured her son lying in his blood, crossed at a bound the
passage and three steps, and burst breathless into the study. Paul was
standing at work before his desk in the bay window. One pane of the
stained glass was open, to throw light upon the half-finished sketch and
the box of colours, while the rest of the perfumed apartment was steeped
in a soft subdued glow. Absorbed in his work he seemed not to have heard
the carriage stop, the bell ring twice, and a lady’s dress flit along
the passage. He had: but it was not his mother’s shabby black dress that
he expected, it was not for her that he posed at his desk, nor for her
that he had provided the delicate bouquets of fine irises and tulips, or
the sweetmeats and elegant decanters upon the light table.

The way in which as he looked round he said, ‘Oh, it’s you,’ would have
been significant to anyone but his mother. She did not notice it, lost
in the delight of seeing him there, perfectly well, perfectly dressed.
She said not a word, but tearing her glove open she triumphantly handed
him the cheque. He did not ask her where she got it, or what she had
given for it, but put his arms round her, taking care not to crumple the
paper. ‘Dear old Mum’; that was all he said, but it was enough for
her, though her child was not as overjoyed as she expected, but rather
embarrassed. ‘Where are you going next?’ he said thoughtfully, with the
cheque in his hand.

‘Where next?’ she repeated, looking at him with disappointment. Why, she
had only just come, and made certain of spending a few minutes with him;
but she could go if she was in the way. ‘Why, I think I shall go to the
Princess’s. But I am in no hurry; she wearies me with her everlasting
lamentation for Herbert. You think she has done with it, and then it
takes a fresh start.’

Paul was on the point of saying something, which he did not say.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘Mammy, will you do something for me? I am expecting
somebody. Go and cash this for me, and let the agent have the money in
return for my drafts. You don’t mind?’

She did not indeed. If she went about his business she would seem to be
with him still. While he was signing his name, the mother looked round
the room. There were charming carpets and curtains, and nothing to mark
the profession of the occupant except an X ruler in old walnut, and some
casts from well-known friezes hung here and there. As she thought of her
recent agony and looked at the elaborate bouquets and the refreshments
laid by the sofa, it occurred to her that these were unusual
preparations for a suicide. She smiled without any resentment. The
naughty wretch! She only pointed with her parasol at the bonbons in the
box and said:

‘Those are to make a hole in your--your--what do you call it?’

He began to laugh too.

‘Oh, there’s a great change since yesterday.

The business, you know, the big thing I talked to you about, is really
coming off this time, I think.’

‘Really? So is mine.’

‘Eh? Ah yes, Sammy’s marriage.’

Their pretty cunning eyes, both of the same hard grey, but, the mother’s
a little faded, exchanged one scrutinising glance.

‘You’ll see, we shall be rolling in riches,’ he said after a moment.
‘Now you must be going,’ and he hurried her gently to the door.

That morning Paul had had a note from the Princess to say that she
should call for him at his own house to go to the usual place. The usual
place was the cemetery. Lately there had been what Madame Astier called
‘a fresh start’ of Herbert. Twice a week the widow went to the cemetery
with flowers, or tapers, or articles for the chapel, and urged the
progress of the work; her conjugal feelings had broken out again. The
fact was, that after a long and painful hesitation between her vanity
and her love, the temptation of keeping her title and the fascinations
of the delightful Paul--a hesitation the more painful that she confided
it to no one, except in her journal every evening to ‘poor Herbert’--the
appointment of Sammy had finally decided her, and she thought it proper,
before taking a new husband, to complete the sepulture of the first and
have done with the mausoleum and the dangerous intimacy of its seductive
designer.

Paul, without understanding the flutterings of the foolish little soul,
was amused by them, and thought them excellent symptoms, indicating the
approach of the crisis. But the thing dragged, and he was in a hurry; it
was time to hasten the conclusion and profit by Colette’s visit, which
had been long proposed but long deferred, the Princess, though curious
to see the young man’s lodgings, being apparently afraid to meet him
in a place much more private than her own house or her carriage,
where there were always the servants to see. Not that he had ever been
over-bold; he only seemed to surround her with his presence. But she was
afraid of herself, her opinion coinciding with that of the young man,
who, being an experienced general in such matters, had classed her
at once as one of the ‘open towns.’ It was his name for the sort of
fashionable women who, in spite of a high and apparently unassailable
position, in spite of a great apparatus of defences in every direction,
are in reality to be carried by a bold attack. He did not intend now
to make the regular assault, but only a smart approach or so of warm
flirtation, sufficient to set a mark upon his prey without hurting her
dignity, and to signify the final expropriation of the deceased. The
marriage and the million would follow in due time. Such was the happy
dream which Madame Astier had interrupted. He was pursuing it still,
at the same desk and in the same contemplative attitude, when the whole
house resounded with another ring at the bell, followed however only by
conversation at the front door. ‘What is it?’ said Paul impatiently, as
he came out.

The voice of a footman, whose tall black figure was conspicuous in the
doorway against a background of splashing rain, answered from the steps,
with respectful insolence, that my lady was waiting for him in the
carriage. Paul, though choking with rage, managed to get out the words,
‘I am coming,’ But what horrid curses he muttered under his breath! The
dead fellow again! Sure enough, it was the remembrance of him that had
kept her away. But after a few seconds the hope of avenging himself
before long in a highly amusing way enabled him so far to recover
countenance, that when he joined the Princess he was as cool as ever,
and showed nothing of his anger but a little extra paleness in the
cheek.

It was warm in the brougham, the windows having been put up because of
the shower. Huge bouquets of violets and wreaths as heavy as pies loaded
the cushions round Madame de Rosen and filled her lap.

‘Are the flowers unpleasant? Shall I put the window down?’ said she,
with the cajoling manner which a woman puts on when she has played you a
trick and wants not to have a quarrel over it. Paul’s gesture expressed
a dignified indifference. It was nothing to him whether the window was
put down or put up. The Princess, whose deep veil, still worn on
such occasions as the present, concealed a blooming face, felt more
uncomfortable than if he had reproached her openly. Poor young man! She
was treating him so cruelly--so much more cruelly than he knew! She laid
her hand gently upon his, and said, ‘You are not angry with me?’

He? Not at all. Why should he be angry with her?

‘For not coming in. I did say I would, but at the last moment I--I did
not think I should hurt you so much.’

‘You hurt me very much indeed.’

When a gentleman of severely correct deportment is betrayed into a
word or two of emotion, oh, what an impression they make upon a woman’s
heart! They upset her almost as much as the tears of an officer in
uniform.

‘No, no,’ she said, ‘please, please do not distress yourself any more
about me. Please say that you are not angry now.’

As she spoke she leaned quite close to him, letting her flowers slip
down. She felt quite safe with two broad black backs and two black
cockades visible on the box under a large umbrella.

‘Look,’ she went on; ‘I promise you to come once--at least
once--before----’ but here she stopped in dismay. Carried away by her
feelings, she was on the point of telling him that they were soon to
part, and that she was going to St. Petersburg. Recovering herself in a
moment, she declared emphatically that she would call unannounced some
afternoon when she was not going to visit the mausoleum.

‘But you go there every afternoon,’ he said, with clenched teeth and
such a queer accent of suppressed indignation that a smile played
beneath the widow’s veil, and to make a diversion she put down the
window. The shower was over. The brougham had turned into a poor
quarter, where the street in its squalid gaiety seemed to feel that the
worst of the year was past, as the sun, almost hot enough for summer,
lighted up the wretched shops, the barrows at the gutter’s edge,
the tawdry placards, and the rags that fluttered in the windows. The
Princess looked out upon it with indifference. Such trivialities are
non-existent for people accustomed to see them from the cushions of
their carriage at an elevation of two feet from the road. The comfort
of the springs and the protection of the glass have a peculiar influence
upon the eyes, which take no interest in things below their level.

Madame de Rosen was thinking, ‘How he loves me! And how nice he is!’ The
other suitor was of course more dignified, but it would have been much
pleasanter with this one. Oh, dear! The happiest life is but a service
incomplete, and never a perfect set!

By this time they were nearing the cemetery. On both sides of the road
were stonemasons’ yards, in which the hard white of slabs, images, and
crosses mingled with the gold of _immortelles_ and the black or white
beads of wreaths and memorials.

‘And what about Védrine’s statue? Which way do we decide?’ he asked
abruptly, in the tone of a man who means to confine himself to business.

‘Well, really--’ she began. ‘But, oh dear, oh dear, I shall hurt your
feelings again?’

‘My feelings! how so?’

The day before, they had been to make a last inspection of the knight,
before he was sent to the foundry. At a previous visit the Princess had
received a disagreeable impression, not so much from Védrine’s work,
which she scarcely looked at, as from the strange studio with trees
growing in it, with lizards and wood-lice running about the walls, and
all around it roofless ruins, suggesting recollections of the incendiary
mob. But from the second visit the poor little woman had come back
literally ill. ‘My dear, it is the horror of horrors!’ Such was her real
opinion, as given the same evening to Madame Astier. But she did not
dare to say so to Paul, knowing that he was a friend of the sculptor,
and also because the name of Védrine is one of the two or three which
the fashionable world has chosen to honour in spite of its natural and
implanted tastes, and regards with an irrational admiration by way of
pretending to artistic originality. That the coarse rude figure should
not be put on dear Herbert’s tomb she was determined, but she was at a
loss for a presentable reason.

‘Really, Monsieur Paul, between ourselves--of course it is a splendid
work--a fine _Védrine_--but you must allow that it is a little _triste!_

‘Well, but for a tomb----’ suggested Paul.

‘And then, if you will not mind, there is this.’ With much hesitation
she came to the point. Really, you know, a man upon a camp bedstead with
nothing on! Really she did not think it fit. It might be taken for a
portrait!’ And just think of poor Herbert, the correctest of men! What
would it look like?’

‘There is a good deal in that,’ said Paul gravely, and he threw his
friend Védrine overboard with as little concern as a litter of kittens.
‘After all, if you do not like the figure, we can put another, or none
at all. It would have a more striking effect. The tent empty; the bed
ready, and no one to lie on it!’

The Princess, whose chief satisfaction was that the shirtless ruffian
would not be seen there, exclaimed, ‘Oh, how glad I am! how nice of you!
I don’t mind telling you now, that I cried over it all night!’

As usual, when they stopped at the entrance gate, the footman took the
wreaths and followed some way behind, while Colette and Paul climbed
in the heat a path made soft by the recent showers. She leaned upon his
arm, and from time to time ‘hoped that she did not tire him.’ He shook
his head with a sad smile. There were few people in the cemetery. A
gardener and a keeper recognised the familiar figure of the Princess
with a respectful bow. But when they had left the avenue and passed the
upper terraces, it was all solitude and shade. Besides the birds in the
trees they heard only the grinding of the saw and the metallic clink of
the chisel, sounds perpetual in Père-la-Chaise, as in some city always
in building and never finished.

Two or three times Madame de Rosen had seen her companion glance with
displeasure at the tall lacquey in his long black overcoat and cockade,
whose funereal figure now as ever formed part of the love-scene. Eager
on this occasion to please him, she stopped, saying, ‘Wait a minute,’
took the flowers herself, dismissed the servant, and they went on all
alone along the winding walk. But in spite of this kindness, Paul’s brow
did not relax; and, as he had hung upon his free arm three or four
rings of violets, _immortelles_, and lilac, he felt more angry with
the deceased than ever. ‘You shall pay me for this,’ was his savage
reflection. She, on the contrary, felt singularly happy, in that vivid
consciousness of life and health which comes upon us in places of death.
Perhaps it was the warmth of the day, the perfume of the flowers, mixing
their fragrance with the stronger scent of the yews and the box trees
and the moist earth steaming in the sun, and with another yet, an acrid,
faint, and penetrating scent, which she knew well, but which, to-day,
instead of revolting her senses, as usual, seemed rather to intoxicate
them.

Suddenly a shiver passed over her. The hand which lay on the young man’s
arm was suddenly grasped in his, grasped with force and held tight,
held as it were in an embrace, and the little hand dared not take itself
away. The fingers of his hand were trying to get between the delicate
fingers of hers and take possession of it altogether. Hers resisted,
trying to clench itself in the glove by way of refusal. All the time
they went on walking, arm in arm, neither speaking nor looking, but much
moved, resistance, according to the natural law, exciting the relative
desire. At last came the surrender; the little hand opened, and their
fingers joined in a clasp which parted their gloves, for one exquisite
moment of full avowal and complete possession. The next minute the
woman’s pride awoke. She wanted to speak, to show that she was mistress
of herself, that she had no part in what was done, nor knowledge of it
at all. Finding nothing to say, she read aloud the epitaph on a tomb
lying flat among the weeds, ‘Augusta, 1847,’ and he continued, under
his breath, ‘A love-story, no doubt.’ Overhead the thrushes and
finches uttered their strident notes, not unlike the sounds of the
stone-cutting, which were heard uninterruptedly in the distance.

They were now entering the Twentieth Division, the part of the cemetery
which may be called its ‘old town,’ where the paths are narrower, the
trees higher, the tombs closer together, a confused mass of ironwork,
pillars, Greek temples, pyramids, angels, genii, busts, wings open
and wings folded. The tombs were various as the lives now hidden
beneath--commonplace, odd, original, simple, forced, pretentious,
modest. In some the floor-stones were freshly cleaned and loaded with
flowers, memorials, and miniature gardens of a Chinese elegance in
littleness. In others the mossy slabs were mouldering or parting, and
were covered with brambles and high weeds. But all bore well-known
names, names distinctly Parisian, names of lawyers, judges, merchants
of eminence, ranged here in rows as in the haunts of business and
trade. There were even double names, standing for family partnerships
in capital and connection, substantial signatures, known no more to the
directory or the bank ledger, but united for ever upon the tomb. And
Madame de Rosen remarked them with the same tone of surprise, almost
of pleasure, with which she would have bowed to a carriage in the Park,
‘Ah! the So-and-So’s! Mario? was that the singer?’ and so forth, all by
way of seeming not to know that their hands were clasped.

But presently the door of a tomb near them creaked, and there appeared
a large lady in black, with a round fresh face. She carried a little
watering-pot, and was putting to rights the flower-beds, oratory, and
tomb generally, as calmly as if she had been in a summer-house. She
nodded to them across the Enclosure with a kindly smile of unselfish
good will, which seemed to say, ‘Use your time, happy lovers; life is
short, and nothing good but love.’ A feeling of embarrassment unloosed
their hands. The spell was broken, and the Princess, with a sort of
shame, led the way across the tombs, taking the quickest and shortest
line to reach the mausoleum of the Prince.

It stood on the highest ground in ‘Division 20,’ upon a large level of
lawn and flowers, inclosed by a low rich rail of wrought iron in the
style of the Scaliger tombs at Verona. Its general appearance was
designedly rough, and fairly realised the conception of an antique
tent with its coarse folds, the red of the Dalmatian granite giving the
colour of the bark in which the canvas had been steeped. At the top of
three broad steps of granite was the entrance, flanked with pedestals
and high funereal tripods of bronze blackened with a sort of lacquer.
Above were the Rosen arms upon a large scutcheon, also of bronze, the
shield of the good knight who slept within the tent.

Entering the inclosure, they laid the wreaths here and there, on the
pedestals and on the slanted projections, representing huge tent-pegs,
at the edge of the base. The Princess went to the far end of the
interior, where in the darkness before the altar shone the silver
fringes of two kneeling-desks, and the old gold of a Gothic cross and
massive candlesticks, and there fell upon her knees--a good place to
pray in, among the cool slabs, the panels of black marble glittering
with the name and full titles of the dead, and the inscriptions from
Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs. But the Princess could find only a
few indistinct words, confused with profane thoughts, which made her
ashamed. She rose and busied herself with the flower-stands, retiring
gradually far enough to judge the effect of the sarcophagus or bed. The
cushion of black bronze, with silver monogram, was already in its place,
and she thought the hard couch with nothing upon it had a fine and
simple effect. But she wanted the opinion of Paul, who could be heard
pacing the gravel as he waited without. Mentally approving his delicacy,
she was on the point of calling him in, when the interior grew dark,
and on the trefoil lights of the lantern was heard the patter of another
shower. Twice she called him, but he did not move from the pedestal,
where he sat exposed to the rain, and without speaking declined her
invitation.

‘Come in,’ she said, ‘come in.’

Still he stayed, saying rapidly and low, ‘I do not want to come. You
love him so.’

‘Come,’ she still said, ‘come/ and taking his hand drew him to the
entrance. Step by step the splashing of the rain made them draw back
as far as the sarcophagus, and there, half sitting, half standing, they
remained side by side, contemplating beneath the low clouds the ‘old
town’ of the dead, which sloped away at their feet with its crowding
throng of pinnacles and grey figures and humbler stones, rising like
Druid architecture from the bright green. No birds were audible, no
sound of tools, nothing but the water running away on all sides, and
from the canvas cover of a half-finished monument the monotonous voices
of two artisans discussing their worries. The rain without made it all
the warmer within, and with the strong aroma of the flowers mingled
still that other inseparable scent The Princess had raised her veil,
feeling the same oppression and dryness of the mouth that she had felt
on the way up. Speechless and motionless, the pair seemed so much a
part of the tomb, that a little brown, bird came hopping in to shake
its feathers and pick a worm between the slabs. ‘It’s a nightingale,’
murmured Paul in the sweet overpowering stillness. She tried to say, ‘Do
they sing still in this month?’ But he had taken her in his arms, he had
set her between his knees at the edge of the granite couch, and putting
her head back, pressed upon her half-open lips a long, long kiss,
passionately returned.

[Illustration: Pressed upon her half-open lips a long, long kiss 146]

‘Because love is more strong than death,’ said the inscription from the
Canticle, written above them upon the marble wall.

When the Princess reached her house, where Madame Astier was awaiting
her return, she had a long cry in the arms of her friend, a refuge
unhappily not more trustworthy than those of her friend’s son. It was
a burst of lamentation and broken words. ‘Oh, my dear, oh, my dear, how
miserable I am! If you knew,’ she said, ‘if you only knew!’ She felt
with despair the hopeless difficulty of the situation, her hand solemnly
promised to the Prince d’Athis, and her affections just plighted to the
enchanter of the tombs, whom she cursed from the depths of her soul.
And, most distressing of all, she could not confide her weakness to her
affectionate friend, being sure that, the moment she opened her lips,
the mother would side with her son against ‘Sammy,’ with love against
prudence, and perhaps even compel her to the intolerable degradation of
marrying a commoner.

‘There then, there then,’ said Madame Astier, unaffected by the torrent
of grief. ‘You are come from the cemetery, I suppose, where you have
been working up your feelings again. But you know, dear, there must
be an end to _Artemisia!_’ She understood the woman’s weak vanity, and
insisted on the absurdity of this interminable mourning, ridiculous in
the eyes of the world, and at all events injurious to her beauty And
after all, it was not a question of a second love-match! What was
proposed was no more than an alliance between two names and titles
equally noble. Herbert himself, if he saw her from heaven, must be
content.

‘He did understand things, certainly, poor dear,’ sighed Colette de
Rosen, whose maiden name was Sauvadon. She was set on becoming ‘Madame
l’Ambassadrice,’ and still more on remaining ‘Madame la Princesse.’

‘Look, dear, will you have a piece of good advice? You just run away.
Sammy will start in a week. Do not wait for him. Take Lavaux. He knows
St. Petersburg, and will settle you there meanwhile. And there will be
this advantage, that you will escape a painful scene with the Duchess. A
Corsican, you know, is capable of anything.’

‘Ye-es, perhaps I had better go,’ said Madame de Rosen, to whom the
chief merit of the plan was that she would avoid any fresh attack, and
put distance between her and the folly of the afternoon.

‘Is it the tomb?’ asked Madame Astier, seeing her hesitate. ‘Is that
it? Why, Paul will finish it very well without you. Come, pet, no more
tears. You may water your beauty, but you must not over-water it.’ As
she went away in the fading light to wait for her omnibus, the good lady
said to herself, ‘Oh dear, D’Athis will never know what his marriage is
costing me!’ And here her feeling of weariness, her longing for a good
rest after so many trials, reminded her suddenly that the most trying of
all was to come, the discovery and confession at home. She had not
yet had time to think about it, and now she was going fast towards
it, nearer and nearer with every turn of the heavy wheels. The very
anticipation made her shudder: it was not fear; but the frantic outcries
of Astier-Réhu, his big rough voice, the answer that must be given, and
then the inevitable reappearance of his trunk--oh, what a weariness it
would be! Could it not be put off till to-morrow? She was tempted not
to confess at once, but to turn suspicion upon some one else, upon
Teyssèdre for instance, till the next morning. She would at least get a
quiet night.

‘Ah, here is Madame! Something has happened/ cried Corentine, as she ran
to the door in a fluster, excitement making more conspicuous than usual
the marks of her smallpox. Madame Astier made straight for her own room;
but the door of the study opened, and a peremptory ‘Adelaide!’ compelled
her to go in. The rays of the lamp-globe showed her that the face of her
husband had a strange expression. He took her by the two hands and drew
her into the light. Then in a quivering voice he said, ‘Loi-sillon is
dead,’ and he kissed her on both cheeks.

Not found out! No, not yet. He had not even gone up to his papers; but
had been pacing his study for two hours, eager to see her and tell her
this great news, these three words which meant a change in their whole
life, ‘Loisillon is dead!’




CHAPTER VII.

            Mlle. Germaine de Freydet,

                          Clos Jallanges.

My DEAREST SISTER,--Your letters distress me much. I know you are lonely
and ill, and feel my absence; but what am I to do? Remember my master’s
advice to show myself and be seen. It is not, as you may suppose, at
Clos Jallanges, in my tweed suit and leggings, that I could get on with
my candidature. I cannot but see that the time is near. Loisillon
is sinking visibly, dying by inches; and I am using the time to make
friendships among the Academicians, which may mean votes hereafter.
Astier has already introduced me to several of them. I often go to
fetch him after the meetings. It is charming to see them come out of the
Institute, almost all laden with years as with honours, and walk away
arm-in-arm in groups of three or four, bright and happy, talking loud
and filling the pavement, their eyes still wet after the hearty laughs
they have had within. ‘Paille-ron is very smart,’ says one; ‘But Danjou
gave it him back,’ says another. As for me, I fasten on to the arm of
Astier-Réhu and, ranked with the deities, seem almost a deity myself.
One by one at this or that bridge the groups break up. ‘See you next
Thursday,’ is the last word. And I go back to the Rue de Beaune with my
master, who gives me encouragement and advice, and in the confidence of
success says, with his frank laugh, ‘Look at me, Freydet; I am twenty
years younger after a meeting!’

I really believe the dome does keep them fresh. Where is there
another old man as lusty as Jean Réhu, whose ninety-eighth birthday we
celebrated yesterday evening by a dinner at Voisin’s? Lavaux suggested
it, and if it cost me 40L., it gave me the opportunity of counting my
men. We were twenty-five at table, all Academicians, except Picheral,
Lavaux, and myself. I have the votes of seventeen or eighteen; the rest
are uncertain, but well disposed. Dinner very well served, and very
chatty.

By the way, I have asked Lavaux to come to Clos Jallanges for his
holiday. He is librarian of the Bibliothèque Mazarine. He shall have
the large room in the wing, looking out on the pheasants. I don’t
think highly of his character, but I must have him; he is the Duchess’s
‘zebra’! Did I tell you that a zebra in ladies’ language is a bachelor
friend, unoccupied, discreet, and quick, kept always at hand for errands
and missions too delicate to be trusted to a servant? In the
intervals of his diplomacy a young zebra may sometimes get particular
gratifications, but as a rule the animal is tame and wants little,
content with small promotion, a place at the bottom of the table, and
the honour of showing his paces before the lady and her friends. Lavaux,
I fancy, has made his place profitable in other ways. He is so clever
and, in spite of his easy manner, so much dreaded. He knows, as he says,
‘the servants’ hall’ of two establishments, literature and politics, and
he shows me the holes and traps of which the road to the Institute is
full. Astier, my master, does not know them to this day. In his grand
simplicity he has climbed straight up, unaware of danger, with his eyes
upon the dome, confident in his strength and his labour. A hundred times
he would have broken his neck, if his wife, the cleverest of clever
women, had not guided him unperceived.

It was Lavaux who dissuaded me from publishing between this and the next
vacancy my ‘Thoughts of a Rustic.’ ‘No, no,’ said he to me, ‘you have
done enough. You might well even let it be understood that you will
not write any more. Your work is over, and you are a mere gentleman at
large. The Académie loves that.’ I put that with the valuable hint from
Picheral: ‘Do not take them your books.’

The fewer your works, I see, the better your claim. Picheral has much
influence; he too must come to us this summer. Put him on the second
floor, in what was the box-room, or somewhere. Poor Germaine, it is a
great bother for you, and ill as you are! But where’s the help? It is
bad enough not to have a house in town for the winter and give parties,
like Dalzon, Moser, and all my competitors. Do, do take care of yourself
and get well.

To go back to my dinner party. There was naturally much talk of the
Académie, its elections and duties, its merits and demerits in public
estimation. The ‘deities’ hold that those who run down the institution
are all, without exception, poor creatures who cannot get in. For the
strong apparent instances to the contrary, there was a reason in each
case. I ventured to mention the great name of Balzac, a man from our
country. But the playwright Desminières, who used to manage the amateur
theatricals at Compiègne, burst out with ‘Balzac! But did you know him?
Do you know, sir, the sort of man he was? An utter Bohemian! A man, sir,
who never had a guinea in his pocket! I had it from his friend Frédéric
Lemaître. Never one guinea! And you would have had the Académie----’
Here old Jean Réhu, having his trumpet to his ear, got the notion that
we were talking of ‘tallies,’ and told us the fine story of his friend
Suard coming to the Académie on January 21, 1793, the day the king was
executed, and availing himself of the absence of his colleagues to sweep
off the whole fees for the meeting.

He tells a story well, does the old gentleman, and but for his deafness
would be a brilliant talker. When I gave his health, with a few
complimentary verses on his marvellous youth, the old fellow in a
gracious reply called me his dear colleague. My master Astier corrected
him--‘future colleague.’ Laughter and applause. ‘Future colleague’ was
the title which they all gave me as they said goodbye, shaking my hand
with a significant pressure, and adding, ‘We shall meet before long,’ or
‘See you soon,’ in reference to my expected call. It is not a pleasant
process, paying these calls, but everyone goes through it. Astier-Réhu
told me, as we came away from the dinner, that when he was elected old
Dufaure let him come ten times without seeing him. Well, he would not
give up, and the eleventh time the door was thrown open. Nothing like
persistence.

In truth, if Ripault-Babin or Loisillon died (they are both in danger,
but even now I have most hopes of Ripault-Babin), my only serious
competitor would be Dalzon. He has talent and wealth, stands well with
the ‘dukes,’ and his cellar is capital; the only thing against him is a
youthful peccadillo lately discovered, ‘Without the Veil,’ a poem of 600
lines printed ‘at Eropolis,’ anonymously, and utterly outrageous. They
say that he has bought up and suppressed the whole, but there are still
some copies in circulation with signature and dedication. Poor Dalzon
contradicts the story and makes a desperate fight. The Académie reserves
judgment pending the inquiry. That is why my respected master said to me
gravely one evening without giving reasons, ‘I shall not vote again
for M. Dalzon.’ The Académie is a club, that is the important thing to
remember. You cannot go in without proper dress and clean hands. For all
that I have too much gallantry and too much respect for my opponent to
make use of such concealed weapons; and Fage, the bookbinder in the
Cour des Comptes, the strange little humpback whom I sometimes meet
in Védrine’s studio--Fage, I say, who has much acquaintance with the
curiosities of bibliography, got a good snub when he offered me one of
the signed copies of ‘Without the Veil.’ ‘Then it will go to M. Moser,’
was his calm reply.

Talking of Védrine, I am in an awkward position. In the warmth of our
first few meetings I made him promise to bring his family to stay with
us in the country. But how can we have him along with people like Astier
and Lavaux, who detest him? He is so uncivilised, such an oddity! Just
imagine! He is by descent Marquis de Védrine, but even at school he
suppressed the title and the ‘de,’ additions coveted by most people in
this democratic age, when everything else may be got. And what is his
reason? Because, do you see, he wants to be liked for his own sake! The
latest of him is that the Princess de Rosen will not take the knight,
which he has done for the Prince’s tomb. It was mentioned every minute
in the family, where money is not plenty. ‘When we have sold the knight,
I am to have a clockwork horse,’ said the boy. The poor mother too
counted upon the knight for refurnishing her empty presses, and to
Védrine himself the price of the master-piece meant just three months’
holiday in a Nile-boat. Well! the knight not sold, or to be paid for
heaven knows when, after a lawsuit and a valuation, if you fancy they
are thrown out by that, you are much mistaken. When I got to the Cour
des Comptes the day after the disappointment, I found friend Védrine
planted before an easel, absorbed in pleasure, sketching upon a large
canvas the curious wild vegetation on the burnt building. Behind him
were his wife and son in ecstasy, and Madame Védrine, with the little
girl in her arms, said to me in a serious undertone, ‘We are so happy;
Monsieur Védrine has at last got to oils.’ Is it not laughable? Is it
not touching?

This piecemeal letter, dear, will show you in what a bustle and fever
I live since I have been working at my candidature. I go here and go
there, to ‘at homes,’ to dinner parties, to evening parties. I am even
supposed to be ‘zebra’ to good Madame Ancelin, because I am constant at
her drawing-room on Fridays, and on Tuesday evenings in her box at the
Français. A very countrified ‘zebra,’ I am sure, in spite of the changes
I have had made to give myself a graver and more fashionable appearance.
You must look for a surprise when I come back. Last Monday there was
a select party at the Duchess Padovani’s, where I had the honour to be
presented to the Grand-Duke Leopold. His Highness complimented me on
my last book, and all my books, which he knows as well as I do. It is
marvellous what foreigners do know. But it is at the Astiers’ that I
am most comfortable. It is such a primitive, simple, united family. One
day, after breakfast, there arrived a new Academic coat for the master,
and we tried it on together. I say ‘we,’ for he wanted to see how the
palm leaves looked upon me. I put on the coat, hat, and sword, a real
sword, my dear, which comes out, and has a groove in the middle for the
blood to run away, and I assure you I was struck with my appearance; but
this I tell you only to show the intimacy of this invaluable friendship.

When I come back to my peaceful, if narrow, quarters, if it is too late
to write to you, I always do a little counting. On the full list of the
Académie I tick those of whom I am sure, and those who stand by Dalzon.
Then I do various sums in subtraction and addition. It is an excellent
amusement, as you will see when I show you. As I was telling you,
Dalzon has the ‘dukes,’ but the writer of the ‘House of Orleans,’ who is
received at Chantilly, is to introduce me there before long. If I get
on there--and with this object I am diligently studying a certain
engagement at Rocroy; so you see your brother is becoming deep--well, if
I get on, the author of ‘Without the Veil, printed at Eropolis,’ loses
his strongest support. As for my opinions, I do not disavow them. I am
a Republican, but not extreme, and more particularly I am a Candidate!
Immediately after this little expedition I quite expect to come back
to my darling Germaine, who will, I do hope, bear up and think of the
happiness of the triumph! We will do it, dear! We will get into the
‘goose’s garden,’ as it is called by that Bohemian Védrine; but we shall
need endurance.

             Your loving brother,

                          Abel de Freydet.

I have opened my letter again to say that the morning papers announce
the death of Loisillon. The stroke of fate is always affecting, even
when fully expected. What a sad event! What a loss to French literature!
And unhappily, dear, it will keep me here still longer. Please pay the
labourers. More news soon.




CHAPTER VIII.

DESTINY had willed that Loisillon, fortunate always, should be fortunate
in dying at the right moment. A week later, when houses were closed,
society broken up, the Chamber and the Institute not sitting, his
funeral train would have been composed of Academicians attentive to
their tallies, followed only by deputies from the numerous societies of
which he was Secretary or President. But business-like to the last and
after, he went off to the moment, just before the Grand Prix, choosing
a week entirely blank, when, as there was no crime, or duel, or
interesting lawsuit, or political event, the sensational obsequies of
the Permanent Secretary would be the only pastime of the town.

The funeral mass was to be at twelve o’clock, and long before that hour
an immense crowd was gathering round St. Germain des Prés. The traffic
was stopped, and no carriages but those of persons invited were allowed
to pass within the rails, strictly kept by a line of policemen posted
at intervals. Who Loisillon was, what he had done in his seventy years’
sojourn among mankind, what was the meaning of the capital letter
embroidered in silver on the funeral drapery, was known to but few in
the crowd. The one thing which struck them was the arrangement of the
protecting line, and the large space left to the dead, distance, room,
and emptiness being the constant symbols of respect and grandeur. It
had been understood that there would be a chance of seeing actresses and
persons of notoriety, and the cockneys at a distance were putting names
to the faces they recognised among the groups conversing in front of the
church.

[Illustration: There, under the black-draped porch 164]

There, under the black-draped porch, was the place for hearing the true
funeral oration on Loisillon, quite other than that which was to be
delivered presently at Mont Parnasse, and the true article on the man
and his work, very different from the notices ready for to-morrow’s
newspapers. His work was a ‘Journey in Val d’Andorre,’ and two reports
published at the National Press, relating to the time when he was
Superintendent at the Beaux-Arts. The man was a sort of shrewd attorney,
creeping and cringing, with a permanent bow and an apologetic attitude,
which seemed to ask your pardon for his decorations, your pardon for
his insignia, your pardon for his place in the Académie--where his
experience as a man of business was useful in fusing together a number
of different elements, with none of which he could well have been
classed--your pardon for the amazing success which had raised so high
such a worthless winged grub. It was remembered that at an official
dinner he had said of himself complacently, as he bustled round the
table with a napkin on his arm, ‘What an excellent servant I should have
made!’ And it might have been written on his tomb.

And while they moralised upon the nothingness of his life, his corpse,
the remains of nothing, was receiving the honours of death. Carriage
after carriage drew up at the church; liveries brown and liveries blue
came and disappeared; long-frocked footmen bowed to the pavement with
a pompous banging of doors and steps; the groups of journalists
respectfully made way, now for the Duchess Padovani, stately and proud,
now for Madame Ancelin, blooming in her crape, now for Madame Eviza,
whose Jewish eyes shone through her veil with blaze enough to attract
a constable--all the ladies of the Académie, assembled in full
congregation to practise their worship, not so much by a service to
the memory of Loisillon, as by contemplation of their living idols, the
‘deities’ made and fashioned by the cunning of their little hands, the
work upon which, as women, they had employed the superabundance of their
energy, artfulness, ambition, and pride. Some actresses had come too,
on the pretext that the deceased had been the president of some sort
of Actors’ Orphanage, but moved in reality by the frantic determination
‘not to be out of it,’ which belongs to their class. Their expressions
of woe were such that they might have been taken for near relations. A
carriage suddenly drawing up set down a distracted group of black veils,
whose sorrow was distressing to witness. The widow, at last? No, it is
Marguerite Oger, the great sensational actress, whose appearance excites
all round the square a prolonged stir and much pushing about. From
the porch a journalist ran forward to meet her, and taking her hands
besought her to bear up. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I ought to be calm; I will,’
Whereupon, drying her tears and forcing them back with her handkerchief,
she entered, or it should rather be said ‘went on,’ into the darkness of
the nave, with its background of glimmering tapers, fell down before
a desk on the ladies’ side in a prostration of self-abandonment, and
rising with a sorrowful air said to another actress at her side, ‘How
much did they take at the Vaudeville last night?’ ‘168L. 18s.,’ answered
her friend, with the same accent of grief.

Lost in the crowd at the edge of the square, Abel de Freydet heard the
people round him say, ‘It’s Marguerite. How well she did it!’ But being
a small man, he was trying in vain to make his way, when a hand was laid
upon his shoulder. ‘What, still in Paris? It must be a trial for your
poor sister,’ said Védrine, as he carried him along. Working his way
with his strong elbows through the stream of people who only came up to
his shoulder, and saying occasionally, ‘Excuse me, gentlemen--members of
the family,’ he brought to the front with him his country friend,
who, though delighted at the meeting, felt some embarrassment, as the
sculptor talked after his fashion, freely and audibly. ‘Bless me, what
luck Loisillon has! Why there weren’t more people for Béranger. This is
the sort of thing to keep a young man’s pecker up.’ Here Freydet, seeing
the hearse approaching, took off his hat. ‘Good gracious, what have you
done to your head? Turn round. Why you look like Louis Philippe!’ The
poet’s moustache was turned down, his hair brushed forward, and his
pleasant face showed its complexion of ruddy brown between whiskers
touched with grey. He drew up his short figure with a stiff dignity,
whereat Védrine laughing said, ‘Ah, I see. Made up for the grandees at
Chantilly? So you are still bent upon the Académie! Why, just look at
the exhibition yonder.’

In the sunlight and on the broad enclosure the official attendants
immediately behind the hearse made a shocking show. Chance might seem
to have chosen them for a wager among the most ridiculous seniors in the
Institute, and they looked especially-ugly in the uniform designed
by David, the coat embroidered with green, the hat, the Court
sword, beating against legs for which the designer was certainly not
responsible. First came Gazan; his hat was tilted awry by the bumps of
his skull, and the vegetable green of the coat threw into relief the
earthy colour and scaly texture of his elephantine visage. At his side
was the grim tall Laniboire with purple apoplectic veins and a crooked
mouth. His uniform was covered by an overcoat whose insufficient length
left visible the end of his sword and the tails of the frock, and gave
him an appearance certainly much less dignified than that of the marshal
with his black rod, who walked before. Those that followed, such as
Astier-Réhu and Desminières, were all embarrassed and uncomfortable,
all acknowledged by their apologetic and self-conscious bearing
the absurdity of their disguise, which, though it might pass in the
chastened light of their historic dome, seemed amid the real life of the
street not less laughable than a show of monkeys. ‘I declare one would
like to throw some nuts to see if they would go after them on all
fours,’ said Freydet’s undesirable companion. But Freydet did not catch
the impertinent remark. He slipped away, mixed with the procession, and
entered the church between two files of soldiers with arms reversed. He
was in his heart profoundly glad that Loisillon was dead. He had never
seen or known him; he could not love him for his work’s sake, as he had
done no work; and the only thing for which he could thank him was that
he had left his chair empty at such a convenient moment. But he was
impressed notwithstanding. The funeral pomp to which custom makes the
old Parisian indifferent, the long line of knapsacks, the muskets that
fell on the flags with a single blow (at the command of a boyish little
martinet, with a stock under-his chin, who was probably performing on
this occasion his first military duty), and, above all, the funeral
music and the muffled drums, filled him with respectful emotion: and
as always happened when he felt keenly, rimes began to rise. He had
actually got a good beginning, presenting a grand picture of the storm
and electric agitation and mental eclipse produced in the atmosphere
of a nation when one of its great men disappears. But he broke off his
thoughts to make room for Danjou, who, having arrived very late, pushed
on amid the looks and whispers of the ladies, gazing about him coldly
and haughtily and passing his hand over his head as he habitually does,
doubtless to ascertain the safety of his back hair.

‘He did not recognise me,’ thought Freydet, hurt by the crushing glance
with which the Academician relegated to the ranks the nobody who had
ventured to greet him; ‘it’s my whiskers, I suppose.’ The interruption
turned the thoughts of the candidate from his verses, and he began to
consider his plan of operations, his calls, his official announcement
to the Permanent Secretary. But what was he thinking of? The Permanent
Secretary was dead! Would Astier-Réhu be appointed before the vacation?
And when would the election be? He proceeded to consider all the
‘details, down to his coat. Should he go to Astier’s tailor now? And did
the tailor supply also the hat and sword?

_Pie Jesu, Domine_, sang a voice behind the altar, the swelling notes of
an opera singer, asking repose for Loisillon, whom it might be thought
the Divine Mercy had destined to special torment, for all through the
church, loud and soft, in every variety of voice, solo and in unison,
came the supplication for ‘repose, repose.’ Ah, let him sleep quietly
after his many years of turmoil and intrigue! The solemn stirring chant
was answered in the nave by women’s sobbing, above which rose the tragic
convulsive gasp of Marguerite Oger, the gasp so impressive in the
fourth act of ‘Musidora.’ All this lamentation touched the kind-hearted
candidate and linked itself in his feelings to other lamentations and
other sorrows. He thought of relatives who had died, and of his sister
who had been a mother to him, and who was now given up by all the
doctors, and knew it, and spoke of it in every letter. Ah! would she
live even to see the day of his success? Tears blinded him, and he was
obliged to wipe his eyes.

‘Don’t come it too strong, it won’t seem genuine,’ said the sneering
voice of fat Lavaux, grinning close at his ear. He turned round
angrily; but here the young officer gave at stentorian pitch the command
‘Carry--arms!’ and the bayonets rattled on the muskets while the muffled
tones of the organ rolled out the ‘Dead March.’ The procession began
to form for leaving the church, headed as before by Gazan, Laniboire,
Desminières, and Freydet’s old master, Astier-Réhu. They all looked
superb now, the parrot green of their laced coats being subdued by
the dim religious light of the lofty building as they walked down the
central aisle, two and two, slowly, as if loth to reach the great square
of daylight seen through the open doors. Behind came the whole Society,
headed by its senior member, the wonderful old Jean Réhu, looking taller
than ever in a long coat, and holding up the little brown head, carved,
one might fancy, out of a cocoa-nut, with an air of contemptuous
indifference telling that ‘this was a thing he had seen’ any number of
times before. Indeed in the course of the sixty years during which he
had been in receipt of the tallies of the Académie, he must have heard
many such funeral chants, and sprinkled much holy water on illustrious
biers.

But if Jean Réhu was a ‘deity,’ whose miraculous immortality justified
the name, it could only be applied in mockery to the band of patriarchs
who followed him. Decrepit, bent double, gnarled as old apple trees,
with feet of lead, limp legs, and blinking owlish eyes, they stumbled
along, either supported on an arm or feeling their way with outstretched
hands; and their names whispered by the crowd recalled works long
dead and forgotten. Beside such ghosts as these, ‘on furlough from the
cemetery,’ as was remarked by a smart young soldier in the guard of
honour, the rest of the Academicians seemed young. They posed and
strutted before the delighted eyes of the ladies, whose bright gleams
reached them through the black veils, the ranks of the crowd, and the
cloaks and knapsacks of the bewildered soldiers. On this occasion again
Freydet, bowing to two or three ‘future colleagues,’ encountered cold or
contemptuous smiles, like those which a man sees when he dreams that his
dearest friends have forgotten him. But he had not time to be depressed,
being caught and turned about by the double stream which moved up the
church and towards the door.

‘Well, my lord, you will have to be stirring now,’ was the advice of
friendly Picheral, whispered in the midst of the hubbub and the scraping
of chairs. It sent the candidate’s blood tingling through his veins. But
just as he passed before the bier Danjou muttered, without looking at
him, as he handed him the holy-water brush, ‘Whatever you do, be quiet,
and let things slide.’ His knees shook beneath him. Bestir yourself! Be
quiet! Which advice was he to take? Which was the best? Doubtless his
master, Astier, would tell him, and he tried to reach him outside the
church. It was no easy task in the confusion of the court, where they
were forming the procession, and lifting the coffin under its heap of
countless wreaths. Never was a scene more lively than this coming out
from the funeral into the brilliant daylight; everywhere people were
bowing and talking gossip quite unconnected with the ceremony, while the
bright expression on every face showed the reaction after a long hour’s
sitting still and listening to melancholy music. Plans were made,
meetings arranged; the hurrying stream of life, stopped for a brief
while, impatiently resumed its course, and poor Loisillon was left far
behind in the past to which he belonged.

‘At the Français to-night, don’t forget; it’s the last Tuesday,’
simpered Madame Ancelin, while Paul said to Lavaux, ‘Are you going to
see it through?’

‘No; I’m taking Madame Eviza home.’

‘Then come to Keyser’s at six. We shall want freshening after the
speeches.’

The mourning coaches were drawing up one after the other, while the
private carriages set off at a trot. People were leaning out of all the
windows in the square, and over towards the Boulevard Saint-Germain
men standing on the stationary tramcars showed tier after tier of heads
rising in dark relief against the blue sky. Freydet, dazzled by the sun,
tilted his hat over his eyes and looked at the crowd, which reached as
far as he could see. He felt proud, transferring to the Académie the
posthumous glory which certainly could not be ascribed to the author
of the ‘Journey in Val d’Andorre,’ though at the same time he was
distressed at noticing that his dear ‘future colleagues’ obviously kept
him at a distance, became meditative when he drew near, or turned away,
making little groups to keep out the intruder. And these were the very
men who only two days ago at Voisin’s had said to him, ‘When are
you going to join us?’ But the heaviest blow was the desertion of
Astier-Réhu.

‘What a calamity, sir!’ said Freydet, coming up to him and putting on
a doleful expression for the purpose of saying something sympathetic.
Astier-Réhu, standing by the hearse, made no answer, but went on turning
over the leaves of the oration he would shortly have to deliver. ‘What a
calamity!’ repeated Freydet.

‘My dear Freydet, you are indecent,’ said his master, roughly, in a loud
voice. And with one harsh snap of the jaw he betook himself again to his
reading.

Indecent! What did he mean? The poor man looked himself over, but could
find no explanation of the reproach. What was the matter? What had he
done?

For some minutes he was quite dazed. Vaguely he saw the hearse start
under its shaking pyramid of flowers, with green coats at the four
corners, more green coats behind, then all the Society, and immediately
following, but at a respectful distance, another group, in which he
found himself involved and carried along he knew not how. Young men, old
men, all terribly gloomy and depressed, all marked on the brow with the
same deep furrow, set there by one fixed idea, all expressing with their
eyes the same hatred and distrust of their neighbours. When he had
got over his discomfiture, and was able to identify these persons,
he recognised the faded, hopeless face of old Moser, the candidate
everlasting; the honest expression of Dalzon, the author of ‘that
book,’ who had failed at the last election; and de Salêles!--and
Guérineau!--Why, they were the ‘fish in tow’! They were the men about
whom the Académie ‘does not trouble itself,’ whom it leaves, hanging
on to a strong hook, to be drawn along in the wake of the ship of fame.
There they all were--all of them, poor drowned fish!--some dead and
under the water; others still struggling, turning up sad and greedy eyes
full of an eager craving, never to be appeased. And while he vowed to
himself to avoid a similar fate, Abel de Freydet followed the bait and
dragged at the line, too firmly struck already to get himself free.

Far away, along the line cleared for the procession, muffled drums
alternated with the blast of trumpets, bringing crowds of bystanders on
the pavement and heads to every window. Then the music again took up the
long-drawn strains of the Hero’s March. In the presence of so impressive
a tribute as this national funeral, this proud protest on the part
of humanity, crushed and overcome by death but decking defeat in
magnificence, it was hard to realise that all this pomp was for
Loisillon, Permanent Secretary of the Académie Française--for nothing,
servant to nothing.




CHAPTER IX.

EVERY day between four and six, earlier or later according to the time
of year, Paul Astier came to take his _douche_ at Keyser’s hydropathic
establishment at the top of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré Twenty minutes’
fencing, boxing, or single-stick followed by a bath and a cold _douche_;
then a little halt at the flower-shop, as he came out, to have a
carnation stitched in his buttonhole; then a constitutional as far
as the Arc de l’Etoile, Stenne and the phaeton following close to the
footway. Finally came a turn in the Bois, where Paul, thanks to his
observance of fashionable hygiene, displayed a feminine delicacy of
colouring and a complexion rivalling any lady’s. By this visit to
Keyser’s he also saved himself the trouble of reading the papers. Gossip
went on between one dressing-room and another, or on the lounges of
the fencing-room, where the visitors sat in fencing dress or flannel
dressing-gowns, or even outside the doctor’s door while awaiting the
_douche_. From clubs, drawing-rooms, the Chamber, the Bourse, or
the Palais de Justice came in the news of the day, and there it was
proclaimed freely in loud tones, to the accompaniment of the clashing
of swords and sticks, shouts for the waiter, resounding slaps on bare
backs, creaking of wheel-chairs for rheumatic patients, heavy plunges
re-echoing under the reverberating roof of the swimming-bath, while
above the various sounds of splashing and spurting water rose the voice
of worthy Dr. Keyser, standing on his platform, and the ever-recurring
burden, ‘Turn round.’

On this occasion Paul Astier was ‘turning round’ under the refreshing
shower with great enjoyment; he was getting rid of the dust and fatigue
of his wearisome afternoon, as well as of the lugubrious sonorities of
Astier-Réhu’s Academic regret ‘His hour sounded upon the bell’... ‘the
hand of Loisillon was cold’... ‘he had drained the cup of happiness’...
&c, &c. Oh Master! Master! oh, respected papa! It took a good deal
of water, showers, streams, floods of it, to wash off all that grimy
rubbish.

[Illustration: Passed a tall figure bent double 182]

As he went away with the water running off him, he passed a tall
figure bent double, coming up from the swimming bath, which gave him a
shivering nod from under a huge gutta-percha cap covering the head and
half the face. The man’s lean pallor and stiff stooping walk made Paul
take him for one of the poor invalids who attend the establishment
regularly, and whose apparition, silent as night-birds in the
fencing-room where they come to be weighed, contrasts so strangely
with the healthy laughter and superabundant vigour of the rest of the
company. But the contemptuous curve of the large nose and the weary
lines round the mouth vaguely recalled some face he knew in society.
In his dressing-room he asked the man who was shampooing him, ‘Who was
that, Raymond, who bowed to me just now?’

‘Why, that’s the Prince d’Athis, sir,’ replied Raymond, with a
plebeian’s satisfaction in uttering the word ‘prince.’ ‘He has been
taking _douches_ for some time past, and generally comes in the morning.
But he is later to-day, on account of a burial, so he told Joseph.’

The door of Paul’s dressing-room was partly open during this dialogue,
and in the room on the opposite side of the passage was visible La vaux.
As he pulled on and buckled his long clerical hose, he said, ‘I say,
Paul, did you see Sammy coming to freshen himself up a bit?’

‘Freshen himself up?’ said Paul. ‘What for?’

‘He’s going to be married in a fortnight, you know.’

‘Oh! And when does he go to his Embassy?’

‘Why, now, at once. The Princess has started. They are to be married out
there.’

Paul had a horrid presentiment. ‘The Princess?’ he asked. ‘Whom is he
going to marry?’

‘Where have you been? It’s been the talk of Paris for the last two days!
Colette, of course; Colette the inconsolable. I should like to see what
the Duchess looks like. At the Loisillon affair she carried herself
well, but never lifted her veil or spoke a word. It’s a tough bit to
swallow, eh? When you think that only yesterday I was helping her to
choose materials for the room he was to have at St. Petersburg!’

The ill-natured unctuous voice of the fashionable scandalmonger went on
with the story as he finished buckling his garters, accompanied by
the sound of a _douche_ two boxes off, and the Prince’s voice saying,
‘Harder, Joseph, harder, don’t be afraid.’ Freshening himself up, was
he?

Paul had crossed the passage as soon as Lavaux began to talk, that he
might hear better. He was seized with a wild desire to kick in the door
of the Prince’s room, spring on him, and have an explanation face to
face with the scoundrel who was stealing the fortune almost in his
grasp. Suddenly he perceived that he had nothing on, reflected that his
wrath was ill-timed, and went back to his room, where he calmed down a
little as he realised that the first thing to do was to have a talk with
his mother and find out exactly how matters stood.

That afternoon, for once, he had no flower in his buttonhole, and while,
as the stream of carriages went past, the ladies looked languidly for
the charming young man in the usual row, he was driving rapidly to the
Rue de Beaune. There he was greeted by Corentine with bare arms and a
dirty apron. She had taken the opportunity of her mistress’s absence to
have a great clean-up.

‘Do you know where my mother is dining?’

No, her mistress had not told her. But the master was upstairs,
rummaging in his papers. The little staircase leading to the paper-room
creaked under Léonard Astier’s heavy tread.

‘Is that you, Paul?’ he asked.

The dim light of the passage and his own agitation prevented the young
man from noticing his father’s extraordinary appearance and the dazed
sound of his voice when he answered.

‘How’s the Master?’ said the son--‘So mamma’s not in?’

‘No, she is dining with Madame Ancelin and going on to the Français; I
am to join them in the evening.’

After this the father and son had nothing further to say to each other.
They met like two strangers, like two men of hostile races. On this
occasion, indeed, Paul in his impatience was half inclined to ask
Leonard whether he knew anything about the marriage; but he thought the
next minute, ‘No, he is too stupid; mother would never say a word to
him.’ His father, who was also strongly tempted to put a question,
called him back with an air of embarrassment.

‘Paul,’ he said, ‘I have lost--I can’t find----’

‘Can’t find what?’ asked the son.

Astier-Réhu hesitated a moment; but after looking closely at the pretty
face, whose expression, on account of the bend in the nose, was never
perfectly straightforward, he added in a gloomy, surly tone--

‘No, nothing; it does not matter. I won’t keep you.’

There was nothing for it but to meet his mother at the theatre in Madame
Ancelin’s box. That meant two or three hours to be got through first.
Paul dismissed his carriage and ordered Stenne to bring him his dress
things at his club. Then he started for a stroll through the city in
a faint twilight, while the clipped shrubs of the Tuileries Gardens
assumed brighter colours as the sky grew dark around them. It was the
mystic hour so precious to people pursuing dreams or making plans.
The carriages grow fewer, the shadowy figures hurry by and touch the
stroller lightly. There is no interruption to the flow of a man’s
thoughts. So the ambitious young fellow, who had quite recovered his
presence of mind, carried on his reflections clearly. His thoughts were
like those of Napoleon at the last hour of the battle of Waterloo: after
a long day of success defeat had come with night. What was the reason?
What mistake had he made? He replaced the pieces on the chessboard, and
looked for the explanation of failure, but in vain. It had perhaps been
rash of him to let two days pass without seeing her. But it was the most
elementary rule that after such a scene as that in the cemetery a woman
should be left to herself to recover. How was he to foresee this sudden
flight? Suddenly a hope flashed upon him. He knew that the Princess
changed her plan as often as a bird its perch. Perhaps she might not
yet have gone; perhaps he should find her in the midst of preparations,
unhappy, undecided, asking Herbert’s portrait for advice, and should
win her back by one embrace. He understood and could follow now all the
capricious turns of the romance which had been going on in her little
head.

He took a cab to the Rue de Courcelles. Nobody there. The Princess had
gone abroad, they told him, that very morning. A terrible fit of despair
came over him, and he went home instead of to the club, so as not to
have to talk and answer questions. His spirits sank even lower at the
sight of his great mediaeval erection and its front, in the style of
the _Tour de la Faim_, all covered with bills; it suggested the piles
of overdue accounts. As he felt his way in, he was greeted by a smell
of fried onions filling the whole place; for his spruce little valet
on nights when his master dined at the club would cook himself a tasty
dish. A gleam of daylight still lingered in the studio, and Paul
flung himself down on a sofa. There, as he was trying to think by what
ill-luck his artfullest, cleverest designs had been upset, he fell
asleep for a couple of hours and woke up another man. Just as
memory gains in sharpness during the sleep of the body, so had his
determination and talent for intrigue gone on acting during his short
rest. He had found a new plan, and moreover a calm fixity of resolution,
such as among the modern youth of France is very much more rarely met
with than courage under arms.

He dressed rapidly and took a couple of eggs and a cup of tea; and
when, with a faint odour of the warm curling-iron about his beard and
moustaches, he entered the Théâtre Français and gave Madame Ancelin’s
name at the box-office, the keenest observer would have failed to detect
any absorbing preoccupation in the perfect gentleman of fashion, and
would never have guessed the contents of this pretty drawing-room
article, black-and-white lacquered, and well locked.

Madame Ancelin’s worship of official literature had two temples, the
Académie Française and the Comédie Française. But the first of these
places being open to the pious believer only at uncertain periods,
she made the most of the second, and attended its services with great
regularity. She never missed a ‘first night,’ whether important or
unimportant, nor any of the Subscribers’ Tuesdays. And as she read
no books but those stamped with the hall-mark of the Académie, so the
actors at the Comédie were the only players to whom she listened with
enthusiasm, with excited ejaculations and rapturous amazement. Her
exclamations began at the box-office, at the sight of the two great
marble fonts, which the good lady’s fancy had set up before the statues
of Rachel and Talma in the entrance to the ‘House of Molière.’

‘Don’t they look after it well? Just look at the door-keepers! What a
theatre it is!’

The jerky movements of her short arms and the puffing of her fat little
body diffused through the passage a sense of noisy gleefulness which
made people say in every box, ‘Here’s Madame Ancelin!’ On Tuesdays
especially, the fashionable indifference of the house contrasted oddly
with the seat where, in supreme content, leaning half out of the box,
sat and cooed this good plump pink-eyed pigeon, piping away audibly,
‘Look at Coquelin! Look at De-launay! What perennial youth! What an
admirable theatre!’ She never allowed her friends to talk of anything
else, and in the _entr’actes_ greeted her visitors with exclamations of
rapture over the genius of the Academic playwright and the grace of the
Actress-Associate.

At Paul Astier’s entrance the curtain was up; and knowing that the
ritual of Madame Ancelin required absolute silence at such a time, he
waited quietly in the little room, separated by a step from the front of
the box, where Madame Ancelin was seated in bliss between Madame Astier
and Madame Eviza, while behind were Danjou and De Freydet looking like
prisoners. The click, which the box-door made and must make in shutting,
was followed by a ‘Hush!’ calculated to appal the intruder who was
disturbing the service. Madame Astier half turned round, and felt a
shiver at the sight of her son. What was the matter? What had Paul to
say to her of such pressing importance as to bring him to that haunt of
boredom--Paul, who never let himself be bored without a reason? Money
again, no doubt, horrid money! Well, fortunately she would soon have
plenty; Sammy’s marriage would make them all rich. Much as she longed to
go up to Paul and reassure him with the good news, which perhaps he had
not heard, she was obliged to stay in her seat, look on at the play, and
join as chorus in her hostess’s exclamations, ‘Look at Coquelin! Look at
De-launay! Oh! Oh!’ It was a hard trial to her to have to wait So it was
to Paul, who could see nothing but the glaring heat of the footlights,
and in the looking-glass at the side the reflection of part of the
house, stalls, dress-circle, boxes, rows of faces, pretty dresses,
bonnets, all as it were drowned in a blue haze, and presenting the
colourless ghostly appearance of things dimly seen under water. During
the _entr’acte_ came the usual infliction of indiscriminate praise.

‘Monsieur Paul! Di’ y’ see Reichemberg’s dress? Di’ y’ see the pink-bead
apron? and the ribbon ruching? Di’ y’ see? This is the only place where
they know how to dress, that it is!’

Visitors began to come, and the mother was able to get hold of her son
and carry him off to the sofa. There, in the midst of wraps and the
bustle of people going out, they spoke in low voices with their heads
close together.

‘Answer me quickly and clearly,’ began Paul ‘Is Sammy going to be
married?’

‘Yes, the Duchess heard yesterday. But she has come here to-night all
the same. Corsican pride!’

‘And whom has he caught? Can you tell me now?’

‘Why, Colette, of course! You must have had a suspicion.’

‘Not the least,’ said Paul. ‘And what shall you get for it?’

She murmured triumphantly, ‘Eight thousand pounds!’

[Illustration: Well, by your schemes I have lost a million 192]

‘Well, by your schemes I have lost a million!--a million, and a wife!’
He grasped her by the wrists in his anger, and hissed into her face,
‘You selfish marplot!’

The news took away her breath and her senses. It was Paul then, Paul,
from whom proceeded the force which acted, as she had occasionally
perceived, against her influence; it was Paul whom the little fool was
thinking of when she said, sobbing in her arms, ‘If you only knew!’ And
now, just at the end of the mines which with so much cunning and skilful
patience they had each been driving towards the treasure, one last
stroke of the axe had brought them face to face, empty-handed! They sat
silent, looking at each other, with corresponding crooks in their noses
and the same fierce gleam in both pairs of grey eyes, while all
around them were the stir of people coming and going and the buzz of
conversation. Rigid indeed is the discipline of society, seeing that it
could repress in these two creatures all the cries and groans, all the
desire to roar and slay, which filled and shook their hearts. Madame
Astier was the first to express her thoughts aloud:

‘If only the Princess were not gone!’

And she writhed her lips with rage at the thought that the sudden
departure had been her own suggestion.

‘We will get her back,’ said Paul.

‘How?’

Without answering her question, he asked, ‘Is Sammy here to-night?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, as _she_ is---- Where are you going? what do you
mean to do?’

‘Keep quiet, won’t you? Don’t interfere. You are too unlucky for me.’

He left with a crowd of visitors who were driven away by the end of the
_entr’acte_, and she went back to her seat on Madame Ancelin’s left.
Her hostess worshipped with the same ecstasy as before, and it was one
perpetual giving of thanks.

‘Oh, look at Coquelin! What humour he has! My dear, do look at him!’

‘My dear’ was indeed not attending; her eyes wandered, and on her lips
was the painful smile of a dancer hissed off the boards. With the excuse
that the footlights dazzled her, she was turning every moment towards
the audience to look for her son. Perhaps there would be a duel with
the Prince, if he was there. And all her fault--all through her stupid
bungling.

‘Ah, there’s Delaunay! Di’ y’ see him? Di’ y’ see?’

No, she had seen nothing but the Duchess’s box, where some one had just
come in, with a youthful elegant figure, like her Paul. But it was the
little Count Adriani, who had heard of the rupture like the rest of
Paris and was already tracking the game. Through the rest of the
play the mother ate her heart out in misery, turning over innumerable
confused plans for the future, mixed in her thoughts with past events
and scenes which ought to have forewarned her. Stupid, how stupid of
her! How had she failed to guess?

At last came the departure, but oh how long it took! She had to stop
every moment, to bow or smile to her friends, to say good-bye. ‘What are
you going to do this summer? Do come and see us at Deauville.’ All down
the narrow passage crammed with people, where ladies finish putting on
their wraps with a pretty movement to make sure of their ear-rings, all
down the white marble staircase to the men-servants waiting at the foot,
the mother, as she talks, still watches, listens, tries to catch in the
hum of the great fashionable swarm dispersing for some months a word or
hint of a scene that evening in a box. Here comes the Duchess, haughty
and erect in her long white and gold mantle, taking the arm of the young
officer of the Papal Guard. She knows the shabby trick her friend
has played her, and as the two women pass they exchange a cold
expressionless glance more to be dreaded than the most violent expletive
of a fishwoman. They know now what to think of each other; they know
that in the poisoned warfare, which is to succeed their sisterly
intimacy, every blow will tell, will be directed to the right spot by
practised hands. But they discharge the task imposed by society, and
both wear the same mask of indifference, so that the masterful hate
of the one can meet and strike against the spiteful hate of the other
without producing a spark.

Downstairs, in the press of valets and young clubmen, Léonard Astier was
waiting, as he had promised, for his wife. ‘Ah, there is the great man!’
exclaimed Madame Ancelin; and with a final dip of her fingers into
the holy water she scattered it around her broadcast, over the great
Astier-Réhu, the great Danjou, and Coquelin, you know! and Delaunay, you
know! Oh! Oh! Oh!--Astier did not reply, but followed with his wife on
his arm and his collar turned up against the draught. It was raining.
Madame Ancelin offered to take them home; but it was only with the
conventional politeness of a ‘carriage’ lady afraid of tiring her horses
and still more afraid of her coachman’s temper (she has invariably the
best coachman in Paris). Besides, ‘the great man’ had a cab; and without
waiting for the lady’s benediction--‘Ah, well, we know you two like to
be alone. Ah! what a happy household!’--he dragged off Madame Astier
along the wet and dirty colonnade.

When, at the end of a ball or evening party, a fashionable couple drive
off in their carriage, the question always suggests itself, ‘Now what
will they say?’ Not much usually, for the man generally comes away from
this kind of festivity weary and knocked up, while the lady continues
the party in the darkness of the carriage by inward comparisons of her
dress and her looks with those she has just seen, and makes plans
for the arrangement of her drawing-room or a new costume. Still
the restraint of feature required by society is so excessive, and
fashionable hypocrisy has reached such a height, that it would be
interesting to be present at the moment when the conventional attitude
is relaxed, to hear the real natural tone of voice, and to realise the
actual relations of the beings thus suddenly released from trammels and
sent rolling home in the light of their brougham lamps through the empty
streets of Paris. In the case of the Astiers the return home was very
characteristic. The moment they were alone the wife laid aside the
deference and pretended interest exhibited towards the Master in
society, and spoke her mind, compensating herself in so doing for the
attention with which she had listened for the hundredth time to old
stories which bored her to death. The husband, kindly by disposition and
accustomed to think well of himself and everyone else, invariably came
home in a state of bliss, and was horrified at the malicious comments of
his wife on their hosts and the guests they had met. Madame Astier would
utter calmly the most shocking accusations, exaggerating gossip in
the light unconscious way which is characteristic of Parisian society.
Rather than stimulate her he would hold his tongue and turn round in
his corner to take a little doze. But on this evening Léonard sat down
straight, regardless of the sharp ‘Do mind my dress!’ which showed that
somebody’s skirts were being crumpled. What did he care about her dress?
‘I’ve been robbed!’ he said, in such a tone that the windows rattled.

Oh dear, the autographs! She had not been thinking of them, least of
all just now, when tormented by very different anxieties, and there was
nothing feigned in her surprise.

Robbed--yes, robbed of his ‘Charles-the-Fifths,’ the three best things
in his collection! But the assurance which made his attack so violent
died out of his voice, and his suspicion hesitated, at the sight of
Adelaide’s surprise. Meanwhile she recovered her self-possession.
‘But whom do you suspect?’ Corentine, she thought, was trustworthy.
Teyssèdre? It was hardly likely that an ignorant----

Teyssèdre! He exclaimed at it, the thing seemed so obvious. Helped by
his hatred for the man of polish, he soon began to see how the crime had
come about, and traced it step by step from a chance allusion at dinner
to the value of his documents, heard by Corentine and repeated in all
innocence. Ah, the scoundrel! Why, he had the skull of a criminal!
Foolish to struggle against the intimations of instinct! There must
be something out of the common, when a floor-polisher could arouse so
strange an antipathy in a member of the Institute! Ah, well, the dolt
was done for now! He should catch it! ‘My three Charleses! Only fancy!’
He wanted to inform the police at once, before going home. His
wife tried to prevent him. ‘Are you out of your mind? Go to the
police-station after midnight?’ But he insisted, and thrust his great
numskull out into the rain to give orders to the driver. She was obliged
to pull him back with an effort, and feeling too much exhausted to carry
on the lie, to let him say his say and bring him round gradually, she
came out with the whole truth.

‘It’s not Teyssèdre--it’s I! There!’ At one breath she poured out the
story of her visit to Bos, the money she had got, the 800L., and the
necessity for it. The silence which ensued was so long that at first she
thought he had had a fit of apoplexy. It was not that; but like a child
that falls or hits itself, poor Crocodilus had opened his mouth so wide
to let out his anger, and taken so deep a breath, that he could not
utter a sound. At last came a roar that filled the Carrousel, where
their cab was at that minute splashing through the pools.

‘Robbed, robbed! Robbed by my wife for the sake of her son!’ In his
insane fury he jumbled together indiscriminately the abusive patois of
his native hillside, ‘_Ah la garso! Ah li bongri!_’ with the classical
exclamations of Harpagon bewailing his casket, _Justice, justice du
ciel!_’ and other select extracts often recited to his pupils. It was
as light as day in the bright rays of the tall electric lamps standing
round the great square, over which, as the theatres were emptying,
omnibuses and carriages were now passing in all directions.

‘Do be quiet,’ said Madame Astier; ‘everyone knows you.’

‘Except you, Madame!’

She thought he was going to beat her, and in the strained condition of
her nerves it might perhaps have been a relief. But under the terror
of a scandal he suddenly quieted down, swearing finally by his mother’s
ashes that as soon as he got home he would pack up his trunk and
go straight off to Sauvagnat, leaving his wife to depart with her
scoundrelly prodigal and live on their spoils.

Once more the deep old box with its big nails was brought hastily from
the anteroom into the study. A few billets of wood were still left in it
from the winter’s supply, but the ‘deity’ did not change his purpose for
that. For an hour the house resounded with the rolling of logs and the
banging of cupboard doors, as he flung among the sawdust and bits of
dry bark linen, clothes, boots, and even the green coat and embroidered
waistcoat of the Academic full dress, carefully put away in napkins. His
wrath was relieved by this operation, and diminished as he filled his
trunk, till his last resentful grumblings died away when it occurred to
him that, fixed as he was to his place, to uproot himself was utterly
impossible. Meanwhile Madame Astier, sitting on the edge of an armchair
in her dressing-gown, with a lace wrap round her head, watched his
proceedings and murmured between yawn and yawn with placid irony,
‘Really, Léonard, really!’




CHAPTER X.

‘My notion is that people, like things, have a right and a wrong way up,
and there’s always a place to get hold of, if you want to have a good
control and grasp of them. I know where the place is, and that’s my
power! Driver, to the Tête Noire.’ At Paul Astier’s order the open
carriage, in which the three tall hats belonging to Freydet, Védrine,
and himself rose in funereal outline against the brightness of the
afternoon landscape, drew up on the right-hand side of the bridge at
St. Cloud, in front of the inn he had named. Every jolt of the hired
conveyance over the paving of the square brought into sight an ominous
long case of green baize projecting beyond the lowered hood of the
carriage. Paul had chosen, as seconds for this meeting with D’Athis,
first the Vicomte de Freydet, on account of his title and his ‘de,’ and
with him the Count Adriani. But the Papal Embassy was afraid of adding
another scandal to the recent affair of the Cardinal’s hat, and he had
been obliged to find a substitute for Pepino in the sculptor, who would
perhaps allow himself at the last minute to be described in the official
statement as ‘Marquis.’ The matter, however, was not supposed to be
serious, only a quarrel at the club over the card-table, where the
Prince had taken a hand for a last game before leaving Paris. The affair
could not be hushed up; it was specially impossible to cave in to a
fighting man like Paul Astier, who had a great reputation in fencing
rooms, and whose records were framed and hung in the shooting-gallery in
the Avenue d’Antin.

While the carriage waited by the terrace of the _restaurant_ and the
waiters unobtrusively bestowed on it knowing glances, down a steep
little path came rolling a short, fat man, with the white spats, white
tie, silk hat, and captivating air of the doctor of a fashionable
watering-place. He made signals from the distance with his sunshade,
there’s Gomes,’ said Paul. Doctor Gomes, formerly on the resident
staff of one of the Paris hospitals, had been ruined by play and an old
attachment. Now he was ‘Uncle Gomes,’ and had an irregular practice;
not a bad fellow, but one who would stick at nothing, and had made a
specialty of affairs like the present. Fee, two guineas and breakfast.
Just now he was spending his holiday with Cloclo at Ville d’Avray, and
came puffing to the meeting place, carrying a little bag which held
his instrument case, medicines, bandages, splints--enough to set up an
ambulance.

‘Is it to be scratch or wound?’ he asked, as he took his seat in the
carriage opposite Paul.

‘Scratch, of course, doctor, scratch, with swords of the Institute. The
Académie Française against the Sciences Morales et Politiques.’

Gomès smiled as he steadied his bag between his knees.

‘I did not know, so I brought the big apparatus.’

‘Well, you must display it; it will impress the enemy,’ suggested
Védrine, in his quiet way.

The doctor winked, a little put out by the two seconds, whose faces were
unknown to the boulevards, and to whom Paul Astier, who treated him like
a servant, did not even introduce him.

As the carriage started, the window of a room on the first floor opened,
and a pair came and looked at them curiously. The girl was Marie Donval,
of the Gymnase, whom the doctor recognised and named in a loud voice.
The other was a deformed little creature, whose head was barely visible
above the window-sill. Freydet, with much indignation, and Védrine, with
some amusement, recognised Fage.

‘Are you surprised, M. de Freydet?’ said Paul. And hereupon he launched
into a savage attack upon woman. Woman! A disordered child, with all a
child’s perversity and wickedness, all its instinctive desire to cheat,
to lie, to tease, all its cowardice. She was greedy, she was vain, she
was inquisitive. Oh yes, she could serve you a hash of somebody else,
but she had not an idea of her own; and in argument, why, she was as
full of holes, twists, and slippery places as the pavement on a frosty
night after a thaw. How was conversation possible with a woman? Why,
there was nothing in her, neither kindness nor pity nor intellect--not
leven common sense. For a fashionable bonnet or one of Spricht’s gowns
she was capable of stealing, of any trick however dirty; for at bottom
the only thing she cares for is dress. To know the strength of this
passion a man must have gone, as Paul had, with the most elegant
ladies of fashion to the rooms of the great man-milliner. They were
hand-and-glove with the forewomen, asked them to breakfast at their
country houses, knelt to old Spricht as if he were the Pope himself. The
Marquise de Roca-Nera took her young daughters to him, and all but asked
him to bless them!

‘Just so,’ said the doctor, with the automatic jerk of a hireling whose
neck has been put out of joint by perpetual acquiescence. Then followed
an awkward pause, the conversation being, as it were, thrown out of gear
by this sudden and unexpectedly violent effusion from a young fellow
usually very civil and self-possessed. The sun was oppressive, and was
reflected off the dry stone walls on each side of the steep road, up
which the horses were toiling painfully, while the pebbles creaked under
the wheels.

‘To show the kindness and pity of woman, I can vouch for the following.’
It was Védrine who spoke, his head thrown back and swaying as it rested
on the hood of the carriage, his eyes half shut as he looked at some
inward vision. ‘It was not at the great milliner’s. It was at the
Hôtel-Dieu, in Bouchereau’s department. A rough, white-washed cell, an
iron bedstead with all the clothes thrown off, and on it, stark naked,
covered with sweat and foam, contorted and twisted like a clown with
sudden springs and with yells that re-echoed through the fore-court of
Notre Dame, a madman in the last agony. Beside the bed two women, one on
either side, the Sister, and one of Bouchereau’s little lady-students,
both quite young, yet with no disgust and no fear, both leaning over the
poonwretch whom no one dared go near, wiping from his brow and mouth the
sweat of his agony and the suffocating foam. The Sister was praying all
the time; the other was not. But in the inspired look in the eyes of
both, in the gentleness of the brave little hands which wiped away the
madman’s foam right from under his teeth, in the heroic and maternal
beauty of their unwearied movements, you felt that they were both very
women. There is woman! It was enough to make a man fall on his knees and
sob.’

‘Thank you, Védrine,’ said Freydet under his breath; he had been choking
with the recollection of the dear one at Clos Jallanges. The doctor
began his jerk and his ‘just so,’ but was cut short by the dry, incisive
tones of Paul Astier.

‘Oh yes, sick nurses, I’ll allow. Sickly themselves, nothing gives them
such pleasure as nursing, dressing, bathing their patients, handling
hot towels and basins; and then there’s the power they exercise over the
suffering and the weak.’ His voice hissed and rose to the pitch of his
mother’s, while from his cold eye darted a little gleam of wickedness
which made his companions wonder ‘what is up,’ and suggested to the
doctor the sage reflection, ‘All very well to talk about a scratch, and
swords of the Institute, but I should not care to be in the Prince’s
skin.’

‘Now I’ll paint you a pendant to our friend’s chromo,’ sneered Paul. ‘As
a specimen of feminine delicacy and faithfulness, take a little
widow, who even in the burial vault of the departed, and on his very
tombstone----’

‘_The Ephesian Matron!_’ broke in Védrine, ‘you want to tell us that!’
The discussion grew animated and ran on, still to an accompaniment
of the jolting wheels, upon the never-failing topics of masculine
discussion, woman and love.

‘Gentlemen, look,’ said the doctor, who from his place on the front seat
saw two carriages coming up the hill at a quick trot. In the first, an
open victoria, were the Prince’s seconds. Gomes stood up, and as he sat
down again named them in a low and respectful tone, ‘the Marquis d’Urbin
and General de Bonneuil of the Jockey Club--very good form--and my
brother-surgeon, Aubouis.’ This Doctor Aubouis was another low-caste
of the same stamp as Gomes; but as he had a ribbon his fee was
five guineas. Behind was a little brougham in which, along with the
inseparable Lavaux, was concealed D’Athis, desperately bored with the
whole business. During five minutes the three vehicles went up the hill
one behind another like a wedding or funeral procession, and nothing
was heard but the sound of the wheels and the panting or snorting of the
horses as they rattled their bits.

‘Pass them,’ said a haughty nasal voice.

‘By all means,’ said Paul, ‘they are going to see to our quarters.’
The wheels grazed on the narrow road, the seconds bowed, the doctors
exchanged professional smiles. Then the brougham went by, showing behind
the window glass, pulled up in spite of the heat, a morose motionless
profile, as pale as a corpse. ‘He won’t be paler than that an hour
hence, when they take him home with a hole in his side,’ thought Paul,
and he pictured the exact thrust, feint No. 2, followed by a direct
lunge straight in between the third and fourth ribs.

At the top of the hill the air was cooler, and laden with the scent of
lime-flowers, acacias, and roses warm in the sun. Behind the low park
railings sloped great lawns over which moved the mottled shadows of the
trees. Presently was heard the bell of a garden gate.

‘Here we are,’ said the doctor, who knew the place. It was where the
Marquis d’Urbin’s stud used to be, but for the last two years it had
been for sale. All the horses were gone, except a few colts gambolling
about in fields separated by high barriers.

The duel was to take place at the further end of the estate, on a wide
terrace in front of a white brick stable. It was reached by sloping
paths all overgrown with moss and grass, along which both parties walked
together, mingling, but not speaking, proper as could be; except that
Védrine, unable to support these fashionable formalities, scandalised
Freydet, who carried his high collar with much gravity, by exclaiming,
‘Here’s a lily of the valley,’ or pulling off a bough, and presently,
struck with the contrast between the splendid passivity of nature and
the futile activity of man, ejaculated, as he gazed on the great woods
that climbed the opposite hill-side, and the distance composed of
clustered roofs, shining water and blue haze, ‘How beautiful, how
peaceful!’ With an involuntary movement he pointed to the horizon, for
the benefit of some one whose patent leather boots came squeaking behind
him. But oh, what an outpouring of contempt, not only upon the improper
Védrine, but upon the landscape and the sky! The Prince d’Athis was
unsurpassed in contempt. He expressed it with his eye, the celebrated
eye whose flash had always overcome Bismarck; he expressed it with his
great hooked nose, and with the turned down corners of his mouth; he
expressed it without reason, without inquiry, study, or thought, and his
rise in diplomacy, his successes in love and in society, were all the
work of this supposed contempt!

In reality ‘Sammy ‘was an empty-headed bauble, a puppet picked by a
clever woman’s compassion out of the refuse and oyster shells of the
supper-tavern, raised by her higher and higher, prompted by her what to
say and, more important still, what not to say, lessoned and guided by
her, till the day when, finding himself at the top of the ladder, he
kicked away the stool which he no longer wanted. Society thought him a
very clever fellow, but Védrine did not share the general opinion; and
the comparison of Talleyrand to a ‘silk stocking full of mud’ came into
his mind as he watched this highly respectable and proper personage
stalk majestically past him. Evidently the Duchess had her wits about
her when she disguised his emptiness by making him both diplomatist and
academician, and cloaking him for the official carnival with the double
thickness of both the two thread-bare, though venerable, dominos, to
which society continues to bow. But how she could have loved such a
hollow, stony-hearted piece of crockery, Védrine did not understand. Was
it his title? But her family was as good as his. Was it the English
cut of his clothes, the frock coat closely fitted to his broken-down
shoulders, and the mud-coloured trousers that made so crude a bit of
colour among the trees? One might almost think that the young villain,
Paul, was right in his contemptuous remarks on woman’s taste for what is
low, for deformity in morals or physique!

The Prince had reached the three-foot fence which divided the path
from the meadow, and either because he mistrusted his slender legs,
or because he thought a vigorous movement improper for a man of his
position, he hesitated, particularly bothered by the sense that ‘that
huge artist fellow’ was just at his back. At last he made up his mind
to step out of his way to a gap in the wooden fence. Védrine winked his
little eyes. ‘Go round, my good sir,’ was his thought, ‘go round; make
the road as long as you will, it must bring you in the end to the front
of the white building yonder. And when you get there, you may possibly
have to pay a heavy reckoning for all your scoundrelly tricks. There is
always a reckoning to pay in the end.’ Having relieved his mind by this
soliloquy, he jumped clean over the fence without so much as putting
a hand on it (a proceeding extremely improper), and joined the knot of
seconds busily engaged in casting lots for places and swords. In spite
of the dandified solemnity of their aspect, they looked, as they all
bent to see whether the toss fell head or tail, or ran to pick up the
coins, like big school-boys in the playground, wrinkled and grey. During
a discussion on a doubtful pitch, Védrine heard his name called by
Astier, who, with perfect self-possession, was taking off his coat and
emptying his pockets behind the little building. ‘What’s that stuff the
General is talking? Wants to have his walking-stick within reach of our
swords, to prevent accidents? I won’t have that sort of thing, do you
hear? This is not a lower school fight. We are both old hands, fifth
form.’ In spite of his light words, his teeth were clenched and his eye
gleamed fiercely. ‘It’s serious then?’ asked Védrine, looking at him
hard.

‘Couldn’t be more so.’

‘Ah! Somehow I thought as much,’ and the sculptor returned to convey the
message to the General, commander of a cavalry division, looking all leg
from his heels to his pointed ears, which in brilliancy of colour vied
with Freydet’s. At Védrine’s intimation these ears flushed suddenly
scarlet, as if the blood boiled in them. ‘Right, Sir! ‘Course, Sir!’
His words cut the air like the lash of a whip. Sammy was being helped by
Doctor Aubouis to turn up his shirt sleeves. Did he hear? or was it the
aspect of the lithe, cat-like, vigorous young fellow as he came forward
with neck and arms bare and round as a woman’s, and with that pitiless
look. Be the reason what it may, D’Athis, who had come to the ground as
a social duty without a shade of anxiety, as befitted a gentleman who
was not inexperienced and knew the value of two good seconds, suddenly
changed countenance, turned earthy pale, while his beard scarcely
concealed the twitch of his jaw in the horrible contortion of fear.
But he kept his self-control, and put himself on the defensive bravely
enough.

‘Now, gentlemen.’

Yes, there is always a reckoning to pay. He realised that keenly as
he faced that pitiless sword-point, which sought him, felt him at a
distance, seemed to spare him now only to make more sure of hitting
presently. They meant to kill him; that was certain. And as he parried
the blows with his long, thin arm stretched out, amid the clashing of
the hilts he felt, for the first time, a pang of remorse for his mean
desertion of the noble lady who had lifted him out of the gutter and
given him once more a decent place in the world; he felt too that her
merited wrath was in some way connected with this present encompassing
peril, which seemed to shake the air all about him, to send round and
round in a glancing, vanishing vision the expanse of sky overhead, the
alarmed faces of the seconds and doctors, and the remoter figures of
two stable boys wildly beating off with their caps the gambolling horses
that wanted to come and look on. Suddenly came exclamations, sharp and
peremptory: ‘Enough! Stop, stop!’ What has happened? The peril is gone,
the sky stands still, everything has resumed its natural colour and
place. But at his feet over the torn and trampled ground spreads a
widening pool of blood, which darkens the yellow soil, and in it lies
Paul Astier helpless, with a wound right through his bare neck, stuck
like a pig. In the still pause of horror which followed the disaster
was heard the shrill, unceasing noise of insects in the distant meadow,
while the horses, no longer watched, gathered together a little way off
and stretched out inquisitive noses towards the motionless body of the
vanquished.

Yet he was a skilful swordsman. His fingers had a firm grasp of the hilt
and could make the whistling blade flash, hover, and descend where he
pleased, while his adversary encountered him with a wavering cowardly
spit. How had it come about? The seconds will say, and the evening
papers repeat, and to-morrow all Paris will take up the cue, that Paul
Astier slipped as he made his thrust and ran on his opponent’s point. A
full and accurate account will no doubt be given: but in life it usually
happens that decision of language varies inversely with certainty
of knowledge. Even from the spectators, even from the combatants
themselves, a certain mist and confusion will always veil the crucial
moment, when, against all reasonable calculation, the final stroke was
given by intervening fate, wrapped in that obscure cloud which by epic
rule closes round the end of a contest.

Carried into a small coachman’s room adjoining the stable, Paul, on
opening his eyes after a long swoon, saw first from the iron bedstead on
which he lay a lithographic print of the Prince Imperial pinned to the
wall over the drawers, which were covered with surgical instruments. As
consciousness returned to him through the medium of external objects,
the poor melancholy face with its faded eyes, discoloured by the damp of
the walls, suggested a sad omen of ill-fated youth. But besides ambition
and cunning, Paul had his full share of courage; and raising with
difficulty his head and its cumbrous wrapping of bandages, he asked in
a voice broken and weak, though fleeting still, ‘Wound or scratch,
doctor?’ Gomes, who was rolling up his medicated wool, waved to him to
keep quiet, as he answered, ‘Scratch, you lucky dog; but a near shave.
Aubouis and I thought the carotid was cut.’ A faint colour came into the
young man’s cheeks, and his eyes sparkled. It is so satisfactory not to
die! Instantly his ambition revived, and he wanted to know how long he
should take to get well again. ‘From three weeks to a month.’ Such was
the doctor’s judgment, announced in an indifferent tone with an amusing
shade of contempt. He was really very much annoyed and mortified that
his patient had got the worst of it. Paul with his eyes on the wall was
making calculations. D’Athis would be gone and Colette married before
he was even out of bed. Well, that business had failed; he must look out
for something else.

The door was opened, and a great flood of light poured into the
miserable room. How delightful was life and the warm sunshine! Védrine,
coming in with Freydet, went up to the bed and held out his hand
joyously, saying ‘You did give us a fright!’ He was really fond of his
young rascal, and cherished him as a work of art. ‘Ah, that you did!’
said Freydet, wiping his brow with an air of great relief. His eyes had
seen all his hopes of election to the Académie lying on the ground in
that pool of blood. How could Astier, the father, ever have come out as
the champion of a man connected with such a fatal event? Not but that
Freydet had a warm heart, but the absorbing thought of his candidature
brought his mind, like a compass needle, always round to the same point;
howsoever shaken and turned about, it came back still to the Academic
Pole. And as the wounded man smiled at his friends, feeling a little
foolish at finding himself, for all his cleverness, lying there at full
length, Freydet dilated with admiration on the ‘proper’ behaviour of the
seconds, whom they had just assisted in framing the report, of Doctor
Aubouis, who had offered to stay with his professional friend, of the
Prince, who had gone off in the victoria and left for Paul his well-hung
carriage, which having only one horse could be brought right up to the
door of the little building. Every one had behaved most properly.

‘How he bores one with his proprieties!’ said Védrine, seeing the face
Paul had not been able to help making.

‘It really is very odd,’ murmured the young fellow in a vague and
wandering voice. So it would be he, and not the other fellow, whose
pale, bloodstained face would be seen by the doctors side through the
window of the brougham as it went slowly home. Well, he had made a mess
of it! Suddenly he sat up, in spite of the doctor’s protest, rummaged
in his card-case for a card, and scribbled on it with pencil in a shaky
hand, ‘Fate is as faithless as man. I wanted to avenge you, but could
not. Forgive me.’ He signed his name, read it over, reflected, read it
again, then fastened up the envelope, which they had found in a dusty
drawer, a nasty scented envelope from some rural stores, and directed it
to the Duchess Padovani. He gave it to Freydet, begging him to deliver
it himself as soon as possible.

‘It shall be there within an hour, my dear Paul.’

He made with his hand a sign of thanks and dismissal, then stretched
himself out, shut his eyes, and lay quiet and still till the departure,
listening to the sound which came from the sunny meadow around--a vast
shrill hum of insects, which imitated the pulsation of approaching
fever. Beneath the closed lids his thoughts pursued the windings of this
second and quite novel plot, conceived by a sudden inspiration on ‘the
place of defeat.

Was it a sudden inspiration? There perhaps the ambitious young man was
wrong; for the spring of our actions is often unseen, lost and hidden
amid the internal disturbance of the crisis, even as the agitator who
starts a crowd himself disappears in it. A human being resembles a
crowd; both are manifold, complicated things, full of confused and
irregular impulses, but there is an agitator in the background; and the
movements of a man, like those of a mob, passionate and spontaneous as
they may appear, have always been preconcerted. Since the evening when
on the terrace of the Hôtel Padovani Lavaux had suggested the Duchess to
the young Guardsman, the thought had occurred to Paul that, if Madame
de Rosen failed him, he might fall back on the fair Antonia. It had
recurred two nights ago at the Français, when he saw Adriani in the
Duchess’s box; but it took no definite shape, because all his energy
was then turned in another direction, and he still believed in the
possibility of success. Now that the game was completely lost, his first
idea on returning to life was ‘the Duchess.’ Thus, although he scarcely
knew it, the resolution reached so abruptly was but the coming to light
of what grew slowly underground. ‘I wanted to avenge you, but could
not.’ Warm-hearted, impulsive, and revengeful as he knew her to be,
‘Mari’ Anto,’ as her Corsicans called her, would certainly be at his
bedside the next morning. It would be his business to see that she did
not go away.

Védrine and Freydet went back together in the landau, without waiting
for Sammy’s brougham, which had to come slowly for the sake of the
wounded man. The sight of the swords lying in their baize cover on the
empty seat opposite suggested reflection. ‘They don’t rattle so much
as they did going, the brutes,’ said Védrine, kicking them as he spoke.
‘Ah, you see they are his!’ said Freydet, giving words to his thoughts.
Then, resuming the air of gravity and propriety appropriate to a second,
he added, ‘We had everything in our favour, the ground, the weapons, and
a first rate fencer. As he says, it is very odd.’

Presently there was a pause in the dialogue, while their attention was
fixed by the gorgeous colour of the river, spread in sheets of green
and purple under the setting sun. Crossing the bridge the horses trotted
fast up the street of Boulogne. ‘Yes,’ Védrine went on, as if there
had been no long interruption of silence; ‘yes, after all, in spite of
apparent successes, the fellow is unlucky at bottom. I have now seen him
more than once fighting with circumstances in one of those crises which
are touchstones to a man’s fate, and bring out of him all the luck he
has. Well, let him plot as cunningly as he will, foresee everything, mix
his tints with the utmost skill, something gives way at the last moment,
and without completely ruining him prevents him from attaining his
object. Why? Very likely, just because his nose is crooked. I assure
you, that sort of crookedness is nearly always the sign of a twist in
the intellect, an obliquity in the character. The helm’s not straight,
you see!’

They laughed at the suggestion; and Védrine, pursuing the subject of
good and bad luck, told an odd story of a thing which had happened
almost under his eyes when he was staying with the Padovani in Corsica.
It was on the coast at Barbicaglia, just opposite the lighthouse on the
Sanguinaires. In this lighthouse lived an old keeper, a tried servant,
just on the eve of retirement. One night when he was on duty the old
fellow fell asleep and dozed for five minutes at the most, stopping with
his outstretched leg the movement of the revolving light, which ought to
change colour once a minute. That very night, just at that moment, the
inspector-general, who was making his annual round in a Government boat,
happened to be opposite the Sanguinaires. He was amazed to see a
stationary light, had the boat stopped, investigated and reported the
matter, and the next morning the official boat brought a new keeper to
the island and notice of instant dismissal to the poor old man. ‘It
seems to me,’ said Védrine, ‘a curiosity in ill-luck that, in the
chances of darkness, time, and space, the inspector’s survey should have
coincided with the old man’s nap.’ Their carriage was just reaching the
Place de la Concorde, and Védrine pointed with one of his slow calm
movements to a great piece of sky overhead where the dark green colour
was pierced here and there by newly-appearing stars, visible in the
waning light of the glorious day.

A few minutes later the landau turned into the Rue de Poitiers, a short
street, already in shadow, and stopped in front of the high iron gates
bearing the Padovani shield. All the shutters of the house were closed,
and there was a great chattering of birds in the garden. The Duchess
had gone for the summer to Mousseaux. Freydet stood hesitating, with the
huge envelope in his hand. He had expected to see the fair Antonia and
give a graphic account of the duel, perhaps even to slip in a reference
to his approaching candidature. Now he could not make up his mind
whether he should leave the letter, or deliver it himself a few days
hence, when he went back to Clos Jallanges. Eventually he decided
to leave it, and as he stepped back into the carriage he said, ‘Poor
fellow! He impressed upon me that the letter was urgent.’

‘Quite so,’ said Védrine, as the landau carried them along the quays,
now beginning to glimmer with rows of yellow lights, to the meeting
place arranged with D’Athis’s seconds; ‘quite so. I don’t know what the
letter is about, but for him to take the trouble to write it at such a
moment, it must be something very smart, something extremely ingenious
and clever. Only there you are! Very urgent--and the Duchess has left.’

And pushing the end of his nose on one side between two fingers, he said
with the utmost gravity, ‘That’s what it is, you see.’




CHAPTER XI.

The sword-thrust which had so nearly cost Paul Astier his life made
peace for the time between his parents. In the emotion produced by such
a shock to his natural feelings, the father forgave all; and as for
three weeks Madame Astier remained with her patient, coming home only on
flying visits to fetch linen or change her dress, there was no risk of
the covert allusions and indirect reproaches, which will revive, even
after forgiveness and reconciliation, the disagreement of husband and
wife. And when Paul got well and went, at the urgent invitation of the
Duchess, to Mousseaux, the return of this truly academic household, if
not to warm affection, at least to the equable temperature of the ‘cold
bed,’ was finally secured by its establishment in the Institute, in
the official lodgings vacated by Loisillon, whose widow, having been
appointed manager of the school of Ecouen, removed so quickly, that the
new secretary began to move in within a very few days of his election.

It was not a long process to settle in rooms which they had surveyed
for years with the minute exactness of envy and hope, till they knew the
very utmost that could be made of every corner. The pieces of furniture
from the Rue de Beaune fell into the new arrangement so smartly, that it
looked as if they were merely returning after a sojourn in the country,
and finding their fixed habitat and natural place of adhesion by the
marks of their own forms upon the floors or panels. The redecoration was
limited to cleaning the room in which Loisillon died, and papering what
had been the reception-room of Villemain and was now taken by Astier
for his study, because there was a good light from the quiet court and
a lofty bright little room, immediately adjoining, for his MSS., which
were transferred there in three journeys of a cab, with the help of Fage
the bookbinder.

[Illustration: With the help of Fage the bookbinder 226]

Every morning, with a fresh delight, he enjoyed the convenience of a
‘library’ scarcely inferior to the Foreign Office, which he could enter
without stooping or climbing a ladder. Of his kennel in the Rue de
Beaune he could not now think without anger and disgust. It is the
nature of man to regard places in which he has felt pain with an
obstinate and unforgiving dislike. We can reconcile ourselves to living
creatures, which are capable of alteration and differences of aspect,
but not to the stony unchange-ableness of things. Amid the pleasures of
getting in, Astier-Réhu could forget his indignation at the offence of
his wife, and even his grievances against Teyssèdre, who received orders
to come every Wednesday morning as before. But at the mere remembrance
of the slope-roofed den, into which he was lately banished for one
day in each week, the historian ground his teeth, and the jaw of
‘Crocodilus’ reappeared.

Teyssèdre, incredible as it may be, was very little excited or impressed
by the honour of polishing the monumental floors of the Palais Mazarin,
and still shoved about the table, papers, and numberless refaits of the
Permanent Secretary with the calm superiority of a citizen of Riom over
a common fellow from ‘Chauvagnat.’ Astier-Réhu, secretly uncomfortable
under this crushing contempt, sometimes tried to make the savage
feel the dignity of the place upon which his wax-cake was operating.
‘Teyssèdre,’ said he to him, one morning, ‘this was the reception-room
of the great Villemain. Pray treat it accordingly;’ but he instantly
offered satisfaction to the Arvernian’s pride by saying weakly to
Corentine, ‘Give the good man a glass of wine.’ The astonished Corentine
brought it, and the polisher, leaning on his stick, emptied it at a
draught, his pupils dilating with pleasure. Then he wiped his mouth with
his sleeve and, setting down the glass with the mark of his greedy lips
upon it, said, ‘Look you, _Meuchieu Astier_, a glass of good wine is the
only real good in life.’ There was such a ring of truth in his voice,
such a sparkle of contentment in his eyes, that the Permanent Secretary,
going back into his library, shut the door a little sharply.

[Illustration: Good wine is the only real good in life. 236]

It was scarcely worth while to have scrambled from his low beginning
to his present glory as head of literature, historian of the ‘House of
Orleans,’ and keystone of the Académie Française, if a glass of good
wine could give to a boor a happiness worth it all. But the next minute,
hearing the polisher say with a sneer to Corentine that ‘mooch ‘e cared
for the ‘ception-room of the great Villemain,’ Léonard Astier shrugged
his shoulders, and at the thought of such ignorance his half-felt envy
gave way to a deep and benign compassion.

Meanwhile Madame Astier, who had been brought up in the building, and
recognised with remembrances of her childhood every stone in the court
and every step in the dusty and venerable Staircase B, felt as if she
had at last got back to her home. She had, moreover, a sense far keener
than her husband’s of the material advantages of the place. Nothing to
pay for rent, for lighting, for fires, a great saving upon the parties
of the winter season, to say nothing of the increase of income and the
influential connection, so particularly valuable in procuring orders
for her beloved Paul. Madame Loisillon in her time, when sounding the
praises of her apartments at the Institute, never failed to add with
emphasis, ‘I have entertained there even Sovereigns.’ ‘Yes, in the
_little_ room,’ good Adelaide would answer tartly, drawing up her long
neck. It was the fact that not unfrequently, after the prolonged fatigue
of a Special Session, some great lady, a Royal Highness on her travels,
or a leader influential in politics, would go upstairs to pay a little
particular visit to the wife of the Permanent Secretary. To this sort of
hospitality Madame Loisillon was indebted for her present appointment
as school-manager, and Madame Astier would certainly not be less clever
than her predecessor in utilising the convenience. The only drawback to
her triumph was her quarrel with the Duchess, which made it impossible
for her to follow Paul to Mousseaux. But an invitation, opportunely
arriving at this moment, enabled her to get as near to him as the house
at Clos Jallanges; and she had hopes of recovering in time the favour
of the fair Antonia, towards whom, when she saw her so kind to Paul she
began again to feel quite affectionate.

Léonard could not leave Paris, having to work off the arrears of
business left by Loisillon. He let his wife go however, and promised to
come down to their friends for a few hours now and then, though in truth
he was resolved not to separate himself from his beloved Institute. It
was so comfortable and quiet! He had to attend two meetings in the week,
just on the other side of the court--summer meetings, where a friendly
party of five or six ‘tallymen’ dozed at ease under the warm glass.
The rest of the week he was entirely free, and the old man employed it
industriously in correcting the proofs of his ‘Galileo,’ which, finished
at last, was to come out at the opening of the season, as well as a
second edition of ‘The House of Orleans,’ improved to twice its value by
the addition of new and unpublished documents. As the world grows old,
history, which being but a collective memory of the race is liable to
all the lapses, losses, and weaknesses of memory in the individual,
finds it ever more necessary to be fortified with authentic texts, and
if it would escape the errors of senility, must refresh itself at the
original springs. With what pride, therefore, with what enjoyment
did Astier-Réhu, during those hot August days, revise the fresh and
trustworthy information displayed in his beloved pages, as a preparation
for returning them to his publisher, with the heading on which, for the
first time, appeared beneath his name the words ‘Secretaire perpétuel
de l’Académie Française.’ His eyes were not yet accustomed to the
title, which dazzled him on each occasion, like the sun upon the white
courtyard beneath his windows. It was the vast Second Court of the
Institute, private and majestic, silent, but for sparrows or swallows
passing rarely overhead, and consecrated by a bronze bust of Minerva
with ten _termini_ in a row against the back wall, over which rose the
huge chimney of the adjoining Mint.

Towards four o’clock, when the helmeted shadow of the bust was beginning
to lengthen, the stiff mechanical step of old Jean Réhu woould be heard
upon the flags. He lived over the Astiers, and went out regularly every
day for a long walk, watched from a respectful distance by a servant,
whose arm he persistently refused. Within the barrier of his increasing
deafness his faculties, under the great heat of this summer, had begun
to _give_ way, and especially his memory, no longer effectually guided
by the reminding pins upon the lappets of his coat. He mixed his
stories, and lost himself, like old Livingstone in the marshes of
Central Africa, among his recollections, where he scrambled and
floundered till some one assisted him. Such a humiliation irritated
his spleen, and he now therefore seldom spoke to anyone, but talked to
himself as he went along, marking with a sudden stop and a shake of the
head the end of an anecdote and the inevitable phrase, ‘That’s a thing
that I have seen.’ But he still carried himself upright, and was as
fond of a hoax as in the days of the Directory. It was his amusement to
impose abstinence from wine, abstinence from meat, and every ridiculous
variety of regimen upon cits enamoured of life, crowds of whom wrote to
him daily, asking by what diet he had so miraculously extended his.
He would prescribe sometimes vegetables, milk, or cider, sometimes
shell-fish exclusively, and meanwhile ate and drank without restriction,
taking after each meal a siesta, and every evening a good turn up and
down the floor, audible to Leonard Astier in the room below.

Two months, August and September, had now elapsed since the Permanent
Secretary came in--two clear months of fruitful, delightful peace; such
a pause in the climb of ambition as perhaps in all his life he had
never enjoyed before. Madame Astier, still at Clos Jallanges, talked of
returning soon; the sky of Paris showed the grey of the first fogs;
the Academicians began to come home; the meetings were becoming less
sociable; and Astier, during his working hours in the reception-room of
the great Villemain, found it no longer necessary to screen himself with
blinds from the blazing reflection of the court. He was at his table one
afternoon, writing to the worthy De Freydet a letter of good news about
his candidature, when the old cracked door-bell was violently rung.
Corentine had just gone out, so he went to the door, where, to his
astonishment, he was confronted by Baron Huchenard and Bos the dealer
in manuscripts. Bos dashed into the study wildly waving his arms, while
breathless ejaculations flew out of his red tangle of beard and hair:
‘Forged! The documents are forged! I can prove it! I can prove it!’

Astier-Réhu, not understanding at first, looked at the Baron, who looked
at the ceiling. But when he had picked up the meaning of the dealer’s
outcry--that the three autograph letters of Charles V., sold by Madame
Astier to Bos and by him transferred to Huchenard, were asserted not
to be genuine--he said with a disdainful smile, that he would readily
repurchase them, as he regarded them with a confidence not to be
affected by any means whatsoever.

‘Allow me, Mr. Secretary, allow me. I would ask you,’ said Baron
Huchenard, slowly unbuttoning his macintosh as he spoke, and drawing
the three documents out of a large envelope, ‘to observe this.’ The
parchments were so changed as scarcely to seem the same; their smoky
brown was bleached to a perfect whiteness; and upon each, clear and
legible in the middle of the page, below the signature of Charles V.,
was this mark,

                 BB.

           Angoulême 1836.

‘It was Delpech, the Professor of Chemistry, our learned colleague of
the Académie des Sciences, who--’ but of the Baron’s explanation nothing
but a confused murmur reached poor Léonard. There was no colour in his
face, nor a drop of blood left at the tips of the big heavy fingers, in
whose hold the three autographs shook.

‘The 800L. shall be at your house this evening, M. Bos,’ he managed to
say at last with what moisture was left in his mouth.

Bos protested and appealed. The Baron had given him 900L.

‘900L., then,’ said Astier-Réhu, making a great effort to show them out.
But in the dimly-lighted hall he kept back his colleague, and begged him
humbly, as a Member of the Académie des Inscriptions, and for the honour
of the whole Institute, to say nothing of this unlucky affair.

‘Certainly, my dear sir, certainly, on one condition.’

‘Name it, name it.’

‘You will shortly receive notice that I am a candidate for Loisillon’s
chair.’ The Secretary’s answer was a firm clasp of hand in hand, which
pledged the assistance of himself and his friends.

Once alone, the unhappy man sank down before the table with its load of
proofs, on which lay outspread the three forged letters to Rabelais. He
gazed at them blankly, and mechanically read: ‘_Maître Rabelais, vous
qu’avez l’esprit fin et subtil!_’ The characters seemed to go round and
round in a mixture of ink, dissolved into broad blots of sulphate of
iron, which to his imagination went on spreading, till they reached his
whole collection of originals, ten or twelve thousand, all unhappily
got from the same quarter. Since these three were forged, what of his
‘Galileo’?--what of his ‘House of Orleans’?--the letter of Catherine II.
which he had presented to the Grand Duke?--the letter of Rotrou, which
he had solemnly bestowed upon the Académie? What? What? A spasm of
energy brought him to his legs. Fage! He must at once see Fage!

His dealings with the bookbinder had begun some years before, when the
little man had come one day to the Library of the Foreign Office to
request the opinion of its learned and illustrious Keeper respecting a
letter from Marie de Médicis to Pope Urban VIII. in favour of Galileo.
It happened that Petit-Séquard had just announced as forthcoming, among
a series of short light volumes on history, entitled ‘Holiday Studies,’
a ‘Galileo’ by Astier-Réhu of the Académie Française. When therefore the
librarian’s trained judgment had assured him that the MS. was genuine,
and he was told that Fage possessed also the letter of the Pope in
reply, a letter of thanks from Galileo to the Queen, and others, he
conceived instantaneously the idea of writing, instead of the ‘slight
trifle,’ a great historical work. But his probity suggesting at the same
moment a doubt as to the source of these documents, he looked the dwarf
steadily in the face, and after examining, as he would have examined an
original, the long pallid visage and the reddened, blinking eye-lids,
said, with an inquisitorial snap of the jaw, ‘Are these manuscripts your
own, M. Fage?’

‘Oh no, sir,’ said Fage. He was merely acting on behalf of a third
person, an old maiden lady of good birth, who was obliged to part
gradually with a very fine collection, which had belonged to the family
ever since Louis XVI. Nor had he been willing to act, till he had taken
the opinion of a scholar of the highest learning and character. Now,
relying upon so competent a judgment, he should go to rich collectors,
such as Baron Huchenard, for instance--but Astier-Réhu stopped him,
saying, ‘Do not trouble yourself. Bring me all you have relating to
Galileo. I can dispose of it.’ People were coming in and taking their
places at the little tables, the sort of people who prowl and hunt in
libraries, colourless and taciturn as diggers from the mines, with an
air as if they had themselves been dug up out of somewhere close and
damp. ‘Come to my private room, upstairs, not here,’ whispered the
librarian in the big ear of the humpback as he moved away, displaying
his gloves, oiled hair, and middle parting with the self-sufficiency
often observable in his species.

The collection of Mademoiselle du Mesnil-Case, a name disclosed by Albin
Fage only under solemn promise of secrecy, proved to be an inexhaustible
treasure of papers relating to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
which threw all sorts of interesting lights upon the past, and
sometimes, by a word or a date, overturned completely the established
opinions about facts or persons. Whatever the price, Léonard Astier took
and kept every one of the documents, which almost always fitted in with
his commenced or projected works. Without a shadow of doubt he accepted
the little man’s account of the masses of originals that were still
accumulating dust in the attic of an ancient mansion at Ménilmontant.
If, after some venomous criticism from ‘the first collector’ in France,
his trust was slightly disturbed the suspicion could not but vanish when
the book-binder, seated at his table or watering his vegetables in the
quiet grass-grown yard, met it with perfect composure, and offered in
particular a quite natural explanation of certain marks of erasure and
restoration, visible on some of the pages, as due to the submergence
of the collection in sea-water, when it was sent to England during the
emigration. After this fresh assurance Astier-Réhu would go back to the
gate with a lively step, carrying off each time a purchase for which
he had given, according to its historical value, a cheque for twenty,
forty, or even as much as eighty pounds.

These extravagances, unsuspected as yet by those around him, were
prompted, whatever he might say to quiet his conscience, not so much by
the motives of the historian as by those of the collector. This, even in
a place so ill-adapted for seeing and hearing as the attic in the Rue de
Beaune, where the bargains were usually struck, would have been patent
to any observer. The tone of pretended indifference, the ‘Let me see’
muttered with dry lips, the quivering of the covetous fingers, marked
the progress from passion to mania, the growth of the hard and selfish
cyst, which was feeding its monstrous size upon the ruin of the whole
organism. Astier was becoming the intractable Harpagon of the stage,
pitiless to others as to himself, bewailing his poverty and riding in
the omnibus, while in two years nearly 6500L. of his savings dropped
secretly into the pocket of the humpback. To account to Madame Astier,
Corentine, and Teyssèdre for the frequent visits of the little man, he
received from the Academician pamphlets to bind, which he took away
and brought back ostentatiously. They corresponded by a sort of private
code. Fage would write on a post-card, ‘I have some new tooling to
show you, sixteenth century, in good condition and rare.’ Astier would
temporise: ‘Not wanted, thanks. Perhaps later.’ Then would come ‘My
dear Sir, Do not think of it. I will try elsewhere,’ and to this the
Academician invariably answered ‘Early to-morrow morning. Bring the
tooling.’ Here was the torment of the collector’s pleasure. He must buy
and buy, or else let pass to Bos, Huchenard, or some other rival the
treasures of Ménilmontant. Sometimes the thought of the time when money
must fail would put him into a grim rage, and infuriated by the calm,
self-satisfied countenance of the dwarf, he would exclaim ‘More than
6400L. in two years! And still you say, the lady is in want of money!
How on earth does she get rid of it? ‘At such moments he longed for the
death of the old maid, the annihilation of the bookbinder, even a war,
revolution, or general catastrophe, which might swallow up both the
treasure and the relentless speculators who worked it.

And now the catastrophe was indeed near, not the catastrophe desired,
for destiny never finds to her hand precisely the thing we asked for,
but a turn of things so sudden and appalling as to threaten his work,
his honour, fortune, and fame, all that he was and all that he had. As
he strode away towards the Cour des Comptes, deadly pale and talking
to himself, the booksellers and print-dealers along the quay scarcely
recognised the Astier-Réhu who, instead of looking right into the shop
for a bow, now passed them without recognition. To him neither person
nor thing was visible. In imagination he was grasping the humpback by
the throat, shaking him by his pin-bespangled scarf, and thrusting under
his nose the autographs dishonoured by the chemistry of Delpech, with
the question, ‘Now then, what is your answer to that?’

When he reached the Rue de Lille, he dashed through the door of rough
planks in the fence which surrounds the ruins, went up the steps, and
rang the bell once and again. He was struck by the gloomy look of the
building, now that no flowers or greenery covered the nakedness of the
gaping, crumbling masonry and the confusion of the twisted iron-work and
leafless creepers. The sound of pattens came slowly across the chilly
court, and the caretaker appeared, a solid woman, who, broom in hand and
without opening the gate, said, ‘You want the bookbinder; but he isn’t
here now.’ Not here! Yes, Fage had gone, and left no address. In fact,
she was just cleaning up the cottage for the man who was to have the
appointment to the Cour des Comptes, which Fage had resigned.

Astier-Réhu, for appearance’ sake, stammered out a word or two, but
his voice was lost in the harsh and mournful cries of a great flight
of black birds, which made the arches echo as they descended upon the
court. ‘Why, here are the Duchess’s rooks!’ said the woman, with a
respectful wave of the hand towards the bare plane-trees of the Hôtel
Padovani, visible over the roof opposite. ‘They are come before the
Duchess this year, and that means an early winter!’

He went away, with horror in his heart.




CHAPTER XII.

The day following that on which the Duchess Padovani, to show herself
smiling under the blow which had fallen upon her, had appeared at
the theatre, she went, as she usually did at that time of year, to
Mousseaux. She made no change in her plans. She had sent out her
invitations for the season, and did not cancel them. But before the
arrival of the first instalment of visitors, during the few days’
solitude usually spent in superintending in detail the arrangements for
entertaining her guests, she passed the whole time from morning to night
in the park at Mousseaux, whose slopes stretched far and wide on the
banks of the Loire. She would go madly along, like a wounded and hunted
animal, stop for a moment from exhaustion, and then at a throb of pain
start off again. ‘Coward! coward! wretch!’ She hurled invectives at the
Prince as though he had been by her side, and still she walked with the
same fevered tread the labyrinth of green paths which ran down in long
shady windings to the river. Here, forgetting her rank and her position,
flinging off her mask and able to be natural at last, she would give
vent to her despair, a despair perhaps something less than her wrath,
for the voice of pride spoke louder within her than any other, and the
few tears which escaped her lids did not flow, but leaped and sparkled
like flames. Revenge, revenge! She longed for a revenge of blood, and
sometimes pictured one of her foresters, Bertoli or Salviato, going off
abroad to put a bullet into him on his wedding-day. Then she changed
her mind. No, she would deal the blow herself, and feel the joy of the
_vendetta_ in her own grasp. She envied the women of lower class who
wait behind a doorway for the traitor, and fling in his face a bottle
full of vitriol with a storm of hideous curses. Why did she not know
some of the horrible names that relieve the heart, some foul insult to
shriek at the mean treacherous companion who rose before her mind with
the hesitating look and false constrained smile he wore at their last
meeting? But even in her savage Corsican patois the great lady knew
no ‘nasty words,’ and when she had cried ‘Coward! coward! wretch!’ her
beautiful mouth could only writhe in helpless rage.

In the evening after her solitary dinner in the vast hall, whose
panelling of old leather was gilt by the setting sun, her wild pacing
to and fro began again. Now it was on the gallery overhanging the river,
quaintly restored by Paul Astier, with open arcades like lace-work and
two pretty corbel-turrets. Below on the Loire, outspread like a lake,
there still lingered a delicate silvery light from the departing day,
while the hazy evening air exaggerated the distances between the willow
beds and islands out towards Chaumont. But poor Mari’ Anto did not look
at the view when, worn out with retracing the steps of her grief, she
leant both elbows on the balustrade and gazed into the dimness. Her life
appeared before her, waste and desolate, at an age when it is difficult
to make a fresh start. A faint sound of voices rose from Mousseaux, a
group of two or three small houses on the embankment; the chain of a
boat creaked as the night breeze rose. How easy it would be! Grief
had bowed down her head so low, that if she were but to lean forward
a little farther.... But then what would the world say? A woman of her
rank and age could not kill herself like any little grisette! The third
day Paul’s note arrived, and with it the newspapers’ detailed report of
the duel. It gave her the same delight as a warm pressure of the hand.
So some one still cared for her, and had wanted to avenge her at the
risk of his life! Not that Paul’s feeling was love, she supposed, but
only a grateful affection, the reminiscence of kindnesses done by her
to him and his family, perhaps an imperative desire to atone for his
mother’s treachery. Generous, brave fellow! If she had been in Paris,
she would have gone to him at once, but as her guests were just due, she
could only write and send him her own doctor.

Every hour came fresh arrivals from Blois and from Onzain, Mousseaux
lying half way between the two stations. The landau, the victoria, and
two great breaks set down at the steps in the great court, amid the
incessant ringing of the bell, many illustrious members of the Duchess’s
set, academicians and diplomatists, the Count and Countess Foder,
the Comte de Brétigny and his son the Vicomte, who was a Secretary of
Legation, M. and Madame Desminières, Laniboire the philosopher, who had
come to the castle to draw up his report on the award of the _Prix de
vertu_, the young critic of Shelley, who was ‘run’ by the Padovani set,
and Danjou, handsome Danjou, all by himself, though his wife had been
asked. Life at Mousseaux was exactly what it had been the year before.
The day passed in calls, or work in the separate rooms, meals, general
conversation, afternoon naps; then, when the great heat was passed, came
long drives through the woods, or sails on the river in the little fleet
of boats anchored at the bottom of the park. Parties would be made to
picnic on an island, and some of the guests would repair to the fish
preserves, which were always well stocked with lively fish, as the
keeper took care to replenish them from his nets before each expedition.
Then every one came back to the ceremonious dinner, after which the
gentlemen, when they had smoked in the billiard room or on the
gallery, joined the ladies in a splendid apartment, which had been the
council-chamber of Catherine de Médicis.

All round the huge room were depicted in tapestry the loves of Dido
and her despair at the departure of the Trojan ships. The irony of this
strange coincidence was not remarked by any one, so little do people
in society regard their surroundings, less for want of observation than
because they are always and fully occupied with their personal behaviour
and the effect they are to produce. But there was a striking contrast
between the tragic despair of the abandoned queen, gazing with arms
uplifted and streaming eyes as the little black speck disappeared,
and the smiling serenity of the Duchess, as she presided in the
drawing-room, maintaining her supremacy over the other ladies, whose
dress and whose reading were guided by her taste, or joining in the
discussions between Laniboire and the young critic, and in the disputes
waged over the candidates for Loisillon’s seat by Desminières and
Danjou. Indeed, if the Prince d’Athis, the faithless Sammy, whose name
was in every one’s thoughts, though on no one’s lips, could have seen
her, he would have been mortified to find how small was the gap left in
a woman’s life by his-absence, and how busy was the turmoil throughout
the royal castle of Mousseaux, where in all the long front there were
but three windows shut up, those belonging to what were called ‘the
Prince’s rooms.’

‘She takes it well,’ said Danjou the first evening. And neither little
Countess Foder, from whose massy lace protruded a very sharp inquisitive
little nose, nor sentimental Madame Desminières, who had looked forward
to lamentations and confidences, could get over such amazing courage.
In truth they were as much amazed at her as if going to a long-expected
play they had found the house ‘closed for the day’; while the men took
Ariadne’s equanimity as an encouragement to would-be successors. The
real change in the Duchess’s life lay in the attitude observed towards
her by all or nearly all the men; they were less reserved, more
sedulous, more eager to please her, and fluttered round her chair with
an obvious desire, not merely to merit her patronage, but to attract her
regard.

Never indeed had Maria Antonia been more beautiful. When she entered the
dining-room the tempered brilliancy of her complexion and her shoulders
in their light summer robe made a bright place at the table, even when
the Marquise de Roca Nera had come over from her neighbouring country
seat on the other side of the Loire. The Marquise was younger, but no
one would have thought so to look at them. Laniboire, the philosopher,
was strongly attracted to the Duchess. He was a widower, well on in
years, with heavy features and apoplectic complexion, but he did
his best to captivate his hostess by the display of a manly and
sportsmanlike activity which led him into occasional mishaps. One
day, in a boat, as he tried to make a great display of biceps over his
rowing, he fell into the river; another time, as he was prancing on
horseback at the side of the carriage, his mount squeezed his leg so
hard against the wheel that he had to keep his room and be bandaged
for several days. But the finest spectacle was to see him in the
drawing-room, ‘dancing,’ as Danjou said, ‘before the Ark.’ He stretched
and bent his unwieldy person in all directions. He would challenge to
a philosophic duel the young critic, a confirmed pessimist of
three-and-twenty, and overwhelm him with his own imperturbable optimism.
Laniboire the philosopher had one particular reason for this good
opinion of the world; his wife had died of diphtheria caught from
nursing their children; both his children had died with their mother;
and each time that he repeated his dithyramb in praise of existence,
the philosopher concluded his statement with a sort of practical
demonstration, a bow to the Duchess, which seemed to say, ‘How can a man
think ill of life in the presence of such beauty as yours?’

The young critic paid his court in a less conspicuous and sufficiently
cunning fashion. He was an immense admirer of the Prince d’Athis, and
being at the age when admiration shows itself by imitation, he no sooner
made his entry into society than he copied Sammy’s attitudes, his walk,
even the carriage of his head, his bent back, and vague mysterious smile
of contemptuous reserve. Now he increased the resemblance by details
of dress, which he had observed and collected with the sharpness of a
child, from the way of pinning his tie just at the opening of the collar
to the fawn-coloured check of his English trousers. Unfortunately he had
too much hair and not a scrap of beard, so that his efforts were quite
thrown away, and revived no uncomfortable memories in the Duchess, who
was as indifferent to his English checks as she was to the languishing
glances of Brétigny _fils_, or the significant pressure of Brétigny
_père_, as he gave her his arm to dinner. But all this helped to
surround her with that atmosphere of gallantry to which she had long
been accustomed by D’Athis, who played the humble servant to the
verge of servility, and to save her woman’s pride from the conscious
humiliation of abandonment.

Amidst all these aspirants Danjou kept somewhat aloof, amusing the
Duchess with his green-room stories and making her laugh, a way of
self-recommendation in certain cases not unsuccessful. But the time came
when he thought matters sufficiently advanced: and one morning when she
was starting for her rapid solitary walk with her dogs through the park,
in the hope of leaving her wrath behind in the thickets with the waking
birds, or of cooling and tempering it among the dewy lawns and dripping
branches--suddenly, at a turn in the path, appeared Danjou, ready for
the attack. Dressed from head to foot in white flannels, his trousers
tucked into his boots, with a picturesque cap and a well-trimmed beard,
he was trying to find a _dénouement_ for a three-act drama, to be
ready for the Français that winter. The name was ‘Appearances,’ and the
subject a satire on society. Everything was written but the final scene.

[Illustration: He began to talk of his love 254]

‘Well, let us try what we can do together,’ said the Duchess brightly,
as she cracked the long lash of the short-handled whip with silver
whistle, which she used to call in her dogs. But the moment they turned
to walk together, he began to talk of his love, and how sad it would
be for her to live alone; and ended by offering himself, after his own
fashion, straight out and with no circumlocutions. The Duchess, with
a quick movement of pride, threw up her head, grasping her whip handle
tightly, as if to strike the insolent fellow who dared to talk to her as
he might to a super at the opera. But the insult was also a compliment,
and there was pleasure as well as anger in her blush. Danjou steadily
urged his point, and tried to dazzle her with his polished wit,
pretending to treat the matter less as a love affair than as an
intellectual partnership. A man like himself and a woman like her might
command the world.

‘Many thanks, my dear Danjou; such specious reasoning is not new to me.
I am suffering from it still.’ Then with a haughty wave of her hand,
which allowed no reply, she pointed out the shady path which the
dramatist was to follow, and said, ‘Look for your _dénouement_; I am
going in.’ He stood where he was, completely disconcerted, and gazed at
her beautiful carriage as she walked away.

‘Not even as zebra?’ he said, in a tone of appeal.

She looked round, her black brows meeting. ‘Ah, yes, you are right; the
post is vacant,’ Her thoughts went to Lavaux, the base underling for
whom she had done so much, and without a smile she answered in a weary
voice, ‘Zebra, if you like.’

Then she vanished behind a little group of fine yellow roses a little
overblown, whose leaves would be scattered at the first fresh breeze.

It was something to boast of that the proud Mari’ Anto’ had heard him
through. Probably no other man, not even her Prince, had ever spoken to
her thus. Full of the inspiration of hope, and stimulated by the fine
speeches he had just thrown off, the dramatist soon hit upon his final
scene. He was going back to write it out before breakfast, when he
stopped short in surprise at seeing through the branches ‘the Prince’s’
windows open to the sunlight Who was coming? What favourite guest was to
be honoured with those convenient and luxurious rooms, looking over the
river and the park? He made inquiries, and was reassured. It was
her Grace’s architect; he was coming to the castle after an illness.
Considering the intimacy between the lady and the Astiers, nothing was
more natural than that Paul should be entertained like a son of the
house in a mansion which he had more or less created. Still, when
the new arrival took his seat at breakfast, his chastened delicacy of
feature, his paleness--the paler by a white silk kerchief--his duel, his
wound, and the general flavour of romance surrounding him seemed to make
so keen an impression on the ladies, and called forth such affectionate
interest and care on the part of the Duchess herself, that handsome
Danjou, being one of those all-engrossing persons to whom any other
man’s success seems a personal loss, if not downright robbery, felt
a jealous pang. With his eyes on his plate he took advantage of his
position by the hostess to murmur some depreciatory remarks upon the
pretty young fellow, unfortunately so much disfigured by his mother’s
nose. He made merry over his duel, his wound, and his reputation in the
fencing-room, the kind of bubble which bursts at the first prick of a
real sword. He added, not knowing how near he was to the truth, ‘The
quarrel at cards was of course a mere pretext; there was a woman at the
bottom of it.’

‘Of the duel? Do you think so?’ His nod said ‘I am sure of it.’ Much
admiring his own cleverness, he turned to the company, and dazzled them
with his epigrams and anecdotes. He never went into society without
providing himself with a store of these pocket squibs. Paul was no match
for him here, and the ladies’ interest soon reverted to the brilliant
talker, especially when he announced that, having got his _dénouement_
and finished his play, he would read it in the drawing-room while it was
too hot to go out. A universal exclamation of delight from the ladies
welcomed this invaluable relief to the day’s monotony. What a precious
privilege for them, proud as they were already of dating their letters
from Mousseaux, to be able to send to all their dear friends, who were
not there, accounts of an unpublished play by Danjou, read by Danjou
himself, and then next winter to be in a position to say when the
rehearsals were going on, ‘Oh, Danjou’s play! I know it; he read it to
us at the castle.’

As the company rose, full of excitement at this good news, the Duchess
went towards Paul, and taking his arm with her graceful air of command
said, ‘Come for a turn on the gallery; it is stifling here.’ The air
was heavy even at the height of the gallery, for there rose from
the steaming river a mist of heat, which overspread and blurred the
irregular green outlines of its banks and of its low floating islands.
She led the young man away from the smokers right to the end of the
furthest bay, and then clasping his hand said, ‘So it was for me; it was
all for me.’

‘Yes, Duchess, for you.’

And he pursed his lips as he added, ‘And presently we shall have another
try.’

‘You must not say that, you naughty boy.’

She stopped, as an inquisitive footstep came towards them. Danjou!’

‘Yes, Duchess.’

‘My fan... on the dining-room table... would you be so kind?...’ When
he was some way off, she said, ‘I will not have it, Paul. In the first
place, the creature is not worth fighting. Ah, if we were alone--if I
could tell you!’ The fierceness of her tone and the clenching of her
hands betrayed a rage that amazed Paul Astier. After a month he had
hoped to find her calmer than this. It was a disappointment, and it
checked the explosion, ‘I love you--I have always loved you,’ which was
to have been forced from him at the first confidential interview. He
was only telling the story of the duel, in which she was very much
interested, when the Academician brought her fan. ‘Well fetched, zebra!’
she said by way of thanks. With a little pout he answered in the same
strain but a lowered voice, ‘A zebra on promotion, you know!’

‘What, wanting to be raised already!’ She tapped him with her fan as she
spoke, and anxious to put him in a good temper for his reading, let
him escort her back to the drawing-room, where his manuscript was lying
ready on a dainty card-table in the full light of a high window partly
open, showing the flower-garden and the groups of great trees.

[Illustration: Danjou read like a genuine ‘Player’ 264]

‘_Appearances. A Drama in Three Acts. Dramatis Personæ_....’

The ladies, getting as close round as they could, drew themselves
together with the charming little shiver which is their way of
anticipating enjoyment. Danjou read like a genuine ‘Player’ of
Picheral’s classification, making lengthy pauses while he moistened
his lips with his glass of water, and wiped them with a fine cambric
handkerchief. As he finished each of the long broad pages, scribbled all
over with his tiny handwriting, he let-it fall carelessly at his feet
on the carpet Each time Madame de Foder, who hunts the ‘lions’ of all
nations, stooped noiselessly, picked up the fallen sheet, and placed it
reverently upon an armchair beside her, exactly square with the sheets
before, contriving, in this subtle and delicate way, to take a certain
part in the great man’s work. It was as if Liszt or Rubinstein had been
at the piano and she had been turning over the music. All went well till
the end of Act I., an interesting and promising introduction, received
with a _furore_ of delighted exclamations, rapturous laughter, and
enthusiastic applause. After a long pause, in which was audible from
the far distance of the park the hum of the insects buzzing about the
tree-tops, the reader wiped his moustache, and resumed:

_Act II The scene represents_... But here his voice began to break, and
grew huskier with every speech. He had just seen an empty chair among
the ladies in the first row; it was Antonia’s chair; and his glances
strayed over his eye-glass searching the whole huge room. It was full
of green plants and screens, behind which the auditors had ensconced
themselves to hear--or to sleep--undisturbed. At last, in one of the
numerous and regular intervals provided by his glass of water, he caught
a whisper, then a glimpse of a light dress, then, at the far end, on
a sofa, he saw the Duchess with Paul beside her, continuing the
conversation interrupted on the gallery. To one like Danjou, spoiled
with every kind of success, the affront was deadly. But he nerved
himself to finish the Act, throwing his pages down on the floor with a
violence which made them fly, and sent little Madame de Foder crawling
after them on all fours. At the end of the Act, as the whispering still
went on, he left off, pretending that he was suddenly taken hoarse and
must defer the rest till the next day. The Duchess, absorbed in the
duel, of which she could not hear enough, supposed the play concluded,
and cried from the distance, clapping her little hands, ‘Bravo, Danjou,
the _dénouement_ is delicious.’

That evening the great man had, or said he had, a bilious attack, and
very early next morning he left Mousseaux without seeing any one again.
Perhaps it was only the vexation of an author; perhaps he truly believed
that young Astier was going to succeed the Prince. However that may be,
a week after he had gone Paul had not got beyond an occasional whispered
word. The lady showed him the utmost kindness, treated him with the care
of a mother, asked after his health, whether he did not find the tower
looking south too hot, whether the shaking of the carriage tired him,
whether it was not too late for him to stay on the river. But the moment
he tried to mention the word ‘love,’ she was off without seeming to
understand. Still he found her a very different creature from the
proud Antonia of other years. Then, haughty and calm, she would show
impertinence his place by a mere frown. It was the serenity of a
majestic river flowing between its embankments. But now the embankment
was giving way; there seemed to be a crack somewhere, through which was
breaking the real nature of the woman. She had fits of rebellion
against custom and social convention, which hitherto she had respected
scrupulously, sudden desires to go somewhere else, and to tire herself
in some long excursion. She planned festivities, fireworks, great
coursing expeditions for the autumn, in which she would take the lead,
though it was years since she had been on horseback. Paul watched
carefully the vagaries of her excitement, and kept his sharp hawk’s-eye
upon everything; he had quite made up his mind not to dangle for two
years, as he had round Colette de Rosen.

One night the party had broken up early, after a tiring day of driving
in the neighbourhood. Paul had gone up to his room, and having thrown
off his coat was sitting in his slippers smoking a cigar and writing
to his mother a carefully studied epistle. Mamma was staying at Clos
Jallanges, and wearing her eyes out with looking across the winding
river into the extreme distance for a glimpse of the four towers of
Mousseaux: and he had to convince her that there was no chance of a
reconciliation at present between her and her friend, and that they had
better not meet. (No, no! His good mother was much too fond of fishing
on her own hook to be a desirable associate!) He had to remind her of
the bill due at the end of the month, and her promise to send the money
to good little Stenne, who had been left in the Rue Fortuny as sole
garrison of the mediaeval mansion. If Sammy’s money had not yet come in,
she might borrow of the Freydets, who would not refuse to advance it for
a few days. That very morning the Paris papers in their foreign news
had announced the marriage of the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg,
mentioned the presence of the Grand Duke, described the bride’s dresses,
and given the name of the Polish Bishop who had bestowed his blessing on
the happy pair. Mamma might imagine how the breakfast party at Mousseaux
was affected by this news, known to every one, and read by the hostess
in the eyes of her guests and in their persistent conversation on other
topics.

The poor Duchess, who had hardly spoken during the meal, felt, when
it was over, that she must rouse herself, and in spite of the heat had
carried off all her visitors in three carriages to the Château de la
Poissonnière, where the poet Ronsard was born. Ten miles’ drive in the
sun on a road all cracks and dust, for the pleasure of hearing that
hideous old Lani-boire, hoisted on to an old stump as decayed as
himself, recite ‘Mignonne, allons voir si la rose.’ On the way home
they had paid a visit to the Agricultural Orphanage and Training School
founded by old Padovani. Mamma must know it all well; they had been
over the dormitory and laundry, and inspected the implements and the
copy-books; and the whole place was so hot and smelly; and Laniboire
made a speech to the Agricultural Orphans, cropped like convicts, in
which he assured them that the world was good. To finish themselves
up they stopped again at the furnaces near Onzain, and spent an hour
between the heat of the setting sun and the smoke and smell of coal from
three huge belching brick chimneys, stumbling over the rails and dodging
the trucks and shovels full of molten metal in gigantic masses, which
dropped fire like dissolving blocks of red ice, All the time the Duchess
went on unwearied, but looked at nothing, listened to nothing. She
seemed to be having an animated discussion with old Brétigny, whose arm
she had taken, and paid as little attention to the furnaces and forges
as to the poet Ronsard or the Agricultural Orphanage.

Paul had reached this point in his letter, painting with terrible force,
to console his mother for her absence, the dullness of life this year at
Mousseaux, when he heard a gentle knock at his door. He thought it was
the young critic, or the Vicomte de Brétigny, or perhaps Laniboire, who
had been very unquiet of late. All these had often prolonged the evening
in his room, which was the largest and most convenient, and had a dainty
smoking-room attached to it. He was very much surprised on opening his
door to see by the light of the painted windows that the long corridor
of the first floor was absolutely silent and deserted, right away to the
guard-room, where a ray of moonlight showed the outline of the carving
on the massive door. He was going back to his seat, when there came
another knock. It came from the smoking-room, which communicated by a
little door under the hangings with a narrow passage in the thickness
of the wall leading to the rooms of the Duchess. The arrangement, dating
much earlier than the restorations, was not known to him: and, as he
remembered certain conversations during the last few days, when the
men were alone, and especially some of the stories of old Laniboire, his
first thought was ‘Whew! I hope she did not hear us.’ He drew the bolt
and the Duchess passed him without a word, and laying down on the table
where he had been writing a bundle of yellowish papers, with which her
delicate fingers played nervously, she said in a serious voice:

‘I want you to give me your advice; you are my friend, and I have no one
else to confide in.’

No one but him--poor woman! And she did not take warning from the
cunning watchful predatory glance, which shifted from the letter,
imprudently left open on the table where she might have read it, to
herself as she stood there with her arms bare and heavy hair coiled
round and round her head. He was thinking, ‘What does she want? What
has she come for?’ She, absorbed in the requickened wrath which had
been rising and choking her since the morning, panted out in low broken
sentences, ‘Just before you came, he sent Lavaux--he did! he sent
Lavaux--to ask for his letters!--I gave his impudent cheeks such a
reception that he won’t come again.--His letters, indeed!--these are
what he wanted.’

She held out the roll, her brief, as it might be called, against the
partner of her affections, showing what she had paid to raise the man
out of the gutter.

‘Take them, look at them! They are really quite interesting! ‘He turned
over the odd collection, smelling now of the boudoir, but better
suited to Bos’s shop-front; there were mortgageable debts to dealers in
curiosities, private jewellers, laundresses, yacht-builders, agents
for imitation-champagne from Touraine, receipts from stewards and
club-waiters, in short, every device of usury by which a man about
Paris comes to bankruptcy. Mari’ Anto muttered under her breath, ‘The
restoration of this gentleman cost more than Mousseaux, you see!... I
have had all these things in a drawer for years, because I never destroy
anything; but I solemnly declare that. I never thought of using them.
Now I have changed my mind. He is rich. I want my money and interest.
If he does not pay, I will take proceedings. Don’t you think I am
justified?’

‘Entirely justified,’ said Paul, stroking the point of his fair beard,
‘only--was not the Prince d’Athis incapable of contracting when he
signed these bills?’

‘Yes, yes, I know... Brétigny told me about that... for as he could get
nothing through Lavaux, he wrote to Brétigny to ask him to arbitrate.
A fellow Academician, you know!’ She laughed a laugh of impartial scorn
for the official dignities of the Ambassador and the ex-Minister. Then
she burst out indignantly, ‘It is true that I need not have paid, but I
chose he should be clean. I don’t want any arbitration. I paid and will
be paid back, or else I go into court, where the name and title of our
representative at St. Petersburg will be dragged through the dirt. If I
can only degrade the wretch, I shall have won the suit I care about.’

‘I can’t understand,’ said Paul as he put down the packet so as to hide
the awkward letter to Mamma, ‘I can’t understand how such proofs should
have been left in your hands by a man as clever----’

‘As D’Athis?’

The shrug of her shoulders sufficiently completed the interjection. But
the madness of a woman’s anger may always lead to something, so he drew
her on. ‘Yet he was one of our best diplomatists.’

‘It was I who put him up to it. He knows nothing of the business but
what I taught him.’

She hid her face, as for shame, in her hands, checking her sobs and
gasping with fury. ‘To think, to think, twelve years of my life to a man
like that! And now he leaves me; he casts me off! Cast off by him! Cast
off by him!’

It is some hours later, and she is still there. The young man is
upon his knees and is whispering tenderly: ‘When you know that I love
you--when you know that I loved you always. Think, think!’ The striking
of a clock is heard in the far distance and wakening sounds go by in the
growing light. She flies in dismay from the room, not caring so much as
to take with her the brief of her intended revenge.

Revenge herself now? On whom? and what for? There was an end of her
hatred now, for had she not her love? From this day she was another
woman, such an one as when she is seen with her lover or her husband,
supporting her unhasty steps upon the tender cradle of his arm, makes
the common people say, ‘Well, _she_ has got what she wants.’ There are
not so many of them as people think, particularly in society. Not that
the mistress of a great house could be thinking exclusively of her own
happiness; there were guests going away and other guests arriving and
settling in, a second instalment, more numerous and less intimate,
the whole in fact of the Academic set. There were the Duke de
Courson-Launay, the Prince and Princess de Fitz-Roy, the De Circourts,
the Huchenards, Saint-Avol the diplomatist, Moser and his daughter, Mr.
and Mrs. Henry of the American embassy. It was a hard task to provide
entertainment and occupation for all these people and to fuse such
different elements. No one understood the business better than she, but
just now it was a burden and a weariness to her. She would have liked to
keep quiet and meditate on her happiness, to think of nothing else: and
she could devise no other amusements for her guests than the invariable.
visit to the fish preserves, to Ronsard’s castle, and to the Orphanage.
Her own pleasure was complete when her hand touched Paul’s, as accident
brought them together in the same boat or the same carriage.

In the course of one such pompous expedition on the river, the little
fleet from Mousseaux, sailing on a shimmering mirror of silken awnings
and ducal pennons, had gone somewhat further than usual. Paul Astier was
in the boat in front of his lady’s. He was sitting in the stern beside
Laniboire, and was receiving the Academician’s confidences. Having been
invited to stay at Mousseaux till his report was finished, the old fool
fancied that he was making good progress towards the coveted succession;
and as always happens in such cases, he chose Paul as the confidant of
his hopes. After telling him what he had said and what she had answered,
and one thing and another, he was just saying, ‘Now, young man, what
would you do, if you were me?’ when a clear voice of low pitch rang over
the water from the boat behind them.

‘Monsieur Astier!’

‘Yes, Duchess.’

‘See yonder, among the reeds. It looks like Védrine.’

Védrine it was, painting away, with his wife and children at his side,
on an old flat-bottomed boat moored to a willow branch alongside of a
green islet, where the wagtails were chirping themselves hoarse. The
boats drew quickly up beside him, any novelty being a break to the
everlasting tedium of fashionable society: and while the Duchess greeted
with her sweetest smile Madame Védrine, who had once been her guest at
Mousseaux, the ladies looked with interest at the artist’s strange home
and the beautiful children, born of its light and its love, as they lay
in the shelter of their green refuge on the clear, placid stream, which
reflected the picture of their happiness. After the first greetings,
Védrine, palette in hand, gave Paul an account of the doings at Clos
Jallanges, which was visible through the mists of the river, half-way
up the hill side--a long low white house with an Italian roof. ‘My dear
fellow, they have all gone crazy there! The vacancy has turned their
heads. They spend their days ticking votes--your mother, Picheral, and
the poor invalid in her wheelchair. She too has caught the Academic
fever, and talks of moving to Paris, entertaining and giving parties to
help her brother on.’ So Védrine, to escape the general madness, camped
out all day and worked in the open air--children and all; and pointing
to his old boat he said, with a simple unresentful laugh, ‘My dahabeeah,
you see; my trip to the Nile.’

All at once the little boy, who in the midst of so many people, so many
pretty ladies and pretty dresses, had eyes for no one but old Laniboire,
addressed him in a clear voice, ‘Please, are you the gentleman of the
Académie who is going to be a hundred?’ The philosopher, occupied in
showing off his boating for the benefit of the fair Antonia, was all
but knocked off his seat: and when the peals of laughter had somewhat
subsided, Védrine explained that the child was strangely interested in
Jean Réhu, whom he did not know and had never seen, merely because he
was nearly a hundred years old. Every day the handsome little boy asked
about the old man and inquired how he was. Child as he was, he admired
such length of days with something of a personal regard. If others had
lived to a hundred, why not he?

But a sudden freshening of the breeze filled the sails of the little
craft, and fluttered all the tiny pennons; a mass of clouds was moving
up from over Blois, and towards Mousseaux a film of rain dimmed the
horizon, while the four lights on the top of the towers sparkled against
the black sky.

There was a moment of hurry and confusion. Then the vessels went away
between the banks of yellow sand, one behind the other in the narrow
channels; while Védrine, pleased by the brightness of the colours
beneath the stormy sky and by the striking figures of the boatmen,
standing in the bows and leaning hard on their long poles, turned to
his wife, who was kneeling in the punt packing in the children, the
colour-box, and the palette, and said, ‘Look over there, mamma. I
sometimes say of a friend, that we are in the same boat. Well, there you
may see what I mean. As those boats fly in line through the wind, with
the darkness-coming down, so are we men and workers, generation after
generation. It’s no use being shy of the fellows in your own boat; you
know them, you rub up against them, you are friends without wishing it
or even knowing it, all sailing on the same tack. But how the fellows
in front do loiter and get in the way! There’s nothing in common between
their boat and ours. We are too far off, we cannot catch what they say.
We never trouble about them except to call out “Go ahead; get on, do!”
 Meanwhile youth in the boat behind is pushing _us_; they would not mind
running us down; and we shout to them angrily, “Easy there! Where’s
the hurry?” Well, as for me,’ and he drew himself to his full height,
towering above the line of coast and river, ‘I belong, of course, to my
own beat and I am fond of it. But the boat just ahead and the one coming
up interest me not less. I would hail them, signal to them, speak to
them all. All of us alike, those before and those behind, are threatened
by the same dangers, and every boat finds the current strong, the sky
treacherous, and the evening quick to close in... Now, my dears, we must
make haste; here comes the rain!’




CHAPTER XIII.

‘Pray for the repose of the soul of the most noble Lord, the Duke
Charles Henri François Padovani, Prince d’Olmitz, formerly Member
of the Senate, Ambassador and Minister, Grand Cross of the Legion of
Honour, who departed this life September 20, 1880, at his estate of
Barbicaglia, where his remains have been interred. A mass for the
deceased will be celebrated on Sunday next in the private chapel, where
you are invited to attend.’

This quaint summons was being proclaimed on both banks of the Loire,
between Mousseaux and Onzain, by mourners hired from Vafflard’s, wearing
tall hats with crape mufflers that reached the ground, and ringing their
heavy bells as they walked. Paul Astier, hearing the words as he came
downstairs to the midday breakfast, felt his heart beat high with joy
and pride. Four days ago the news of the Duke’s death had startled
Mousseaux as the report of a gun startles a covey of partridges, and had
unexpectedly dispersed and scattered the second instalment of guests to
various seaside and holiday resorts. The Duchess had had to set off
at once for Corsica, leaving at the castle only a few very intimate
friends. The melancholy sound of the voices and moving bells, carried
to Paul’s ear by a breeze from the river through the open panes of
the staircase window, the antiquated and princely form of the funeral
invitation, could not but invest the domain of Mousseaux with an
impressive air of grandeur, which added to the height of its four towers
and its immemorial trees. And as all this was to be his (for the Duchess
on leaving had begged him to stay at the castle, as there were important
decisions to be taken on her return), the proclamation of death sounded
in his ears like the announcement of his approaching installation. ‘Pray
for the repose of the soul,’ said the voices. At last he really had
fortune within his grasp, and this time it should not be taken from him.
‘Member of the Senate, Ambassador and Minister,’ said the voices again.

‘Those bells are depressing, are they not, Monsieur Paul?’ said
Mdlle. Moser who was sitting at breakfast between her father and the
Academician Laniboire. The Duchess had kept these guests at Mousseaux,
partly to amuse Paul’s solitude and partly to give a little more
rest and fresh air to the poor ‘Antigone,’ kept in bondage by the
interminable candidature of her father. There was certainly no fear that
the Duchess would find a rival in this woman, who had eyes like a beaten
hound, hair without colour, and no other thought but her humiliating
petition for the unattainable place in the Académie. But on this
particular morning she had taken more pains than usual with her
appearance, and wore a bright dress open at the neck. The poor neck was
very thin and lean, but--there was no higher game. So Laniboire, in high
spirits, was teasing her with a gay freedom. No, he did not think the
death-bells at all depressing, nor the repetition of ‘Pray for the
repose,’ as it died away in the distance. No, life seemed to him by
contrast more enjoyable than usual, the _Vouvray_ sparkled more brightly
in the decanters, and his good stories had a telling echo in the
huge half-empty dining-room. The sodden subservient face of Moser the
candidate wore a fawning smile, though he wished his daughter away. But
the philosopher was a man of great influence in the Académie.

After coffee had been served on the terrace, Laniboire, with his face
coloured like a Redskin, called out, ‘Now let’s go and work, Mdlle.
Moser; I feel quite in the humour. I believe I shall finish my report
to-day.’ The gentle little lady, who sometimes acted as his secretary,
rose with some regret. On a delicious day like this, hazy with the first
mists of autumn, a good walk, or perhaps a continuation on the gallery
of her talk with the charming and well-mannered M. Paul, would have
pleased her better than writing at old M. Laniboire’s dictation
commendations of devoted hospital-nurses or exemplary attendants. But
her father urged her to go, as the great man wanted her. She obeyed and
went upstairs behind Laniboire, followed by old Moser, who was going to
have his afternoon nap.

Laniboire may have had Pascal’s nose, but he had not his manners. When
Paul came back from cooling his ambitious hopes by a long walk in the
woods, he found the break waiting at the foot of the steps in the great
court. The two fine horses were pawing the ground, and Mdlle. Moser was
inside, surrounded by boxes and bags, while Moser, looking bewildered,
stood on the doorstep, feeling in his pockets and bestowing coins on
two or three sneering footmen. Paul went up to the carriage, ‘So you are
leaving us, Mademoiselle.’ She gave him a thin clammy hand, on which she
had forgotten to put a glove, and without saying a word, or removing the
handkerchief with which she was wiping her eyes under her veil, she bent
her head in sign of good-bye. He learnt little more from old Moser, who
stammered out in a low voice, as he stood vexed and gloomy, with one
foot on the step of the carriage ‘It’s her doing: she _will_ go. He
was rude to her she says, but I can’t believe it.’ Then with a profound
sigh, and knitting the wrinkle in his brow, the deep, red, scar-like
wrinkle of the Academic candidate, he added, ‘It’s a very bad thing for
my election.’

Laniboire stayed all the afternoon in his room, and at dinner, as he
took his seat opposite Paul, he said, ‘Do you know why our friends the
Mosers went off so suddenly?’

‘No, sir, do you?’

‘It’s very strange, very strange.’

He assumed an air of great composure for the benefit of the servants,
but it was obvious that he was disturbed, worried, and in desperate fear
of a scandal. Gradually he regained his serenity and satisfaction, not
being able to think ill of life at dinner, and ended by admitting to his
young friend that he had perhaps been a little too attentive. ‘But it is
her father’s fault; he pesters me; and even an awarder of good-conduct
prizes has his feelings, eh?’ He lifted his glass of liqueur with a
triumphant flourish, cut short by Paul’s remark, ‘What will the Duchess
say? Of course Mdlle. Moser must have written to her to explain why she
left.’

Laniboire turned pale. ‘Really, do you think she did?’

Paul pressed the point, in the hopes of ridding himself of such a far
from gay gallant. If the lady had not written, there was the chance
that a servant might say something. Then, wrinkling his deceitful little
nose, he said, ‘If I were you, my dear sir----’

‘Pooh, pooh! Nonsense! I may get a scolding, but it won’t really do me
any harm.’

But in spite of his assumed confidence, the day before the Duchess
returned, upon the pretext that the election to the Académie was coming
on, and that the damp evenings were bad for his rheumatism, he went
off, taking in his portmanteau his completed report on the prizes for
good-conduct.

The Duchess arrived for Sunday’s mass, celebrated with great
magnificence in the Renaissance chapel, where Védrine’s versatility had
restored both the fine stained glass and the wonderful carving of the
reredos. A huge crowd from the villages of the neighbourhood filled the
chapel to overflowing, and gathered in the great court. Everywhere were
awkward fellows in hideous black coats, and long blue blouses shining
from the iron, everywhere white caps and kerchiefs stiff with starch
round sunburnt necks. All these people were brought together not by the
religious ceremony, nor by the honours paid to the old Duke, who was
unknown in the district, but by the open-air feast which was to follow
the mass. The long tables and benches were arranged on both sides of the
long lordly avenue; and here, after the service, between two and three
thousand peasants had no difficulty in finding room. At first there
was some constraint; the guests, overawed by the troop of servants in
mourning and the rangers with crape on their caps, spoke in whispers
under the shadow of the majestic elms. But as they warmed with the wine
and the victuals, the funeral feast grew more lively, and ended in a
vast merrymaking.

To escape this unpleasant carnival, the Duchess and Paul went for a
drive, sweeping rapidly in an open carriage draped with black along the
roads and fields, abandoned to the desertion of Sunday. The mourning
cockades of the tall footmen and the long veil of the widow opposite
reminded the young man of other similar drives. He thought to himself,
‘My destiny seems to lie in the way of dead husbands.’ He felt a touch
of regret at the thought of Colette de Rosen’s little curly head,
contrasting so brightly with the black mass of her surroundings. The
Duchess however, tired as she was by her journey, and looking stouter
than usual in her improvised mourning, had a magnificence of manner
entirely wanting in Colette, and besides, her dead husband did not
embarrass her, for she was much too frank to feign a grief which
ordinary women think necessary under such circumstances, even when the
deceased has been cordially detested and completely abandoned. The road
rang under the horses’ hoofs, as it unrolled before them, climbing or
descending gentle slopes, bordered now by little oak plantations, now
by huge plains which, in the neighbourhood of the isolated mills, were
swept by circling flights of crows. A pale sunlight gleamed through rare
gaps in a sky soft, rainy, and low: and to protect them from the wind as
they drove, the same wrap enveloped them both, so that their knees were
closely pressed together under the furs. The Duchess was talking of her
native Corsica, and of a wonderful _vocero_ which had been improvised at
the funeral by her maid.

‘Matéa?’

‘Yes, Matéa. She’s quite a poet, fancy’--and the Duchess quoted some
of the lines of the _voceratrice_, in the spirited Corsican dialect,
admirably suited to her contralto voice. But to the ‘important decision’
she did not refer.

But it was the important decision that interested Paul Astier, and
not the verses of the lady’s-maid. No doubt it would be discussed that
evening. To pass the time, he told her, in a low tone, how he had got
rid of Laniboire. ‘Poor little Moser,’ said the Duchess, ‘her father
really must be elected this time.’ After that they spoke but a word now
and then. They only drew together, lulled, as it were, by the gentle
movement of the carriage, while the daylight left the darkening fields,
and let them see over towards the furnaces sudden flashes of flame and
flickering gleams like lightning against the sky. Unfortunately the
drive home was spoilt by the drunken cries and songs of the crowds
returning from the feast. The peasants got among the wheels of the
carriage like cattle, and from the ditches on either side of the road,
into which they rolled, came snores and grunts, their peculiar fashion
of praying for the repose of the soul of the most noble Lord Duke.

They walked, as usual, on the gallery, and the Duchess, leaning against
Paul’s shoulder to look out at the darkness between the massive pillars
which cut the dim line of the horizon, murmured, ‘This is happiness!
Together, and alone!’ Still not a word on the subject which Paul was
waiting for. He tried to bring her to it, and with his lips in her hair
asked what she was going to do in the winter. Should she go back to
Paris? Oh, no! certainly not. She was sick of Paris and its false
society, its disguises and its treachery! She was still undecided,
however, whether to shut herself up at Mousseaux, or to set out on a
long journey to Syria and Palestine. What did he think? Why, this must
be the important decision they were to consider! It had been a mere
pretext to keep him there! She had been afraid that if he went back
to Paris, and away from her, some one else would carry him off! Paul,
thinking that he had been taken in, bit his lips as he said to himself,
‘Oh, if that’s your game, my lady, we’ll see!’ Tired by her journey
and a long day in the open air, the Duchess bid him good-night and went
wearily up to her room.

The next day they hardly met. The Duchess was busy settling accounts
with her steward and her tenants, much to the admiration of Maître
Gobineau, the notary, who observed to Paul as they sat at breakfast,
with slyness marked in every wrinkle of his shrivelled old face, ‘Ah,
it’s not easy to get on the blind side of the Duchess!’

‘Little he knows,’ was the thought of the Duchess’s young pursuer as he
played with his light brown beard. But when he heard the hard cold tones
which his lady’s tender contralto could assume in a business discussion,
he felt that he would have to play his cards carefully.

After breakfast there arrived some trunks from Paris with Spricht’s
forewoman and two fitters. And at last, about four o’clock, the Duchess
appeared in a marvellous costume, which made her look quite young and
slim, and proposed a walk in the park. They went along briskly, side by
side, keeping to the bye-paths to avoid the noise of the heavy rakes.
Three times a day the gardeners struggled against the accumulation of
the falling leaves. But in vain; in an hour the walks were again covered
by the same Oriental carpet, richly coloured with purple, green, and
bronze; and their feet rustled in it as they walked under the soft level
rays of the sun. The Duchess spoke of the husband who had brought so
much sorrow into her youth; she was anxious to make Paul feel that her
mourning was entirely conventional and did not affect her feelings. Paul
understood her object, and smiled coldly, determined to carry out his
plan.

At the lower end of the park they sat down, near a little building
hidden behind maples and privet, where the fishing nets and oars of the
boats were kept. From their seat they looked across the sloping lawns
and the plantations and shrubberies showing patches of gold. The castle,
seen in the background, with its long array of closed windows and
deserted terraces, lifting its towers and turrets proudly to the sky,
seemed withdrawn, as it were, into the past, and grander than ever.

‘I am sorry to leave all that,’ said Paul, with a sigh. She looked at
him in amazement with storm in her knitted brows. Go away? Did he mean
to go away? Why?

‘No help. Such is life.’

‘Are we to part? And what is to become of me?--and the journey we were
to make together?’

‘I could not interrupt you----’ he said. But how could a poor artist
like him afford himself a journey to Palestine? It was an impossible
dream, like Védrine’s dahabeeah ending in a punt on the Loire.

She shrugged her aristocratic shoulders, and said, ‘Why, Paul, what
nonsense! You know that all I have is yours.’

‘Mine? By what right?’

It was out! But she did not see yet what he was driving at. Fearing that
he had gone too far, he added, ‘I mean, what right, in the prejudiced
view of society, shall I have to travel with you?’

‘Well then, we will stay at Mousseaux.’

He made her a little mocking bow as he said, ‘Your architect has
finished his work on the castle.’

‘Oh, we will find him something to do, if I have to set fire to it
to-night!’

She laughed her open-hearted tender laugh, leant against him, and taking
his hands pressed them against her cheeks--fond trifling this, not the
word which he was waiting for, and trying to make her say. Then he
burst out, ‘If you love me, Antonia, let me go. I must make a living for
myself and mine. Society would not forgive my living on the bounty of a
woman who is not and never will be my wife.’

She understood, and closed her eyes as if on the brink of an abyss. In
the long silence that followed was heard all over the park the falling
of the leaves in the breeze, some still heavy with sap, dropping in
bunches from bough to bough, others stealing down with a scarcely
audible sound, like the rustling of a dress. Round the little hut, under
the maples, it was more like the pattering footsteps of some voiceless
crowd which moved around. She rose with a shiver. ‘It is cold; let us go
in.’ She had made her sacrifice. It would kill her, very probably, but
the world should not see the degradation of the Duchess Padovani into
Madame Paul Astier, who had married her architect.

Paul spent the evening in making the obvious arrangements for his
departure. He gave orders about his luggage, bestowed princely
gratuities upon the servants, and inquired about the time of the trains,
chatting away without constraint, but quite unsuccessful in breaking
through the gloomy silence of the fair Antonia, who read with absorbed
attention a magazine, of which she did not turn the pages. But when he
took his leave of her and thanked her for her prolonged and gracious
hospitality, in the light of the huge lace lamp-shade he saw on her
haughty face a look of anguish, and in her eyes, magnificent as those of
a dying lion, a beseeching supplication.

When he reached his room the young man looked to see that the door
to the smoking-room was bolted; then he put out his light and waited,
sitting quite still on the divan close to the communication. If she did
not come, he had made a mistake and must begin again. But there was a
slight noise in the private passage, the sound of a gown, then after a
momentary surprise at not being able to come straight in, a touch with
the tip of a finger, scarcely a knock. He did not move, and paid no
attention to a little significant coughing. Then he heard her go away,
with an agitated, uneven step.

‘Now,’ thought he, ‘she is mine. I can do what I like with her.’ And he
went quietly to bed.

‘If I were called the Prince d’Athis, would you not have married me when
your mourning was over? Yet D’Athis did not love you, and Paul Astier
does. Proud of his love, he would gladly have proclaimed it abroad
instead of hiding it as a thing to be ashamed of. Ah, Mari’ Anto! I have
awaked from a beautiful dream! Farewell for ever.’

She read his letter with her eyes hardly open, swollen with the tears
she had been shedding all night. ‘Is Monsieur Astier gone?’ The maid who
was leaning out of the window to fasten back the shutters that moment
caught sight of the carriage that was taking away M. Paul, right at the
end of the avenue, too far off to be called back. The Duchess sprang out
of bed and flew to the clock. ‘Nine o’clock.’ The express did not reach
Onzain till ten. ‘Quick, a messenger--Bertoli, and the best of the
horses!’ By taking the short cut through the woods he could reach
the station before the carriage. Whilst her orders were being hastily
carried out she wrote a note, standing, without waiting to dress. ‘Come
back; all shall be as you wish.’ No, that was too cold. That would not
bring him back. She tore up the note, wrote another, ‘What you will,
so long as I am yours,’ and signed it with her title. Then, wild at the
thought that perhaps even that would not bring him, she cried, ‘I’ll go
myself! My habit, quick!’ And she called out of the window to Bertoli,
whose horse was by this time waiting impatiently at the foot of the
steps, and gave orders to saddle ‘Mademoiselle Oger’ for herself.

She had not ridden for five years. Her figure had grown stouter, the
stitches of the habit gave way, some of the hooks were missing. ‘Never
mind, Matéa, never mind.’ She went down the staircase with the train
over her arm, between the footmen who stood with blank looks of
astonishment, and set off full speed down the avenue, through the gate,
into the road, into the wood, and down the cool green paths and long
avenues, where the wild creatures fluttered and leapt away as she
galloped madly by. She must and will have him. He is her death and
life. She has tasted love; and what else does the world contain? Leaning
forward, she listens for the sound of the train and watches in every
distant view for the steam skirting the horizon. If only she is in time!
Poor thing! She might let her horse walk, and yet she would overtake
that handsome runaway He is her evil genius, and he is not to be
escaped.

[Illustration: down the cool gree paths and long avenues 298]




CHAPTER XIV.

            From the Vicomte de Freydet

                   To Mademoiselle Germaine de Freydet Villa Beauséjour,

                              Paris-Passy.

_Café d’Orsay: 11 A.M. at breakfast._ EVERY two hours, and oftener if
I can, I shall send you off an interim despatch like this, as much to
relieve your anxiety, dearest, as for the pleasure of being with you
throughout this great day, which I hope will end with the news of
victory, in spite of defections at the last moment. Picheral told me
just now of a saying of Laniboire’s, ‘When a man enters the Académie he
wears a sword, but he does not draw it.’ an allusion, of course, to the
Astier duel. It was not I who fought, but the creature cares more for
his jest than for his promise. Cannot count on Danjou, either. After
having said so often to me, ‘You must join us,’ this morning in the
secretary’s office he came up to me and whispered, ‘You should let us
miss you,’ perhaps the best epigram on his list. Never mind, I’m well
ahead. My rivals are not formidable Fancy Baron Huchenard, the author of
‘Cave Man,’ in the Académie Française! Why, Paris would rise! As for M.
Dalzon, I can’t think how he has the face. I have got a copy of his too
notorious book. I do not like to use it, but he had better be careful.


_2 P.M._

At the Institute, in my good master’s rooms, where I shall await the
result of the voting. Perhaps it is pure imagination, but I fancy that
my arrival, though they expected me, has put them out here a little.
Our friends were finishing breakfast. There was a bustle and banging
of doors, and Corentine, instead of showing me into the drawing-room,
hustled me into the library, where my old master joined me with an
embarrassed air, and in a low voice advised me to keep extremely quiet.
He was quite depressed. I asked if he had any bad news. He said first,
‘No, no, my dear boy,’ and then, grasping my hand, ‘Come, cheer up.’ For
some time past the poor man has been much altered. He is evidently ready
to overflow with vexation and sorrow that he will not express. Probably
some deep private trouble, quite unconnected with my candidature; but I
am so nervous.

More than an hour to wait. I am amusing myself by looking across the
court through the great bay window of the meeting-room at the long rows
of busts. The Academicians! Is it an omen?


_2.45 P.M._

I have just seen all my judges go by, thirty-seven of them, if I counted
right. The full number of the Académie, since Epinchard is at Nice,
Ripault-Babin in bed, and Loisillon in the grave. It was glorious to
see all the distinguished men come into the court; the younger walking
slowly with serious looks and head bent as if under the weight of a
responsibility too heavy for them, the old men carrying themselves
well and stepping out briskly. A few gouty and rheumatic, like
Courson-Launay, drove up to the foot of the steps and leant on the arm
of a colleague. They stood about before going up, talking in little
knots, and I watched the movements of their backs and shoulders and
the play of their open hands. What would I not give to hear the last
discussion of my prospects! I opened the window gently, but just then
a carriage covered with luggage came clattering into the court, and out
got a traveller wrapped in furs and wearing an otter-skin cap. It was
Epinchard; just think, dear, Epinchard arriving from Nice on purpose to
vote for me. Good fellow! Then my old master went by, his broad-brimmed
hat down over his _eyes_; he was turning over the copy of ‘Without the
Veil,’ which I gave him, to be used if necessary. Well, self-defence is
always legitimate.

Now there’s nothing to see but two carriages waiting and the bust of
Minerva keeping guard. Goddess, protect me! They must be beginning the
calling of names, and the interrogatory. Each Academician has to state
to the President that his vote is not promised. It’s a mere formality,
as you may suppose, and they all reply by a smile of denial or a little
shake of the head like a Chinese mandarin.

A most amazing thing has just happened! I had given my letter to
Corentine and was getting a breath of fresh air at the window and
trying to read the secret of my fate in the gloomy front of the building
opposite, when at the next window to mine I caught sight of
Huchenard, airing himself too, quite close to me. Huchenard, my
rival--Astier-Réhu’s worst enemy, installed in his study! We were, both
equally amazed, bowed, and withdrew at the same moment. But there he is,
I can hear him, I feel that he is on the other side of the partition. No
doubt, like me, he is waiting to hear the decision of the Académie,
only he has all the space of ‘Villemain’s reception-room,’ while I am
suffocating in this hole crammed full of papers! Now I understand the
confusion caused by my arrival. But what is it all about? What is going
on? My dear Germaine, my head is going! Which of us is the fool?

Lost! And by treachery, by some mean Academic intrigue which I do not
yet understand!

     FIRST COUNTING.

     Baron Huchenard.......... 17 votes.

     Dalzon................... 15  ”

     Vicomte de Freydet.......  5  ”

     Moser......................1 vote.


     SECOND COUNTING.

     Baron Huchenard.......... 19 votes.

     Dalzon................... 15  ”

     Vicomte de Freydet.......  3  ”

     Moser....................  1 vote.


     THIRD COUNTING.

     Baron Huchenard.......... 33 votes.

     Dalzon...................  4  ”

     Vicomte de Freydet.......  0  “(!!)

     Moser................... . 1 vote.


It is clear that between the second and third taking of votes the copy
of ‘Without the Veil’ must have been sent round in the interest of Baron
Huchenard. An explanation I must and will have. I won’t leave the place
till I get it.


_4 P.M._

Dearest sister, you may guess my feelings when, after I had heard in
the next room M. and Madame Astier, old Réhu, and a stream of visitors
congratulating the author of ‘Cave Man,’ the door of the library opened
and my old master came in, reaching out his hands and saying, ‘My
dear boy, forgive me’--between heat and emotion he was nearly
speechless--‘forgive me, that man had a hold over me. I had to do it, I
had to do it. I thought I could avert the disaster which threatens me,
but destiny is not to be escaped, no, not even by a base act--’ He held
out his arms and I embraced him without the least anger, without indeed
quite understanding the mystery of this bitter grief.

After all, my own loss is easily retrieved. I have first-rate news of
Ripault-Babin. He can hardly live through the week. One more campaign,
dear, one more. Unfortunately the Hôtel Padovani will be closed all
the winter, owing to the Duchess’s deep mourning. So for our scene of
operations we shall have the ‘at home’ days of Madame Astier, Madame
Ancelin, and Madame Eviza, of whose fashion there is no question since
the visit of the Grand Duke. But the first thing, dear Germaine, will be
to move. Passy is too far off; the Académie will not go there. You will
say I am dragging you about again, but it is so important. Just look at
Huchenard. He had no claim whatever but his parties. I dine with my dear
master; don’t wait for me.

                 Your affectionate brother,

                             Abel de Freydet.

Moser’s solitary vote in each counting was given by Laniboire, the man
who reports for the good conduct prizes. They tell a queer story about
it There are strange things under the dome!




CHAPTER XV.

‘It’s a scandal.’

‘There must be a reply. The Académie cannot be silent under the attack.’

‘What are you thinking of? On the contrary, the dignity of the Académie
demands----’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, the real feeling of the Académie is----’

In their private assembly room, in front of the great chimney-piece
and the full-length portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, the ‘deities’
were engaged in a discussion preliminary to the meeting. The cold
smoke-stained light of a Parisian winter’s day, falling through the
great lantern overhead, gave effect to the chill solemnity of the marble
busts ranged in row along the walls; and the huge fire in the chimney,
nearly as red as the Cardinal’s robe, was not enough to warm the little
council-chamber or court-house, furnished with green leather seats, long
horse-shoe table in front of the desk, and chain-bedecked usher, keeping
the entrance near the place of Picheral, the Secretary.

Generally the best part of the meeting is the quarter of an hour’s grace
allowed to late-comers. The Academicians gather in groups with their
backs to the fire and their coat tails turned up, chatting familiarly in
undertones. But on this afternoon the conversation was general and had
risen to the utmost violence of public debate, each new comer joining in
from the far end of the room, while he signed the attendance list.
Some even before entering, while they were still depositing their great
coats, comforters, and overshoes in the empty room of the Académie
des Sciences, opened the door to join in the cries of ‘Shame!’ and
‘Scandalous!’

The cause of all the commotion was this. There had appeared in a morning
paper a reprint of a highly disrespectful report made to the Académie of
Florence upon Astier-Réhu’s ‘Galileo’ and the manifestly apocryphal
and absurd (sic) historical documents which were published with it. The
report had been sent with the greatest privacy to the President of
the Académie Française, and for some days there had been considerable
excitement at the Institute, where Astier-Réhu’s decision was eagerly
awaited. He had said nothing but, ‘I know, I know; I am taking the
necessary steps.’ And now suddenly here was this report which they
believed to be known only to themselves, hurled at them like a
bomb-shell from the outer sheet of one of the most widely circulated
of the Parisian newspapers, and accompanied by remarks insulting to the
Permanent Secretary and to the whole Society.

Furious was the indignant outcry against the impudence of the journalist
and the folly of Astier-Réhu, which had brought this upon them. The
Académie has not been accustomed to such attacks, since it has prudently
opened its doors to ‘gentlemen of the Press.’ The fiery Laniboire,
familiar with every kind of ‘sport.’ talked of cutting off the
gentleman’s ears, and it took two or three colleagues to restrain his
ardour.

‘Come, Laniboire; we wear the sword, but we do not draw it Why, it’s
your own epigram, confound you, though adopted by the Institute.’

‘Gentlemen, you remember that Pliny the Elder, in the thirteenth book of
his “Natural History”’--here arrived Gazan, who came in puffing with his
elephantine trot--‘is one of the first writers who mentions counterfeit
autographs; amongst others, a false letter of Priam’s on papyrus’--

‘Monsieur Gazan has not signed the list,’ cried Picheral’s sharp
falsetto.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’ And the fat man went off to sign, still
discoursing about papyrus and King Priam, though unheard for the hubbub
of angry voices, in which the only word that could be distinguished was
‘Académie.’ They all talked about the Académie as if it were an actual
live person, whose real view each man believed himself alone to know and
to express. Suddenly the exclamations ceased, as Astier-Réhu entered,
signed his name, and quietly deposited at his place as Permanent
Secretary the ensign of his office, carried under his arm. Then moving
towards his colleagues he said:

‘Gentlemen, I have bad news for you. I sent to the Library to be tested
the twelve or fifteen thousand documents which made what I called my
collection. Well, gentlemen, all are forgeries. The Académie of Florence
stated the truth. I am the victim of a stupendous hoax.’

As he wiped from his brow the great drops of sweat wrung out by the
strain of his confession, some one asked in an insolent tone:

‘Well, and _so_, Mr. Secretary’--

‘So, M. Danjou, I had no other choice but to bring an action--which
is what I have done. There was a general protest, all declaring that a
lawsuit was out of the question and would bring ridicule upon the whole
Society, to which he answered that he was exceedingly sorry to disoblige
his colleagues, but his mind was made up. ‘Besides, the man is in prison
and the proceedings have commenced.’

Never had the private assembly-room heard a roar like that which greeted
this statement. Laniboire distinguished himself as usual among the most
excited by shouting that the Académie ought to get rid of so dangerous
a member. In the first heat of their anger some of the assembly began to
discuss the question aloud. Could it be done? Could the Académie say to
a member who had brought the whole body into an undignified position,
‘Go! I reverse my judgment. Deity as you are, I relegate you to the rank
of a mere mortal’? Suddenly, either having caught a few words of
the discussion, or by one of those strange intuitions which seem
occasionally to come as an inspiration to the most hopelessly deaf, old
Réhu, who had been keeping to himself, away from the fire for fear of
a fit, remarked in his loud unmodulated voice, ‘During the Restoration,
for reasons merely political, we turned out eleven members at once.’ The
patriarch gave the usual little attesting movement of the head, calling
to witness his contemporaries of the period, white busts with vacant
eyes standing in rows on pedestals round the room.

‘Eleven! whew!’ muttered Danjou amid a great silence. And Laniboire,
cynical as before, said ‘All societies are cowardly; it’s the natural
law of self-preservation.’ Here Epinchard, who had been busy near the
door with Picheral the Secretary, rejoined the rest, and observed in a
weak voice, between two fits of coughing, that the Permanent Secretary
was not the only person to blame in the matter, as would appear from the
minutes of the proceedings of July 8, 1879, which should now be read.
Picheral from his place, in his thin brisk voice, began at a great pace:
_On July 8, 1879, Léonard-Pierre-Alexandre Astier-Réhu presented to the
Académie Française a letter from Rotrou to Cardinal Richelieu respecting
the statutes of the Society. The Académie, after an examination of this
unpublished and interesting document, passed a vote of thanks to the
donor, and decided to enter the letter of Rotrou upon the minutes. The
letter is appended_ (at this point the Secretary slackened his delivery
and put a malicious stress upon each word) _with all the errors of the
original text, which, being such as occur in ordinary correspondence,
confirm the authenticity of the document_. All stood motionless in the
faded light that came through the glass, avoiding each other’s eyes and
listening in utter amazement.

‘Shall I read the letter too?’ asked Picheral with a smile. He was much
amused.

‘Yes, read the letter too,’ said Epinchard. But after a phrase or two
there were cries of ‘Enough, enough, that will do!’ They were ashamed
of such a letter of Rotrou. It was a crying forgery, a mere schoolboy’s
imitation, the sentences misshapen, and half the words not known at the
supposed date. How could they have been so blind?

‘You see, gentlemen, that we could scarcely throw the whole burden upon
our unfortunate colleague,’ said Epinchard; and turning to the Permanent
Secretary begged him to abandon proceedings which could bring nothing
but discredit upon the whole Society and the great Cardinal himself.

But neither the fervour of the appeal nor the magnificence of the
orator’s attitude, as he pointed to the insignia of the Sacred Founder,
could prevail over the stubborn resolution of Astier-Réhu. Standing firm
and upright before the little table in the middle of the room, which
was used as a desk for the reading of communications, with his fists
clenched, as if he feared that his decision might be wrung out of his
hands, he repeated that ‘Nothing, I assure you, nothing’ would alter his
determination. He struck the hard wood angrily with his big knuckles, as
he said, ‘Ah, gentlemen, I have waited, for reasons like these, too long
already! I tell you, my “Galileo” is a bone in my throat! I am not rich
enough to buy it up, and I see it in the shop windows, advertising me as
the accomplice of a forger.’ What was his object! Why, to tear out the
rotten pages with his own hand and burn them before all the world!
A trial would give him the opportunity. ‘You talk of ridicule? The
Académie is above the fear of it; and as for me, a butt and a beggar as
I must be, I shall have the proud satisfaction of having protected
my personal honour and the dignity of history. I ask no more.’ Honest
Crocodilus! In the beat of his rhetoric was a sound of pure probity,
which rang strangely where all around was padded with compromise and
concealment. Suddenly the usher announced, ‘Four o’clock, gentlemen.’
Four o’clock! and they had not finished the arrangements for
Ripault-Babin’s funeral.

‘Ah, we must remember Ripault-Babin!’ observed Danjou in a mocking
voice. ‘He has died at the right moment!’ said Laniboire with mournful
emphasis. But the point of his epigram was lost, for the usher was
crying, ‘Take your places’; and the President was ringing his bell On
his right was Desminières the Chancellor, and on his left the Permanent
Secretary, reading quietly with recovered self-possession the report
of the Funeral Committee, to an accompaniment of eager whispers and the
pattering of sleet on the glass.

‘How late you went on to-day!’ remarked Coren-tine, as she opened the
door to her master. Corentine was certainly to be reckoned with those
who had no great opinion of the Institute. ‘M. Paul is in your study
with Madame. You must go through the library; the drawing-room is full
of people waiting to see you.’

The library, where nothing was left but the frame of the pigeon-holes,
looked as if there had been a fire or a burglary. It depressed him, and
he generally avoided it But to-day he went through it proudly, supported
by the remembrance of his resolve, and of how he had declared it at
the meeting. After an effort, which had cost him so much courage and
determination, he felt a sweet sense of relief in the thought that his
son was waiting for him. He had not seen him since just after the duel,
when he had been overcome by the sight of his gallant boy, laid at full
length and whiter than the sheet. He was thinking with delight how he
would go up to him with open arms, and embrace him, and hold him tight,
a long while, and say nothing--nothing! But as soon as he came into the
room and saw the mother and son close together, whispering, with
their eyes on the carpet, and their everlasting air of conspiracy, the
affectionate impulse was gone.

‘Here you are at last!’ cried Madame Astier, who was dressed to go out.
And in a tone of mock solemnity, as if introducing the two, she said,
‘My dear--the Count Paul Astier.’

‘At your service, Master,’ said Paul, as he bowed.

Astier-Réhu knitted his thick brows as he looked at them. ‘_Count_ Paul
Astier?’ said he.

The young fellow, as charming as ever, in spite of the tanning of
six months spent in the open air, said he had just indulged in the
extravagance of a Roman title, not so much for his own sake as in honour
of the lady who was about to take his name.

‘So you are going to be married,’ said his father, whose suspicions
increased. ‘And who is the lady?’

‘The Duchess Padovani.’

‘You must have lost your senses! Why she is five-and-twenty years older
than you, and besides--and besides--’ He hesitated, trying to find a
respectful phrase, but at last blurted right out, ‘You can’t marry a
woman who to every one’s knowledge has belonged to another for years.’

‘A fact, however, which has never prevented our dining with her
regularly, and accepting from her all kinds of favours,’ hissed Madame
Astier, rearing her little head as to strike. Without bestowing on her a
word or a look, as holding her no judge in a question of honour, the man
went up to his son, and said in earnest tones, the muscles of his big
cheeks twitching with emotion, ‘Don’t do it, Paul. For the sake of the
name you bear, don’t do it, my boy, I beg you.’ He grasped his son’s
shoulder and shook him, voice and hand quivering together. But the
young fellow moved away, not liking such demonstrations, and objected
generally that ‘he didn’t see it; it was not his view.’ The father
felt the impassable distance between himself and his son, saw the
impenetrable face and the look askance, and instinctively lifted up his
voice in appeal to his rights as head of the family. A smile which he
caught passing between Paul and his mother, a fresh proof of their joint
share in this discreditable business, completed his exasperation. He
shouted and raved, threatening to make a public protest, to write to the
papers, to brand them both, mother and son, ‘in his history.’ This
last was his most appalling threat. When he had said of some historical
character, ‘I have branded him in my history,’ he thought no punishment
could be more severe. Madame Astier, almost as familiar with the
threat of branding as with the dragging of his trunk about the passage,
contented herself with saying as she buttoned her gloves: ‘You know
every word can be heard in the next room.’ In spite of the curtains over
the door, the murmur of conversation was audible from the drawing-room.

Then, repressing and swallowing his wrath, ‘Listen to me, Paul,’ said
Léonard Astier, shaking his forefinger in the young man’s face, ‘if ever
this thing you are talking of comes to pass, do not expect to look upon
me again. I will not be present on your wedding day; I will not have you
near me, not even at my death-bed; You are no longer a son of mine;
and you go with my curse upon you.’ Moving away instinctively from the
finger which almost touched him, Paul replied with great calmness, ‘Oh,
you know, my dear father, that sort of thing is never done now-a-days!
Even on the stage they have given up blessing and cursing.’

‘But not punishing, you scoundrel!’ growled the old man, lifting his
hand. There was an angry cry of ‘Léonard!’ from the mother, as with the
prompt parry of a boxer Paul turned the blow aside, quietly as if he
had been in Keyser’s gymnasium, and without letting go the wrist he had
twisted under, said beneath his breath, ‘No, no; I won’t have that.’

The tough old hillsman struggled violently, but, vigorous as he still
was, he had found his master. At this terrible moment, while father and
son stood face to face, breathing hate at one another, and exchanging
murderous glances, the door of the drawing-room opened a little and
showed the good-natured doll-like smile of a fat lady bedecked with
feathers and flowers. ‘Excuse me, dear master, I want just to say a
word--why, Adelaide is here, and M. Paul too. Charming! delightful!
Quite a family group!’ Madame Ancelin was right. A family group it was,
a picture of the modern family, spoilt by the crack which runs
through European society from top to bottom, endangering its essential
principles of authority and subordination, and nowhere more remarkable
than here, under the stately dome of the Institute, where the
traditional domestic virtues are judged and rewarded.




CHAPTER XVI.

[Illustration: People were still coming in 316]

It was stifling in the Eighth Chamber, where the Fage case was just
coming on after interminable preliminaries and great efforts on the
part of influential persons to stop the proceedings. Never had this
court-room, whose walls of a mouldy blue and diamond pattern in faded
gilding reeked with the effluvium of rags and misery, never had this
court seen squeezed on its dirty seats and packed in its passages such a
press and such a crowd of fashionable and distinguished persons, so many
flower-trimmed bonnets and spring costumes by the masters of millinery
art, to throw into relief the dead black of the gowns and caps. People
were still coming in through the entrance lobby, where the double doors
were perpetually swinging as the tide flowed on, a wavy sea of thronging
faces upturned beneath the whitish light of the landing. Everyone was
there, all the well-known, well-worn, depressingly familiar personages
that figure at every Parisian festivity, fashionable funeral, or famous
‘first night.’ There was Marguerite Oger well to the fore, and the
little Countess Foder, and beautiful Mrs. Henry of the American Embassy.
There were the ladies belonging to the Academic confraternity, Madame
Ancein in mauve on the arm of Raverand, the leader of the bar; Madame
Eviza, a bush of little roses surrounded by a busy humming swarm of
would-be barristers. Behind the President’s bench was Danjou, standing
with folded arms, and showing above the audience and the judges the hard
angles of his regular stage-weathered countenance, everywhere to be seen
during the last forty years as the type of social commonplace in all
its manifold manifestations. With the exception of Astier-Réhu and Baron
Huchenard, who were summoned as witnesses, he was the only Academician
bold enough to face the irreverent remarks that might be expected in the
speech of Fage’s counsel, Margery, the dreaded wit, who convulses the
whole assembly and the bench with the mere sound of his nasal ‘Well.’
Some fun was to be expected; the whole atmosphere of the place announced
it, the erratic tilt of the barristers’ caps, the gleam in the eyes and
curl in the corners of the mouths of people giving one another little
anticipatory smiles. There were endless anecdotes current about the
achievements in gallantry of the little humpback who had just been
brought to the prisoner’s box and, lifting his long well-greased head,
cast into the court over the bar the conquering glance of a manifest
ladies’ man. Stories were told of compromising letters, of an account
drawn up by the prisoner mentioning right out the names of two or three
well-known ladies of fashion, the regular names dragged again and again
into every unsavoury case. There was a copy of the production going
the rounds of the seats reserved for the press, a simple conceited
autobiography containing none of the revelations imputed to it by public
rumour. Fage had beguiled the tedium of confinement by writing for the
court the story of his life. He was born, he said, near Vassy (Haute
Marne), as straight as anybody--so they all say--but a fall from a horse
at fifteen had bent and inflected his spine. His taste for gallantry had
developed somewhat late in life when he was working at a bookseller’s in
the Passage des Panoramas. As his deformity interfered with his success,
he tried to find some way of getting plenty of money. The story of
his love affairs alternating with that of his forgeries and the means
employed, with descriptions of ink and of parchment, resulted in such
headings to his chapters as ‘My first victim--For a red ribbon--The
gingerbread fair--I make the acquaintance of Astier-Réhu--The mysterious
ink--I defy the chemists of the Institute.’ This brief epitome is enough
to show the combination, the humpback’s self-satisfaction _plus_ the
arrogance of the self-taught artisan. The general result of reading
the production was utter amazement that the Permanent Secretary of
the Académie Française and the official representatives of science
and literature could have been taken in for two or three years by an
ignorant dwarf with a brain crammed full of the refuse of libraries and
the ill-digested parings of books. This constituted the extraordinary
joke of the whole business, and was the explanation of the crowded
court. People came to see the Académie pilloried in the person of
Astier-Réhu, who sat among the witnesses, the mark of every eye. There
he sat without moving, absorbed in his thoughts, not turning his head,
and hardly answering the fulsome compliments of Freydet who was standing
behind, with black gloves and a deep crape hat-band, having quite
recently lost his sister. He had been summoned for the defence, and the
Academic candidate was afraid that the fact might damage him in the eyes
of his old master. He was apologising and explaining how he had come
across the wretched Fage in Védrine’s studio, and that was the reason
of this unexpected call. But his whispers were lost in the noise of the
court and the monotonous hum from the bench, as cases were called on and
disposed of, the invariable ‘This day week, this day week’ descending
like the stroke of the guillotine and cutting short the barrister’s
protest, and the entreaties of poor red-faced fellows mopping their
brows before the seat of justice. ‘But, Monsieur le Président...’ ‘This
day week.’ Sometimes from the back of the court would come a cry and a
despairing movement of a pair of arms, ‘I am here, M. le Président, but
I can’t get through, there’s such a crowd...’ ‘This day week.’ When a
man has beheld such clearances as these, and seen the symbolic scales
operate with such dexterity, he gets a vivid impression of French
justice; it is not unlike the sensation of hearing the funeral service
raced through in a hurry by a strange priest over a pauper’s grave.

The voice of the President called for the Fage case. Complete silence
followed in the court, and even on the staircase landing where people
had climbed on to benches to see. Then after a short consultation on the
bench the witnesses filed out through a dense crowd of gowns on their
way to the little room reserved for them, a dreary empty place, badly
lighted by glass windows that had once been red, and looking out on a
narrow alley. Astier-Réhu, who was to be called first, did not go in,
but walked up and down in the gloomy passage between the witness-room
and the court. Freydet wished to stay with him, but he said in a
colourless voice, ‘No, no, let me alone, I want to be alone.’ So
the candidate joined the other witnesses who were standing in little
knots--Baron Huchenard, Bos the palaeographer, Delpech the chemist, of
the Académie des Sciences, some experts in handwriting, and two or three
pretty girls, the originals of some of the photographs that adorned the
walls of Fage’s room, delighted at the notoriety that the proceedings
would bring them, laughing loudly and displaying startling little spring
hats strangely different from the linen cap and woollen mittens of the
caretaker at the Cour des Comptes. Védrine also had been summoned, and
Freydet came and sat by him on the wide ledge of the open window. The
two friends, whirled apart in the opposing currents that divide men’s
lives in Paris, had not met since the summer before until the recent
funeral of poor Germaine de Freydet Védrine pressed his friend’s hand
and asked how he was, how he felt after so terrible a blow. Freydet
shrugged his shoulders, ‘It’s hard, very hard, but after all I’m used
to it.’ Then, as Védrine stared in wonder at his selfish stoicism, he
added, ‘Just think, that’s twice in one year that I have been fooled.’
The blow, the only blow, that he remembered, was his failure to get
Ripault-Babin’s seat, which he had lately missed, as he had missed
Loisillon’s before. Presently he understood, sighed deeply, and said,
‘Ah, yes, poor Germaine!’ She had taken so much trouble all the winter
about his unlucky candidature. Two dinners a week! Up to twelve or one
o’clock she would be wheeling her chair all over the drawing-room. She
had sacrificed her remaining strength to it, and was even more excited
and keen than her brother. And at the last, the very last, when she was
past speaking, her poor twisted fingers went on counting upon the hem of
the sheet ‘Yes, Védrine, she died, ticking and calculating my chances
of Ripault-Babin’s seat. Oh, if only for her sake, I will get into their
Académie, in defiance of them all, and in honour of her dear memory!’
He stopped short, then in an altered and lower voice went on: ‘Really I
don’t know why I talk like that. The truth is that, since they put the
idea into my head, I can think of nothing else. My sister is dead and
I have hardly given her a tear. I had to pay my calls and “beg for the
Académie,” as that fellow says. The thing takes the very life out of me.
It’s perfectly maddening.’

In the savage plainness of these words and the excited ring of the
angry voice, the sculptor could scarcely recognise his gentle courteous
friend, to whom mere living used to be a joy. The absent expression in
his eye, the anxious wrinkle on his brow, and the heat of the hand which
grasped Védrine’s, all betrayed his subjection to one absorbing passion,
one fixed idea. But the meeting with Védrine seemed to have relieved his
nerves, and he asked affectionately, ‘Well, what are you doing, and
how are you getting on? How is your wife? And the children?’ His friend
answered with his quiet smile. All were doing well, thank God. The
little girl was just going to be weaned. The boy continued to fulfil his
function of looking lovely, and was waiting impatiently for old Réhu’s
centenary. As for himself, he was hard at work. He had two pictures in
the Salon this year, not badly hung, and not badly sold. On the other
hand a creditor, not less unwise than hard, had taken possession of the
Knight, and he had passed from stage to stage, first lying much in
the way in a fine suite of rooms on the ground floor in the Rue St.
Pétersbourg, then packed off to a stable at Batignolles, and now
shivering under a cowkeeper’s shed at Levallois, where from time to time
the sculptor and his family went to pay him a visit.

‘So much for glory!’ added Védrine with a laugh, as the voice of the
usher called for the witness Astier-Réhu. The head of the Permanent
Secretary showed for a moment, outlined against the dusty light of
the court-room, upright and steady; but his back he had forgotten to
control, and the shiver of his broad shoulders betrayed intense feeling.
‘Poor man,’ muttered the sculptor, ‘he’s got heavy trials to go through.
This autograph business, and his son’s marriage.’

‘Is Paul Astier married?’

‘Yes, three days ago, to the Duchess Padovani. It was a sort of
morganatic marriage, with no guests but the young man’s mamma and the
four witnesses. I was one of them, as you may suppose, for a freak of
fate seems to associate me with all the acts and deeds of the Astier
family.’

And Védrine described the sorrowful surprise with which in the Mayor’s
room he had seen the Duchess Padovani appear, deathly pale, as haughty
as ever, but withered and heart-broken, with a mass of grey hair, the
poor beautiful hair that she no longer took the trouble to dye. By her
side was Paul Astier, the Count, smiling, cold, and charming as before.
They all looked at one another, and nobody had a word to say except
the official who, after a good stare at the two old ladies, felt it
incumbent upon him to remark with a gracious bow:

‘We are only waiting for the bride.’

‘The bride is here,’ replied the Duchess, stepping forward with head
erect and a bitter smile which spoilt and twisted her beautiful mouth.

From the Mayor’s office, where the deputy on duty had the good taste to
spare them an oration, they adjourned to the Catholic Institute in the
Rue de Vaugirard, an aristocratic church, all over gilding and flowers
and a blaze of candles, but not a soul there, nobody but the wedding
party on a single row of chairs, to hear the Papal Nuncio, Monsignor
Adriani, mumble an interminable homily out of an illuminated book. A
fine thing it was, to hear the worldly prelate with large nose, thin
lips, and hollow shoulders under his violet cape, talking of the
‘honourable traditions of the husband and the charms of the wife,’ with
a sombre, cynical side-glance at the velvet cushions of the unhappy
couple. Then came the departure; cold good-byes were exchanged under the
arches of the little cloister, and a sigh of relief with ‘Well, that’s
over,’ escaped the Duchess, said in the despairing, disenchanted accent
of a woman who has measured the abyss, and leaps in with her eyes open
only to keep her word.

‘Ah, well,’ Védrine went on, ‘I have seen gloomy and lamentable sights
enough in the course of my lite, but never anything so heart-breaking as
Paul Astier’s wedding.’

‘He’s a fine rascal, though, is our young friend,’ said Freydet, between
his closed teeth.

‘Yes, a precious product of the “struggle for existence.”’

The sculptor repeated the phrase with emphasis. A ‘struggler for
existence’ was his name for the novel tribe of young savages who cite
the necessity of ‘nature’s war’ as an hypocritical excuse for every kind
of meanness. Freydet went on:

‘Well, anyhow, he’s rich now, which is what he wanted. His nose has not
led him astray this time.’

‘Wait and see. The Duchess is not easy to get on with, and he looked
devilish wicked at the Mayor’s. If the old lady bores him too much,
we may still see him some day at the Assize Court, son and grandson of
divinities as he is.’

‘The witness Védrine!’ called the usher at the top of his voice.

At the same moment a huge roar of laughter ran over the thronging crowd
and came through the door as it swung open. ‘They don’t seem bored in
there,’ said the municipal officer posted in the passage. The witnesses’
room, which had been gradually emptying during the chat of the two
schoolfellows, now contained only Freydet and the caretaker, who, scared
at having to appear in court, was twisting the strings of her cap like
a lunatic. The worthy candidate, on the contrary, thought he had
an unparalleled opportunity of burning incense at the shrine of the
Académie Française and its Permanent Secretary. Left alone, when the
good woman’s turn came, he paced up and down the room, planted himself
in front of the window, and let off well-rounded periods accompanied by
magnificent gestures of his black gloves. But he was misunderstood in
the house opposite; and a fat hand at the end of a bare arm pulled aside
a pink curtain and waved to him. Freydet, flushing crimson with shame,
moved quickly away from the window, and took refuge in the passage.

‘The Public Prosecutor is speaking now,’ said the doorkeeper in a
whisper, as a voice in a tone of assumed indignation rang through the
heated air of the court--‘You played,’ it said, ‘on the innocent passion
of an old man.’

‘But how about me?’ said Freydet, thinking aloud.

‘I expect you have been forgotten.’

Freydet was at first puzzled, but presently disgusted at the strange
fate which prevented his coming forward in public as the champion of the
Académie, and so getting himself talked about and seeing his name
for once in the papers. Just then a shout of laughter greeted the
enumeration of the forgeries in the Mesnil-Case collection; letters from
kings, popes, empresses, Turenne, Buffon, Montaigne, La Boëtie, Clémence
Isaure, and the mere mention of the absurd list showed the extraordinary
simplicity of the historian who had been befooled by the little dwarf.
But at the thought that this disrespectful laugh was a scoff at his
master and protector, Freydet felt an indignation not altogether free
from selfishness. He felt that he was himself hit by the recoil, and his
candidature damaged again. He broke away, mingling in the stir of the
general exodus amid a confusion of footmen running to and fro in the
beautiful waning light of a fine June day, while the parasols, pink,
white, mauve, or green opened like so many large flowers. Little
explosions of laughter were still coming from the various groups, as
if they had been seeing an amusing piece at the theatre. The little
humpback had got it hot--five years’ imprisonment and costs. But how
comic Margery had been! Marguerite Oger was exclaiming in fits, ‘Oh my
dears, my dears!’ and Danjou, escorting Madame Eviza to her carriage,
said aloud in his cynical way, ‘It’s a slap in the face for the
Académie, well planted--but it was cleverly done.’

Léonard Astier, who was walking alone, heard Danjou’s remark as well
as others, in spite of the warnings passed from mouth to mouth, ‘Take
care--there he is.’ It signified to him the beginning of his fall in
estimation, consequent on the general knowledge of his folly and the
amusement of Paris.

‘Take my arm, my dear master!’ said Freydet, who had been carried to him
by the strong impulse of affection.

‘Ah, my dear friend, how much good you do me!’ said the old man in a
dull, broken voice.

They walked on in silence for some time. The trees on the quay cast a
tracery of shade upon the stones below; the sounds of the street and the
river echoed in the joyous air. It was one of those days on which human
wretchedness seems to have been reprieved.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Freydet.

‘Anywhere--except home,’ answered the elder man, who felt a child’s
terror at the thought of the scene his wife would inflict on him at
dinner.

They dined together at the Point-du-Jour after walking a long time by
the river. When poor Astier returned home very late the friendly words
of his old pupil and the sweetness of the air had succeeded in restoring
his peace of mind. He had got over his five hours in the stocks on the
bench of the Eighth Chamber--five hours to endure with bound hands the
insulting laughter of the crowd and the vitriol squirt of the counsel.
‘Laugh, apes, laugh! Posterity will judge!’ was the thought with which
he consoled himself as he crossed the large courts of the Institute,
wrapped in slumber, with unlighted windows and great dark foursquare
holes right and left where the staircases came down. He felt his way
upstairs and reached his study noiselessly like a thief. Since Paul’s
marriage and his quarrel with his son he was in the habit of flinging
himself down every night on a bed made up in the study, to escape the
interminable midnight discussions in which the wife always comes off
victorious, thanks to the never-failing support of her ‘nerves’, and
the husband ends by giving way and promising everything for the sake of
peace and permission to sleep.

Sleep! Never had he so much felt the need of it as now, at the end of
his long day of emotion and fatigue, and the darkness of his study as he
entered seemed the beginning of rest--when in the angle of the window he
dimly distinguished a human figure.

‘Well, I hope you are satisfied.’ It was his wife! She was on the look
out for him, waiting, and her angry voice stopped him short in the dark
to listen. ‘You have won your cause; you insisted on making yourself
a mockery, and you have done it--daubed and drenched yourself with
ridicule, till you won’t be able to show yourself again! Much reason you
had to cry out that your son was disgracing you, to insult and to curse
your son! Poor boy, it is well he has changed his name, now that yours
has become so identified with ignorance and gullibility that no one will
be able to utter it without a smile. And all this, if you please,
for the sake of your historical work! Why, you foolish man, who knows
anything about your historical work? Who can possibly care whether your
documents are genuine or forged? You know that nobody reads you.’

She went on and on, pouring out a thin stream of voice in her shrillest
tone; and he felt as if he were back again in the pillory, listening to
the official abuse as he had done all day, without interrupting, without
even a threatening gesture, swallowing the insults as he had in court,
and feeling that the authority was above attack and the judge one not to
be answered. But how cruel was this invisible mouth which bit him, and
wounded him all over, and slowly mangled in its teeth his pride as a man
and a writer!

His books, indeed! Did he suppose that they had got him into the
Académie? Why, it was to his wife alone that he owed his green coat! She
had spent her life in plotting and manoeuvring to break open one door
after another; sacrificed all her youth to such intrigues, and such
intriguers, as made her sick with disgust. ‘Why, my dear, I had to! The
Académie is attained by talent, of which you have none, or a great
name, or a high position. You had none of these things. So I came to the
rescue.’ And that there might be no mistake about it, that he might not
attribute what she said only to the exasperation of a woman wounded
and humiliated in her wifely pride and her blind maternal devotion, she
recalled the details of his election, and reminded him of his famous
remark about Madame Astier’s veils that smelt of tobacco, though
he never smoked, ‘a remark, my dear, that has done more to make you
notorious than your books.’

He gave a low deep groan, the stifled cry of a man who stays with both
hands the life escaping from a mortal rent The sharp little voice went
on unaltered. ‘Ah well, pack your trunk, do, once for all! Let the world
hear no more of you. Fortunately your son is rich and will give you
your daily bread. For you need not be told that now you will find no
publisher or magazine to take your rubbish, and it will be due to Paul’s
supposed infamy that you escape starvation.’

‘This is more than I can bear,’ muttered the poor man as he fled away,
away from the lashing fury. And as he felt his way along the walls, and
passed through the passage, down the stairs, across the echoing court,
he muttered almost in tears, ‘More than I can bear, more than I can
bear.’

Whither is he going? Straight before him, as if in a dream. He crosses
the square and is half over the bridge, before the fresh air revives
him. He sits down on a bench, takes off his hat and pulls up his coat
sleeves to still the beating of his pulses; and the regular lapping of
the water makes him calmer. He comes to himself again, but consciousness
brings only memory and pain. What a woman! what a monster! And to think
that he has lived five-and-thirty years with her and not known her! A
shudder of disgust runs over him at the recollection of all the horrors
he has just heard. She has spared nothing and left within him nothing
alive, not even the pride which still kept him erect, his faith in his
work and his belief in the Académie. At the thought of the Académie he
instinctively turned round. Beyond the deserted bridge, beyond the wider
avenue which leads to the foot of the building, the pile of the Palais
Mazarin, massed together in the darkness, up-reared its portico and its
dome, as on the cover of the Didot books, so often gazed upon in his
young days and in the ambitious aspirations of his whole life. That
dome, that block of stone, had been the delusive object of his hopes,
and the cause of all his misery.

It was there he sought his wife, feeling neither love nor delight, but
for the hope of the Institute. And he has had the coveted seat, and he
knows the price!

Just then there was a sound of steps and laughter on the bridge; it came
nearer. Some students with their mistresses were coming back to their
rooms. Afraid of being recognised, he rose and leant over the parapet;
and while the party passed close to him without seeing him, he reflected
with bitterness that he had never amused himself, never allowed himself
such a fine night’s holiday of song beneath the starlight. His ambition
had always been fixed unbendingly on the approach to yonder dome, the
dome, as it were, of a temple, whose beliefs and whose ritual he had
respected in anticipation.

And what had yonder dome given him in return? Nothing, absolutely
nothing. Even on the day of his admission, when the speeches were over
and the double-edged compliments at an end, he had felt the sensation of
emptiness and deluded hope. He had said to himself as he drove home
to change his green coat, ‘Have I really got in? Why, it can’t be like
this.’ Since then, by dint of constant lying to himself and echoing,
with his colleagues, that it was delightful, delicious, he had ended by
believing so. But now the veil had fallen away, and he saw the truth;
and he would have liked to proclaim with a thousand tongues to the youth
of France, ‘The Académie is a snare and a delusion. Go your way and
do your work. Sacrifice nothing to the Académie, for it has nothing
to offer you, neither gift, nor glory, nor the best thing of all,
self-contentment. It is neither a retreat nor a refuge; it is a hollow
idol, a religion that offers no consolations. The great troubles of
life come upon you there as elsewhere; under that dome men have killed
themselves, men have gone mad there! Those who in their agony have
turned to the Académie, and weary of loving, or weary of cursing, have
stretched forth their arms to her, have clasped but a shadow.’

The old schoolmaster was speaking aloud, bareheaded, grasping the
parapet with both hands as in old days he used to hold the edge of his
desk at lessons. The river rolled on below, tinged with hues of night,
between its rows of winking lamps. An uncanny thing is the speechless
life of light, moving, and looking, and never saying what it means. On
the quay the song of a drunken man died quavering away in the distance,
‘When Cupid... in the morn... awakes.’ The accent showed that the
merry singer was an Auvergnat making his way back to his coal-barge. It
reminded him of Teyssèdre, the polisher, and his glass of good wine. He
saw him wiping his mouth on his shirt-sleeve. ‘It’s the only real good
in life.’ Even a humble natural joy like that he had never known; he
must needs envy even Teyssèdre. Absolutely alone, with no refuge, no
breast on which to weep, he realised that ‘that woman’ was right, and
‘the trunk had better be packed for good and all, Léonard.’

In the morning some policemen found on a bench on the Pont des Arts
a wide-brimmed hat, one of those hats which preserve something of the
expression of their owner. Inside was a large gold watch and a visiting
card--‘Léonard Astier-Réhu, Permanent Secretary of the Académie
Française.’ Right across the line of print had been written in pencil
the words, ‘I die here of my own will.’ Of his own will indeed it was!
Even better than the little phrase in the large, firm handwriting did
the expression of his features--the set teeth, the projection of
the lower jaw--declare his fixed determination to die, when after a
morning’s search the dredgers found the body caught in the wide meshes
of an iron net surrounding some baths for women, quite close to the
bridge.

[Illustration: The dredgers found the body 342]

It was taken first to the emergency-station, where Picheral came to
identify it, a strange sight himself, as he fluttered along the wide
bank, with bare bald head and in a frock coat. It was not the first time
that a Permanent Secretary had been taken out of the Seine; the same
thing had occurred in the time of Picheral’s father, under very similar
circumstances. And Picheral the son did not seem much affected, only
annoyed that he could not wait till the evening to carry Astier-Réhu
home. But it was necessary to take advantage of the absence of Madame
Astier (who was breakfasting with her son) so as to spare her too great
a shock.

The clock of the Palais Mazarin was striking one, when with the heavy
tramp of the bearers the stretcher from the station was brought under
the archway, marking its road with ominous splashes of water. At the
foot of Staircase B there was a halt to take breath. Over the dazzling
court was a great sharp-lined square of blue sky. The covering of the
stretcher had been raised, and the features of Léonard Astier-Réhu were
visible for the last time to his colleagues on the Dictionary Committee,
who had just broken up their meeting in sign of mourning. They stood
round, with their hats off, not a little shocked. Other people also
stopped to see what it was, workmen, clerks, and apprentices, for the
Institute serves as a passage from the Rue Mazarin to the quay. Among
them was kind-hearted Freydet, who, as he wiped his eyes, thought in his
heart, and was ashamed to think it, that here was another vacancy. Old
Jean Réhu was just coming downstairs for his daily constitutional.

He had heard nothing, seemed surprised to see the crowd beneath him as
he stood on one of the lower steps, and came nearer to look, in spite
of the scared gestures of those who tried to keep him back. Did he
understand? Did he recognise the corpse? His face remained calm, so did
his eyes, as expressionless as those of the bust of Minerva under her
helmet of bronze. And after a long look, as they turned the striped
canvas down over the poor dead face, he went on, upright and proud, with
his tall shadow stalking beside him, a ‘deity’ deathless indeed, while a
half-mad senile shake of the head seemed to say: ‘That’s another of the
things I have seen.’