V

For the past eighteen months the Duchesse de Langeais had been

leading this empty life, filled with balls and subsequent visits,

objectless triumphs, and the transient loves that spring up and

die in an evening's space.  All eyes were turned on her when she

entered a room; she reaped her harvest of flatteries and some few

words of warmer admiration, which she encouraged by a gesture or

a glance, but never suffered to penetrate deeper than the skin.

Her tone and bearing and everything else about her imposed her

will upon others.  Her life was a sort of fever of vanity and

perpetual enjoyment, which turned her head.  She was daring

enough in conversation; she would listen to anything, corrupting

the surface, as it were, of her heart.  Yet when she returned

home, she often blushed at the story that had made her laugh; at

the scandalous tale that supplied the details, on the strength of

which she analysed the love that she had never known, and marked

the subtle distinctions of modern passion, not with comment on

the part of complacent hypocrites.  For women know how to say

everything among themselves, and more of them are ruined by each

other than corrupted by men.

There came a moment when she discerned that not until a woman is

loved will the world fully recognise her beauty and her wit.

What does a husband prove?  Simply that a girl or woman was

endowed with wealth, or well brought up; that her mother managed

cleverly that in some way she satisfied a man's ambitions.  A

lover constantly bears witness to her personal perfections.  Then

followed the discovery still in Mme de Langeais's early

womanhood, that it was possible to be loved without committing

herself, without permission, without vouchsafing any satisfaction

beyond the most meagre dues.  There was more than one demure

feminine hypocrite to instruct her in the art of playing such

dangerous comedies.

So the Duchess had her court, and the number of her adorers and

courtiers guaranteed her virtue.  She was amiable and

fascinating; she flirted till the ball or the evening's gaiety

was at an end.  Then the curtain dropped.  She was cold,

indifferent, self-contained again till the next day brought its

renewed sensations, superficial as before.  Two or three men were

completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest.  She laughed at

them, she was utterly insensible.  "I am loved!" she told

herself.  "He loves me!"  The certainty sufficed her.  It is

enough for the miser to know that his every whim might be

fulfilled if he chose; so it was with the Duchess, and perhaps

she did not even go so far as to form a wish.

One evening she chanced to be at the house of an intimate friend

Mme la Vicomtesse de Fontaine, one of the humble rivals who

cordially detested her, and went with her everywhere.  In a

"friendship" of this sort both sides are on their guard, and

never lay their armour aside; confidences are ingeniously

indiscreet, and not unfrequently treacherous.  Mme de Langeais

had distributed her little patronising, friendly, or freezing

bows, with the air natural to a woman who knows the worth of her

smiles, when her eyes fell upon a total stranger.  Something in

the man's large gravity of aspect startled her, and, with a

feeling almost like dread, she turned to Mme de Maufrigneuse

with, "Who is the newcomer, dear?"

"Someone that you have heard of, no doubt.  The Marquis de

Montriveau."

"Oh! is it he?"

She took up her eyeglass and submitted him to a very insolent

scrutiny, as if he had been a picture meant to receive glances,

not to return them.

"Do introduce him; he ought to be interesting."

"Nobody more tiresome and dull, dear.  But he is the fashion."

M. Armand de Montriveau, at that moment all unwittingly the

object of general curiosity, better deserved attention than any

of the idols that Paris needs must set up to worship for a brief

space, for the city is vexed by periodical fits of craving, a

passion for engouement and sham enthusiasm, which must be

satisfied.  The Marquis was the only son of General de

Montriveau, one of the ci-devants who served the Republic nobly,

and fell by Joubert's side at Novi.  Bonaparte had placed his son

at the school at Chalons, with the orphans of other generals who

fell on the battlefield, leaving their children under the

protection of the Republic.  Armand de Montriveau left school

with his way to make, entered the artillery, and had only reached

a major's rank at the time of the Fontainebleau disaster.  In his

section of the service the chances of advancement were not many.

There are fewer officers, in the first place, among the gunners

than in any other corps; and in the second place, the feeling in

the artillery was decidedly Liberal, not to say Republican; and

the Emperor, feeling little confidence in a body of highly

educated men who were apt to think for themselves, gave promotion

grudgingly in the service.  In the artillery, accordingly, the

general rule of the army did not apply; the commanding officers

were not invariably the most remarkable men in their department,

because there was less to be feared from mediocrities.  The

artillery was a separate corps in those days, and only came under

Napoleon in action.

Besides these general causes, other reasons, inherent in Armand

de Montriveau's character, were sufficient in themselves to

account for his tardy promotion.  He was alone in the world.  He

had been thrown at the age of twenty into the whirlwind of men

directed by Napoleon; his interests were bounded by himself, any

day he might lose his life; it became a habit of mind with him to

live by his own self-respect and the consciousness that he had

done his duty.  Like all shy men, he was habitually silent; but

his shyness sprang by no means from timidity; it was a kind of

modesty in him; he found any demonstration of vanity intolerable.