IX

"Armand," she began, "it seems to me that when I resisted

love, I was obeying all the instincts of woman's modesty; I

should not have looked for such reproaches from YOU.  I was weak;

you have turned all my weaknesses against me, and made so many

crimes of them.  How could you fail to understand that the

curiosity of love might have carried me further than I ought to

go; and that next morning I might be angry with myself, and

wretched because I had gone too far?  Alas!  I sinned in

ignorance.  I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as

in my remorse.  There was far more love for you in my severity

than in my concessions.  And besides, of what do you complain?  I

gave you my heart; that was not enough; you demanded, brutally,

that I should give my person"

"Brutally?" repeated Montriveau.  But to himself he said, "If

I once allow her to dispute over words, I am lost."

"Yes.  You came to me as if I were one of those women.  You

showed none of the respect, none of the attentions of love.  Had

I not reason to reflect?  Very well, I reflected.  The

unseemliness of your conduct is not inexcusable; love lay at the

source of it; let me think so, and justify you to myself.--Well,

Armand, this evening, even while you were prophesying evil, I

felt convinced that there was happiness in store for us both.

Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested

and proved."  She bent lower.  "And I was yours wholly," she

murmured in his ear.  "I felt a longing that I cannot express to

give happiness to a man so violently tried by adversity.  If I

must have a master, my master should be a great man.  As I felt

conscious of my height, the less I cared to descend.  I felt I

could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of love, while you were

pointing to death...  Strength and kindness always go

together.  My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind

to a helpless woman who loves you.  If I was wrong, is there no

way of obtaining forgiveness?  No way of making reparation?

Repentance is the charm of love; I should like to be very

charming for you.  How could I, alone among women, fail to know a

woman's doubts and fears, the timidity that it is so natural to

feel when you bind yourself for life, and know how easily a man

snaps such ties?  The bourgeoises, with whom you compared me just

now, give themselves, but they struggle first.  Very well--I

struggled; but here I am!--Ah!  God, he does not hear me!" she

broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out "But I love

you!  I am yours!" and fell at Armand's feet.

"Yours! yours! my one and only master!"

Armand tried to raise her.

"Madame, it is too late!  Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de

Langeais.  I cannot believe in either.  Today you may give

yourself; tomorrow, you may refuse.  No power in earth or heaven

can insure me the sweet constancy of love.  All love's pledges

lay in the past; and now nothing of that past exists."

The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the

Duchess could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly

saw the three masked figures.

"Armand," she said, "I would not wish to think ill of you.

Why are those men there?  What are you going to do to me?"

"Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the

thing which is about to be done.  Think of them simply as my

hands and my heart.  One of them is a surgeon"

"A surgeon!  Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense is the

hardest to bear.  Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I

will give it to you, you shall not take it"

"Then you did not understand me?  Did I not speak just now of

justice?  To put an end to your misapprehensions," continued he,

taking up a small steel object from the table, "I will now

explain what I have decided with regard to you."

He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.

"Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another

cross, made on this pattern, red-hot.  We are going to stamp it

upon your forehead, here between the eyes, so that there will be

no possibility of hiding the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding

people's questions.  In short, you shall bear on your forehead

the brand of infamy which your brothers the convicts wear on

their shoulders.  The pain is a mere trifle, but I feared a

nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance"

"Resistance?" she cried, clapping her hands for joy.  "Oh no,

no!  I would have the whole world here to see.  Ah, my Armand,

brand her quickly, this creature of yours; brand her with your

mark as a poor little trifle belonging to you.  You asked for

pledges of my love; here they are all in one.  Ah! for me there

is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal happiness in

this revenge of yours.  When you have marked this woman with your

mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul,

you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for

evermore?  When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself

responsible for my happiness, or you prove yourself base; and I

know that you are noble and great!  Why, when a woman loves, the

brand of love is burnt into her soul by her own will.--Come in,

gentlemen! come in and brand her, this Duchesse de Langeais.  She

is M. de Montriveau's forever!  Ah! come quickly, all of you, my

forehead burns hotter than your fire!"

Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the

Duchess kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart.  He

said some word, and his three friends vanished.

The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another.

The Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand's

heart, was all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror,

brushed away two tears as they fell.  Her whole future lay in

those two tears.  When he turned round again to help her to rise,

she was standing before him, sure of love.  Her pulses must have

throbbed fast when he spoke with the firmness she had known so

well how to use of old while she played with him.

"I spare you, madame.  All that has taken place shall be as if

it had never been, you may believe me.  But now, let us bid each

other goodbye.  I like to think that you were sincere in your

coquetries on your sofa, sincere again in this outpouring of your

heart.  Good-bye.  I feel that there is no faith in you left in

me.  You would torment me again; you would always be the Duchess,

and But there, good-bye, we shall never understand each

other.

"Now, what do you wish?" he continued, taking the tone of a

master of the ceremonies--"to return home, or to go back to Mme

de Serizy's ball?  I have done all in my power to prevent any

scandal.  Neither your servants nor anyone else can possibly know

what has passed between us in the last quarter of an hour.  Your

servants have no idea that you have left the ballroom; your

carriage never left Mme de Serizy's courtyard; your brougham may

likewise be found in the court of your own hotel.  Where do you

wish to be?"

"What do you counsel, Armand?"

"There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse.  We are strangers to

each other."

"Then take me to the ball," she said, still curious to put

Armand's power to the test.  "Thrust a soul that suffered in the

world, and must always suffer there, if there is no happiness for

her now, down into hell again.  And yet, oh my friend, I love you

as your bourgeoises love; I love you so that I could come to you

and fling my arms about your neck before all the world if you

asked it off me.  The hateful world has not corrupted me.  I am

young at least, and I have grown younger still.  I am a child,

yes, your child, your new creature.  Ah! do not drive me forth

out of my Eden!"

Armand shook his head.

"Ah! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing

to wear tonight on my heart," she said, taking possession of

Armand's glove, which she twisted into her handkerchief.

"No, I am NOT like all those depraved women.  You do not know

the world, and so you cannot know my worth.  You shall know it

now!  There are women who sell themselves for money; there are

others to be gained by gifts, it is a vile world!  Oh, I wish I

were a simple bourgeoise, a working girl, if you would rather

have a woman beneath you than a woman whose devotion is

accompanied by high rank, as men count it.  Oh, my Armand, there

are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us; and then

they are lovely indeed.  I would have all nobleness that I might

offer it all up to you.  Misfortune willed that I should be a

duchess; I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might

be complete.  I would be a grisette for you, and a queen for

everyone besides."

He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.

"You will let me know when you wish to go," he said.

"But I should like to stay"

"That is another matter!"

"Stay, that was badly rolled," she cried, seizing on a cigar

and devouring all that Armand's lips had touched.

"Do you smoke?"

"Oh, what would I not do to please you?"

"Very well.  Go, madame."

"I will obey you," she answered, with tears in her eyes.

"You must be blindfolded; you must not see a glimpse of the

way."

"I am ready, Armand," she said, bandaging her eyes.

"Can you see?"

"No."

Noiselessly he knelt before her.

"Ah!  I can hear you!" she cried, with a little fond gesture,

thinking that the pretence of harshness was over.

He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.

"You can see, madame."

"I am just a little bit curious."

"So you always deceive me?"

"Ah! take off this handkerchief, sir," she cried out, with the

passion of a great generosity repelled with scorn, "lead me; I

will not open my eyes."

Armand felt sure of her after that cry.  He led the way; the

Duchess nobly true to her word, was blind.  But while Montriveau

held her hand as a father might, and led her up and down flights

of stairs, he was studying the throbbing pulses of this woman's

heart so suddenly invaded by Love.  Mme de Langeais, rejoicing in

this power of speech, was glad to let him know all; but he was

inflexible; his hand was passive in reply to the questionings of

her hand.

At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go

forward; the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she

felt that his hand protected her dress.  His care touched her; it

was a revelation surely that there was a little love still left;

yet it was in some sort a farewell, for Montriveau left her

without a word.  The air was warm; the Duchess, feeling the heat,

opened her eyes, and found herself standing by the fire in the

Comtesse de Serizy's boudoir.

She was alone.  Her first thought was for her disordered

toilette; in a moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her

picturesque coiffure.

"Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you

everywhere."  It was the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she

opened the door.

"I came here to breathe," said the Duchess; "it is unbearably

hot in the rooms."

"People thought that you had gone; but my brother Ronquerolles

told me that your servants were waiting for you."

"I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,"

and the Duchess sat down on the sofa.

"Why, what is the matter with you?  You are shaking from head to

foot!"

The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.

"Mme la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have

happened.  I have just come across your coachman, the man is as

tipsy as all the Swiss in Switzerland."

The Duchess made no answer; she was looking round the room, at

the chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an

opening.  Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected

that she was again in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom

after that terrific scene which had changed the whole course of

her life.  She began to shiver violently.

"M. de Montriveau's prophecy has shaken my nerves," she said.

"It was a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London

will haunt me even in my sleep.  So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M.

le Marquis."

As she went through the rooms she was beset with enquiries and

regrets.  Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its

queen, had fallen so low, was so diminished.  And what, moreover,

were these men compared with him whom she loved with all her

heart; with the man grown great by all that she had lost in

stature?  The giant had regained the height that he had lost for

a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure.  She

looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her

to the ball.  He was fast asleep.

"Have you been here all the time?" she asked.

"Yes, madame."

As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her

coachman was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would

have been afraid; but after a great crisis in life, fear loses

its appetite for common food.  She reached home, at any rate,

without accident; but even there she felt a change in herself, a

new feeling that she could not shake off.  For her, there was now

but one man in the world; which is to say that henceforth she

cared to shine for his sake alone.

While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out

natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem

before him if he attempts to consider love in all its

developments due to social conditions.  Still, in spite of the

heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love,

there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine,

a line that all the discussion in the world can never deflect.  A

rigid application of this line explains the nature of the crisis

through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass.  Passion

she knew, but she did not love as yet.

Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men

of the world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound.

Love implies a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing

can change; it means so close a clinging of the heart, and an

exchange of happiness so constant, that there is no room left for

jealousy.  Then possession is a means and not an end;

unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not less close; the

soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but happy at

every moment; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading

from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in

the selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven.

But Passion is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to

which all suffering souls aspire.  Passion is a hope that may be

cheated.  Passion means both suffering and transition.  Passion

dies out when hope is dead.  Men and women may pass through this

experience many times without dishonour, for it is so natural to

spring towards happiness; but there is only one love in a

lifetime.  All discussions of sentiment ever conducted on paper

or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by two

questions--"Is it passion?  Is it love?"  So, since love comes

into existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss

which gives it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of

passion as yet; and as she knew the fierce tumult, the

unconscious calculations, the fevered cravings, and all that is

meant by that word PASSION--she suffered.  Through all the

trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest, raised

by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these

forms of egoism make common cause together.

She had said to this man, "I love you; I am yours!"  Was it

possible that the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those

words--in vain?  She must either be loved now or play her part of

queen no longer.  And then she felt the loneliness of the

luxurious couch where pleasure had never yet set his glowing

feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and writhed

there, she said, "I want to be loved."

But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of

success.  The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might

be humiliated; but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness,

and imagination, avenging the time lost for nature, took a

delight in kindling the inextinguishable fire in her veins.  She

all but attained to the sensations of love; for amid her poignant

doubt whether she was loved in return, she felt glad at heart to

say to herself, "I love him!"  As for her scruples, religion,

and the world she could trample them under foot!  Montriveau was

her religion now.  She spent the next day in a state of moral

torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could

express.  She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a

thousand impossible fancies.

When M. de Montriveau's usual hour arrived, she tried to think

that he would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation.  Her

whole life was concentrated in the single sense of hearing.

Sometimes she shut her eyes, straining her ears to listen through

space, wishing that she could annihilate everything that lay

between her and her lover, and so establish that perfect silence

which sounds may traverse from afar.  In her tense

self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful to her;

she stopped its ill-omened garrulity.  The twelve strokes of

midnight sounded from the drawing-room.

"Ah, God!" she cried, "to see him here would be happiness.

And yet, it is not so very long since he came here, brought by

desire, and the tones of his voice filled this boudoir.  And now

there is nothing."

She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with

him, and how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the

despairing tears flowed for long.

Her woman came at length with, "Mme la Duchesse does not know,

perhaps, that it is two o'clock in the morning; I thought that

madame was not feeling well."

"Yes, I am going to bed," said the Duchess, drying her eyes.

"But remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I

tell you this for the last time."

For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a

hope of meeting M. de Montriveau.  Contrary to her usual habits,

she came early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the

card-tables.  Her experiments were fruitless.  She did not

succeed in getting a glimpse of Armand.  She did not dare to

utter his name now.  One evening, however, in a fit of despair,

she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as she could,

"You must have quarrelled with M. de Montriveau?  He is not to

be seen at your house now."

The Countess laughed.  "So he does not come here either?" she

returned.  "He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter.  He

is interested in some woman, no doubt."

"I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his

friends" the Duchess began sweetly.

"I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with

him."

Mme de Langeais did not reply.  Mme de Serizy concluded from the

Duchess's silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity

to a discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of

soul, for a long time past.

"So you miss that melancholy personage, do you?  I have heard

most extraordinary things of him.  Wound his feelings, he never

comes back, he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps

you in chains.  To everything that I said of him, one of those

that praise him sky-high would always answer, `He knows how to

love!'  People are always telling me that Montriveau would give

up all for his friend; that his is a great nature.  Pooh! society

does not want such tremendous natures.  Men of that stamp are all

very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our

pleasant littlenesses.  What do you say, Antoinette?"

Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated,

yet she replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair

friend--

"I am sorry to miss him.  I took a great interest in him, and

promised to myself to be his sincere friend.  I like great

natures, dear friend, ridiculous though you may think it.  To

give oneself to a fool is a clear confession, is it not, that one

is governed wholly by one's senses?

Mme de Serizy's "preferences" had always been for commonplace

men; her lover at the moment, the Marquis d'Aiglemont, was a

fine, tall man.

After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure

Mme de Langeais saw hope in Armand's withdrawal from the world;

she wrote to him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely

it would bring him if he loved her still.  She sent her footman

with it next day.  On the servant's return, she asked whether he

had given the letter to M. de Montriveau himself, and could not

restrain the movement of joy at the affirmative answer.  Armand

was in Paris!  He stayed alone in his house; he did not go out

into society!  So she was loved!  All day long she waited for an

answer that never came.  Again and again, when impatience grew

unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay.  Armand felt

embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and

she could not deceive herself any longer.  It was a dreadful day,

a day of pain grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day

when the heart squanders the very forces of life in riot.

Next day she sent for an answer.

"M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme la

Duchesse," reported Julien.

She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung

herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.

"He is coming!"

The thought rent her soul.  And, in truth, woe unto those for

whom suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it

increases and multiplies the sweetest joys; for they have nothing

in them of that flame which quickens the images of things, giving

to them a second existence, so that we cling as closely to the

pure essence as to its outward and visible manifestation.  What

is suspense in love but a constant drawing upon an unfailing

hope?--a submission to the terrible scourging of passion, while

passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment of reality has not

set in.  The constant putting forth of strength and longing,

called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance to

the flower that breathes it forth.  We soon leave the brilliant,

unsatisfying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again

and again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or

volkameria-flowers compared separately, each in its own land, to

a betrothed bride, full of love, made fair by the past and

future.

The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through the

rapture with which she received the scourgings of love.  As this

change wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a

better meaning in the things of life.  As she hurried to her

dressing-room, she understood what studied adornment and the most

minute attention to her toilet mean when these are undertaken for

love's sake and not for vanity.  Even now this making ready

helped her to bear the long time of waiting.  A relapse of

intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she passed through

nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which sets the

whole mind in ferment.  Perhaps that power is only a disease,

though the pain of it is sweet.  The Duchess was dressed and

waiting at two o clock in the afternoon.  At half-past eleven

that night M. de Montriveau had not arrived.  To try to give an

idea of the anguish endured by a woman who might be said to be

the spoilt child of civilisation, would be to attempt to say how

many imaginings the heart can condense into one thought.  As well

endeavour to measure the forces expended by the soul in a sigh

whenever the bell rang; to estimate the drain of life when a

carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her prostrate.

"Can he be playing with me?" she said, as the clocks struck

midnight.

She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands

together and leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as

she did so how often he had come thither without a summons.  But

she resigned herself.  Had she not seen him grow pale, and start

up under the stinging barbs of irony?  Then Mme de Langeais felt

the horror of the woman's appointed lot; a man's is the active

part, a woman must wait passively when she loves.  If a woman

goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can

forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself

by this piece of angelic flattery.  But Armand's was a great

nature; he surely must be one of the very few who can repay such

exceeding love by love that lasts forever.

"Well, I will make the advance," she told herself, as she

tossed on her bed and found no sleep there; "I will go to him.

I will not weary myself with holding out a hand to him, but I

will hold it out.  A man of a thousand will see a promise of love

and constancy in every step that a woman takes towards him.  Yes,

the angels must come down from heaven to reach men; and I wish to

be an angel for him."

Next day she wrote.  It was a billet of the kind in which the

intellects of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number

particularly excel.  And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought

up by Mme la Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written

that delicious note; no other woman could complain without

lowering herself; could spread wings in such a flight without

draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise gracefully in revolt;

scold without giving offence; and pardon without compromising her

personal dignity.

Julien went with the note.  Julien, like his kind, was the victim

of love's marches and countermarches.

"What did M. de Montriveau reply?" she asked, as indifferently

as she could, when the man came back to report himself.

"M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was

all right.

Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself!  To have her

heart stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to

utter a sound, to be forced to keep silence!  One of the

countless miseries of the rich!

More than three weeks went by.  Mme de Langeais wrote again and

again, and no answer came from Montriveau.  At last she gave out

that she was ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the

Princess and from social duties.  She was only at home to her

father the Duc de Navarreins, her aunt the Princesse de

Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers (her maternal

great-uncle), and to her husband's uncle, the Duc de Grandlieu.

These persons found no difficulty in believing that the Duchess

was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more dejected

every day.  The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded pride,

the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her, the

yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual

longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the

forces of her nature were stimulated to no purpose.  She was

paying the arrears of her life of make-believe.

She went out at last to a review.  M. de Montriveau was to be

there.  For the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the

Royal Family, it was one of those festival days that are long

remembered.  She looked supremely beautiful in her languor; she

was greeted with admiration in all eyes.  It was Montriveau's

presence that made her so fair.

Once or twice they exchanged glances.  The General came almost to

her feet in all the glory of that soldier's uniform, which

produces an effect upon the feminine imagination to which the

most prudish will confess.  When a woman is very much in love,

and has not seen her lover for two months, such a swift moment

must be something like the phase of a dream when the eyes embrace

a world that stretches away forever.  Only women or young men can

imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the Duchess's eyes.  As for

older men, if during the paroxysms of early passion in youth they

had experience of such phenomena of nervous power; at a later day

it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very existence

of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to

these wonderful intuitions.  Religious ecstasy is the aberration

of a soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in

amorous ecstasy all the forces of soul and body are embraced and

blended in one.  If a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous

frenzy before which Mme de Langeais was forced to bend, she will

take one decisive resolution after another so swiftly that it is

impossible to give account of them.  Thought after thought rises

and flits across her brain, as clouds are whirled by the wind

across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun.  Thenceforth

the facts reveal all.  And the facts are these.

The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and

liveried servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau's door

from eight o'clock in the morning till three in the afternoon.

Armand lived in the Rue de Tournon, a few steps away from the

Chamber of Peers, and that very day the House was sitting; but

long before the peers returned to their palaces, several people

had recognised the Duchess's carriage and liveries.  The first of

these was the Baron de Maulincour.  That young officer had met

with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception from Mme

de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,

and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.

In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through

all the coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the

Tuileries and the Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the

day, the matter of all the talk from noon till night.  Almost

everywhere the women denied the facts, but in such a manner that

the report was confirmed; the men one and all believed it, and

manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de Langeais.  Some

among them threw the blame on Armand.

"That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze," said they;

"he insisted on making this scandal, no doubt."

"Very well, then," others replied, "Mme de Langeais has been

guilty of a most generous piece of imprudence.  To renounce the

world and rank, and fortune, and consideration for her lover's

sake, and that in the face of all Paris, is as fine a coup d'etat

for a woman as that barber's knife-thrust, which so affected

Canning in a court of assize.  Not one of the women who blame the

Duchess would make a declaration worthy of ancient times.  It is

heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so frankly.  Now

there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau.  There must

be something great about a woman if she says, `I will have but

one passion.' "

"But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice

in this way without respect for virtue?" asked the Comtesse de

Granville, the attorney-general's wife.

While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d'Antin were

discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited

young men rushed about on horseback to make sure that the

carriage was standing in the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in

consequence was beyond a doubt in M. de Montriveau's rooms, Mme

de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses, was lying hidden away

in her boudoir.  And Armand?--he had been out all night, and at

that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens of the

Tuileries.  The elder members, of Mme de Langeais's family were

engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a

homily and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a

stop to the scandal.

At three o'clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame

de Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de

Grandlieu were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais's

drawing-room.  To them, as to all curious enquirers, the servants

said that their mistress was not at home; the Duchess had made no

exceptions to her orders.  But these four personages shone

conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the revolutions and

hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by year in the

Almanach de Gotha, wherefore without some slight sketch of each

of them this picture of society were incomplete.

The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a

most poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze.  In her beautiful

prime, so it was said, she had done her part to win for that

monarch his appellation of le Bien-aime.  Of her past charms of

feature, little remained save a remarkably prominent slender

nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now the principal ornament

of a countenance that put you in mind of an old white glove.  Add

a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap with

upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for

ombre.  But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that

she appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an

opinion of her ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her

cheeks with Martin's classic rouge.  An appalling amiability in

her wrinkles, a prodigious brightness in the old lady's eyes, a

profound dignity in her whole person, together with the triple

barbed wit of her tongue, and an infallible memory in her head,

made of her a real power in the land.  The whole Cabinet des

Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment of her brain.

She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in

Europe--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the

last descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line.  No

usurpation of title could escape the Princesse de

Blamont-Chauvry.

Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and

young married women paid her assiduous homage.  Her salon set the

tone of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.  The words of this Talleyrand

in petticoats were taken as final decrees.  People came to

consult her on questions of etiquette or usages, or to take

lessons in good taste.  And, in truth, no other old woman could

put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the Princess could; while

there was a precision and a grace about the movements of her

skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which drove the

finest ladies of the young generation to despair.  Her voice had

remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she

could not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which

lent to it a peculiar expressiveness.  She still retained a

hundred and fifty thousand livres of her great fortune, for

Napoleon had generously returned her woods to her; so that

personally and in the matter of possessions she was a woman of no

little consequence.

This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was

chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin.  The

Vidame was a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old

school, and had been a Commander of the Order of Malta.  His neck

had always been so tightly compressed by a strangulation stock,

that his cheeks pouched over it a little, and he held his head

high; to many people this would have given an air of

self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a

Voltairean wit.  His wide prominent eyes seemed to see

everything, and as a matter of fact there was not much that they

had not seen.  Altogether, his person was a perfect model of

aristocratic outline, slim and slender, supple and agreeable.  He

seemed as if he could be pliant or rigid at will, and twist and

bend, or rear his head like a snake.

The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the

Duc de Grandlieu.  Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and

still hale; both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat

florid-complexioned men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had

begun to hang already.  But for an exquisite refinement of

accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease of manner that could

change in a moment to insolence, a superficial observer might

have taken them for a couple of bankers.  Any such mistake would

have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard

them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they

feared, vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with

the inferiors whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a

tactful word, or to humiliate with an unexpected phrase.

Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that

determined to perish rather than submit to any change.  It was a

noblesse that deserved praise and blame in equal measure; a

noblesse that will never be judged impartially until some poet

shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles obeyed the King

though their heads fell under a Richelieu's axe, and how deeply

they scorned the guillotine of '89 as a foul revenge.

Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that

agreed peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing.  Among

themselves, at any rate, they were on terms of perfect equality.

None of them betrayed any sign of annoyance over the Duchess's

escapade, but all of them had learned at Court to hide their

feelings.

And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the

opening of the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind

the reader that Locke, once happening to be in the company of

several great lords, renowned no less for their wit than for

their breeding and political consistency, wickedly amused himself

by taking down their conversation by some shorthand process of

his own; and afterwards, when he read it over to them to see what

they could make of it, they all burst out laughing.  And, in

truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the upper ranks

in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible when

washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy.  In every rank

of society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious

observer finds folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less

transparent varnish.  Conversation with any substance in it is a

rare exception, and boeotianism is current coin in every zone.

In the higher regions they must perforce talk more, but to make

up for it they think the less.  Thinking is a tiring exercise,

and the rich like their lives to flow by easily and without

effort.  It is by comparing the fundamental matter of jests, as

you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer of

France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M.

de Talleyrand's maxim, "The manner is everything"; an elegant

rendering of the legal axiom, "The form is of more consequence

than the matter."  In the eyes of the poet the advantage rests

with the lower classes, for they seldom fail to give a certain

character of rude poetry to their thoughts.  Perhaps also this

same observation may explain the sterility of the salons, their

emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance felt by men of

ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small change.

The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him,

and remarked to his neighbour--

"So you have sold Tornthon?"

"No, he is ill.  I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I

should be uncommonly sorry.  He is a very good hunter.  Do you

know how the Duchesse de Marigny is?"

"No.  I did not go this morning.  I was just going out to call

when you came in to speak about Antoinette.  But yesterday she

was very ill indeed; they had given her up, she took the

sacrament."

"Her death will make a change in your cousin's position."

"Not at all.  She gave away her property in her lifetime, only

keeping an annuity.  She made over the Guebriant estate to her

niece, Mme de Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge."

"It will be a great loss for society.  She was a kind woman.

Her family will miss her; her experience and advice carried

weight.  Her son Marigny is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit,

he can talk.  He is pleasant, very pleasant.  Pleasant? oh, that

no one can deny, but--ill regulated to the last degree.  Well,

and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is very acute.  He was

dining at the club the other day with that moneyed

Chaussee-d'Antin set.  Your uncle (he always goes there for his

game of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if

he was a member.  `Yes,' said he, `I don't go into society now; I

am living among the bankers.'--You know why?" added the Marquis,

with a meaning smile.

"No," said the Duke.

"He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville's

daughter; she is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they

say, in that set."

"Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it

seems," remarked the Vidame.

"My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a

singular pastime," replied the Princess, as she returned her

snuff-box to her pocket.

"Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed," said the Duke, stopping

short in his walk.  "Nobody but one of Buonaparte's men could

ask such an indecorous thing of a woman of fashion.  Between

ourselves, Antoinette might have made a better choice."

"The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected,

my dear," replied the Princess; "they are related to all the

noblest houses of Burgundy.  If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot

Rivaudoults should come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus

would succeed to the Arschoot title and estates.  They inherit

through their great-grandfather.

"Are you sure?"

"I know it better than this Montriveau's father did.  I told him

about it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of

several orders though he was, he only laughed; he was an

encyclopaedist.  But his brother turned the relationship to good

account during the emigration.  I have heard it said that his

northern kinsfolk were most kind in every way"

"Yes, to be sure.  The Comte de Montriveau died at St.

Petersburg," said the Vidame.  "I met him there.  He was a big

man with an incredible passion for oysters."

"However many did he eat?" asked the Duc de Grandlieu.

"Ten dozen every day."

"And did they not disagree with him?"

"Not the least bit in the world."

"Why, that is extraordinary!  Had he neither the stone nor gout,

nor any other complaint, in consequence?"

"No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an

accident."

"By accident!  Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably

he required them; for up to a certain point our predominant

tastes are conditions of our existence."

"I am of your opinion," said the Princess, with a smile.

"Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,"

returned the Marquis.

"I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a

wrong impression on a young woman's mind," said she, and

interrupted herself to exclaim, "But this niece, this niece of

mine!"

"Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to

M. de Montriveau," said the Duc de Navarreins.

"Bah!" returned the Princess.

"What do you think, Vidame?" asked the Marquis.

"If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think

that"

"But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,"

retorted the Princess.  "Really, my poor Vidame, you must be

getting older."

"After all, what is to be done?" asked the Duke.

"If my dear niece is wise," said the Princess, "she will go to

Court this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception

day--and you must see that we all rally round her and give the

lie to this absurd rumour.  There are hundreds of ways of

explaining things; and if the Marquis de Montriveau is a

gentleman, he will come to our assistance.  We will bring these

children to listen to reason"

"But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the

truth to his face.  He is one of Buonaparte's pupils, and he has

a position.  Why, he is one of the great men of the day; he is

high up in the Guards, and very useful there.  He has not a spark

of ambition.  He is just the man to say, `Here is my commission,

leave me in peace,' if the King should say a word that he did not

like."

"Then, pray, what are his opinions?"

"Very unsound."

"Really," sighed the Princess, "the King is, as he always has

been, a Jacobin under the Lilies of France."

"Oh! not quite so bad," said the Vidame.

"Yes; I have known him for a long while.  The man that pointed

out the Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state

dinner in public with, `These are our people,' could only be a

black-hearted scoundrel.  I can see Monsieur exactly the same as

ever in the King.  The bad brother who voted so wrongly in his

department of the Constituent Assembly was sure to compound with

the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk.  This

philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger

brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the

little mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how

his successor is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his

younger brother in abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he

lay dying, `He will not reign very long' "

"Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his

service"

"But does your post take away your right of free speech, my

dear?  You come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons.  If the

Guises had shown a little more resolution, His Majesty would be a

nobody at this day.  It is time I went out of this world, the

noblesse is dead.  Yes, it is all over with you, my children,"

she continued, looking as she spoke at the Vidame.  "What has my

niece done that the whole town should be talking about her?  She

is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless scandal

is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want

of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know

that"

Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir.  She had

recognised her aunt's voice and heard the name of Montriveau.

She was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in,

M. de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his

niece's carriage driving back along the street.  The Duke took

his daughter's face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.

"So, dear girl," he said, "you do not know what is going on?"

"Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?"

"Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau."

"My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you

not?" said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess

kissed with affectionate respect.

"Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time.  And," she

added, as she turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, "I

wished that all Paris should think that I was with M. de

Montriveau."

The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and

folded his arms.

"Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?" he

asked at last.

But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking

steadily at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes

fell.  Mme de Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, "My

little angel, let me kiss you!"

She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and

continued smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.

"We are not under the Valois now, dear child.  You have

compromised your husband and your position.  Still, we will

arrange to make everything right."

"But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all.  It is

my wish that all Paris should say that I was with M. de

Montriveau this morning.  If you destroy that belief, however ill

grounded it may be, you will do me a singular disservice."

"Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your

family?"

"My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable

misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations.  You

may, perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will

certainly feel for me."

"After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters

suitably!" muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.

The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts.  "My

dear little girl," she said, "be happy, if you can.  We are not

talking of troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with

social usages.  We all of us here assembled know that marriage is

a defective institution tempered by love.  But when you take a

lover, is there any need to make your bed in the Place du

Carrousel?  See now, just be a bit reasonable, and hear what we

have to say."

"I am listening."

"Mme la Duchesse," began the Duc de Grandlieu, "if it were any

part of an uncle's duty to look after his nieces, he ought to

have a position; society would owe him honours and rewards and a

salary, exactly as if he were in the King's service.  So I am not

here to talk about my nephew, but of your own interests.  Let us

look ahead a little.  If you persist in making a scandal--I have

seen the animal before, and I own that I have no great liking for

him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care a rap for

anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick to

your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a

nobody.  The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have

just inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for

his mistresses' amusements.  You will be bound and gagged by the

law; you will have to say Amen to all these arrangements.

Suppose M. de Montriveau leaves youdear me! do not let us put

ourselves in a passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a

woman while she is young and pretty; still, we have seen so many

pretty women left disconsolate, even among princesses, that you

will permit the supposition, an all but impossible supposition I

quite wish to believe.Well, suppose that he goes, what will

become of you without a husband?  Keep well with your husband as

you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's

parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse.  I am

supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am

leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the

reckoning.  This being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may

have children.  What are they to be?  Montriveaus?  Very well;

they certainly will not succeed to their father's whole fortune.

You will want to give them all that you have; he will wish to do

the same.  Nothing more natural, dear me!  And you will find the

law against you.  How many times have we seen heirs-at-law

bringing a law-suit to recover the property from illegitimate

children?  Every court of law rings with such actions all over

the world.  You will create a fidei commissum perhaps; and if the

trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy

against him; and they are ruined.  So choose carefully.  You see

the perplexities of the position.  In every possible way your

children will be sacrificed of necessity to the fancies of your

heart; they will have no recognised status.  While they are

little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day they will

reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves.  We old

gentlemen know all about it.  Little boys grow up into men, and

men are ungrateful beings.  When I was in Germany, did I not hear

young de Horn say, after supper, `If my mother had been an honest

woman, I should be prince-regnant!'  `IF?'  We have spent our

lives in hearing plebeians say IF.  IF brought about the

Revolution.  When a man cannot lay the blame on his father or

mother, he holds God responsible for his hard lot.  In short,

dear child, we are here to open your eyes.  I will say all I have

to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate:  A woman

ought never to put her husband in the right."

"Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I

looked at interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel."

"But, my dear little girl," remonstrated the Vidame, "life is

simply a complication of interests and feelings; to be happy,

more particularly in your position, one must try to reconcile

one's feelings with one's interests.  A grisette may love

according to her fancy, that is intelligible enough, but you have

a pretty fortune, a family, a name and a place at Court, and you

ought not to fling them out of the window.  And what have we been

asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre carefully

instead of falling foul of social conventions.  Lord!  I shall

very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any

regime, a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for

the love of this lucky young man."