III

"The distinguishing feature of his chambers, where I have licked my

lips over breakfast more than once, was a mysterious dressing-closet,

nicely decorated, and comfortably appointed, with a grate in it and a

bath-tub. It gave upon a narrow staircase, the folding doors were

noiseless, the locks well oiled, the hinges discreet, the window panes

of frosted glass, the curtain impervious to light. While the bedroom

was, as it ought to have been, in a fine disorder which would suit the

most exacting painter in water-colors; while everything therein was

redolent of the Bohemian life of a young man of fashion, the dressing-

closet was like a shrinewhite, spotless, neat, and warm. There were

no draughts from door or window, the carpet had been made soft for

bare feet hastily put to the floor in a sudden panic of alarmwhich

stamps him as your thoroughbred dandy that knows life; for here, in a

few moments, he may show himself either a noodle or a master in those

little details in which a man's character is revealed. The Marquise

previously quotedno, it was the Marquise de Rochefidecame out of

that dressing-closet in a furious rage, and never went back again. She

discovered nothing 'improper' in it. Godefroid used to keep a little

cupboard full of"

"Waistcoats?" suggested Finot.

"Come, now, just like you, great Turcaret that you are. (I shall never

form that fellow.) Why, no. Full of cakes, and fruit, and dainty

little flasks of Malaga and Lunel; an en cas de nuit in Louis

Quatorze's style; anything that can tickle the delicate and well-bred

appetite of sixteen quarterings. A knowing old man-servant, very

strong in matters veterinary, waited on the horses and groomed

Godefroid. He had been with the late M. de Beaudenord, Godefroid's

father, and bore Godefroid an inveterate affection, a kind of heart

complaint which has almost disappeared among domestic servants since

savings banks were established.

"All material well-being is based upon arithmetic. You to whom Paris

is known down to its very excrescences, will see that Beaudenord must

have acquired about seventeen thousand livres per annum; for he paid

some seventeen francs of taxes and spent a thousand crowns on his own

whims. Well, dear boys, when Godefroid came of age, the Marquis

d'Aiglemont submitted to him such an account of his trust as none of

us would be likely to give a nephew; Godefroid's name was inscribed as

the owner of eighteen thousand livres of rentes, a remnant of his

father's wealth spared by the harrow of the great reduction under the

Republic and the hailstorms of Imperial arrears. D'Aiglemont, that

upright guardian, also put his ward in possession of some thirty

thousand francs of savings invested with the firm of Nucingen; saying

with all the charm of a grand seigneur and the indulgence of a soldier

of the Empire, that he had contrived to put it aside for his ward's

young man's follies. 'If you will take my advice, Godefroid,' added

he, 'instead of squandering the money like a fool, as so many young

men do, let it go in follies that will be useful to you afterwards.

Take an attache's post at Turin, and then go to Naples, and from

Naples to London, and you will be amused and learn something for your

money. Afterwards, if you think of a career, the time and the money

will not have been thrown away.' The late lamented d'Aiglemont had

more sense than people credited him with, which is more than can be

said of some of us."

"A young fellow that starts with an assured income of eighteen

thousand livres at one-and-twenty is lost," said Couture.

"Unless he is miserly, or very much above the ordinary level," added

Blondet.

"Well, Godefroid sojourned in the four capitals of Italy," continued

Bixiou. "He lived in England and Germany, he spent some little time at

St. Petersburg, he ran over Holland but he parted company with the

aforesaid thirty thousand francs by living as if he had thirty

thousand a year. Everywhere he found the same supreme de volaille, the

same aspics, and French wines; he heard French spoken wherever he went

in short, he never got away from Paris. He ought, of course, to have

tried to deprave his disposition, to fence himself in triple brass, to

get rid of his illusions, to learn to hear anything said without a

blush, and to master the inmost secrets of the Powers.Pooh! with a

good deal of trouble he equipped himself with four languagesthat is

to say, he laid in a stock of four words for one idea. Then he came

back, and certain tedious dowagers, styled 'conquests' abroad, were

left disconsolate. Godefroid came back, shy, scarcely formed, a good

fellow with a confiding disposition, incapable of saying ill of any

one who honored him with an admittance to his house, too staunch to be

a diplomatist, altogether he was what we call a thoroughly good

fellow."

"To cut it short, a brat with eighteen thousand livres per annum to

drop over the first investment that turns up," said Couture.

"That confounded Couture has such a habit of anticipating dividends,

that he is anticipating the end of my tale. Where was I? Oh!

Beaudenord came back. When he took up his abode on the Quai Malaquais,

it came to pass that a thousand francs over and above his needs was

altogether insufficient to keep up his share of a box at the Italiens

and the Opera properly. When he lost twenty-five or thirty louis at

play at one swoop, naturally he paid; when he won, he spent the money;

so should we if we were fools enough to be drawn into a bet.

Beaudenord, feeling pinched with his eighteen thousand francs, saw the

necessity of creating what we to-day call a balance in hand. It was a

great notion of his 'not to get too deep.' He took counsel of his

sometime guardian. 'The funds are now at par, my dear boy,' quoth

d'Aiglemont; 'sell out. I have sold mine and my wife's. Nucingen has

all my capital, and is giving me six per cent; do likewise, you will

have one per cent the more upon your capital, and with that you will

be quite comfortable.'

"In three days' time our Godefroid was comfortable. His increase of

income exactly supplied his superfluities; his material happiness was

complete.

"Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of all the young men

in Paris at one glance (as, it appears, will be done at the Day of

Judgment with all the millions upon millions that have groveled in all

spheres, and worn all uniforms or the uniform of nature), and to ask

them whether happiness at six-and-twenty is or is not made up of the

following itemsto wit, to own a saddle-horse and a tilbury, or a

cab, with a fresh, rosy-faced Toby Joby Paddy no bigger than your

fist, and to hire an unimpeachable brougham for twelve francs an

evening; to appear elegantly arrayed, agreeably to the laws that

regulate a man's clothes, at eight o'clock, at noon, four o'clock in

the afternoon, and in the evening; to be well received at every

embassy, and to cull the short-lived flowers of superficial,

cosmopolitan friendships; to be not insufferably handsome, to carry

your head, your coat, and your name well; to inhabit a charming little

entresol after the pattern of the rooms just described on the Quai

Malaquais; to be able to ask a party of friends to dine at the Rocher

de Cancale without a previous consultation with your trousers' pocket;

never to be pulled up in any rational project by the words, 'And the

money?' and finally, to be able to renew at pleasure the pink rosettes

that adorn the ears of three thoroughbreds and the lining of your hat?

"To such inquiry any ordinary young man (and we ourselves that are not

ordinary men) would reply that the happiness is incomplete; that it is

like the Madeleine without the altar; that a man must love and be

loved, or love without return, or be loved without loving, or love at

cross purposes. Now for happiness as a mental condition.

"In January 1823, after Godefroid de Beaudenord had set foot in the

various social circles which it pleased him to enter, and knew his way

about in them, and felt himself secure amid these joys, he saw the

necessity of a sunshadethe advantage of having a great lady to

complain of, instead of chewing the stems of roses bought for

fivepence apiece of Mme. Prevost, after the manner of the callow

youngsters that chirp and cackle in the lobbies of the Opera, like

chickens in a coop. In short, he resolved to centre his ideas, his

sentiments, his affections upon a woman, ONE WOMAN?LA PHAMME!

Ah!...

"At first he conceived the preposterous notion of an unhappy passion,

and gyrated for a while about his fair cousin, Mme. d'Aiglemont, not

perceiving that she had already danced the waltz in Faust with a

diplomatist. The year '25 went by, spent in tentatives, in futile

flirtations, and an unsuccessful quest. The loving object of which he

was in search did not appear. Passion is extremely rare; and in our

time as many barriers have been raised against passion in social life

as barricades in the streets. In truth, my brothers, the 'improper' is

gaining upon us, I tell you!

"As we may incur reproach for following on the heels of portrait

painters, auctioneers, and fashionable dressmakers, I will not inflict

any description upon you of HER in whom Godefroid recognized the

female of his species. Age, nineteen; height, four feet eleven inches;

fair hair, eyebrows idem, blue eyes, forehead neither high nor low,

curved nose, little mouth, short turned-up chin, oval face;

distinguishing signsnone. Such was the description on the passport

of the beloved object. You will not ask more than the police, or their

worships the mayors, of all the towns and communes of France, the

gendarmes and the rest of the powers that be? In other respectsI

give you my word for itshe was a rough sketch of a Venus dei

Medici.

"The first time that Godefroid went to one of the balls for which Mme.

de Nucingen enjoyed a certain not undeserved reputation, he caught a

glimpse of his future lady-love in a quadrille, and was set marveling

by that height of four feet eleven inches. The fair hair rippled in a

shower of curls about the little girlish head, she looked as fresh as

a naiad peeping out through the crystal pane of her stream to take a

look at the spring flowers. (This is quite in the modern style,

strings of phrases as endless as the macaroni on the table a while

ago.) On that 'eyebrows idem' (no offence to the prefect of police)

Parny, that writer of light and playful verse, would have hung half-a-

dozen couplets, comparing them very agreeably to Cupid's bow, at the

same time bidding us to observe that the dart was beneath; the said

dart, however, was neither very potent nor very penetrating, for as

yet it was controlled by the namby-pamby sweetness of a Mlle. de la

Valliere as depicted on fire-screens, at the moment when she

solemnizes her betrothal in the sight of heaven, any solemnization

before the registrar being quite out to the question.

"You know the effect of fair hair and blue eyes in the soft,

voluptuous decorous dance? Such a girl does not knock audaciously at

your heart, like the dark-haired damsels that seem to say after the

fashion of Spanish beggars, 'Your money or your life; give me five

francs or take my contempt!' These insolent and somewhat dangerous

beauties may find favor in the sight of many men, but to my thinking

the blonde that has the good fortune to look extremely tender and

yielding, while foregoing none of her rights to scold, to tease, to

use unmeasured language, to be jealous without grounds, to do

anything, in short, that makes woman adorable,the fair-haired girl,

I say, will always be more sure to marry than the ardent brunette.

Firewood is dear, you see.

"Isaure, white as an Alsacienne (she first saw the light at

Strasbourg, and spoke German with a slight and very agreeable French

accent), danced to admiration. Her feet, omitted on the passport,

though they really might have found a place there under the heading

Distinguishing Signs, were remarkable for their small size, and for

that particular something which old-fashioned dancing masters used to

call flic-flac, a something that put you in mind of Mlle. Mars'

agreeable delivery, for all the Muses are sisters, and the dancer and

poet alike have their feet upon the earth. Isaure's feet spoke lightly

and swiftly with a clearness and precision which augured well for

things of the heart. 'Elle a duc flic-flac,' was old Marcel's highest

word of praise, and old Marcel was the dancing master that deserved

the epithet of 'the Great.' People used to say 'the Great Marcel,' as

they said 'Frederick the Great,' and in Frederick's time."

"Did Marcel compose any ballets?" inquired Finot.

"Yes, something in the style of Les Quatre Elements and L'Europe

galante."

"What times they were, when great nobles dressed the dancers!" said

Finot.

"Improper!" said Bixiou. "Isaure did not raise herself on the tips of

her toes, she stayed on the ground, she swayed in the dance without

jerks, and neither more nor less voluptuously than a young lady ought

to do. There was a profound philosophy in Marcel's remark that every

age and condition had its dance; a married woman should not dance like

a young girl, nor a little jackanapes like a capitalist, nor a soldier

like a page; he even went so far as to say that the infantry ought not

to dance like the cavalry, and from this point he proceeded to

classify the world at large. All these fine distinctions seem very far

away."

"Ah!" said Blondet, "you have set your finger on a great calamity. If

Marcel had been properly understood, there would have been no French

Revolution."