VIII

Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough to subdue

Emilie's nature; but she insensibly fell into her old habits and threw

herself again into the world of fashion. She declared that there was

no disgrace in making a mistake. If she, like her father, had a vote

in the Chamber, she would move for an edict, she said, by which all

merchants, and especially dealers in calico, should be branded on the

forehead, like Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She wished

that none but nobles should have the right to wear the antique French

costume, which was so becoming to the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear

her, it was a misfortune for France, perhaps, that there was no

outward and visible difference between a merchant and a peer of

France. And a hundred more such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were

rapidly poured out when any accident brought up the subject.

But those who loved Emilie could see through all her banter a tinge of

melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longueville still reigned

over that inexorable heart. Sometimes she would be as gentle as she

had been during the brief summer that had seen the birth of her love;

sometimes, again, she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her

inequality of temper, which had its source in sufferings at once

secret and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some influence

over her, thanks to his increased prodigality, a kind of consolation

which rarely fails of its effect on a Parisian girl.

The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared was at the

Neapolitan ambassador's. As she took her place in the first quadrille

she saw, a few yards away from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded

slightly to her partner.

"Is that young man a friend of yours?" she asked, with a scornful air.

"Only my brother," he replied.

Emilie could not help starting. "Ah!" he continued, "and he is the

noblest soul living----"

"Do you know my name?" asked Emilie, eagerly interrupting him.

"No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to remember a name

which is on every lip--I ought to say in every heart. But I have a

valid excuse. I have but just arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who

is in Paris on leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his

amiable wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner."

"A perfect tragic mask!" said Emilie, after looking at the

ambassadress.

"And yet that is her ballroom face!" said the young man, laughing. "I

shall have to dance with her! So I thought I might have some

compensation." Mademoiselle de Fontaine courtesied. "I was very much

surprised," the voluble young secretary went on, "to find my brother

here. On arriving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in

bed; and I counted on seeing him before coming to this ball; but good

policy will always allow us to indulge family affection. The Padrona

della case would not give me time to call on my poor Maximilien."

"Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplomatic

employment."

"No," said the attache, with a sigh, "the poor fellow sacrificed

himself for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced their share of

my father's fortune to make an eldest son of me. My father dreams of a

peerage, like all who vote for the ministry. Indeed, it is promised

him," he added in an undertone. "After saving up a little capital my

brother joined a banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a

speculation in Brazil which may make him a millionaire. You see me in

the highest spirits at having been able, by my diplomatic connections,

to contribute to his success. I am impatiently expecting a dispatch

from the Brazilian Legation, which will help to lift the cloud from

his brow. What do you think of him?"

"Well, your brother's face does not look to me like that of a man

busied with money matters."

The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the apparently calm

face of his partner.

"What!" he exclaimed, with a smile, "can young ladies read the

thoughts of love behind the silent brow?"

"Your brother is in love, then?" she asked, betrayed into a movement

of curiosity.

"Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a mother, wrote to

me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but

I have had no further news of the affair. Would you believe that the

poor boy used to get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle

his business that he might be back by four o'clock in the country

where the lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I

had just given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just

come home from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I

have been weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such

a degree that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the

chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve

unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it

not you who pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become

inexhaustible. I should like to proclaim to all the world how good and

generous he is. He gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a

year, the income from the Longueville property."

If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these important

revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which she continued

to question her confiding partner from the moment when she found that

he was the brother of her scorned lover.

"And could you, without being grieved, see your brother selling muslin

and calico?" asked Emilie, at the end of the third figure of the

quadrille.

"How do you know that?" asked the attache. "Thank God, though I pour

out a flood of words, I have already acquired the art of not telling

more than I intend, like all the other diplomatic apprentices I know."

"You told me, I assure you."

Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with a

surprise that was full of perspicacity. A suspicion flashed upon him.

He glanced inquiringly from his brother to his partner, guessed

everything, clasped his hands, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and

began to laugh, saying, "I am an idiot! You are the handsomest person

here; my brother keeps stealing glances at you; he is dancing in spite

of his illness, and you pretend not to see him. Make him happy," he

added, as he led her back to her old uncle. "I shall not be jealous,

but I shall always shiver a little at calling you my sister----"

The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to each other as they

were to themselves. At about two in the morning, refreshments were

served in an immense corridor, where, to leave persons of the same

coterie free to meet each other, the tables were arranged as in a

restaurant. By one of those accidents which always happen to lovers,

Mademoiselle de Fontaine found herself at a table next to that at

which the more important guests were seated. Maximilien was of the

group. Emilie, who lent an attentive ear to her neighbors'

conversation, overheard one of those dialogues into which a young

woman so easily falls with a young man who has the grace and style of

Maximilien Longueville. The lady talking to the young banker was a

Neapolitan duchess, whose eyes shot lightning flashes, and whose skin

had the sheen of satin. The intimate terms on which Longueville

affected to be with her stung Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more

because she had just given her lover back twenty times as much

tenderness as she had ever felt for him before.

"Yes, monsieur, in my country true love can make every kind of

sacrifice," the Duchess was saying, in a simper.

"You have more passion than Frenchwomen," said Maximilien, whose

burning gaze fell on Emilie. "They are all vanity."

"Monsieur," Emilie eagerly interposed, "is it not very wrong to

calumniate your own country? Devotion is to be found in every nation."

"Do you imagine, mademoiselle," retorted the Italian, with a sardonic

smile, "that a Parisian would be capable of following her lover all

over the world?"

"Oh, madame, let us understand each other. She would follow him to a

desert and live in a tent but not to sit in a shop."

A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under the influence

of her disastrous education, Emile for the second time killed her

budding happiness, and destroyed its prospects of life. Maximilien's

apparent indifference, and a woman's smile, had wrung from her one of

those sarcasms whose treacherous zest always let her astray.

"Mademoiselle," said Longueville, in a low voice, under cover of the

noise made by the ladies as they rose from the table, "no one will

ever more ardently desire your happiness than I; permit me to assure

you of this, as I am taking leave of you. I am starting for Italy in a

few days."

"With a Duchess, no doubt?"

"No, but perhaps with a mortal blow."

"Is not that pure fancy?" asked Emilie, with an anxious glance.

"No," he replied. "There are wounds which never heal."

"You are not to go," said the girl, imperiously, and she smiled.

"I shall go," replied Maximilien, gravely.

"You will find me married on your return, I warn you," she said

coquettishly.

"I hope so."

"Impertinent wretch!" she exclaimed. "How cruel a revenge!"

A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara for the

warm and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving Mademoiselle de

Fontaine a prey to the most vehement regret. The young Secretary to

the Embassy took up his brother's quarrel, and contrived to take

signal vengeance on Emilie's disdain by making known the occasion of

the lovers' separation. He repaid his fair partner with interest all

the sarcasm with which she had formerly attacked Maximilien, and often

made more than one Excellency smile by describing the fair foe of the

counting-house, the amazon who preached a crusade against bankers, the

young girl whose love had evaporated before a bale of muslin. The

Comte de Fontaine was obliged to use his influence to procure an

appointment to Russia for Auguste Longueville in order to protect his

daughter from the ridicule heaped upon her by this dangerous young

persecutor.

Not long after, the Ministry being compelled to raise a levy of peers

to support the aristocratic party, trembling in the Upper Chamber

under the lash of an illustrious writer, gave Monsieur Guiraudin de

Longueville a peerage, with the title of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine

also obtained a peerage, the reward due as much to his fidelity in

evil days as to his name, which claimed a place in the hereditary

Chamber.

About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, some serious

reflections on life, for her tone and manners changed perceptibly.

Instead of amusing herself by saying spiteful things to her uncle, she

lavished on him the most affectionate attentions; she brought him his

stick with a persevering devotion that made the cynical smile, she

gave him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his

drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco,

and read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in the midst of clouds

of smoke, which the malicious old sailor intentionally blew over her;

she learned piquet to be a match for the old count; and this fantastic

damsel even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives

of the battles of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de

Paris, M. de Suffren's first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir.

Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longitude and

latitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a young corvette,

one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms heard the news of the marriage of

Mademoiselle de Fontaine to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young

Countess gave splendid entertainments to drown thought; but she, no

doubt, found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool; luxury was

ineffectual to disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrowing soul;

for the most part, in spite of the flashes of assumed gaiety, her

beautiful face expressed unspoken melancholy. Emilie appeared,

however, full of attentions and consideration for her old husband,

who, on retiring to his rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively

band, would often say, "I do not know myself. Was I to wait till the

age of seventy-two to embark as pilot on board the Belle Emilie after

twenty years of matrimonial galleys?"

The conduct of the young Countess was marked by such strictness that

the most clear-sighted criticism had no fault to find with her.

Lookers on chose to think that the vice-admiral had reserved the right

of disposing of his fortune to keep his wife more tightly in hand; but

this was a notion as insulting to the uncle as to the niece. Their

conduct was indeed so delicately judicious that the men who were most

interested in guessing the secrets of the couple could never decide

whether the old Count regarded her as a wife or as a daughter. He was

often heard to say that he had rescued his niece as a castaway after

shipwreck; and that, for his part, he had never taken a mean advantage

of hospitality when he had saved an enemy from the fury of the storm.

Though the Countess aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keep pace

with Mesdames the Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and du Chaulieu, the

Marquises d'Espard and d'Aiglemont, the Comtesses Feraud, de

Montcornet, and de Restaud, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des

Touches, she did not yield to the addresses of the young Vicomte de

Portenduere, who made her his idol.

Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing-rooms in the

Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was admired for her character,

worthy of the old school, Emilie heard the Vicomte de Longueville

announced. In the corner of the room where she was sitting, playing

piquet with the Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed;

she turned her head and saw her former lover come in, in all the

freshness of youth. His father's death, and then that of his brother,

killed by the severe climate of Saint-Petersburg, had placed on

Maximilien's head the hereditary plumes of the French peer's hat. His

fortune matched his learning and his merits; only the day before his

youthful and fervid eloquence had dazzled the Assembly. At this moment

he stood before the Countess, free, and graced with all the advantages

she had formerly required of her ideal. Every mother with a daughter

to marry made amiable advances to a man gifted with the virtues which

they attributed to him, as they admired his attractive person; but

Emilie knew, better than any one, that the Vicomte de Longueville had

the steadfast nature in which a wise woman sees a guarantee of

happiness. She looked at the admiral who, to use his favorite

expression, seemed likely to hold his course for a long time yet, and

cursed the follies of her youth.

At this moment Monsieur de Persepolis said with Episcopal grace: "Fair

lady, you have thrown away the king of hearts--I have won. But do not

regret your money. I keep it for my little seminaries."

PARIS, December 1829.