II

Thus, accustomed by degrees to the enjoyment of money, elegance of

dress, of gilded drawing-rooms and fine carriages, became as necessary

to her as the compliments of flattery, sincere or false, and the

festivities and vanities of court life. Like most spoiled children,

she tyrannized over those who loved her, and kept her blandishments

for those who were indifferent. Her faults grew with her growth, and

her parents were to gather the bitter fruits of this disastrous

education. At the age of nineteen Emilie de Fontaine had not yet been

pleased to make a choice from among the many young men whom her

father's politics brought to his entertainments. Though so young, she

asserted in society all the freedom of mind that a married woman can

enjoy. Her beauty was so remarkable that, for her, to appear in a room

was to be its queen; but, like sovereigns, she had no friends, though

she was everywhere the object of attentions to which a finer nature

than hers might perhaps have succumbed. Not a man, not even an old

man, had it in him to contradict the opinions of a young girl whose

lightest look could rekindle love in the coldest heart.

She had been educated with a care which her sisters had not enjoyed;

painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, and played the piano

brilliantly; her voice, trained by the best masters, had a ring in it

which made her singing irresistibly charming. Clever, and intimate

with every branch of literature, she might have made folks believe

that, as Mascarille says, people of quality come into the world

knowing everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish

painting, on the Middle Ages or the Renaissance; pronounced at

haphazard on books new or old, and could expose the defects of a work

with a cruelly graceful wit. The simplest thing she said was accepted

by an admiring crowd as a fetfah of the Sultan by the Turks. She thus

dazzled shallow persons; as to deeper minds, her natural tact enabled

her to discern them, and for them she put forth so much fascination

that, under cover of her charms, she escaped their scrutiny. This

enchanting veneer covered a careless heart; the opinion--common to

many young girls--that no one else dwelt in a sphere so lofty as to be

able to understand the merits of her soul; and a pride based no less

on her birth than on her beauty. In the absence of the overwhelming

sentiment which, sooner or later, works havoc in a woman's heart, she

spent her young ardor in an immoderate love of distinctions, and

expressed the deepest contempt for persons of inferior birth.

Supremely impertinent to all newly-created nobility, she made every

effort to get her parents recognized as equals by the most illustrious

families of the Saint-Germain quarter.

These sentiments had not escaped the observing eye of Monsieur de

Fontaine, who more than once, when his two elder girls were married,

had smarted under Emilie's sarcasm. Logical readers will be surprised

to see the old Royalist bestowing his eldest daughter on a Receiver-

General, possessed, indeed, of some old hereditary estates, but whose

name was not preceded by the little word to which the throne owed so

many partisans, and his second to a magistrate too lately Baronified

to obscure the fact that his father had sold firewood. This noteworthy

change in the ideas of a noble on the verge of his sixtieth year--an

age when men rarely renounce their convictions--was due not merely to

his unfortunate residence in the modern Babylon, where, sooner or

later, country folks all get their corners rubbed down; the Comte de

Fontaine's new political conscience was also a result of the King's

advice and friendship. The philosophical prince had taken pleasure in

converting the Vendeen to the ideas required by the advance of the

nineteenth century, and the new aspect of the Monarchy. Louis XVIII.

aimed at fusing parties as Napoleon had fused things and men. The

legitimate King, who was not less clever perhaps than his rival, acted

in a contrary direction. The last head of the House of Bourbon was

just as eager to satisfy the third estate and the creations of the

Empire, by curbing the clergy, as the first of the Napoleons had been

to attract the grand old nobility, or to endow the Church. The Privy

Councillor, being in the secret of these royal projects, had

insensibly become one of the most prudent and influential leaders of

that moderate party which most desired a fusion of opinion in the

interests of the nation. He preached the expensive doctrines of

constitutional government, and lent all his weight to encourage the

political see-saw which enabled his master to rule France in the midst

of storms. Perhaps Monsieur de Fontaine hoped that one of the sudden

gusts of legislation, whose unexpected efforts then startled the

oldest politicians, might carry him up to the rank of peer. One of his

most rigid principles was to recognize no nobility in France but that

of the peerage--the only families that might enjoy any privileges.

"A nobility bereft of privileges," he would say, "is a tool without a

handle."

As far from Lafayette's party as he was from La Bourdonnaye's, he

ardently engaged in the task of general reconciliation, which was

to result in a new era and splendid fortunes for France. He

strove to convince the families who frequented his drawing-room,

or those whom he visited, how few favorable openings would

henceforth be offered by a civil or military career. He urged

mothers to give their boys a start in independent and industrial

professions, explaining that military posts and high Government

appointments must at last pertain, in a quite constitutional

order, to the younger sons of members of the peerage. According

to him, the people had conquered a sufficiently large share in

practical government by its elective assembly, its appointments

to law-offices, and those of the exchequer, which, said he, would

always, as heretofore, be the natural right of the distinguished

men of the third estate.

These new notions of the head of the Fontaines, and the prudent

matches for his eldest girls to which they had led, met with strong

resistance in the bosom of his family. The Comtesse de Fontaine

remained faithful to the ancient beliefs which no woman could disown,

who, through her mother, belonged to the Rohans. Although she had for

a while opposed the happiness and fortune awaiting her two eldest

girls, she yielded to those private considerations which husband and

wife confide to each other when their heads are resting on the same

pillow. Monsieur de Fontaine calmly pointed out to his wife, by exact

arithmetic that their residence in Paris, the necessity for

entertaining, the magnificence of the house which made up to them now

for the privations so bravely shared in La Vendee, and the expenses of

their sons, swallowed up the chief part of their income from salaries.

They must therefore seize, as a boon from heaven, the opportunities

which offered for settling their girls with such wealth. Would they

not some day enjoy sixty--eighty--a hundred thousand francs a year?

Such advantageous matches were not to be met with every day for girls

without a portion. Again, it was time that they should begin to think

of economizing, to add to the estate of Fontaine, and re-establish the

old territorial fortune of the family. The Countess yielded to such

cogent arguments, as every mother would have done in her place, though

perhaps with a better grace; but she declared that Emilie, at any

rate, should marry in such a way as to satisfy the pride she had

unfortunately contributed to foster in the girl's young soul.

Thus events, which ought to have brought joy into the family, had

introduced a small leaven of discord. The Receiver-General and the

young lawyer were the objects of a ceremonious formality which the

Countess and Emilie contrived to create. This etiquette soon found

even ampler opportunity for the display of domestic tyranny; for

Lieutenant-General de Fontaine married Mademoiselle Mongenod, the

daughter of a rich banker; the President very sensibly found a wife in

a young lady whose father, twice or thrice a millionaire, had traded

in salt; and the third brother, faithful to his plebeian doctrines,

married Mademoiselle Grossetete, the only daughter of the Receiver-

General at Bourges. The three sisters-in-law and the two brothers-in-

law found the high sphere of political bigwigs, and the drawing-rooms

of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal

advantages, that they united in forming a little court round the

overbearing Emilie. This treaty between interest and pride was not,

however, so firmly cemented but that the young despot was, not

unfrequently, the cause of revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which

the highest circles would not have disowned, kept up a sarcastic

temper among all the members of this powerful family; and this,

without seriously diminishing the regard they professed in public,

degenerated sometimes in private into sentiments far from charitable.

Thus the Lieutenant-General's wife, having become a Baronne, thought

herself quite as noble as a Kergarouet, and imagined that her good

hundred thousand francs a year gave her the right to be as impertinent

as her sister-in-law Emilie, whom she would sometimes wish to see

happily married, as she announced that the daughter of some peer of

France had married Monsieur So-and-So with no title to his name. The

Vicomtesse de Fontaine amused herself by eclipsing Emilie in the taste

and magnificence that were conspicuous in her dress, her furniture,

and her carriages. The satirical spirit in which her brothers and

sisters sometimes received the claims avowed by Mademoiselle de

Fontaine roused her to wrath that a perfect hailstorm of sharp sayings

could hardly mitigate. So when the head of the family felt a slight

chill in the King's tacit and precarious friendship, he trembled all

the more because, as a result of her sisters' defiant mockery, his

favorite daughter had never looked so high.

In the midst of these circumstances, and at a moment when this petty

domestic warfare had become serious, the monarch, whose favor Monsieur

de Fontaine still hoped to regain, was attacked by the malady of which

he was to die. The great political chief, who knew so well how to

steer his bark in the midst of tempests, soon succumbed. Certain then

of favors to come, the Comte de Fontaine made every effort to collect

the elite of marrying men about his youngest daughter. Those who may

have tried to solve the difficult problem of settling a haughty and

capricious girl, will understand the trouble taken by the unlucky

father. Such an affair, carried out to the liking of his beloved

child, would worthily crown the career the Count had followed for

these ten years at Paris. From the way in which his family claimed

salaries under every department, it might be compared with the House

of Austria, which, by intermarriage, threatens to pervade Europe. The

old Vendeen was not to be discouraged in bringing forward suitors, so

much had he his daughter's happiness at heart, but nothing could be

more absurd than the way in which the impertinent young thing

pronounced her verdicts and judged the merits of her adorers. It might

have been supposed that, like a princess in the Arabian Nights, Emilie

was rich enough and beautiful enough to choose from among all the

princes in the world. Her objections were each more preposterous than

the last: one had too thick knees and was bow-legged, another was

short-sighted, this one's name was Durand, that one limped, and almost

all were too fat. Livelier, more attractive, and gayer than ever after

dismissing two or three suitors, she rushed into the festivities of

the winter season, and to balls, where her keen eyes criticised the

celebrities of the day, delighted in encouraging proposals which she

invariably rejected.

Nature had bestowed on her all the advantages needed for playing the

part of Celimene. Tall and slight, Emilie de Fontaine could assume a

dignified or a frolicsome mien at her will. Her neck was rather long,

allowing her to affect beautiful attitudes of scorn and impertinence.

She had cultivated a large variety of those turns of the head and

feminine gestures, which emphasize so cruelly or so happily a hint of

a smile. Fine black hair, thick and strongly-arched eyebrows, lent her

countenance an expression of pride, to which her coquettish instincts

and her mirror had taught her to add terror by a stare, or gentleness

by the softness of her gaze, by the set of the gracious curve of her

lips, by the coldness or the sweetness of her smile. When Emilie meant

to conquer a heart, her pure voice did not lack melody; but she could

also give it a sort of curt clearness when she was minded to paralyze

a partner's indiscreet tongue. Her colorless face and alabaster brow

were like the limpid surface of a lake, which by turns is rippled by

the impulse of a breeze and recovers its glad serenity when the air is

still. More than one young man, a victim to her scorn, accused her of

acting a part; but she justified herself by inspiring her detractors

with the desire to please her, and then subjecting them to all her

most contemptuous caprice. Among the young girls of fashion, not one

knew better than she how to assume an air of reserve when a man of

talent was introduced to her, or how to display the insulting

politeness which treats an equal as an inferior, and to pour out her

impertinence on all who tried to hold their heads on a level with

hers. Wherever she went she seemed to be accepting homage rather than

compliments, and even in a princess her airs and manner would have

transformed the chair on which she sat into an imperial throne.

Monsieur de Fontaine discovered too late how utterly the education of

the daughter he loved had been ruined by the tender devotion of the

whole family. The admiration which the world is at first ready to

bestow on a young girl, but for which, sooner or later, it takes its

revenge, had added to Emilie's pride, and increased her self-

confidence. Universal subservience had developed in her the

selfishness natural to spoilt children, who, like kings, make a

plaything of everything that comes to hand. As yet the graces of youth

and the charms of talent hid these faults from every eye; faults all

the more odious in a woman, since she can only please by self-

sacrifice and unselfishness; but nothing escapes the eye of a good

father, and Monsieur de Fontaine often tried to explain to his

daughter the more important pages of the mysterious book of life. Vain

effort! He had to lament his daughter's capricious indocility and

ironical shrewdness too often to persevere in a task so difficult as

that of correcting an ill-disposed nature. He contented himself with

giving her from time to time some gentle and kind advice; but he had

the sorrow of seeing his tenderest words slide from his daughter's

heart as if it were of marble. A father's eyes are slow to be

unsealed, and it needed more than one experience before the old

Royalist perceived that his daughter's rare caresses were bestowed on

him with an air of condescension. She was like young children, who

seem to say to their mother, "Make haste to kiss me, that I may go to

play." In short, Emilie vouchsafed to be fond of her parents. But

often, by those sudden whims, which seem inexplicable in young girls,

she kept aloof and scarcely ever appeared; she complained of having to

share her father's and mother's heart with too many people; she was

jealous of every one, even of her brothers and sisters. Then, after

creating a desert about her, the strange girl accused all nature of

her unreal solitude and her wilful griefs. Strong in the experience of

her twenty years, she blamed fate, because, not knowing that the

mainspring of happiness is in ourselves, she demanded it of the

circumstances of life. She would have fled to the ends of the earth to

escape a marriage such as those of her two sisters, and nevertheless

her heart was full of horrible jealousy at seeing them married, rich,

and happy. In short, she sometimes led her mother--who was as much a

victim to her vagaries as Monsieur de Fontaine--to suspect that she

had a touch of madness.

But such aberrations are quite inexplicable; nothing is commoner than

this unconfessed pride developed in the heart of young girls belonging

to families high in the social scale, and gifted by nature with great

beauty. They are almost all convinced that their mothers, now forty or

fifty years of age, can neither sympathize with their young souls, nor

conceive of their imaginings. They fancy that most mothers, jealous of

their girls, want to dress them in their own way with the premeditated

purpose of eclipsing them or robbing them of admiration. Hence, often,

secret tears and dumb revolt against supposed tyranny. In the midst of

these woes, which become very real though built on an imaginary basis,

they have also a mania for composing a scheme of life, while casting

for themselves a brilliant horoscope; their magic consists in taking

their dreams for reality; secretly, in their long meditations, they

resolve to give their heart and hand to none but the man possessing

this or the other qualification; and they paint in fancy a model to

which, whether or no, the future lover must correspond. After some

little experience of life, and the serious reflections that come with

years, by dint of seeing the world and its prosaic round, by dint of

observing unhappy examples, the brilliant hues of their ideal are

extinguished. Then, one fine day, in the course of events, they are

quite astonished to find themselves happy without the nuptial poetry

of their day-dreams. It was on the strength of that poetry that

Mademoiselle Emilie de Fontaine, in her slender wisdom, had drawn up a

programme to which a suitor must conform to be excepted. Hence her

disdain and sarcasm.