“He plays his part well,” said Lucien; “I saw him at work.”
Etienne and Lucien reached a handsome house in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple.
“Is M. Braulard in?” Etienne asked of the porter.
“Monsieur?” said Lucien. “Then, is the leader of the claque ‘Monsieur’?”
“My dear boy, Braulard has twenty thousand francs of income. All the dramatic authors of the Boulevards are in his clutches, and have a standing account with him as if he were a banker. Orders and complimentary tickets are sold here. Braulard knows where to get rid of such merchandise. Now for a turn at statistics, a useful science enough in its way. At the rate of fifty complimentary tickets every evening for each theatre, you have two hundred and fifty tickets daily. Suppose, taking one with another, that they are worth a couple of francs apiece, Braulard pays a hundred and twenty-five francs daily for them, and takes his chance of making cent per cent. In this way authors’ tickets alone bring him in about four thousand francs every month, or forty-eight thousand francs per annum. Allow twenty thousand francs for loss, for he cannot always place all his tickets – ”
“Why not?”
“Oh! the people who pay at the door go in with the holders of complimentary tickets for unreserved seats, and the theatre reserves the right of admitting those who pay. There are fine warm evenings to be reckoned with besides, and poor plays. Braulard makes, perhaps, thirty thousand francs every year in this way, and he has his claqueurs besides, another industry. Florine and Coralie pay tribute to him; if they did not, there would be no applause when they come on or go off.”
Lousteau gave this explanation in a low voice as they went up the stair.
“Paris is a queer place,” said Lucien; it seemed to him that he saw self-interest squatting in every corner.
A smart maid-servant opened the door. At the sight of Etienne Lousteau, the dealer in orders and tickets rose from a sturdy chair before a large cylinder desk, and Lucien beheld the leader of the claque, Braulard himself, dressed in a gray molleton jacket, footed trousers, and red slippers; for all the world like a doctor or a solicitor. He was a typical self-made man, Lucien thought – a vulgar-looking face with a pair of exceedingly cunning gray eyes, hands made for hired applause, a complexion over which hard living had passed like rain over a roof, grizzled hair, and a somewhat husky voice.
“You have come from Mlle. Florine, no doubt, sir, and this gentleman for Mlle. Coralie,” said Braulard; “I know you very well by sight. Don’t trouble yourself, sir,” he continued, addressing Lucien; “I am buying the Gymnase connection, I will look after your lady, and I will give her notice of any tricks they may try to play on her.”
“That is not an offer to be refused, my dear Braulard, but we have come about the press orders for the Boulevard theatres – I as editor, and this gentleman as dramatic critic.”
“Oh! – ah, yes! Finot has sold his paper. I heard about it. He is getting on, is Finot. I have asked him to dine with me at the end of the week; if you will do me the honor and pleasure of coming, you may bring your ladies, and there will be a grand jollification. Adele Dupuis is coming, and Ducange, and Frederic du Petit-Mere, and Mlle. Millot, my mistress. We shall have good fun and better liquor.”
“Ducange must be in difficulties. He has lost his lawsuit.”
“I have lent him ten thousand francs; if Calas succeeds, it will repay the loan, so I have been organizing a success. Ducange is a clever man; he has brains – ”
Lucien fancied that he must be dreaming when he heard a claqueur appraising a writer’s value.
“Coralie has improved,” continued Braulard, with the air of a competent critic. “If she is a good girl, I will take her part, for they have got up a cabal against her at the Gymnase. This is how I mean to do it. I will have a few well-dressed men in the balconies to smile and make a little murmur, and the applause will follow. That is a dodge which makes a position for an actress. I have a liking for Coralie, and you ought to be satisfied, for she has feeling. Aha! I can hiss any one on the stage if I like.”
“But let us settle this business about the tickets,” put in Lousteau.
“Very well, I will come to this gentleman’s lodging for them at the beginning of the month. He is a friend of yours, and I will treat him as I do you. You have five theatres; you will get thirty tickets – that will be something like seventy-five francs a month. Perhaps you will be wanting an advance?” added Braulard, lifting a cash-box full of coin out of his desk.
“No, no,” said Lousteau; “we will keep that shift against a rainy day.”
“I will work with Coralie, sir, and we will come to an understanding,” said Braulard, addressing Lucien, who was looking about him, not without profound astonishment. There was a bookcase in Braulard’s study, there were framed engravings and good furniture; and as they passed through the drawing room, he noticed that the fittings were neither too luxurious nor yet mean. The dining-room seemed to be the best ordered room, he remarked on this jokingly.
“But Braulard is an epicure,” said Lousteau; “his dinners are famous in dramatic literature, and they are what you might expect from his cash-box.”
“I have good wine,” Braulard replied modestly. – “Ah! here are my lamplighters,” he added, as a sound of hoarse voices and strange footsteps came up from the staircase.
Lucien on his way down saw a march past of claqueurs and retailers of tickets. It was an ill smelling squad, attired in caps, seedy trousers, and threadbare overcoats; a flock of gallows-birds with bluish and greenish tints in their faces, neglected beards, and a strange mixture of savagery and subservience in their eyes. A horrible population lives and swarms upon the Paris boulevards; selling watch guards and brass jewelry in the streets by day, applauding under the chandeliers of the theatre at night, and ready to lend themselves to any dirty business in the great city.
“Behold the Romans!” laughed Lousteau; “behold fame incarnate for actresses and dramatic authors. It is no prettier than our own when you come to look at it close.”
“It is difficult to keep illusions on any subject in Paris,” answered Lucien as they turned in at his door. “There is a tax upon everything – everything has its price, and anything can be made to order – even success.”
Thirty guests were assembled that evening in Coralie’s rooms, her dining room would not hold more. Lucien had asked Dauriat and the manager of the Panorama-Dramatique, Matifat and Florine, Camusot, Lousteau, Finot, Nathan, Hector Merlin and Mme. du Val-Noble, Felicien Vernou, Blondet, Vignon, Philippe Bridau, Mariette, Giroudeau, Cardot and Florentine, and Bixiou. He had also asked all his friends of the Rue des Quatre-Vents. Tullia the dancer, who was not unkind, said gossip, to du Bruel, had come without her duke. The proprietors of the newspapers, for whom most of the journalists wrote, were also of the party.
At eight o’clock, when the lights of the candles in the chandeliers shone over the furniture, the hangings, and the flowers, the rooms wore the festal air that gives to Parisian luxury the appearance of a dream; and Lucien felt indefinable stirrings of hope and gratified vanity and pleasure at the thought that he was the master of the house. But how and by whom the magic wand had been waved he no longer sought to remember. Florine and Coralie, dressed with the fanciful extravagance and magnificent artistic effect of the stage, smiled on the poet like two fairies at the gates of the Palace of Dreams. And Lucien was almost in a dream.
His life had been changed so suddenly during the last few months; he had gone so swiftly from the depths of penury to the last extreme of luxury, that at moments he felt as uncomfortable as a dreaming man who knows that he is asleep. And yet, he looked round at the fair reality about him with a confidence to which envious minds might have given the name of fatuity.
Lucien himself had changed. He had grown paler during these days of continual enjoyment; languor had lent a humid look to his eyes; in short, to use Mme. d’Espard’s expression, he looked like a man who is loved. He was the handsomer for it. Consciousness of his powers and his strength was visible in his face, enlightened as it was by love and experience. Looking out over the world of letters and of men, it seemed to him that he might go to and fro as lord of it all. Sober reflection never entered his romantic head unless it was driven in by the pressure of adversity, and just now the present held not a care for him. The breath of praise swelled the sails of his skiff; all the instruments of success lay there to his hand; he had an establishment, a mistress whom all Paris envied him, a carriage, and untold wealth in his inkstand. Heart and soul and brain were alike transformed within him; why should he care to be over nice about the means, when the great results were visibly there before his eyes.
As such a style of living will seem, and with good reason, to be anything but secure to economists who have any experience of Paris, it will not be superfluous to give a glance to the foundation, uncertain as it was, upon which the prosperity of the pair was based.
Camusot had given Coralie’s tradesmen instructions to grant her credit for three months at least, and this had been done without her knowledge. During those three months, therefore, horses and servants, like everything else, waited as if by enchantment at the bidding of two children, eager for enjoyment, and enjoying to their hearts’ content.
Coralie had taken Lucien’s hand and given him a glimpse of the transformation scene in the dining-room, of the splendidly appointed table, of chandeliers, each fitted with forty wax-lights, of the royally luxurious dessert, and a menu of Chevet’s. Lucien kissed her on the forehead and held her closely to his heart.
“I shall succeed, child,” he said, “and then I will repay you for such love and devotion.”
“Pshaw!” said Coralie. “Are you satisfied?”
“I should be very hard to please if I were not.”
“Very well, then, that smile of yours pays for everything,” she said, and with a serpentine movement she raised her head and laid her lips against his.
When they went back to the others, Florine, Lousteau, Matifat, and Camusot were setting out the card-tables. Lucien’s friends began to arrive, for already these folk began to call themselves “Lucien’s friends”; and they sat over the cards from nine o’clock till midnight. Lucien was unacquainted with a single game, but Lousteau lost a thousand francs, and Lucien could not refuse to lend him the money when he asked for it.
Michel, Fulgence, and Joseph appeared about ten o’clock; and Lucien, chatting with them in a corner, saw that they looked sober and serious enough, not to say ill at ease. D’Arthez could not come, he was finishing his book; Leon Giraud was busy with the first number of his review; so the brotherhood had sent three artists among their number, thinking that they would feel less out of their element in an uproarious supper party than the rest.
“Well, my dear fellows,” said Lucien, assuming a slightly patronizing tone, “the ‘comical fellow’ may become a great public character yet, you see.”
“I wish I may be mistaken; I don’t ask better,” said Michel.
“Are you living with Coralie until you can do better?” asked Fulgence.
“Yes,” said Lucien, trying to look unconscious. “Coralie had an elderly adorer, a merchant, and she showed him the door, poor fellow. I am better off than your brother Philippe,” he added, addressing Joseph Bridau; “he does not know how to manage Mariette.”
“You are a man like another now; in short, you will make your way,” said Fulgence.
“A man that will always be the same for you, under all circumstances,” returned Lucien.
Michel and Fulgence exchanged incredulous scornful smiles at this. Lucien saw the absurdity of his remark.
“Coralie is wonderfully beautiful,” exclaimed Joseph Bridau. “What a magnificent portrait she would make!”
“Beautiful and good,” said Lucien; “she is an angel, upon my word. And you shall paint her portrait; she shall sit to you if you like for your Venetian lady brought by the old woman to the senator.”
“All women who love are angelic,” said Michel Chrestien.
Just at that moment Raoul Nathan flew upon Lucien, and grasped both his hands and shook them in a sudden access of violent friendship.
“Oh, my good friend, you are something more than a great man, you have a heart,” cried he, “a much rarer thing than genius in these days. You are a devoted friend. I am yours, in short, through thick and thin; I shall never forget all that you have done for me this week.”
Lucien’s joy had reached the highest point; to be thus caressed by a man of whom everyone was talking! He looked at his three friends of the brotherhood with something like a superior air. Nathan’s appearance upon the scene was the result of an overture from Merlin, who sent him a proof of the favorable review to appear in to-morrow’s issue.
“I only consented to write the attack on condition that I should be allowed to reply to it myself,” Lucien said in Nathan’s ear. “I am one of you.” This incident was opportune; it justified the remark which amused Fulgence. Lucien was radiant.
“When d’Arthez’s book comes out,” he said, turning to the three, “I am in a position to be useful to him. That thought in itself would induce me to remain a journalist.”
“Can you do as you like?” Michel asked quickly.
“So far as one can when one is indispensable,” said Lucien modestly.
It was almost midnight when they sat down to supper, and the fun grew fast and furious. Talk was less restrained in Lucien’s house than at Matifat’s, for no one suspected that the representatives of the brotherhood and the newspaper writers held divergent opinions. Young intellects, depraved by arguing for either side, now came into conflict with each other, and fearful axioms of the journalistic jurisprudence, then in its infancy, hurtled to and fro. Claude Vignon, upholding the dignity of criticism, inveighed against the tendency of the smaller newspapers, saying that the writers of personalities lowered themselves in the end. Lousteau, Merlin, and Finot took up the cudgels for the system known by the name of blague; puffery, gossip, and humbug, said they, was the test of talent, and set the hall-mark, as it were, upon it. “Any man who can stand that test has real power,” said Lousteau.
“Besides,” cried Merlin, “when a great man receives ovations, there ought to be a chorus in insults to balance, as in a Roman triumph.”
“Oho!” put in Lucien; “then every one held up to ridicule in print will fancy that he has made a success.”
“Any one would think that the question interested you,” exclaimed Finot.
“And how about our sonnets,” said Michel Chrestien; “is that the way they will win us the fame of a second Petrarch?”
“Laura already counts for something in his fame,” said Dauriat, a pun [Laure (l’or)] received with acclamations.
“Faciamus experimentum in anima vili,” retorted Lucien with a smile.
“And woe unto him whom reviewers shall spare, flinging him crowns at his first appearance, for he shall be shelved like the saints in their shrines, and no man shall pay him the slightest attention,” said Vernou.
“People will say, ‘Look elsewhere, simpleton; you have had your due already,’ as Champcenetz said to the Marquis de Genlis, who was looking too fondly at his wife,” added Blondet.
“Success is the ruin of a man in France,” said Finot. “We are so jealous of one another that we try to forget, and to make others forget, the triumphs of yesterday.”
“Contradiction is the life of literature, in fact,” said Claude Vignon.
“In art as in nature, there are two principles everywhere at strife,” exclaimed Fulgence; “and victory for either means death.”
“So it is with politics,” added Michel Chrestien.
“We have a case in point,” said Lousteau. “Dauriat will sell a couple of thousand copies of Nathan’s book in the coming week. And why? Because the book that was cleverly attacked will be ably defended.”
Merlin took up the proof of to-morrow’s paper. “How can such an article fail to sell an edition?” he asked.
“Read the article,” said Dauriat. “I am a publisher wherever I am, even at supper.”
Merlin read Lucien’s triumphant refutation aloud, and the whole party applauded.
“How could that article have been written unless the attack had preceded it?” asked Lousteau.
Dauriat drew the proof of the third article from his pocket and read it over, Finot listening closely; for it was to appear in the second number of his own review, and as editor he exaggerated his enthusiasm.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “so and not otherwise would Bossuet have written if he had lived in our day.”
“I am sure of it,” said Merlin. “Bossuet would have been a journalist to-day.”
“To Bossuet the Second!” cried Claude Vignon, raising his glass with an ironical bow.
“To my Christopher Columbus!” returned Lucien, drinking a health to Dauriat.
“Bravo!” cried Nathan.
“Is it a nickname?” Merlin inquired, looking maliciously from Finot to Lucien.
“If you go on at this pace, you will be quite beyond us,” said Dauriat; “these gentlemen” (indicating Camusot and Matifat) “cannot follow you as it is. A joke is like a bit of thread; if it is spun too fine, it breaks, as Bonaparte said.”
“Gentlemen,” said Lousteau, “we have been eye-witnesses of a strange, portentous, unheard-of, and truly surprising phenomenon. Admire the rapidity with which our friend here has been transformed from a provincial into a journalist!”
“He is a born journalist,” said Dauriat.
“Children!” called Finot, rising to his feet, “all of us here present have encouraged and protected our amphitryon in his entrance upon a career in which he has already surpassed our hopes. In two months he has shown us what he can do in a series of excellent articles known to us all. I propose to baptize him in form as a journalist.”
“A crown of roses! to signalize a double conquest,” cried Bixiou, glancing at Coralie.
Coralie made a sign to Berenice. That portly handmaid went to Coralie’s dressing-room and brought back a box of tumbled artificial flowers. The more incapable members of the party were grotesquely tricked out in these blossoms, and a crown of roses was soon woven. Finot, as high priest, sprinkled a few drops of champagne on Lucien’s golden curls, pronouncing with delicious gravity the words – “In the name of the Government Stamp, the Caution-money, and the Fine, I baptize thee, Journalist. May thy articles sit lightly on thee!”
“And may they be paid for, including white lines!” cried Merlin.
Just at that moment Lucien caught sight of three melancholy faces. Michel Chrestien, Joseph Bridau, and Fulgence Ridal took up their hats and went out amid a storm of invective.
“Queer customers!” said Merlin.
“Fulgence used to be a good fellow,” added Lousteau, “before they perverted his morals.”
“Who are ‘they’?” asked Claude Vignon.
“Some very serious young men,” said Blondet, “who meet at a philosophico-religious symposium in the Rue des Quatre-Vents, and worry themselves about the meaning of human life – ”
“Oh! oh!”
“They are trying to find out whether it goes round in a circle, or makes some progress,” continued Blondet. “They were very hard put to it between the straight line and the curve; the triangle, warranted by Scripture, seemed to them to be nonsense, when, lo! there arose among them some prophet or other who declared for the spiral.”
“Men might meet to invent more dangerous nonsense than that!” exclaimed Lucien, making a faint attempt to champion the brotherhood.
“You take theories of that sort for idle words,” said Felicien Vernou; “but a time comes when the arguments take the form of gunshot and the guillotine.”
“They have not come to that yet,” said Bixiou; “they have only come as far as the designs of Providence in the invention of champagne, the humanitarian significance of breeches, and the blind deity who keeps the world going. They pick up fallen great men like Vico, Saint-Simon, and Fourier. I am much afraid that they will turn poor Joseph Bridau’s head among them.”
“Bianchon, my old schoolfellow, gives me the cold shoulder now,” said Lousteau; “it is all their doing – ”
“Do they give lectures on orthopedy and intellectual gymnastics?” asked Merlin.
“Very likely,” answered Finot, “if Bianchon has any hand in their theories.”
“Pshaw!” said Lousteau; “he will be a great physician anyhow.”
“Isn’t d’Arthez their visible head?” asked Nathan, “a little youngster that is going to swallow all of us up.”
“He is a genius!” cried Lucien.
“Genius, is he! Well, give me a glass of sherry!” said Claude Vignon, smiling.
Every one, thereupon, began to explain his character for the benefit of his neighbor; and when a clever man feels a pressing need of explaining himself, and of unlocking his heart, it is pretty clear that wine has got the upper hand. An hour later, all the men in the company were the best friends in the world, addressing each other as great men and bold spirits, who held the future in their hands. Lucien, in his quality of host, was sufficiently clearheaded to apprehend the meaning of the sophistries which impressed him and completed his demoralization.
“The Liberal party,” announced Finot, “is compelled to stir up discussion somehow. There is no fault to find with the action of the Government, and you may imagine what a fix the Opposition is in. Which of you now cares to write a pamphlet in favor of the system of primogeniture, and raise a cry against the secret designs of the Court? The pamphlet will be paid for handsomely.”
“I will write it,” said Hector Merlin. “It is my own point of view.”
“Your party will complain that you are compromising them,” said Finot. “Felicien, you must undertake it; Dauriat will bring it out, and we will keep the secret.”
“How much shall I get?”
“Six hundred francs. Sign it ‘Le Comte C, three stars.’”
“It’s a bargain,” said Felicien Vernou.
“So you are introducing the canard to the political world,” remarked Lousteau.
“It is simply the Chabot affair carried into the region of abstract ideas,” said Finot. “Fasten intentions on the Government, and then let loose public opinion.”
“How a Government can leave the control of ideas to such a pack of scamps as we are, is matter for perpetual and profound astonishment to me,” said Claude Vignon.
“If the Ministry blunders so far as to come down into the arena, we can give them a drubbing. If they are nettled by it, the thing will rankle in people’s minds, and the Government will lose its hold on the masses. The newspaper risks nothing, and the authorities have everything to lose.”
“France will be a cipher until newspapers are abolished by law,” said Claude Vignon. “You are making progress hourly,” he added, addressing Finot. “You are a modern order of Jesuits, lacking the creed, the fixed idea, the discipline, and the union.”
They went back to the card-tables; and before long the light of the candles grew feeble in the dawn.
“Lucien, your friends from the Rue des Quatre-Vents looked as dismal as criminals going to be hanged,” said Coralie.
“They were the judges, not the criminals,” replied the poet.
“Judges are more amusing than that,” said Coralie.
For a month Lucien’s whole time was taken up with supper parties, dinner engagements, breakfasts, and evening parties; he was swept away by an irresistible current into a vortex of dissipation and easy work. He no longer thought of the future. The power of calculation amid the complications of life is the sign of a strong will which poets, weaklings, and men who live a purely intellectual life can never counterfeit. Lucien was living from hand to mouth, spending his money as fast as he made it, like many another journalist; nor did he give so much as a thought to those periodically recurrent days of reckoning which chequer the life of the bohemian in Paris so sadly.
In dress and figure he was a rival for the great dandies of the day. Coralie, like all zealots, loved to adorn her idol. She ruined herself to give her beloved poet the accoutrements which had so stirred his envy in the Garden of the Tuileries. Lucien had wonderful canes, and a charming eyeglass; he had diamond studs, and scarf-rings, and signet-rings, besides an assortment of waistcoats marvelous to behold, and in sufficient number to match every color in a variety of costumes. His transition to the estate of dandy swiftly followed. When he went to the German Minister’s dinner, all the young men regarded him with suppressed envy; yet de Marsay, Vandenesse, Ajuda-Pinto, Maxime de Trailles, Rastignac, Beaudenord, Manerville, and the Duc de Maufrigneuse gave place to none in the kingdom of fashion. Men of fashion are as jealous among themselves as women, and in the same way. Lucien was placed between Mme. de Montcornet and Mme. d’Espard, in whose honor the dinner was given; both ladies overwhelmed him with flatteries.
“Why did you turn your back on society when you would have been so well received?” asked the Marquise. “Every one was prepared to make much of you. And I have a quarrel with you too. You owed me a call – I am still waiting to receive it. I saw you at the Opera the other day, and you would not deign to come to see me nor to take any notice of me.”
“Your cousin, madame, so unmistakably dismissed me – ”
“Oh! you do not know women,” the Marquise d’Espard broke in upon him. “You have wounded the most angelic heart, the noblest nature that I know. You do not know all that Louise was trying to do for you, nor how tactfully she laid her plans for you. – Oh! and she would have succeeded,” the Marquise continued, replying to Lucien’s mute incredulity. “Her husband is dead now; died, as he was bound to die, of an indigestion; could you doubt that she would be free sooner or later? And can you suppose that she would like to be Madame Chardon? It was worth while to take some trouble to gain the title of Comtesse de Rubempre. Love, you see, is a great vanity, which requires the lesser vanities to be in harmony with itself – especially in marriage. I might love you to madness – which is to say, sufficiently to marry you – and yet I should find it very unpleasant to be called Madame Chardon. You can see that. And now that you understand the difficulties of Paris life, you will know how many roundabout ways you must take to reach your end; very well, then, you must admit that Louise was aspiring to an all but impossible piece of Court favor; she was quite unknown, she is not rich, and therefore she could not afford to neglect any means of success.
“You are clever,” the Marquise d’Espard continued; “but we women, when we love, are cleverer than the cleverest man. My cousin tried to make that absurd Chatelet useful – Oh!” she broke off, “I owe not a little amusement to you; your articles on Chatelet made me laugh heartily.”
Lucien knew not what to think of all this. Of the treachery and bad faith of journalism he had had some experience; but in spite of his perspicacity, he scarcely expected to find bad faith or treachery in society. There were some sharp lessons in store for him.
“But, madame,” he objected, for her words aroused a lively curiosity, “is not the Heron under your protection?”
“One is obliged to be civil to one’s worst enemies in society,” protested she; “one may be bored, but one must look as if the talk was amusing, and not seldom one seems to sacrifice friends the better to serve them. Are you still a novice? You mean to write, and yet you know nothing of current deceit? My cousin apparently sacrificed you to the Heron, but how could she dispense with his influence for you? Our friend stands well with the present ministry; and we have made him see that your attacks will do him service – up to a certain point, for we want you to make it up again some of these days. Chatelet has received compensations for his troubles; for, as des Lupeaulx said, ‘While the newspapers are making Chatelet ridiculous, they will leave the Ministry in peace.’”
There was a pause; the Marquise left Lucien to his own reflections.
“M. Blondet led me to hope that I should have the pleasure of seeing you in my house,” said the Comtesse de Montcornet. “You will meet a few artists and men of letters, and some one else who has the keenest desire to become acquainted with you – Mlle. des Touches, the owner of talents rare among our sex. You will go to her house, no doubt. Mlle. de Touches (or Camille Maupin, if you prefer it) is prodigiously rich, and presides over one of the most remarkable salons in Paris. She has heard that you are as handsome as you are clever, and is dying to meet you.”
Lucien could only pour out incoherent thanks and glance enviously at Emile Blondet. There was as great a difference between a great lady like Mme. de Montcornet and Coralie as between Coralie and a girl out of the streets. The Countess was young and witty and beautiful, with the very white fairness of women of the north. Her mother was the Princess Scherbellof, and the Minister before dinner had paid her the most respectful attention.
By this time the Marquise had made an end of trifling disdainfully with the wing of a chicken.
“My poor Louise felt so much affection for you,” she said. “She took me into her confidence; I knew her dreams of a great career for you. She would have borne a great deal, but what scorn you showed her when you sent back her letters! Cruelty we can forgive; those who hurt us must have still some faith in us; but indifference! Indifference is like polar snows, it extinguishes all life. So, you must see that you have lost a precious affection through your own fault. Why break with her? Even if she had scorned you, you had your way to make, had you not? – your name to win back? Louise thought of all that.”
“Then why was she silent?”
“Eh! mon Dieu!” cried the Marquise, “it was I myself who advised her not to take you into her confidence. Between ourselves, you know, you seemed so little used to the ways of the world, that I took alarm. I was afraid that your inexperience and rash ardor might wreck our carefully-made schemes. Can you recollect yourself as you were then? You must admit that if you could see your double to-day, you would say the same yourself. You are not like the same man. That was our mistake. But would one man in a thousand combine such intellectual gifts with such wonderful aptitude for taking the tone of society? I did not think that you would be such an astonishing exception. You were transformed so quickly, you acquired the manner of Paris so easily, that I did not recognize you in the Bois de Boulogne a month ago.”