A Daughter of Eve

“You assure me that these little papers with the stamps on them – ”

“Don’t be in the least uneasy,” said the countess.

“I am not uneasy,” he said, hastily. “I only meant to ask if these little papers will give pleasure to Madame du Tillet.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “you are doing her a service, as if you were her father.”

“I am happy, indeed, to be of any good to her – Come and listen to my music!” and leaving the papers on the table, he jumped to his piano.

The hands of this angel ran along the yellowing keys, his glance was rising to heaven, regardless of the roof; already the air of some blessed climate permeated the room and the soul of the old musician; but the countess did not allow the artless interpreter of things celestial to make the strings and the worn wood speak, like Raffaelle’s Saint Cecilia, to the listening angels. She quickly slipped the notes into her muff and recalled her radiant master from the ethereal spheres to which he soared, by laying her hand upon his shoulder.

“My good Schmucke – ” she said.

“Going already?” he cried. “Ah! why did you come?”

He did not murmur, but he sat up like a faithful dog who listens to his mistress.

“My good Schmucke,” she repeated, “this is a matter of life and death; minutes can save tears, perhaps blood.”

“Always the same!” he said. “Go, angel! dry the tears of others. Your poor Schmucke thinks more of your visit than of your gifts.”

“But we must see each other often,” she said. “You must come and dine and play to me every Sunday, or we shall quarrel. Remember, I shall expect you next Sunday.”

“Really and truly?”

“Yes, I entreat you; and my sister will want you, too, for another day.”

“Then my happiness will be complete,” he said; “for I only see you now in the Champs Elysees as you pass in your carriage, and that is very seldom.”

This thought dried the tears in his eyes as he gave his arm to his beautiful pupil, who felt the old man’s heart beat violently.

“You think of us?” she said.

“Always as I eat my food,” he answered, – “as my benefactresses; but chiefly as the first young girls worthy of love whom I ever knew.”

So respectful, faithful, and religious a solemnity was in this speech that the countess dared say no more. That smoky chamber, full of dirt and rubbish, was the temple of the two divinities.

“There we are loved – and truly loved,” she thought.

The emotion with which old Schmucke saw the countess get into her carriage and leave him she fully shared, and she sent him from the tips of her fingers one of those pretty kisses which women give each other from afar. Receiving it, the old man stood planted on his feet for a long time after the carriage had disappeared.

A few moments later the countess entered the court-yard of the hotel de Nucingen. Madame de Nucingen was not yet up; but anxious not to keep a woman of the countess’s position waiting, she hastily threw on a shawl and wrapper.

“My visit concerns a charitable action, madame,” said the countess, “or I would not disturb you at so early an hour.”

“But I am only too happy to be disturbed,” said the banker’s wife, taking the notes and the countess’s guarantee. She rang for her maid.

“Therese,” she said, “tell the cashier to bring me up himself, immediately, forty thousand francs.”

Then she locked into a table drawer the guarantee given by Madame de Vandenesse, after sealing it up.

“You have a delightful room,” said the countess.

“Yes, but Monsieur de Nucingen is going to take it from me. He is building a new house.”

“You will doubtless give this one to your daughter, who, I am told, is to marry Monsieur de Rastignac.”

The cashier appeared at this moment with the money. Madame de Nucingen took the bank-bills and gave him the notes of hand.

“That balances,” she said.

“Except the discount,” replied the cashier. “Ha, Schmucke; that’s the musician of Anspach,” he added, examining the signatures in a suspicious manner that made the countess tremble.

“Who is doing this business?” said Madame de Nucingen, with a haughty glance at the cashier. “This is my affair.”

The cashier looked alternately at the two ladies, but he could discover nothing on their impenetrable faces.

“Go, leave us – Have the kindness to wait a few moments that the people in the bank may not connect you with this negotiation,” said Madame de Nucingen to the countess.

“I must ask you to add to all your other kindness that of keeping this matter secret,” said Madame de Vandenesse.

“Most assuredly, since it is for charity,” replied the baroness, smiling. “I will send your carriage round to the garden gate, so that no one will see you leave the house.”

“You have the thoughtful grace of a person who has suffered,” said the countess.

“I do not know if I have grace,” said the baroness; “but I have suffered much. I hope that your anxieties cost less than mine.”

When a man has laid a plot like that du Tillet was scheming against Nathan, he confides it to no man. Nucingen knew something of it, but his wife knew nothing. The baroness, however, aware that Raoul was embarrassed, was not the dupe of the two sisters; she guessed into whose hands that money was to go, and she was delighted to oblige the countess; moreover, she felt a deep compassion for all such embarrassments. Rastignac, so placed that he was able to fathom the manoeuvres of the two bankers, came to breakfast that morning with Madame de Nucingen.

Delphine and Rastignac had no secrets from each other; and the baroness related to him her scene with the countess. Eugene, who had never supposed that Delphine could be mixed up in the affair, which was only accessory to his eyes, – one means among many others, – opened her eyes to the truth. She had probably, he told her, destroyed du Tillet’s chances of selection, and rendered useless the intrigues and deceptions of the past year. In short, he put her in the secret of the whole affair, advising her to keep absolute silence as to the mistake she had just committed.

“Provided the cashier does not tell Nucingen,” she said.

A few moments after mid-day, while du Tillet was breakfasting, Monsieur Gigonnet was announced.

“Let him come in,” said the banker, though his wife was at table. “Well, my old Shylock, is our man locked up?”

“No.”

“Why not? Didn’t I give you the address, rue du Mail, hotel – ”

“He has paid up,” said Gigonnet, drawing from his wallet a pile of bank-bills. Du Tillet looked furious. “You should never frown at money,” said his impassible associate; “it brings ill-luck.”

“Where did you get that money, madame?” said du Tillet, suddenly turning upon his wife with a look which made her color to the roots of her hair.

“I don’t know what your question means,” she said.

“I will fathom this mystery,” he cried, springing furiously up. “You have upset my most cherished plans.”

“You are upsetting your breakfast,” said Gigonnet, arresting the table-clock, which was dragged by the skirt of du Tillet’s dressing-gown.

Madame du Tillet rose to leave the room, for her husband’s words alarmed her. She rang the bell, and a footman entered.

“The carriage,” she said. “And call Virginie; I wish to dress.”

“Where are you going?” exclaimed du Tillet.

“Well-bred husbands do not question their wives,” she answered. “I believe that you lay claim to be a gentleman.”

“I don’t recognize you ever since you have seen more of your impertinent sister.”

“You ordered me to be impertinent, and I am practising on you,” she replied.

“Your servant, madame,” said Gigonnet, taking leave, not anxious to witness this family scene.

Du Tillet looked fixedly at his wife, who returned the look without lowering her eyes.

“What does all this mean?” he said.

“It means that I am no longer a little girl whom you can frighten,” she replied. “I am, and shall be, all my life, a good and loyal wife to you; you may be my master if you choose, my tyrant, never!”

Du Tillet left the room. After this effort Marie-Eugenie broke down.

“If it were not for my sister’s danger,” she said to herself, “I should never have dared to brave him thus; but, as the proverb says, ‘There’s some good in every evil.’”

CHAPTER IX. THE HUSBAND’S TRIUMPH

During the preceding night Madame du Tillet had gone over in her mind her sister’s revelations. Sure, now, of Nathan’s safety, she was no longer influenced by the thought of an imminent danger in that direction. But she remembered the vehement energy with which the countess had declared that she would fly with Nathan if that would save him. She saw that the man might determine her sister in some paroxysm of gratitude and love to take a step which was nothing short of madness. There were recent examples in the highest society of just such flights which paid for doubtful pleasures by lasting remorse and the disrepute of a false position. Du Tillet’s speech brought her fears to a point; she dreaded lest all should be discovered; she knew her sister’s signature was in Nucingen’s hands, and she resolved to entreat Marie to save herself by confessing all to Felix.

She drove to her sister’s house, but Marie was not at home. Felix was there. A voice within her cried aloud to Eugenie to save her sister; the morrow might be too late. She took a vast responsibility upon herself, but she resolved to tell all to the count. Surely he would be indulgent when he knew that his honor was still safe. The countess was deluded rather than sinful. Eugenie feared to be treacherous and base in revealing secrets that society (agreeing on this point) holds to be inviolable; but – she saw her sister’s future, she trembled lest she should some day be deserted, ruined by Nathan, poor, suffering, disgraced, wretched, and she hesitated no longer; she sent in her name and asked to see the count.

Felix, astonished at the visit, had a long conversation with his sister-in-law, in which he seemed so calm, so completely master of himself, that she feared he might have taken some terrible resolution.

“Do not be uneasy,” he said, seeing her anxiety. “I will act in a manner which shall make your sister bless you. However much you may dislike to keep the fact that you have spoken to me from her knowledge, I must entreat you to do so. I need a few days to search into mysteries which you don’t perceive; and, above all, I must act cautiously. Perhaps I can learn all in a day. I, alone, my dear sister, am the guilty person. All lovers play their game, and it is not every woman who is able, unassisted, to see life as it is.”

Madame du Tillet returned home comforted. Felix de Vandenesse drew forty thousand francs from the Bank of France, and went direct to Madame de Nucingen He found her at home, thanked her for the confidence she had placed in his wife, and returned the money, explaining that the countess had obtained this mysterious loan for her charities, which were so profuse that he was trying to put a limit to them.

“Give me no explanations, monsieur, since Madame de Vandenesse has told you all,” said the Baronne de Nucingen.

“She knows the truth,” thought Vandenesse.

Madame de Nucingen returned to him Marie’s letter of guarantee, and sent to the bank for the four notes. Vandenesse, during the short time that these arrangements kept him waiting, watched the baroness with the eye of a statesman, and he thought the moment propitious for further negotiation.

“We live in an age, madame, when nothing is sure,” he said. “Even thrones rise and fall in France with fearful rapidity. Fifteen years have wreaked their will on a great empire, a monarchy, and a revolution. No one can now dare to count upon the future. You know my attachment to the cause of legitimacy. Suppose some catastrophe; would you not be glad to have a friend in the conquering party?”

“Undoubtedly,” she said, smiling.

“Very good; then, will you have in me, secretly, an obliged friend who could be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supporting his claim to the peerage he is seeking?”

“What do you want of me?” she asked.

“Very little,” he replied. “All that you know about Nathan’s affairs.”

The baroness repeated to him her conversation with Rastignac, and said, as she gave him the four notes, which the cashier had meantime brought to her:

“Don’t forget your promise.”

So little did Vandenesse forget this illusive promise that he used it again on Baron Eugene de Rastignac to obtain from him certain other information. Leaving Rastignac’s apartments, he dictated to a street amanuensis the following note to Florine.

“If Mademoiselle Florine wishes to know of a part she may play she

is requested to come to the masked opera at the Opera next Sunday

night, accompanied by Monsieur Nathan.”

To this ball he determined to take his wife and let her own eyes enlighten her as to the relations between Nathan and Florine. He knew the jealous pride of the countess; he wanted to make her renounce her love of her own will, without causing her to blush before him, and then to return to her her own letters, sold by Florine, from whom he expected to be able to buy them. This judicious plan, rapidly conceived and partly executed, might fail through some trick of chance which meddles with all things here below.

After dinner that evening, Felix brought the conversation round to the masked balls of the Opera, remarking that Marie had never been to one, and proposing that she should accompany him the following evening.

“I’ll find you some one to ‘intriguer,’” he said.

“Ah! I wish you would,” she replied.

“To do the thing well, a woman ought to fasten upon some good prey, a celebrity, a man of enough wit to give and take. There’s Nathan; will you have him? I know, through a friend of Florine, certain secrets of his which would drive him crazy.”

“Florine?” said the countess. “Do you mean the actress?”

Marie had already heard that name from the lips of the watchman Quillet; it now shot like a flash of lightning through her soul.

“Yes, his mistress,” replied the count. “What is there so surprising in that?”

“I thought Monsieur Nathan too busy to have a mistress. Do authors have time to make love?”

“I don’t say they love, my dear, but they are forced to lodge somewhere, like other men, and when they haven’t a home of their own they lodge with their mistresses; which may seem to you rather loose, but it is far more agreeable than lodging in a prison.”

Fire was less red than Marie’s cheeks.

“Will you have him for a victim? I can help you to terrify him,” continued the count, not looking at his wife’s face. “I’ll put you in the way of proving to him that he is being tricked like a child by your brother-in-law du Tillet. That wretch is trying to put Nathan in prison so as to make him ineligible to stand against him in the electoral college. I know, through a friend of Florine, the exact sum derived from the sale of her furniture, which she gave to Nathan to found his newspaper; I know, too, what she sent him out of her summer’s harvest in the departments and in Belgium, – money which has really gone to the profit of du Tillet, Nucingen, and Massol. All three of them, unknown to Nathan, have privately sold the paper to the new ministry, so sure are they of ejecting him.”

“Monsieur Nathan is incapable of accepting money from an actress.”

“You don’t know that class of people, my dear,” said the count. “He would not deny the fact if you asked him.”

“I will certainly go to the ball,” said the countess.

“You will be very much amused,” replied Vandenesse. “With such weapons in hand you can cut Nathan’s complacency to the quick, and you will also do him a great service. You will put him in a fury; he’ll try to be calm, though inwardly fuming; but, all the same, you will enlighten a man of talent as to the peril in which he really stands; and you will also have the satisfaction of laming the horses of the ‘juste-milieu’ in their stalls – But you are not listening to me, my dear.”

“On the contrary, I am listening intently,” she said. “I will tell you later why I feel desirous to know the truth of all this.”

“You shall know it,” said Vandenesse. “If you stay masked I will take you to supper with Nathan and Florine; it would be rather amusing for a woman of your rank to fool an actress after bewildering the wits of a clever man about these important facts; you can harness them both to the same hoax. I’ll make some inquiries about Nathan’s infidelities, and if I discover any of his recent adventures you shall enjoy the sight of a courtesan’s fury; it is magnificent. Florine will boil and foam like an Alpine torrent; she adores Nathan; he is everything to her; she clings to him like flesh to the bones or a lioness to her cubs. I remember seeing, in my youth, a celebrated actress (who wrote like a scullion) when she came to a friend of mine to demand her letters. I have never seen such a sight again, such calm fury, such insolent majesty, such savage self-control – Are you ill, Marie?”

“No; they have made too much fire.” The countess turned away and threw herself on a sofa. Suddenly, with an unforeseen movement, impelled by the horrible anguish of her jealousy, she rose on her trembling legs, crossed her arms, and came slowly to her husband.

“What do you know?” she asked. “You are not a man to torture me; you would crush me without making me suffer if I were guilty.”

“What do you expect me to know, Marie?”

“Well! about Nathan.”

“You think you love him,” he replied; “but you love a phantom made of words.”

“Then you know – ”

“All,” he said.

The word fell on Marie’s head like the blow of a club.

“If you wish it, I will know nothing,” he continued. “You are standing on the brink of a precipice, my child, and I must draw you from it. I have already done something. See!”

He drew from his pocket her letter of guarantee and the four notes endorsed by Schmucke, and let the countess recognize them; then he threw them into the fire.

“What would have happened to you, my poor Marie, three months hence?” he said. “The sheriffs would have taken you to a public court-room. Don’t bow your head, don’t feel humiliated; you have been the dupe of noble feelings; you have coquetted with poesy, not with a man. All women – all, do you hear me, Marie? – would have been seduced in your position. How absurd we should be, we men, we who have committed a thousand follies through a score of years, if we were not willing to grant you one imprudence in a lifetime! God keep me from triumphing over you or from offering you a pity you repelled so vehemently the other day. Perhaps that unfortunate man was sincere when he wrote to you, sincere in attempting to kill himself, sincere in returning that same night to Florine. Men are worth less than women. It is not for my own sake that I speak at this moment, but for yours. I am indulgent, but the world is not; it shuns a woman who makes a scandal. Is that just? I know not; but this I know, the world is cruel. Society refuses to calm the woes itself has caused; it gives its honors to those who best deceive it; it has no recompense for rash devotion. I see and know all that. I can’t reform society, but this I can do, I can protect you, Marie, against yourself. This matter concerns a man who has brought you trouble only, and not one of those high and sacred loves which do, at times, command our abnegation, and even bear their own excuse. Perhaps I have been wrong in not varying your happiness, in not providing you with gayer pleasures, travel, amusements, distractions for the mind. Besides, I can explain to myself the impulse that has driven you to a celebrated man, by the jealous envy you have roused in certain women. Lady Dudley, Madame d’Espard, and my sister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this. Those women, against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on your guard, have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause me unhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe, you would never have entered.”

As she listened to these words, so full of kindness, the countess was torn by many conflicting feelings; but the storm within her breast was ruled by one of them, – a keen admiration for her husband. Proud and noble souls are prompt to recognize the delicacy with which they are treated. Tact is to sentiments what grace is to the body. Marie appreciated the grandeur of the man who bowed before a woman in fault, that he might not see her blush. She ran from the room like one beside herself, but instantly returned, fearing lest her hasty action might cause him uneasiness.

“Wait,” she said, and disappeared again.

Felix had ably prepared her excuse, and he was instantly rewarded for his generosity. His wife returned with Nathan’s letters in her hand, and gave them to him.

“Judge me,” she said, kneeling down beside him.

“Are we able to judge where we love?” he answered, throwing the letters into the fire; for he felt that later his wife might not forgive him for having read them. Marie, with her head upon his knee, burst into tears.

“My child,” he said, raising her head, “where are your letters?”

At this question the poor woman no longer felt the intolerable burning of her cheeks; she turned cold.

“That you may not suspect me of calumniating a man whom you think worthy of you, I will make Florine herself return you those letters.”

“Oh! Surely he would give them back to me himself.”

“Suppose that he refused to do so?”

The countess dropped her head.

“The world disgusts me,” she said. “I don’t want to enter it again. I want to live alone with you, if you forgive me.”

“But you might get bored again. Besides, what would the world say if you left it so abruptly? In the spring we will travel; we will go to Italy, and all over Europe; you shall see life. But to-morrow night we must go to the Opera-ball; there is no other way to get those letters without compromising you; besides, by giving them up, Florine will prove to you her power.”

“And must I see that?” said the countess, frightened.

“To-morrow night.”

The next evening, about midnight, Nathan was walking about the foyer of the Opera with a mask on his arm, to whom he was attending in a sufficiently conjugal manner. Presently two masked women came up to him.

“You poor fool! Marie is here and is watching you,” said one of them, who was Vandenesse, disguised as a woman.

“If you choose to listen to me I will tell you secrets that Nathan is hiding from you,” said the other woman, who was the countess, to Florine.

Nathan had abruptly dropped Florine’s arm to follow the count, who adroitly slipped into the crowd and was out of sight in a moment. Florine followed the countess, who sat down on a seat close at hand, to which the count, doubling on Nathan, returned almost immediately to guard his wife.

“Explain yourself, my dear,” said Florine, “and don’t think I shall stand this long. No one can tear Raoul from me, I’ll tell you that; I hold him by habit, and that’s even stronger than love.”

“In the first place, are you Florine?” said the count, speaking in his natural voice.

“A pretty question! if you don’t know that, my joking friend, why should I believe you?”

“Go and ask Nathan, who has left you to look for his other mistress, where he passed the night, three days ago. He tried to kill himself without a word to you, my dear, – and all for want of money. That shows how much you know about the affairs of a man whom you say you love, and who leaves you without a penny, and kills himself, – or, rather, doesn’t kill himself, for he misses it. Suicides that don’t kill are about as absurd as a duel without a scratch.”

“That’s a lie,” said Florine. “He dined with me that very day. The poor fellow had the sheriff after him; he was hiding, as well he might.”

“Go and ask at the hotel du Mail, rue du Mail, if he was not taken there that morning, half dead of the fumes of charcoal, by a handsome young woman with whom he has been in love over a year. Her letters are at this moment under your very nose in your own house. If you want to teach Nathan a good lesson, let us all three go there; and I’ll show you, papers in hand, how you can save him from the sheriff and Clichy if you choose to be the good girl that you are.”

“Try that on others than Florine, my little man. I am certain that Nathan has never been in love with any one but me.”