The Parisians — Complete

Just as Bacourt finished that last sentence, Isaura lifted the head which had hitherto bent in an earnest listening attitude that seemed to justify the Doctor’s remarks, and looked round. Her eyes met Graham’s with the fearless candour which made half the charm of their bright yet soft intelligence; but she dropped them suddenly with a half-start and a change of colour, for the expression of Graham’s face was unlike that which she had hitherto seen on it,—it was hard, stern, and somewhat disdainful. A minute or so afterwards she rose, and in passing across the room towards the group round the host, paused at a table covered with books and prints near to which Graham was standing alone. The Doctor had departed in company with the German Count.

Isaura took up one of the prints.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “Sorrento, my Sorrento. Have you ever visited Sorrento, Mr. Vane?”

Her question and her movement were evidently in conciliation. Was the conciliation prompted by coquetry, or by a sentiment more innocent and artless?

Graham doubted, and replied coldly, as he bent over the print,—

“I once stayed there a few days, but my recollection of it is not sufficiently lively to enable me to recognize its features in this design.”

“That is the house, at least so they say, of Tasso’s father; of course you visited that?”

“Yes, it was a hotel in my time; I lodged there.”

“And I too. There I first read ‘The Gerusalemine.’” The last words were said in Italian, with a low measured tone, inwardly and dreamily.

A somewhat sharp and incisive voice speaking in French here struck in and prevented Graham’s rejoinder: “Quel joli dessin! What is it, Mademoiselle?”

Graham recoiled; the speaker was Gustave Rameau, who had, unobserved, first watched Isaura, then rejoined her side.

“A view of Sorrento, Monsieur, but it does not do justice to the place. I was pointing out the house which belonged to Tasso’s father.”

“Tasso! Hein! and which is the fair Eleonora’s?”

“Monsieur,” answered Isaura, rather startled at that question, from a professed homme de lettres, “Eleonora did not live at Sorrento.”

“Tant pis pour Sorrente,” said the homme de lettres, carelessly. “No one would care for Tasso if it were not for Eleonora.”

“I should rather have thought,” said Graham, “that no one would have cared for Eleonora if it were not for Tasso.”

Rameau glanced at the Englishman superciliously. “Pardon, Monsieur, in every age a love-story keeps its interest; but who cares nowadays for le clinquant du Tasse?”

“Le clinquant du Tasse!” exclaimed Isaura, indignantly.

“The expression is Boileau’s, Mademoiselle, in ridicule of the ‘Sot de qualite,’ who prefers—

“‘Le clinquant du Tasse a tout l’or de Virgile.’

“But for my part I have as little faith in the last as the first.”

“I do not know Latin, and have therefore not read Virgil,” said Isaura.

“Possibly,” remarked Graham, “Monsieur does not know Italian, and has therefore not read Tasso.”

“If that be meant in sarcasm,” retorted Rameau, “I construe it as a compliment. A Frenchman who is contented to study the masterpieces of modern literature need learn no language and read no authors but his own.”

Isaura laughed her pleasant silvery laugh. “I should admire the frankness of that boast, Monsieur, if in our talk just now you had not spoken as contemptuously of what we are accustomed to consider French masterpieces as you have done of Virgil and Tasso.”

“Ah, Mademoiselle! it is not my fault if you have had teachers of taste so rococo as to bid you find masterpieces in the tiresome stilted tragedies of Corneille and Racine. Poetry of a court, not of a people, one simple novel, one simple stanza that probes the hidden recesses of the human heart, reveals the sores of this wretched social state, denounces the evils of superstition, kingcraft, and priestcraft, is worth a library of the rubbish which pedagogues call ‘the classics.’ We agree, at least, in one thing, Mademoiselle; we both do homage to the genius of your friend Madame de Grantmesnil.”

“Your friend, Signorina!” cried Graham, incredulously; “is Madame de Grantmesnil your friend?”

“The dearest I have in the world.”

Graham’s face darkened; he turned away in silence, and in another minute vanished from the room, persuading himself that he felt not one pang of jealousy in leaving Gustave Rameau by the side of Isaura. “Her dearest friend Madame de Grantmesnil!” he muttered.

A word now on Isaura’s chief correspondent. Madame de Grantmesnil was a woman of noble birth and ample fortune. She had separated from her husband in the second year after marriage. She was a singularly eloquent writer, surpassed among contemporaries of her sex in popularity and renown only by Georges Sand.

At least as fearless as that great novelist in the frank exposition of her views, she had commenced her career in letters by a work of astonishing power and pathos, directed against the institution of marriage as regulated in Roman Catholic communities. I do not know that it said more on this delicate subject than the English Milton has said; but then Milton did not write for a Roman Catholic community, nor adopt a style likely to captivate the working classes. Madame de Grantmesnil’s first book was deemed an attack on the religion of the country, and captivated those among the working classes who had already abjured that religion. This work was followed up by others more or less in defiance of “received opinions,”—some with political, some with social revolutionary aim and tendency, but always with a singular purity of style. Search all her books, and however you might revolt from her doctrine, you could not find a hazardous expression. The novels of English young ladies are naughty in comparison. Of late years, whatever might be hard or audacious in her political or social doctrines softened itself into charm amid the golden haze of romance. Her writings had grown more and more purely artistic,—poetizing what is good and beautiful in the realities of life rather than creating a false ideal out of what is vicious and deformed. Such a woman, separated young from her husband, could not enunciate such opinions and lead a life so independent and uncontrolled as Madame de Grantmesnil had done, without scandal, without calumny. Nothing, however, in her actual life had ever been so proved against her as to lower the high position she occupied in right of birth, fortune, renown. Wherever she went she was fetee, as in England foreign princes, and in America foreign authors, are fetes. Those who knew her well concurred in praise of her lofty, generous, lovable qualities. Madame de Grantmesnil had known Mr. Selby; and when, at his death, Isaura, in the innocent age between childhood and youth, had been left the most sorrowful and most lonely creature on the face of the earth, this famous woman, worshipped by the rich for her intellect, adored by the poor for her beneficence, came to the orphan’s friendless side, breathing love once more into her pining heart, and waking for the first time the desires of genius, the aspirations of art, in the dim self-consciousness of a soul between sleep and waking.

But, my dear Englishman, put yourself in Graham’s place, and suppose that you were beginning to fall in love with a girl whom for many good reasons you ought not to marry; suppose that in the same hour in which you were angrily conscious of jealousy on account of a man whom it wounds your self-esteem to consider a rival, the girl tells you that her dearest friend is a woman who is famed for her hostility to the institution of marriage!

CHAPTER IV

On the same day in which Graham dined with the Savarins, M. Louvier assembled round his table the elite of the young Parisians who constituted the oligarchy of fashion, to meet whom he had invited his new friend the Marquis de Rochebriant. Most of them belonged to the Legitimist party, the noblesse of the faubourg; those who did not, belonged to no political party at all,—indifferent to the cares of mortal States as the gods of Epicurus. Foremost among this Jeunesse doree were Alain’s kinsmen, Raoul and Enguerrand de Vandemar. To these Louvier introduced him with a burly parental bonhomie, as if he were the head of the family. “I need not bid you, young folks, to make friends with each other. A Vandemar and a Rochebriant are not made friends,—they are born friends.” So saying he turned to his other guests.

Almost in an instant Alain felt his constraint melt away in the cordial warmth with which his cousins greeted him. These young men had a striking family likeness to each other, and yet in feature, colouring, and expression, in all save that strange family likeness, they were contrasts. Raoul was tall, and, though inclined to be slender, with sufficient breadth of shoulder to indicate no inconsiderable strength of frame. His hair worn short and his silky beard worn long were dark; so were his eyes, shaded by curved drooping lashes; his complexion was pale, but clear and healthful. In repose the expression of his face was that of a somewhat melancholy indolence, but in speaking it became singularly sweet, with a smile of the exquisite urbanity which no artificial politeness can bestow; it must emanate from that native high breeding which has its source in goodness of heart.

Enguerrand was fair, with curly locks of a golden chestnut. He wore no beard, only a small mustache rather darker than his hair. His complexion might in itself be called effeminate, its bloom was so fresh and delicate; but there was so much of boldness and energy in the play of his countenance, the hardy outline of the lips, and the open breadth of the forehead, that “effeminate” was an epithet no one ever assigned to his aspect. He was somewhat under the middle height, but beautifully proportioned, carried himself well, and somehow or other did not look short even by the side of tall men. Altogether he seemed formed to be a mother’s darling, and spoiled by women, yet to hold his own among men with a strength of will more evident in his look and his bearing than it was in those of his graver and statelier brother.

Both were considered by their young co-equals models in dress, but in Raoul there was no sign that care or thought upon dress had been bestowed; the simplicity of his costume was absolute and severe. On his plain shirt-front there gleamed not a stud, on his fingers there sparkled not a ring. Enguerrand, on the contrary, was not without pretension in his attire; the broderie in his shirt-front seemed woven by the Queen of the Fairies. His rings of turquoise and opal, his studs and wrist-buttons of pearl and brilliants, must have cost double the rental of Rochebriant, but probably they cost him nothing. He was one of those happy Lotharios to whom Calistas make constant presents. All about him was so bright that the atmosphere around seemed gayer for his presence.

In one respect at least the brothers closely resembled each other,—in that exquisite graciousness of manner for which the genuine French noble is traditionally renowned; a graciousness that did not desert them even when they came reluctantly into contact with roturiers or republicans; but the graciousness became egalite, fraternite, towards one of their caste and kindred.

“We must do our best to make Paris pleasant to you,” said Raoul, still retaining in his grasp the hand he had taken.

“Vilain cousin,” said the livelier Enguerrand, “to have been in Paris twenty-four hours, and without letting us know.”

“Has not your father told you that I called upon him?”

“Our father,” answered Raoul, “was not so savage as to conceal that fact; but he said you were only here on business for a day or two, had declined his invitation, and would not give your address. Pauvre pere! we scolded him well for letting you escape from us thus. My mother has not forgiven him yet; we must present you to her to-morrow. I answer for your liking her almost as much as she will like you.”

Before Alain could answer dinner was announced. Alain’s place at dinner was between his cousins. How pleasant they made themselves! It was the first time in which Alain had been brought into such familiar conversation with countrymen of his own rank as well as his own age. His heart warmed to them. The general talk of the other guests was strange to his ear; it ran much upon horses and races, upon the opera and the ballet; it was enlivened with satirical anecdotes of persons whose names were unknown to the Provincial; not a word was said that showed the smallest interest in politics or the slightest acquaintance with literature. The world of these well-born guests seemed one from which all that concerned the great mass of mankind was excluded, yet the talk was that which could only be found in a very polished society. In it there was not much wit, but there was a prevalent vein of gayety, and the gayety was never violent, the laughter was never loud; the scandals circulated might imply cynicism the most absolute, but in language the most refined. The Jockey Club of Paris has its perfume.

Raoul did not mix in the general conversation; he devoted himself pointedly to the amusement of his cousin, explaining to him the point of the anecdotes circulated, or hitting off in terse sentences the characters of the talkers.

Enguerrand was evidently of temper more vivacious than his brother, and contributed freely to the current play of light gossip and mirthful sally.

Louvier, seated between a duke and a Russian prince, said little except to recommend a wine or an entree, but kept his eye constantly on the Vandemars and Alain.

Immediately after coffee the guests departed. Before they did so, however, Raoul introduced his cousin to those of the party most distinguished by hereditary rank or social position. With these the name of Rochebriant was too historically famous not to insure respect of its owner; they welcomed him among them as if he were their brother.

The French duke claimed him as a connection by an alliance in the fourteenth century; the Russian prince had known the late Marquis, and trusted that the son would allow him to improve into friendship the acquaintance he had formed with the father.

Those ceremonials over, Raoul linked his arm in Alain’s and said: “I am not going to release you so soon after we have caught you. You must come with me to a house in which I at least spend an hour or two every evening. I am at home there. Bah! I take no refusal. Do not suppose I carry you off to Bohemia,—a country which, I am sorry to say, Enguerrand now and then visits, but which is to me as unknown as the mountains of the moon. The house I speak of is comme il faut to the utmost. It is that of the Contessa di Rimini,—a charming Italian by marriage, but by birth and in character on ne peut plus Francaise. My mother adores her.”

That dinner at M. Louvier’s had already effected a great change in the mood and temper of Alain de Rochebriant; he felt, as if by magic, the sense of youth, of rank, of station, which had been so suddenly checked and stifled, warmed to life within his veins. He should have deemed himself a boor had he refused the invitation so frankly tendered.

But on reaching the coupe which the brothers kept in common, and seeing it only held two, he drew back.

“Nay, enter, mon cher,” said Raoul, divining the cause of his hesitation; “Enguerrand has gone on to his club.”

CHAPTER V

“Tell me,” said Raoul, when they were in the carriage, “how you came to know M. Louvier.”

“He is my chief mortgagee.”

“H’m! that explains it. But you might be in worse hands; the man has a character for liberality.”

“Did your father mention to you my circumstances, and the reason that brings me to Paris?”

“Since you put the question point-blank, my dear cousin, he did.”

“He told you how poor I am, and how keen must be my lifelong struggle to keep Rochebriant as the home of my race?”

“He told us all that could make us still more respect the Marquis de Rochebriant, and still more eagerly long to know our cousin and the head of our house,” answered Raoul, with a certain nobleness of tone and manner.

Alain pressed his kinsman’s hand with grateful emotion. “Yet,” he said falteringly, “your father agreed with me that my circumstances would not allow me to—”

“Bah!” interrupted Raoul, with a gentle laugh; “my father is a very clever man, doubtless, but he knows only the world of his own day, nothing of the world of ours. I and Enguerrand will call on you to-morrow, to take you to my mother, and before doing so, to consult as to affairs in general. On this last matter Enguerrand is an oracle. Here we are at the Contessa’s.”

CHAPTER VI

The Contessa di Rimini received her visitors in a boudoir furnished with much apparent simplicity, but a simplicity by no means inexpensive. The draperies were but of chintz, and the walls covered with the same material,—a lively pattern, in which the prevalents were rose-colour and white; but the ornaments on the mantelpiece, the china stored in the cabinets or arranged on the shelves, the small knickknacks scattered on the tables, were costly rarities of art.

The Contessa herself was a woman who had somewhat passed her thirtieth year,—not strikingly handsome, but exquisitely pretty. “There is,” said a great French writer, “only one way in which a woman can be handsome, but a hundred thousand ways in which she can be pretty;” and it would be impossible to reckon up the number of ways in which Adeline di Rimini carried off the prize in prettiness.

Yet it would be unjust to the personal attractions of the Contessa to class them all under the word “prettiness.” When regarded more attentively, there was an expression in her countenance that might almost be called divine, it spoke so unmistakably of a sweet nature and an untroubled soul. An English poet once described her by repeating the old lines,

“Her face is like the milky way I’ the sky, —A meeting of gentle lights without a name.”

She was not alone; an elderly lady sat on an armchair by the fire, engaged in knitting; and a man, also elderly, and whose dress proclaimed him an ecclesiastic, sat at the opposite corner, with a large Angora cat on his lap.

“I present to you, Madame,” said Raoul, “my new-found cousin, the seventeenth Marquis de Rochebriant, whom I am proud to consider on the male side the head of our house, representing its eldest branch. Welcome him for my sake,—in future he will be welcome for his own.”

The Contessa replied very graciously to this introduction, and made room for Alain on the divan from which she had risen.

The old lady looked up from her knitting; the ecclesiastic removed the cat from his lap. Said the old lady, “I announce myself to M. le Marquis. I knew his mother well enough to be invited to his christening; otherwise I have no pretension to the acquaintance of a cavalier si beau, being old, rather deaf, very stupid, exceedingly poor—”

“And,” interrupted Raoul, “the woman in all Paris the most adored for bonte, and consulted for savoir vivre by the young cavaliers whom she deigns to receive. Alain, I present you to Madame de Maury, the widow of a distinguished author and academician, and the daughter of the brave Henri de Gerval, who fought for the good cause in La Vendee. I present you also to the Abbe Vertpre, who has passed his life in the vain endeavour to make other men as good as himself.”

“Base flatterer!” said the Abbe, pinching Raoul’s ear with one hand, while he extended the other to Alain. “Do not let your cousin frighten you from knowing me, Monsieur le Marquis; when he was my pupil, he so convinced me of the incorrigibility of perverse human nature, that I now chiefly address myself to the moral improvement of the brute creation. Ask the Contessa if I have not achieved a beau succes with her Angora cat. Three months ago that creature had the two worst propensities of man,—he was at once savage and mean; he bit, he stole. Does he ever bite now? No. Does he ever steal? No. Why? I have awakened in that cat the dormant conscience, and that done, the conscience regulates his actions; once made aware of the difference between wrong and right, the cat maintains it unswervingly, as if it were a law of nature. But if, with prodigious labour, one does awaken conscience in a human sinner, it has no steady effect on his conduct,—he continues to sin all the same. Mankind at Paris, Monsieur le Marquis, is divided between two classes,-one bites and the other steals. Shun both; devote yourself to cats.”

The Abbe delivered this oration with a gravity of mien and tone which made it difficult to guess whether he spoke in sport or in earnest, in simple playfulness or with latent sarcasm.

But on the brow and in the eye of the priest there was a general expression of quiet benevolence, which made Alain incline to the belief that he was only speaking as a pleasant humourist; and the Marquis replied gayly,—

“Monsieur L’Abbe, admitting the superior virtue of cats when taught by so intelligent a preceptor, still the business of human life is not transacted by cats; and since men must deal with men, permit me, as a preliminary caution, to inquire in which class I must rank yourself. Do you bite or do you steal?”

This sally, which showed that the Marquis was already shaking off his provincial reserve, met with great success. Raoul and the Contessa laughed merrily; Madame de Maury clapped her hands, and cried “Bien!”

The Abbe replied, with unmoved gravity, “Both. I am a priest; it is my duty to bite the bad and steal from the good, as you will see, Monsieur le Marquis, if you will glance at this paper.”

Here he handed to Alain a memorial on behalf of an afflicted family who had been burnt out of their home, and reduced from comparative ease to absolute want. There was a list appended of some twenty subscribers, the last being the Contessa, fifty francs, and Madame de Maury, five.

“Allow me, Marquis,” said the Abbe, “to steal from you. Bless you two-fold, mon fils!” (taking the napoleon Alain extended to him) “first for your charity; secondly, for the effect of its example upon the heart of your cousin. Raoul de Vandemar, stand and deliver. Bah! what! only ten francs.”

Raoul made a sign to the Abbe, unperceived by the rest, as he answered, “Abbe, I should excel your expectations of my career if I always continue worth half as much as my cousin.”

Alain felt to the bottom of his heart the delicate tact of his richer kinsman in giving less than himself, and the Abbe replied, “Niggard, you are pardoned. Humility is a more difficult virtue to produce than charity, and in your case an instance of it is so rare that it merits encouragement.”

The “tea equipage” was now served in what at Paris is called the English fashion; the Contessa presided over it, the guests gathered round the table, and the evening passed away in the innocent gayety of a domestic circle. The talk, if not especially intellectual, was at least not fashionable. Books were not discussed, neither were scandals; yet somehow or other it was cheery and animated, like that of a happy family in a country-house. Alain thought still the better of Raoul that, Parisian though he was, he could appreciate the charm of an evening so innocently spent.

On taking leave, the Contessa gave Alain a general invitation to drop in whenever he was not better engaged.

“I except only the opera nights,” said she. “My husband has gone to Milan on his affairs, and during his absence I do not go to parties; the opera I cannot resist.”

Raoul set Alain down at his lodgings. “Au revoir; tomorrow at one o’clock expect Enguerrand and myself.”