The Parisians — Complete

Gustave had been hitherto walking slowly by the side of Julie, amidst the distant boom of the besiegers’ cannon, while the short day began to close; and along the dreary boulevards sauntered idlers turning to look at the young, beautiful, well-dressed woman who seemed in such contrast to the capital whose former luxuries the “Ondine” of imperial Paris represented. He now offered his arm to Julie; and, quickening his pace, said, “There is no reason why I should refuse to attend thee home, and listen to the explanations thou dost generously condescend to volunteer.”

CHAPTER IX

“Ah, indeed! what a difference! what a difference!” said Gustave to himself when he entered Julie’s apartment. In her palmier days, when he had first made her acquaintance, the apartment no doubt had been infinitely more splendid, more abundant in silks and fringes and flowers and nicknacks; but never had it seemed so cheery and comfortable and home-like as now. What a contrast to Isaura’s dismantled chilly salon! She drew him towards the hearth, on which, blazing though it was, she piled fresh billets, seated him in the easiest of easy-chairs, knelt beside him, and chafed his numbed hands in hers; and as her bright eyes fixed tenderly on his, she looked so young and so innocent! You would not then have called her the “Ondine of Paris.”

But when, a little while after, revived by the genial warmth and moved by the charm of her beauty, Gustave passed his arm round her neck and sought to draw her on his lap, she slid from his embrace, shaking her head gently, and seated herself, with a pretty air of ceremonious decorum, at a little distance.

Gustave looked at her amazed.

“Causons,” said she, gravely, “thou wouldst know why I am so well dressed, so comfortably lodged, and I am longing to explain to thee all. Some days ago I had just finished my performance at the cafe—, and was putting on my shawl, when a tall Monsieur, fort bel homme, with the air of a grand seigneur, entered the cafe, and approaching me politely, said, ‘I think I have the honour to address Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin?’ ‘That is my name,’ I said, surprised; and, looking at him more intently, I recognised his face. He had come into the cafe a few days before with thine old acquaintance Frederic Lemercier, and stood by when I asked Frederic to give me news of thee. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he continued, with a serious melancholy smile, ‘I shall startle you when I say that I am appointed to act as your guardian by the last request of your mother.’ ‘Of Madame Surville?’ ‘Madame Surville adopted you, but was not your mother. We cannot talk at ease here. Allow me to request that you will accompany me to Monsieur ——-, the avoue. It is not very far from this—and by the way—I will tell you some news that may sadden, and some news that may rejoice.’

“There was an earnestness in the voice and look of this Monsieur that impressed me. He did not offer me his arm; but I walked by his side in the direction he chose. As we walked he told me in very few words that my mother had been separated from her husband, and for certain family reasons had found it so difficult to rear and provide for me herself, that she had accepted the offer of Madame Surville to adopt me as her own child. While he spoke, there came dimly back to me the remembrance of a lady who had taken me from my first home, when I had been, as I understood, at nurse, and left me with poor dear Madame Surville, saying, ‘This is henceforth your mamma.’

“I never again saw that lady. It seems that many years afterwards my true mother desired to regain me. Madame Surville was then dead. She failed to trace me out, owing, alas! to my own faults and change of name. She then entered a nunnery, but, before doing so, assigned a sum of 100,000 francs to this gentleman, who was distantly connected with her, with full power to him to take it to himself, or give it to my use should he discover me, at his discretion. ‘I ask you,’ continued the Monsieur, ‘to go with me to Mons. N———‘s, because the sum is still in his hands. He will confirm my statement. All that I have now to say is this, If you accept my guardianship, if you obey implicitly my advice, I shall consider the interest of this sum which has accumulated since deposited with M. ——- due to you; and the capital will be your dot on marriage, if the marriage be with my consent.’”

Gustave had listened very attentively, and without interruption, until now; when he looked up, and said with his customary sneer, “Did your Monsieur, fort bel homme, you say, inform you of the value of the advice, rather of the commands, you were implicitly to obey?”

“Yes,” answered Julie, “not then, but later. Let me go on. We arrived at M. N——-’s, an elderly grave man. He said that all he knew was that he held the money in trust for the Monsieur with me, to be given to him, with the accumulations of interest, on the death of the lady who had deposited it. If that Monsieur had instructions how to dispose of the money, they were not known to him. All he had to do was to transfer it absolutely to him on the proper certificate of the lady’s death. So you see, Gustave, that the Monsieur could have kept all from me if he had liked.”

“Your Monsieur is very generous. Perhaps you will now tell me his name.”

“No; he forbids me to do it yet.”

“And he took this apartment for you, and gave you money to buy that smart dress and these furs. Bah! mon enfant, why try to deceive me? Do I not know my Paris? A fort bel homme does not make himself guardian to a fort belle fine so young and fair as Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin without certain considerations which shall be nameless, like himself.”

Julie’s eyes flashed. “Ah, Gustave! ah, Monsieur!” she said, half angrily, half plaintively, “I see that my guardian knew you better than I did. Never mind; I will not reproach. Thou halt the right to despise me.”

“Pardon! I did not mean to offend thee,” said Gustave, somewhat disconcerted. “But own that thy story is strange; and this guardian, who knows me better than thou—does he know me at all? Didst thou speak to him of me?”

“How could I help it? He says that this terrible war, in which he takes an active part, makes his life uncertain from day to day. He wished to complete the trust bequeathed to him by seeing me safe in the love of some worthy man who”—she paused for a moment with an expression of compressed anguish, and then hurried on—“who would recognise what was good in me,—would never reproach me for—for—the past. I then said that my heart was thine: I could never marry any one but thee.”

“Marry me,” faltered Gustave—“marry!”

“And,” continued the girl, not heeding his interruption, “he said thou wert not the husband he would choose for me: that thou wert not—no, I cannot wound thee by repeating what he said unkindly, unjustly. He bade me think of thee no more. I said again, that is impossible.”

“But,” resumed Rameau, with an affected laugh, “why think of anything so formidable as marriage? Thou lovest me, and—” He approached again, seeking to embrace her. She recoiled. “No, Gustave, no. I have sworn solemnly by the memory of my lost mother—O—that I will never sin again. I will never be to thee other than thy friend—or thy wife.”

Before Gustave could reply to these words, which took him wholly by surprise, there was a ring at the outer door, and the old bonne ushered in Victor de Mauleon. He halted at the threshold, and his brow contracted.

“So you have already broken faith with me, Mademoiselle?”

“No, Monsieur, I have not broken faith,” cried Julie; passionately. “I told you that I would not seek to find out Monsieur Rameau. I did not seek, but I met him unexpectedly. I owed to him an explanation. I invited him here to give that explanation. Without it, what would he have thought of me? Now he may go, and I will never admit him again without your sanction.”

The Vicomte turned his stern look upon Gustave, who though, as we know, not wanting in personal courage, felt cowed by his false position; and his eye fell, quailed before De Mauleon’s gaze.

“Leave us for a few minutes alone, Mademoiselle,” said the Vicomte. “Nay, Julie,” he added, in softened tones, “fear nothing. I, too, owe explanation—friendly explanation—to M. Rameau.”

With his habitual courtesy towards women, he extended his hand to Julie, and led her from the room. Then, closing the door, he seated himself, and made a sign to Gustave to do the same.

“Monsieur,” said De Mauleon, “excuse me if I detain you. A very few words will suffice for our present interview. I take it for granted that Mademoiselle has told you that she is no child of Madame Surville’s: that her own mother bequeathed her to my protection and guardianship with a modest fortune which is at my disposal to give or withhold. The little I have seen already of Mademoiselle impresses me with sincere interest in her fate. I look with compassion on what she may have been in the past; I anticipate with hope what she may be in the future. I do not ask you to see her in either with my eyes. I say frankly that it is my intention, and I may add, my resolve, that the ward thus left to my charge shall be henceforth safe from the temptations that have seduced her poverty, her inexperience, her vanity, if you will, but have not yet corrupted her heart. Bref, I must request you to give me your word of honour that you will hold no further communication with her. I can allow no sinister influence to stand between her fate and honour.”

“You speak well and nobly, M. le Vicomte,” said Rameau, “and I give the promise you exact.” He added, feelingly: “It is true her heart has never been corrupted that is good, affectionate, unselfish as a child’s. J’ai l’honneur de vous saluer, M. le Vicomte.”

He bowed with a dignity unusual to him, and tears were in his eyes as he passed by De Mauleon and gained the anteroom. There a side-door suddenly opened, and Julie’s face, anxious, eager, looked forth.

Gustave paused: “Adieu, Mademoiselle! Adieu, though we may never meet again,—though our fates divide us,—believe me that I shall ever cherish your memory—and—”

The girl interrupted him, impulsively seizing his arm, and looking him in the face with a wild fixed stare. “Hush! dost thou mean to say that we are parted,—parted forever?”

“Alas!” said Gustave, “what option is before us? Your guardian rightly forbids my visits; and even were I free to offer you my hand, you yourself say that I am not a suitor he would approve.”

Julie turned her eyes towards De Mauleon, who, following Gustave into the ante-room, stood silent and impassive, leaning against the wall.

He now understood and replied to the pathetic appeal in the girl’s eyes.

“My young ward,” he said, “M. Rameau expresses himself with propriety and truth. Suffer him to depart. He belongs to the former life; reconcile yourself to the new.”

He advanced to take her hand, making a sign to Gustave to depart. But as he approached Julie, she uttered a weak piteous wail, and fell at his feet senseless. De Mauleon raised and carried her into her room, where he left her to the care of the old bonne. On re-entering the anteroom, he found Gustave still lingering by the outer door. “You will pardon me, Monsieur,” he said to the Vicomte, “but in fact I feel so uneasy, so unhappy. Has she—? You see, you see that there is danger to her health, perhaps to her reason, in so abrupt a separation, so cruel a rupture between us. Let me call again, or I may not have strength to keep my promise.”

De Mauleon remained a few minutes musing. Then he said in a whisper, “Come back into the salon. Let us talk frankly.”

CHAPTER X

“M. Rameau,” said De Mauleon, when the two men had reseated themselves in the salon, “I will honestly say that my desire is to rid myself as soon as I can of the trust of guardian to this young lady. Playing as I do with fortune, my only stake against her favours is my life. I feel as if it were my duty to see that Mademoiselle is not left alone and friendless in the world at my decease. I have in my mind for her a husband that I think in every way suitable: a handsome and brave young fellow in my battalion, of respectable birth, without any living relations to consult as to his choice. I have reason to believe that if Julie married him, she need never fear as a reproach to her antecedents. Her dot would suffice to enable him to realise his own wish of a country town in Normandy. And in that station, Paris and its temptations would soon pass from the poor child’s thoughts, as an evil dream. But I cannot dispose of her hand without her own consent; and if she is to be reasoned out of her fancy for you, I have no time to devote to the task. I come to the point, You are not the man I would choose for her husband. But, evidently, you are the man she would choose. Are you disposed to marry her? You hesitate, very naturally; I have no right to demand an immediate answer to a question so serious. Perhaps you will think over it, and let me know in a day or two? I take it for granted that if you were, as I heard, engaged before the siege to marry the Signora Cicogna, that engagement is annulled?”

“Why take it for granted?” asked Gustave, perplexed. “Simply because I find you here. Nay, spare explanations and excuses. I quite understand that you were invited to come. But a man solemnly betrothed to a mademoiselle like the Signora Cicogna, in a time of such dire calamity and peril, could scarcely allow himself to be tempted to accept the invitation of one so beautiful, and so warmly attached to him, as is Mademoiselle Julie; and on witnessing the passionate strength of that attachment, say that he cannot keep a promise not to repeat his visits. But if I mistake, and you are still betrothed to the Signorina, of course all discussion is at an end.”

Gustave hung his head in some shame, and in much bewildered doubt.

The practised observer of men’s characters, and of shifting phases of mind, glanced at the poor poet’s perturbed countenance with a half-smile of disdain.

“It is for you to judge how far the very love to you so ingenuously evinced by my ward—how far the reasons against marriage with one whose antecedents expose her to reproach—should influence one of your advanced opinions upon social ties. Such reasons do not appear to have with artists the same weight they have with the bourgeoisie. I have but to add that the husband of Julie will receive with her hand a dot of nearly 120,000 francs; and I have reason to believe that that fortune will be increased—how much, I cannot guess-when the cessation of the siege will allow communication with England. One word more. I should wish to rank the husband of my ward in the number of my friends. If he did not oppose the political opinions with which I identify my own career, I should be pleased to make any rise in the world achieved by me assist to the raising of himself. But my opinions, as during the time we were brought together you were made aware, are those of a practical man of the world, and have nothing in common with Communists, Socialists, Internationalists, or whatever sect would place the aged societies of Europe in Medea’s caldron of youth. At a moment like the present, fanatics and dreamers so abound that the number of such sinners will necessitate a general amnesty when order is restored. What a poet so young as you may have written or said at such a time will be readily forgotten and forgiven a year or two hence, provided he does not put his notions into violent action. But if you choose to persevere in the views you now advocate, so be it. They will not make poor Julie less a believer in your wisdom and genius. Only they will separate you from me, and a day may come when I should have the painful duty of ordering you to be shot—Die meliora. Think over all I have thus frankly said. Give me your answer within forty-eight hours; and meanwhile hold no communication with my ward. I have the honour to wish you good-day.”

CHAPTER XI

The short grim day was closing when Gustave, quitting Julie’s apartment, again found himself in the streets. His thoughts were troubled and confused. He was the more affected by Julie’s impassioned love for him, by the contrast with Isaura’s words and manner in their recent interview. His own ancient fancy for the “Ondine of Paris” became revived by the difficulties between their ancient intercourse which her unexpected scruples and De Mauleon’s guardianship interposed. A witty writer thus defines une passion, “une caprice inflamme par des obstacles.” In the ordinary times of peace, Gustave, handsome, aspiring to reputable position in the beau monde, would not have admitted any considerations to compromise his station by marriage with a fagurante. But now the wild political doctrines he had embraced separated his ambition from that beau monde, and combined it with ascendancy over the revolutionists of the populace—a direction which he must abandon if he continued his suit to Isaura. Then, too, the immediate possession of Julie’s dot was not without temptation to a man who was so fond of his personal comforts, and who did not see where to turn for a dinner, if, obedient to Isaura’s “prejudices,” he abandoned his profits as a writer in the revolutionary press. The inducements for withdrawal from the cause he had espoused, held out to him with so haughty a coldness by De Mauleon, were not wholly without force, though they irritated his self-esteem. He was dimly aware of the Vicomte’s masculine talents for public life; and the high reputation he had already acquired among military authorities, and even among experienced and thoughtful civilians, had weight upon Gustave’s impressionable temperament. But though De Mauleon’s implied advice here coincided in much with the tacit compact he had made with Isaura, it alienated him more from Isaura herself, for Isaura did not bring to him the fortune which would enable him to suspend his lucubrations, watch the turn of events, and live at ease in the meanwhile; and the dot to be received with De Mauleon’s ward had those advantages.

While thus meditating Gustave turned into one of the cantines still open, to brighten his intellect with a petit verre, and there he found the two colleagues in the extinct Council of Ten, Paul Grimm and Edgar Ferrier. With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become intimately lie. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected heritage? “Es-tu fou d’en douter?” cried Edgar. “What a sublime occasion to manifest thy scorn of the miserable banalities of the bourgeoisie! It will but increase thy moral power over the people. And then think of the money. What an aid to the cause! What a capital for the launch!—journal all thine own! Besides, when our principles triumph—as triumph they must—what would be marriage but a brief and futile ceremony, to be broken the moment thou hast cause to complain of thy wife or chafe at the bond? Only get the dot into thine own hands. L’amour passe—reste la cassette.”

Though there was enough of good in the son of Madame Rameau to revolt at the precise words in which the counsel was given, still, as the fumes of the punch yet more addled his brains, the counsel itself was acceptable; and in that sort of maddened fury which intoxication produces in some excitable temperaments, as Gustave reeled home that night leaning on the arm of stouter Edgar Ferrier, he insisted on going out of his way to pass the house in which Isaura lived, and, pausing under her window, gasped out some verses of a wild song, then much in vogue among the votaries of Felix Pyat, in which everything that existent society deems sacred was reviled in the grossest ribaldry. Happily Isaura’s ear heard it not. The girl was kneeling by her bedside absorbed in prayer.

CHAPTER XII

Three days after the evening thus spent by Gustave Rameau, Isaura was startled by a visit from M. de Mauleon. She had not seen him since the commencement of the siege, and she did not recognise him at first glance in his military uniform.

“I trust you will pardon my intrusion, Mademoiselle,” he said, in the low sweet voice habitual to him in his gentler moods, “but I thought it became me to announce to you the decease of one who, I fear, did not discharge with much kindness the duties her connection with you imposed. Your father’s second wife, afterwards Madame Selby, is no more. She died some days since in a convent to which she had retired.”

Isaura had no cause to mourn the dead, but she felt a shock in the suddenness of this information; and in that sweet spirit of womanly compassion which entered so largely into her character, and made a part of her genius itself, she murmured tearfully, “The poor Signora! Why could I not have been with her in illness? She might then have learned to love me. And she died in a convent, you say? Ah, her religion was then sincere! Her end was peaceful?”

“Let us not doubt that, Mademoiselle. Certainly she lived to regret any former errors, and her last thought was directed towards such atonement as might be in her power. And it is that desire of atonement which now strangely mixes me up, Mademoiselle, in your destinies. In that desire for atonement, she left to my charge, as a kinsman distant indeed, but still, perhaps, the nearest with whom she was personally acquainted—a young ward. In accepting that trust, I find myself strangely compelled to hazard the risk of offending you.”

“Offending me? How? Pray speak openly.”

“In so doing, I must utter the name of Gustave Rameau.”

Isaura turned pale and recoiled, but she did not speak. “Did he inform me rightly that, in the last interview with him three days ago, you expressed a strong desire that the engagement between him and yourself should cease; and that you only, and with reluctance, suspended your rejection of the suit he had pressed on you, in consequence of his entreaties, and of certain assurances as to the changed direction of the talents of which we will assume that he is possessed?”

“Well, well, Monsieur,” exclaimed Isaura, her whole face brightening; “and you come on the part of Gustave Rameau to say that on reflection he does not hold me to our engagement—that in honour and in conscience I am free?”

“I see,” answered De Mauleon, smiling, “that I am pardoned already. It would not pain you if such were my instructions in the embassy I undertake?”

“Pain me? No. But—”

“But what?”

“Must he persist in a course which will break his mother’s heart, and make his father deplore the hour that he was born? Have you influence over him, M. de Mauleon? If so, will you not exert it for his good?”

“You interest yourself still in his fate, Mademoiselle?”

“How can I do otherwise? Did I not consent to share it when my heart shrank from the thought of our union? And now when, if I understand you rightly, I am free, I cannot but think of what was best in him.”

“Alas! Mademoiselle, he is but one of many—a spoilt child of that Circe, imperial Paris. Everywhere I look around, I see but corruption. It was hidden by the halo which corruption itself engenders. The halo is gone, the corruption is visible. Where is the old French manhood? Banished from the heart, it comes out only at the tongue. Were our deeds like our words, Prussia would beg on her knee to be a province of France. Gustave is the fit poet for this generation. Vanity—desire to be known for something, no matter what, no matter by whom—that is the Parisian’s leading motive power;—orator, soldier, poet, all alike. Utterers of fine phrases; despising knowledge, and toil, and discipline; railing against the Germans as barbarians, against their generals as traitors; against God for not taking their part. What can be done to weld this mass of hollow bubbles into the solid form of a nation—the nation it affects to be? What generation can be born out of the unmanly race, inebriate with brag and absinthe? Forgive me this tirade; I have been reviewing the battalion I command. As for Gustave Rameau,—if we survive the siege, and see once more a Government that can enforce order, and a public that will refuse renown for balderdash,—I should not be surprised if Gustave Rameau were among the prettiest imitators of Lamartine’s early Meditations. Had he been born under Louis XIV. how loyal he would have been! What sacred tragedies in the style of Athalie he would have written, in the hope of an audience at Versailles! But I detain you from the letter I was charged to deliver you. I have done so purposely, that I might convince myself that you welcome that release which your too delicate sense of honour shrank too long from demanding.”