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Section III The young man who called himself a friend
of Henri de Marsay was a rattle-head who had come from the provinces,
and whom the young men then in fashion were teaching the art of running
through an inheritance; but he had one last leg to stand on in his
province, in the shape of a secure establishment. He was simply an heir
who had passed without any transition from his pittance of a hundred
francs a month to the entire paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit
enough to perceive that he was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious
to stop short at two-thirds of his capital. He had learned at Paris, for
a consideration of some thousands of francs, the exact value of harness,
the art of not being too respectful to his gloves, learned to make
skilful meditations upon the right wages to give people, and to seek
out what bargain was the best to close with them. He set store on his
capacity to speak in good terms of his horses, of his Pyrenean hound;
to tell by her dress, her walk, her shoes, to what class a woman belonged;
to study ecarte, remember a few fashionable catchwords, and
win by his sojourn in Parisian society the necessary authority to
import later into his province a taste for tea and silver of an
English fashion, and to obtain the right of despising everything around him
for the rest of his days.
De Marsay had admitted him to his society in order to make use of him in
the world, just as a bold speculator employs a confidential clerk. The
friendship, real or feigned, of De Marsay was a social position for Paul
de Manerville, who, on his side, thought himself astute in exploiting,
after his fashion, his intimate friend. He lived in the reflecting
lustre of his friend, walked constantly under his umbrella, wore his
boots, gilded himself with his rays. When he posed in Henri's company or
walked at his side, he had the air of saying: "Don't insult us, we are
real dogs." He often permitted himself to remark fatuously: "If I were
to ask Henri for such and such a thing, he is a good enough friend of
mine to do it." But he was careful never to ask anything of him. He
feared him, and his fear, although imperceptible, reacted upon the
others, and was of use to De Marsay.
"De Marsay is a man of a thousand," said Paul. "Ah, you will see, he
will be what he likes. I should not be surprised to find him one of
these days Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nothing can withstand him."
He made of De Marsay what Corporal Trim made of his cap, a perpetual
instance.
"Ask De Marsay and you will see!"
Or again:
"The other day we were hunting, De Marsay and I, He would not believe
me, but I jumped a hedge without moving on my horse!"
Or again:
"We were with some women, De Marsay and I, and upon my word of honor, I
was——" etc.
Thus Paul de Manerville could not be classed amongst the great,
illustrious, and powerful family of fools who succeed. He would one day
be a deputy. For the time he was not even a young man. His friend, De
Marsay, defined him thus: "You ask me what is Paul? Paul? Why, Paul de
Manerville!"
"I am surprised, my dear fellow," he said to De Marsay, "to see you here
on a Sunday."
"I was going to ask you the same question."
"Is it an intrigue?"
"An intrigue."
"Bah!"
"I can mention it to you without compromising my passion. Besides,
a woman who comes to the Tuileries on Sundays is of no account,
aristocratically speaking."
"Ah! ah!"
"Hold your tongue then, or I shall tell you nothing. Your laugh is too
loud, you will make people think that we have lunched too well. Last
Thursday, here on the Terrasse des Feuillants, I was walking along,
thinking of nothing at all, but when I got to the gate of the Rue de
Castiglione, by which I intended to leave, I came face to face with a
woman, or rather a young girl; who, if she did not throw herself at my
head, stopped short, less I think, from human respect, than from one of
those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep down
the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet, to nail
you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this nature, a sort
of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful when the
relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this was not
stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her face
seemed to say: 'What, is it you, my ideal! The creation of my thoughts,
of my morning and evening dreams! What, are you there? Why this morning?
Why not yesterday? Take me, I am thine, et cetera!' Good, I said to
myself, another one! Then I scrutinize her. Ah, my dear fellow, speaking
physically, my incognita is the most adorable feminine person whom I
ever met. She belongs to that feminine variety which the Romans call
fulva, flava—the woman of fire. And in chief, what struck me the
most, what I am still taken with, are her two yellow eyes, like a
tiger's, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, gold which thinks,
gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge in your pocket."
"My dear fellow, we are full of her!" cried Paul. "She comes here
sometimes—the girl with the golden eyes! That is the name we have
given her. She is a young creature—not more than twenty-two, and I
have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who was
worth a hundred thousand of her."
"Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl; she
is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl with
ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy
threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks
a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and
loses itself on her neck."
"Ah, the other, my dear De Marsay! She has black eyes which have never
wept, but which burn; black eyebrows which meet and give her an air of
hardness contradicted by the compact curve of her lips, on which the
kisses do not stay, lips burning and fresh; a Moorish color that warms a
man like the sun. But—upon my word of honor, she is like you!"
"You flatter her!"
"A firm figure, the tapering figure of a corvette built for speed, which
rushes down upon the merchant vessel with French impetuosity, which
grapples with her and sinks her at the same time."
"After all, my dear fellow," answered De Marsay, "what has that got
to do with me, since I have never seen her? Ever since I have studied
women, my incognita is the only one whose virginal ***, whose
ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of
my dreams—of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture
called La Femme Caressant sa Chimere, the warmest, the most infernal
inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by those
who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of bourgeois
who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it on their
watch-chains—whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of pleasure into
which one plunges and finds no end; whereas, it is the ideal woman, to
be seen sometimes in reality in Spain or Italy, almost never in France.
Well, I have again seen this girl of the gold eyes, this woman caressing
her chimera. I saw her on Friday. I had a presentiment that on the
following day she would be here at the same hour; I was not mistaken.
I have taken a pleasure in following her without being observed, in
studying her indolent walk, the walk of the woman without occupation,
but in the movements of which one devines all the pleasure that lies
asleep. Well, she turned back again, she saw me, once more she adored
me, once more trembled, shivered. It was then I noticed the genuine
Spanish duenna who looked after her, a hyena upon whom some jealous
man has put a dress, a she-devil well paid, no doubt, to guard this
delicious creature.... Ah, then the duenna made me deeper in love. I
grew curious. On Saturday, nobody. And here I am to-day waiting for
this girl whose chimera I am, asking nothing better than to pose as the
monster in the fresco."
"There she is," said Paul. "Every one is turning round to look at her."
The unknown blushed, her eyes shone; she saw Henri, she shut them and
passed by.
"You say that she notices you?" cried Paul, facetiously.
The duenna looked fixedly and attentively at the two young men. When the
unknown and Henri passed each other again, the young girl touched him,
and with her hand pressed the hand of the young man. Then she turned her
head and smiled with passion, but the duenna led her away very quickly
to the gate of the Rue de Castiglione.
The two friends followed the young girl, admiring the magnificent grace
of the neck which met her head in a harmony of vigorous lines, and upon
which a few coils of hair were tightly wound. The girl with the golden
eyes had that well-knitted, arched, slender foot which presents so
many attractions to the dainty imagination. Moreover, she was shod with
elegance, and wore a short skirt. During her course she turned from
time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the old woman
regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she
could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was
perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let
down the step of a tasteful coupe emblazoned with armorial bearings.
The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat
at the side where she could be best seen when the carriage turned,
put her hand on the door, and waved her handkerchief in the duennna's
despite. In contempt of what might be said by the curious, her
handkerchief cried to Henri openly: "Follow me!"
"Have you ever seen a handkerchief better thrown?" said Henri to Paul de
Manerville.
Then, observing a fiacre on the point of departure, having just set down
a fare, he made a sign to the driver to wait.
"Follow that carriage, notice the house and the street where it
stops—you shall have ten francs.... Paul, adieu."
The cab followed the coupe. The coupe stopped in the Rue Saint
Lazare before one of the finest houses of the neighborhood.
End of Section III Section IV
De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his
impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized so
fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry
of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had
told his coachman to continue along the Rue Saint Lazare and carry him
back to his house. The next day, his confidential valet, Laurent by
name, as cunning a fellow as the Frontin of the old comedy, waited in
the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which
letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and
hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police
officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of
an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the
postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare that morning, passed
by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a
person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted the postman.
Deceived at first by appearances, this personage, so picturesque in the
midst of Parisian civilization, informed him that the house in which
the girl with the golden eyes dwelt belonged to Don Hijos, Marquis de
San-Real, grandee of Spain. Naturally, it was not with the Marquis that
the Auvergnat was concerned.
"My parcel," he said, "is for the marquise."
"She is away," replied the postman. "Her letters are forwarded to
London."
"Then the marquise is not a young girl who...?"
"Ah!" said the postman, interrupting the valet de chambre and
observing him attentively, "you are as much a porter as I'm..."
Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began to
smile.
"Come, here's the name of your quarry," he said, taking from his leather
wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the address, "To
Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, Rue Saint Lazare, Hotel San-Real, Paris,"
was written in long, fine characters, which spoke of a woman's hand.
"Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a
filet saute with mushrooms to follow it?" said Laurent, who wished to
win the postman's valuable friendship.
"At half-past nine, when my round is finished—— Where?"
"At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d'Antin and the Rue
Neuve-des-Mathurins, at the Puits sans Vin," said Laurent.
"Hark ye, my friend," said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an
hour after this encounter, "if your master is in love with the girl, he
is in for a famous task. I doubt you'll not succeed in seeing her. In
the ten years that I've been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty of
different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being
called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
mysterious as M. de San-Real's. No one can get into the house without
the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication with
other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a word
of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they are not
thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you—I make no comparisons—could get
the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall, which is shut
by a glazed door, you would run across a butler surrounded by lackeys,
an old joker more savage and surly even than the porter. If any one
gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes out, waits for you at the
entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That
has happened to me, a mere postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in
disguise, he said, laughing at his nonsense. As for the servants, don't
hope to get aught out of them; I think they are mutes, no one in the
neighborhood knows the color of their speech; I don't know what wages
they can pay them to keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, they
are not to be got at, whether because they are afraid of being shot, or
that they have some enormous sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion.
If your master is fond enough of Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes to surmount
all these obstacles, he certainly won't triumph over Dona Concha
Marialva, the duenna who accompanies her and would put her under her
petticoats sooner than leave her. The two women look as if they were
sewn to one another."
"All that you say, worthy postman," went on Laurent, after having drunk
off his wine, "confirms me in what I have learned before. Upon my word,
I thought they were making fun of me! The fruiterer opposite told me
that of nights they let loose dogs whose food is hung up on stakes just
out of their reach. These cursed animals think, therefore, that any one
likely to come in has designs on their victuals, and would tear one to
pieces. You will tell me one might throw them down pieces, but it seems
they have been trained to touch nothing except from the hand of the
"The porter of the Baron de Nucingen, whose garden joins at the top that
of the Hotel San-Real, told me the same thing," replied the postman.
"Good! my master knows him," said Laurent, to himself. "Do you know,"
he went on, leering at the postman, "I serve a master who is a rare
man, and if he took it into his head to kiss the sole of the foot of an
empress, she would have to give in to him. If he had need of you, which
is what I wish for you, for he is generous, could one count on you?"
"Lord, Monsieur Laurent, my name is Moinot. My name is written exactly
like Moineau, magpie: M-o-i-n-o-t, Moinot."
"Exactly," said Laurent.
"I live at No. 11, Rue des Trois Freres, on the fifth floor," went on
Moinot; "I have a wife and four children. If what you want of me doesn't
transgress the limits of my conscience and my official duties, you
understand! I am your man."
"You are an honest fellow," said Laurent, shaking his hand....
"Paquita Valdes is, no doubt, the mistress of the Marquis de San-Real,
the friend of King Ferdinand. Only an old Spanish mummy of eighty years
is capable of taking such precautions," said Henri, when his valet de
chambre had related the result of his researches.
"Monsieur," said Laurent, "unless he takes a balloon no one can get into
that hotel."
"You are a fool! Is it necessary to get into the hotel to have Paquita,
when Paquita can get out of it?"
"But, sir, the duenna?"
"We will shut her up for a day or two, your duenna."
"So, we shall have Paquita!" said Laurent, rubbing his hands.
"Rascal!" answered Henri, "I shall condemn you to the Concha, if you
carry your impudence so far as to speak so of a woman before she has
become mine.... Turn your thoughts to dressing me, I am going out."
Henri remained for a moment plunged in joyous reflections. Let us say it
to the praise of women, he obtained all those whom he deigned to desire.
And what could one think of a woman, having no lover, who should
have known how to resist a young man armed with beauty which is the
intelligence of the body, with intelligence which is a grace of the
soul, armed with moral force and fortune, which are the only two real
powers? Yet, in triumphing with such ease, De Marsay was bound to grow
weary of his triumphs; thus, for about two years he had grown very weary
indeed. And diving deep into the sea of pleasures he brought back more
grit than pearls. Thus had he come, like potentates, to implore of
Chance some obstacle to surmount, some enterprise which should ask the
employment of his dormant moral and physical strength. Although Paquita
Valdes presented him with a marvelous concentration of perfections which
he had only yet enjoyed in detail, the attraction of passion was almost
nil with him. Constant satiety had weakened in his heart the sentiment
of love. Like old men and people disillusioned, he had no longer
anything but extravagant caprices, ruinous tastes, fantasies, which,
once satisfied, left no pleasant memory in his heart. Amongst young
people love is the finest of the emotions, it makes the life of the soul
blossom, it nourishes by its solar power the finest inspirations and
their great thoughts; the first fruits in all things have a delicious
savor. Amongst men love becomes a passion; strength leads to abuse.
Amongst old men it turns to vice; impotence tends to extremes. Henri was
at once an old man, a man, and a youth. To afford him the feelings of
a real love, he needed like Lovelace, a Clarissa Harlowe. Without
the magic lustre of that unattainable pearl he could only have either
passions rendered acute by some Parisian vanity, or set determinations
with himself to bring such and such a woman to such and such a point of
corruption, or else adventures which stimulated his curiosity.
The report of Laurent, his valet de chambre had just given an enormous
value to the girl with the golden eyes. It was a question of doing
battle with some secret enemy who seemed as dangerous as he was cunning;
and to carry off the victory, all the forces which Henri could dispose
of would be useful. He was about to play in that eternal old comedy
which will be always fresh, and the characters in which are an old man,
a young girl, and a lover: Don Hijos, Paquita, De Marsay. If Laurent was
the equal of Figaro, the duenna seemed incorruptible. Thus, the living
play was supplied by Chance with a stronger plot than it had ever been
by dramatic author! But then is not Chance too, a man of genius?
"It must be a cautious game," said Henri, to himself.
"Well," said Paul de Manerville, as he entered the room. "How are we
getting on? I have come to breakfast with you."
"So be it," said Henri. "You won't be shocked if I make my toilette
before you?"
"How absurd!"
"We take so many things from the English just now that we might well
become as great prudes and hypocrites as themselves," said Henri.
Laurent had set before his master such a quantity of utensils, so many
different articles of such elegance, that Paul could not refrain from
saying:
"But you will take a couple of hours over that?"
"No!" said Henri, "two hours and a half."
"Well, then, since we are by ourselves, and can say what we like,
explain to me why a man as superior as yourself—for you are
superior—should affect to exaggerate a foppery which cannot be
natural. Why spend two hours and a half in adorning yourself, when it is
sufficient to spend a quarter of an hour in your bath, to do your hair
in two minutes, and to dress! There, tell me your system."
"I must be very fond of you, my good dunce, to confide such high
thoughts to you," said the young man, who was at that moment having his
feet rubbed with a soft brush lathered with English soap.
"Have I not the most devoted attachment to you," replied Paul de
Manerville, "and do I not like you because I know your superiority?..."
"You must have noticed, if you are in the least capable of observing any
moral fact, that women love fops," went on De Marsay, without replying
in any way to Paul's declaration except by a look. "Do you know why
women love fops? My friend, fops are the only men who take care of
themselves. Now, to take excessive care of oneself, does it not imply
that one takes care in oneself of what belongs to another? The man who
does not belong to himself is precisely the man on whom women are keen.
Love is essentially a thief. I say nothing about that excess of niceness
to which they are so devoted. Do you know of any woman who has had a
passion for a sloven, even if he were a remarkable man? If such a fact
has occurred, we must put it to the account of those morbid affections
of the breeding woman, mad fancies which float through the minds of
everybody. On the other hand, I have seen most remarkable people left in
the lurch because of their carelessness. A fop, who is concerned about
his person, is concerned with folly, with petty things. And what is a
woman? A petty thing, a bundle of follies. With two words said to the
winds, can you not make her busy for four hours? She is sure that the
fop will be occupied with her, seeing that he has no mind for great
things. She will never be neglected for glory, ambition, politics,
art—those prostitutes who for her are rivals. Then fops have the
courage to cover themselves with ridicule in order to please a woman,
and her heart is full of gratitude towards the man who is ridiculous for
love. In fine, a fop can be no fop unless he is right in being one. It
is women who bestow that rank. The fop is love's colonel; he has his
victories, his regiment of women at his command. My dear fellow, in
Paris everything is known, and a man cannot be a fop there gratis.
You, who have only one woman, and who, perhaps, are right to have but
one, try to act the fop!... You will not even become ridiculous, you
will be dead. You will become a foregone conclusion, one of those men
condemned inevitably to do one and the same thing. You will come to
signify folly as inseparably as M. de La Fayette signifies America;
M. de Talleyrand, diplomacy; Desaugiers, song; M. de Segur,
romance. If they once forsake their own line people no longer attach
any value to what they do. So, foppery, my friend Paul, is the sign of
an incontestable power over the female folk. A man who is loved by many
women passes for having superior qualities, and then, poor fellow, it
is a question who shall have him! But do you think it is nothing to have
the right of going into a drawing-room, of looking down at people from
over your cravat, or through your eye-glass, and of despising the most
superior of men should he wear an old-fashioned waistcoat?... Laurent,
you are hurting me! After breakfast, Paul, we will go to the Tuileries
and see the adorable girl with the golden eyes."
End of Section IV
Section V
When, after making an excellent meal, the two young men had traversed
the Terrasse de Feuillants and the broad walk of the Tuileries, they
nowhere discovered the sublime Paquita Valdes, on whose account some
fifty of the most elegant young men in Paris where to be seen, all
scented, with their high scarfs, spurred and booted, riding, walking,
talking, laughing, and damning themselves mightily.
"It's a white Mass," said Henri; "but I have the most excellent idea in
the world. This girl receives letters from London. The postman must be
bought or made drunk, a letter opened, read of course, and a love-letter
slipped in before it is sealed up again. The old tyrant, crudel
tirano, is certain to know the person who writes the letters from
London, and has ceased to be suspicious of them."
The day after, De Marsay came again to walk on the Terrasse des
Feuillants, and saw Paquita Valdes; already passion had embellished her
for him. Seriously, he was wild for those eyes, whose rays seemed akin
to those which the sun emits, and whose ardor set the seal upon that
of her perfect body, in which all was delight. De Marsay was on fire to
brush the dress of this enchanting girl as they passed one another in
their walk; but his attempts were always vain. But at one moment, when
he had repassed Paquita and the duenna, in order to find himself on the
same side as the girl of the golden eyes, when he returned, Paquita,
no less impatient, came forward hurriedly, and De Marsay felt his
hand pressed by her in a fashion at once so swift and so passionately
significant that it was as though he had received the emotions surged up
in his heart. When the two lovers glanced at one another, Paquita seemed
ashamed, she dropped her eyes lest she should meet the eyes of Henri,
but her gaze sank lower to fasten on the feet and form of him whom
women, before the Revolution, called their conqueror.
"I am determined to make this girl my mistress," said Henri to himself.
As he followed her along the terrace, in the direction of the Place
Louis XV., he caught sight of the aged Marquis de San-Real, who was
walking on the arm of his valet, stepping with all the precautions due
to gout and decrepitude. Dona Concha, who distrusted Henri, made Paquita
pass between herself and the old man.
"Oh, for you," said De Marsay to himself, casting a glance of disdain
upon the duenna, "if one cannot make you capitulate, with a little ***
one can make you sleep. We know mythology and the fable of Argus."
Before entering the carriage, the golden-eyed girl exchanged certain
glances with her lover, of which the meaning was unmistakable and which
enchanted Henri, but one of them was surprised by the duenna; she said
a few rapid words to Paquita, who threw herself into the coupe with
an air of desperation. For some days Paquita did not appear in the
Tuileries. Laurent, who by his master's orders was on watch by the
hotel, learned from the neighbors that neither the two women nor the
aged marquis had been abroad since the day upon which the duenna had
surprised a glance between the young girl in her charge and Henri. The
bond, so flimsy withal, which united the two lovers was already severed.
Some days later, none knew by what means, De Marsay had attained his
end; he had a seal and wax, exactly resembling the seal and wax affixed
to the letters sent to Mademoiselle Valdes from London; paper similar
to that which her correspondent used; moreover, all the implements and
stamps necessary to affix the French and English postmarks.
He wrote the following letter, to which he gave all the appearances of a
letter sent from London:—
"MY DEAR PAQUITA,—I shall not try to paint to you in words the
passion with which you have inspired me. If, to my happiness, you
reciprocate it, understand that I have found a means of
corresponding with you. My name is Adolphe de Gouges, and I live
at No. 54 Rue de l'Universite. If you are too closely watched to
be able to write to me, if you have neither pen nor paper, I shall
understand it by your silence. If then, to-morrow, you have not,
between eight o'clock in the morning and ten o'clock in the
evening, thrown a letter over the wall of your garden into that of
the Baron de Nucingen, where it will be waited for during the
whole of the day, a man, who is entirely devoted to me, will let
down two flasks by a string over your wall at ten o'clock the next
morning. Be walking there at that hour. One of the two flasks will
contain *** to send your Argus to sleep; it will be sufficient
to employ six drops; the other will contain ink. The flask of ink
is of cut glass; the other is plain. Both are of such a size as
can easily be concealed within your ***. All that I have already
done, in order to be able to correspond with you, should tell you
how greatly I love you. Should you have any doubt of it, I will
confess to you, that to obtain an interview of one hour with you I
would give my life."
"At least they believe that, poor creatures!" said De Marsay; "but they
are right. What should we think of a woman who refused to be beguiled by
a love-letter accompanied by such convincing accessories?"
This letter was delivered by Master Moinot, postman, on the following
day, about eight o'clock in the morning, to the porter of the Hotel
San-Real.
In order to be nearer to the field of action, De Marsay went and
breakfasted with Paul, who lived in the Rue de la Pepiniere. At
two o'clock, just as the two friends were laughingly discussing the
discomfiture of a young man who had attempted to lead the life of
fashion without a settled income, and were devising an end for him,
Henri's coachman came to seek his master at Paul's house, and presented
to him a mysterious personage who insisted on speaking himself with his
master.
This individual was a mulatto, who would assuredly have given Talma a
model for the part of Othello, if he had come across him. Never did any
African face better express the grand vengefulness, the ready suspicion,
the promptitude in the execution of a thought, the strength of the Moor,
and his childish lack of reflection. His black eyes had the fixity of
the eyes of a bird of prey, and they were framed, like a vulture's, by
a bluish membrane devoid of lashes. His forehead, low and narrow, had
something menacing. Evidently, this man was under the yoke of some
single and unique thought. His sinewy arm did not belong to him.
He was followed by a man whom the imaginations of all folk, from those
who shiver in Greenland to those who sweat in the tropics, would paint
in the single phrase: He was an unfortunate man. From this phrase,
everybody will conceive him according to the special ideas of each
country. But who can best imagine his face—white and wrinkled, red at
the extremities, and his long beard. Who will see his lean and yellow
scarf, his greasy shirt-collar, his battered hat, his green frock coat,
his deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold
pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who
will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the
unfortunate man in toto, for he has still enough mirth to know the
extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis
XI. leading a man to the gallows.
"Who has hunted us out these two extraordinary creatures?" said Henri.
"Faith! there is one of them who makes me shudder," replied Paul.
"Who are you—you fellow who look the most like a Christian of the two?"
said Henri, looking at the unfortunate man.
The mulatto stood with his eyes fixed upon the two young men, like a man
who understood nothing, and who sought no less to divine something from
the gestures and movements of the lips.
"I am a public scribe and interpreter; I live at the Palais de Justice,
and am named Poincet."
"Good!... and this one?" said Henri to Poincet, looking towards the
mulatto.
"I do not know; he only speaks a sort of Spanish patois, and he has
brought me here to make himself understood by you."
The mulatto drew from his pocket the letter which Henri had written to
Paquita and handed it to him. Henri threw it in the fire.
"Ah—so—the game is beginning," said Henri to himself. "Paul, leave us
alone for a moment."
"I translated this letter for him," went on the interpreter, when they
were alone. "When it was translated, he was in some place which I don't
remember. Then he came back to look for me, and promised me two louis
to fetch him here."
"What have you to say to me, ***?" asked Henri.
"I did not translate ***," said the interpreter, waiting for the
mulatto's reply....
"He said, sir," went on the interpreter, after having listened to the
unknown, "that you must be at half-past ten to-morrow night on the
boulevard Montmartre, near the cafe. You will see a carriage there, in
which you must take your place, saying to the man, who will wait to
open the door for you, the word cortejo—a Spanish word, which means
lover," added Poincet, casting a glance of congratulation upon Henri.
"Good."
The mulatto was about to bestow the two louis, but De Marsay would not
permit it, and himself rewarded the interpreter. As he was paying him,
the mulatto began to speak.
"What is he saying?"
"He is warning me," replied the unfortunate, "that if I commit a single
indiscretion he will strangle me. He speaks fair and he looks remarkably
as if he were capable of carrying out his threat."
"I am sure of it," answered Henri; "he would keep his word."
"He says, as well," replied the interpreter, "that the person from whom
he is sent implores you, for your sake and for hers, to act with the
greatest prudence, because the daggers which are raised above your
head would strike your heart before any human power could save you from
them."
"He said that? So much the better, it will be more amusing. You can come
in now, Paul," he cried to his friend.
The mulatto, who had not ceased to gaze at the lover of Paquita Valdes
with magnetic attention, went away, followed by the interpreter.
"Well, at last I have an adventure which is entirely romantic," said
Henri, when Paul returned. "After having shared in a certain number I
have finished by finding in Paris an intrigue accompanied by serious
accidents, by grave perils. The deuce! what courage danger gives a
woman! To torment a woman, to try and contradict her—doesn't it give
her the right and the courage to scale in one moment obstacles which it
would take her years to surmount of herself? Pretty creature, jump then!
To die? Poor child! Daggers? Oh, imagination of women! They cannot help
trying to find authority for their little jests. Besides, can one think
of it, Paquita? Can one think of it, my child? The devil take me, now
that I know this beautiful girl, this masterpiece of nature, is mine,
the adventure has lost its charm."
For all his light words, the youth in Henri had reappeared. In order
to live until the morrow without too much pain, he had recourse to
exorbitant pleasure; he played, dined, supped with his friends; he drank
like a fish, ate like a German, and won ten or twelve thousand francs.
He left the Rocher de Cancale at two o'clock in the morning, slept like
a child, awoke the next morning fresh and rosy, and dressed to go to
the Tuileries, with the intention of taking a ride, after having seen
Paquita, in order to get himself an appetite and dine the better, and so
kill the time.
End of Section V Section VI
At the hour mentioned Henri was on the boulevard, saw the carriage,
and gave the counter-word to a man who looked to him like the mulatto.
Hearing the word, the man opened the door and quickly let down the step.
Henri was so rapidly carried through Paris, and his thoughts left him so
little capacity to pay attention to the streets through which he passed,
that he did not know where the carriage stopped. The mulatto let him
into a house, the staircase of which was quite close to the entrance.
This staircase was dark, as was also the landing upon which Henri
was obliged to wait while the mulatto was opening the door of a damp
apartment, fetid and unlit, the chambers of which, barely illuminated
by the candle which his guide found in the ante-chamber, seemed to him
empty and ill furnished, like those of a house the inhabitants of which
are away. He recognized the sensation which he had experienced from the
perusal of one of those romances of Anne Radcliffe, in which the hero
traverses the cold, sombre, and uninhabited saloons of some sad and
desert spot.
At last the mulatto opened the door of a salon. The condition of
the old furniture and the dilapidated curtains with which the room was
adorned gave it the air of the reception-room of a house of ill fame.
There was the same pretension to elegance, and the same collection of
things in bad taste, of dust and dirt. Upon a sofa covered with red
Utrecht velvet, by the side of a smoking hearth, the fire of which was
buried in ashes, sat an old, poorly dressed woman, her head capped by
one of those turbans which English women of a certain age have invented
and which would have a mighty success in China, where the artist's ideal
is the monstrous.
The room, the old woman, the cold hearth, all would have chilled love to
death had not Paquita been there, upon an ottoman, in a loose voluptuous
wrapper, free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free to show her
arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first interview
was what every rendezvous must be between persons of passionate
disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire
each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other. It
is impossible that at first there should not occur certain discordant
notes in the situation, which is embarrassing until the moment when two
souls find themselves in unison.
If desire gives a man boldness and disposes him to lay restraint aside,
the mistress, under pain of ceasing to be woman, however great may be
her love, is afraid of arriving at the end so promptly, and face to face
with the necessity of giving herself, which to many women is equivalent
to a fall into an abyss, at the bottom of which they know not what they
shall find. The involuntary coldness of the woman contrasts with her
confessed passion, and necessarily reacts upon the most passionate
lover. Thus ideas, which often float around souls like vapors, determine
in them a sort of temporary malady. In the sweet journey which two
beings undertake through the fair domains of love, this moment is like
a waste land to be traversed, a land without a tree, alternatively damp
and warm, full of scorching sand, traversed by marshes, which leads to
smiling groves clad with roses, where Love and his retinue of pleasures
disport themselves on carpets of soft verdure. Often the witty man
finds himself afflicted with a foolish laugh which is his only answer to
everything; his wit is, as it were, suffocated beneath the icy pressure
of his desires. It would not be impossible for two beings of equal
beauty, intelligence, and passion to utter at first nothing but the
most silly commonplaces, until chance, a word, the tremor of a certain
glance, the communication of a spark, should have brought them to the
happy transition which leads to that flowery way in which one does not
walk, but where one sways and at the same time does not lapse.
Such a state of mind is always in proportion with the violence of the
feeling. Two creatures who love one another weakly feel nothing similar.
The effect of this crisis can even be compared with that which is
produced by the glow of a clear sky. Nature, at the first view, appears
to be covered with a gauze veil, the azure of the firmament seems black,
the intensity of light is like darkness. With Henri, as with the Spanish
girl, there was an equal intensity of feeling; and that law of statics,
in virtue of which two identical forces cancel each other, might have
been true also in the moral order. And the embarrassment of the moment
was singularly increased by the presence of the old hag. Love takes
pleasure or fright at all, all has meaning for it, everything is an omen
of happiness or sorrow for it.
This decrepit woman was there like a suggestion of catastrophe, and
represented the horrid fish's tail with which the allegorical geniuses
of Greece have terminated their chimeras and sirens, whose figures, like
all passions, are so seductive, so deceptive.
Although Henri was not a free-thinker—the phrase is always a
mockery—but a man of extraordinary power, a man as great as a man can
be without faith, the conjunction struck him. Moreover, the strongest
men are naturally the most impressionable, and consequently the most
superstitious, if, indeed, one may call superstition the prejudice of
the first thoughts, which, without doubt, is the appreciation of the
result in causes hidden to other eyes but perceptible to their own.
The Spanish girl profited by this moment of stupefaction to let herself
fall into the ecstasy of that infinite adoration which seizes the heart
of a woman, when she truly loves and finds herself in the presence of
an idol for whom she has vainly longed. Her eyes were all joy, all
happiness, and sparks flew from them. She was under the charm, and
fearlessly intoxicated herself with a felicity of which she had dreamed
long. She seemed then so marvelously beautiful to Henri, that all this
phantasmagoria of rags and old age, of worn red drapery and of the green
mats in front of the armchairs, the ill-washed red tiles, all this sick
and dilapidated luxury, disappeared.
The room seemed lit up; and it was only through a cloud that one could
see the fearful harpy fixed and dumb on her red sofa, her yellow eyes
betraying the servile sentiments, inspired by misfortune, or caused by
some vice beneath whose servitude one has fallen as beneath a tyrant who
brutalizes one with the flagellations of his despotism. Her eyes had the
cold glitter of a caged tiger, knowing his impotence and being compelled
to swallow his rage of destruction.
"Who is that woman?" said Henri to Paquita.
But Paquita did not answer. She made a sign that she understood no
French, and asked Henri if he spoke English.
De Marsay repeated his question in English.
"She is the only woman in whom I can confide, although she has sold me
already," said Paquita, tranquilly. "My dear Adolphe, she is my mother,
a slave bought in Georgia for her rare beauty, little enough of which
remains to-day. She only speaks her native tongue."
The attitude of this woman and her eagerness to guess from the gestures
of her daughter and Henri what was passing between them, were suddenly
explained to the young man; and this explanation put him at his ease.
"Paquita," he said, "are we never to be free then?"
"Never," she said, with an air of sadness. "Even now we have but a few
days before us."
She lowered her eyes, looked at and counted with her right hand on the
fingers of her left, revealing so the most beautiful hands which Henri
had ever seen.
"One, two, three——"
She counted up to twelve.
"Yes," she said, "we have twelve days."
"And after?"
"After," she said, showing the absorption of a weak woman before the
executioner's axe, and slain in advance, as it were, by a fear which
stripped her of that magnificent energy which Nature seemed to have
bestowed upon her only to aggrandize pleasure and convert the most
vulgar delights into endless poems. "After——" she repeated. Her eyes
took a fixed stare; she seemed to contemplate a threatening object far
away.
"I do not know," she said.
"This girl is mad," said Henri to himself, falling into strange
reflections.
Paquita appeared to him occupied by something which was not himself,
like a woman constrained equally by remorse and passion. Perhaps she had
in her heart another love which she alternately remembered and forgot.
In a moment Henri was assailed by a thousand contradictory thoughts.
This girl became a mystery for him; but as he contemplated her with the
scientific attention of the blase man, famished for new pleasures,
like that Eastern king who asked that a pleasure should be created
for him,—a horrible thirst with which great souls are seized,—Henri
recognized in Paquita the richest organization that Nature had ever
deigned to compose for love. The presumptive play of this machinery,
setting aside the soul, would have frightened any other man than Henri;
but he was fascinated by that rich harvest of promised pleasures, by
that constant variety in happiness, the dream of every man, and the
desire of every loving woman too. He was infuriated by the infinite
rendered palpable, and transported into the most excessive raptures
of which the creature is capable. All that he saw in this girl more
distinctly than he had yet seen it, for she let herself be viewed
complacently, happy to be admired. The admiration of De Marsay became
a secret fury, and he unveiled her completely, throwing a glance at her
which the Spaniard understood as though she had been used to receive
such.
"If you are not to be mine, mine only, I will kill you!" he cried.
Hearing this speech, Paquita covered her face in her hands, and cried
naively:
"Holy ***! What have I brought upon myself?"
She rose, flung herself down upon the red sofa, and buried her head in
the rags which covered the *** of her mother, and wept there. The
old woman received her daughter without issuing from her state of
immobility, or displaying any emotion. The mother possessed in the
highest degree that gravity of savage races, the impassiveness of a
statue upon which all remarks are lost. Did she or did she not love her
daughter? Beneath that mask every human emotion might brood—good and
evil; and from this creature all might be expected. Her gaze passed
slowly from her daughter's beautiful hair, which covered her like a
mantle, to the face of Henri, which she considered with an indescribable
curiosity.
She seemed to ask by what fatality he was there, from what caprice
Nature had made so seductive a man.
"These women are making sport of me," said Henri to himself.
At that moment Paquita raised her head, cast at him one of those looks
which reach the very soul and consume it. So beautiful seemed she that
he swore he would possess such a treasure of beauty.
"My Paquita! Be mine!"
"Wouldst thou kill me?" she said fearfully, palpitating and anxious, but
drawn towards him by an inexplicable force.
"Kill thee—I!" he said, smiling.
Paquita uttered a cry of alarm, said a word to the old woman, who
authoritatively seized Henri's hand and that of her daughter. She gazed
at them for a long time, and then released them, wagging her head in a
fashion horribly significant.
"Be mine—this evening, this moment; follow me, do not leave me! It must
be, Paquita! Dost thou love me? Come!"
In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the
rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same
sound in a thousand different forms.
"It is the same voice!" said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which
De Marsay could not overhear, "and the same ardor," she added. "So be
it—yes," she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can
describe. "Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I gave too little
*** to La Concha. She might wake up, and I should be lost. At this
moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. In two
days be at the same spot, say the same word to the same man. That man is
my foster-father. Cristemio worships me, and would die in torments for
me before they could extract one word against me from him. Farewell,"
she said seizing Henri by the waist and twining round him like a
serpent.
She pressed him on every side at once, lifted her head to his, and
offered him her lips, then snatched a kiss which filled them both with
such a dizziness that it seemed to Henri as though the earth opened; and
Paquita cried: "Enough, depart!" in a voice which told how little
she was mistress of herself. But she clung to him still, still crying
"Depart!" and brought him slowly to the staircase. There the mulatto,
whose white eyes lit up at the sight of Paquita, took the torch from the
hands of his idol, and conducted Henri to the street. He left the light
under the arch, opened the door, put Henri into the carriage, and set
him down on the Boulevard des Italiens with marvelous rapidity. It was
as though the horses had hell-fire in their veins.
The scene was like a dream to De Marsay, but one of those dreams
which, even when they fade away, leave a feeling of supernatural
voluptuousness, which a man runs after for the remainder of his life.
A single kiss had been enough. Never had rendezvous been spent in a
manner more decorous or chaste, or, perhaps, more coldly, in a spot of
which the surroundings were more gruesome, in presence of a more hideous
divinity; for the mother had remained in Henri's imagination like some
infernal, cowering thing, cadaverous, monstrous, savagely ferocious,
which the imagination of poets and painters had not yet conceived. In
effect, no rendezvous had ever irritated his senses more, revealed
more audacious pleasures, or better aroused love from its centre to
shed itself round him like an atmosphere. There was something sombre,
mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained, and expansive, an intermingling
of the awful and the celestial, of paradise and hell, which made De
Marsay like a drunken man.
He was no longer himself, and he was, withal, great enough to be able to
resist the intoxication of pleasure.
In order to render his conduct intelligible in the catastrophe of this
story, it is needful to explain how his soul had broadened at an age
when young men generally belittle themselves in their relations with
women, or in too much occupation with them. Its growth was due to a
concurrence of secret circumstances, which invested him with a vast and
unsuspected power.
This young man held in his hand a sceptre more powerful than that of
modern kings, almost all of whom are curbed in their least wishes by the
laws. De Marsay exercised the autocratic power of an Oriental despot.
But this power, so stupidly put into execution in Asia by brutish men,
was increased tenfold by its conjunction with European intelligence,
with French wit—the most subtle, the keenest of all intellectual
instruments. Henri could do what he would in the interest of his
pleasures and vanities. This invisible action upon the social world
had invested him with a real, but secret, majesty, without emphasis and
deriving from himself. He had not the opinion which Louis XIV. could
have of himself, but that which the proudest of the Caliphs, the
Pharoahs, the Xerxes, who held themselves to be of divine origin, had
of themselves when they imitated God, and veiled themselves from their
subjects under the pretext that their looks dealt forth death. Thus,
without any remorse at being at once the judge and the accuser, De
Marsay coldly condemned to death the man or the woman who had seriously
offended him. Although often pronounced almost lightly, the verdict
was irrevocable. An error was a misfortune similar to that which a
thunderbolt causes when it falls upon a smiling Parisienne in some
hackney coach, instead of crushing the old coachman who is driving
her to a rendezvous. Thus the bitter and profound sarcasm which
distinguished the young man's conversation usually tended to frighten
people; no one was anxious to put him out. Women are prodigiously fond
of those persons who call themselves pashas, and who are, as it were
accompanied by lions and executioners, and who walk in a panoply of
terror. The result, in the case of such men, is a security of action,
a certitude of power, a pride of gaze, a leonine consciousness, which
makes women realize the type of strength of which they all dream. Such
was De Marsay.
Happy, for the moment, with his future, he grew young and pliable, and
thought of nothing but love as he went to bed. He dreamed of the girl
with the golden eyes, as the young and passionate can dream. His dreams
were monstrous images, unattainable extravagances—full of light,
revealing invisible worlds, yet in a manner always incomplete, for an
intervening veil changes the conditions of vision.
End of Section VI �