BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
The next day at noon M. Louvier was closeted in his study with M.
Gandrin.
"Yes," cried Louvier, "I have behaved very handsomely to the _beau
Marquis_. No one can say to the contrary."
"True," answered Gandrin. "Besides the easy terms for the transfer of
the mortgages, that free bonus of one thousand louis is a generous and
noble act of munificence."
"Is it not! and my youngster has already begun to do with it as I meant
and expected. He has taken a fine apartment; he has bought a coupe and
horses; he has placed himself in the hands of the Chevalier de
Finisterre; he is entered at the Jockey Club. Parbleu, the one thousand
louis will be soon gone."
"And then?"
"And then! why, he will have tasted the sweets of Parisian life; he will
think with disgust of the _vieux manoir_. He can borrow no more. I must
remain sole mortgagee, and I shall behave as handsomely in buying his
estates as I have behaved in increasing his income."
Here a clerk entered and said that a monsieur wished to see M. Louvier
for a few minutes in private, on urgent business.
"Tell him to send in his card."
"He has declined to do so, but states that he has already the honour of
your acquaintance."
"A writer in the press, perhaps; or is he an artist?"
"I have not seen him before, Monsieur, but he has the air _tres comme il
faut_."
"Well, you may admit him. I will not detain you longer, my dear Gandrin.
My homages to Madame. Bonjour."
Louvier bowed out M. Gandrin, and then rubbed his hands complacently. He
was in high spirits. "Aha, my dear Marquis, thou art in my trap now.
Would it were thy father instead," he muttered chucklingly, and then took
his stand on the hearth, with his back to the fireless grate. There
entered a gentleman exceedingly well dressed,--dressed according to the
fashion, but still as became one of ripe middle age, not desiring to pass
for younger than he was.
He was tall, with a kind of lofty ease in his air and his movements; not
slight of frame, but spare enough to disguise the strength and endurance
which belong to sinews and thews of steel, freed from all superfluous
flesh, broad across the shoulders, thin in the flanks. His dark hair had
in youth been luxuriant in thickness and curl; it was now clipped short,
and had become bare at the temples, but it still retained the lustre of
its colour and the crispness of its ringlets. He wore neither beard nor
mustache, and the darkness of his hair was contrasted by a clear fairness
of complexion, healthful, though somewhat pale, and eyes of that rare
gray tint which has in it no shade of blue,--peculiar eyes, which give a
very distinct character to the face. The man must have been singularly
handsome in youth; he was handsome still, though probably in his forty-
seventh or forty-eighth year, doubtless a very different kind of
comeliness. The form of the features and the contour of the face were
those that suit the rounded beauty of the Greek outline, and such beauty
would naturally have been the attribute of the countenance in earlier
days; but the cheeks were now thin, and with lines of care and sorrow
between nostril and lip, so that the shape of the face seemed lengthened,
and the features had become more salient.
Louvier gazed at his visitor with a vague idea that he had seen him
before, and could not remember where or when; but at all events he
recognized at the first glance a man of rank and of the great world.
"Pray be seated, Monsieur," he said, resuming his own easy-chair.
The visitor obeyed the invitation with a very graceful bend of his head,
drew his chair near to the financier's, stretched his limbs with the ease
of a man making himself at home, and fixing his calm bright eyes quietly
on Louvier, said, with a bland smile,--
"My dear old friend, do you not remember me? You are less altered than I
am."
Louvier stared hard and long; his lip fell, his cheek paled, and at last
he faltered out, "Ciel! is it possible! Victor, the Vicomte de Mauleon?"
"At your service, my dear Louvier."
There was a pause; the financier was evidently confused and embarrassed,
and not less evidently the visit of the "dear old friend" was unwelcome.
"Vicomte," he said at last, "this is indeed a surprise; I thought you had
long since quitted Paris for good."
"'L'homme propose,' etc. I have returned, and mean to enjoy the rest of
my days in the metropolis of the Graces and the Pleasures. What though
we are not so young as we were, Louvier,--we have more vigour in us than
the new generation; and though it may no longer befit us to renew the gay
carousals of old, life has still excitements as vivid for the social
temperament and ambitious mind. Yes, the _roi des viveurs_ returns to
Paris for a more solid throne than he filled before."
"Are you serious?"
"As serious as the French gayety will permit one to be."
"Alas, Monsieur le Vicomte! can you flatter yourself that you will regain
the society you have quitted, and the name you have--"
Louvier stopped short; something in the Vicomte's eye daunted him.
"The name I have laid aside for convenience of travel. Princes travel
incognito, and so may a simple _gentilhomme_. 'Regain my place in
society,' say you? Yes; it is not that which troubles me."
"What does?"
"The consideration whether on a very modest income I can be sufficiently
esteemed for myself to render that society more pleasant than ever. Ah,
_mon cher_! why recoil? why so frightened? Do you think I am going to
ask you for money? Have I ever done so since we parted; and did I ever
do so before without repaying you? Bah! you _roturiers_ are worse than
the Bourbons. You never learn or unlearn. 'Fors non mutat genus.'"
The magnificent _millionaire_, accustomed to the homage of grandees from
the Faubourg and _lions_ from the Chaussee d'Antin, rose to his feet in
superb wrath, less at the taunting words than at the haughtiness of mien
with which they were uttered.
"Monsieur, I cannot permit you to address me in that tone. Do you mean
to insult me?"
"Certainly not. Tranquillize your nerves, reseat yourself, and listen,--
reseat yourself, I say."
Louvier dropped into his chair.
"No," resumed the Vicomte, politely, "I do not come here to insult you,
neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I
ask Monsieur Louvier what has become of Louise Duval?"
"Louise Duval! I know nothing about her."
"Possibly not now; but you did know her well enough, when we two parted,
to be a candidate for her hand. You did know her enough to solicit my
good offices in promotion of your suit; and you did, at my advice, quit
Paris to seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle."
"What! have you, Monsieur de Mauleon, not heard news of her since that
day?"
"I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine. You went to
Aix-la-Chapelle; you saw Louise Duval, at my urgent request she
condescended to accept your hand."
"No, Monsieur de Mauleon, she did not accept my hand. I did not even see
her. The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it,--not
alone,--left it with her lover."
"Her lover! You do not mean the miserable Englishman who--"
"No Englishman," interrupted Louvier, fiercely. "Enough that the step
she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself. I have never
even sought to hear of her since that day. Vicomte, that woman was the
one love of my life. I loved her, as you must have known, to folly, to
madness. And how was my love requited? Ah! you open a very deep wound,
Monsieur le Vicomte."
"Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen and
so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters
belonging to a past life so remote from the present. For whom did Louise
forsake you?"
"It matters not; he is dead."
"I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you."
"I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass."
"Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer? So proud as she was, I
can scarcely believe it."
"Oh, it was not with a _roturier_ she fled; her pride would not have
allowed that."
"He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue to live with him?"
"That question, at least, I can answer; for though I lost all trace of
her life, his life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very
few months after she fled he was enchained to another. Let us talk of
her no more."
"Ay, ay," muttered De Mauleon, "some disgraces are not to be redeemed,
and therefore not to be discussed. To me, though a relation, Louise
Duval was but little known, and after what you tell me, I cannot dispute
your right to say, 'Talk of her no more.' You loved her, and she wronged
you. My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed afresh."
These words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness; they softened
Louvier towards the speaker.
After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his brow, as if to
dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive thought; then with a
changed expression of countenance,--an expression frank and winning,--
with voice and with manner in which no vestige remained of the irony or
the haughtiness with which he had resented the frigidity of his
reception, he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier's, and resumed: "Our
situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we two became friends.
I then could say, 'Open sesame' to whatever recesses, forbidden to vulgar
footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by the hand might wish to explore.
In those days my heart was warm; I liked you, Louvier,--honestly liked
you. I think our personal acquaintance commenced in some gay gathering
of young viveurs, whose behaviour to you offended my sense of good
breeding?"
Louvier coloured and muttered inaudibly. De Mauleon continued: "I felt it
due to you to rebuke their incivilities, the more so as you evinced on
that occasion your own superiority in sense and temper, permit me to add,
with no lack of becoming spirit."
Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified.
"From that day we became familiar. If any obligation to me were
incurred, you would not have been slow to return it. On more than one
occasion when I was rapidly wasting money--and money was plentiful with
you--you generously offered me your purse. On more than one occasion I
accepted the offer; and you would never have asked repayment if I had not
insisted on repaying. I was no less grateful for your aid." Louvier
made a movement as if to extend his hand, but he checked the impulse.
"There was another attraction which drew me towards you. I recognized in
your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I
imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the
_freluquets_ and _lions_ who were my more habitual associates. Do you
not remember some hours of serious talk we have had together when we
lounged in the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the garden of the
Palais Royal?--hours when we forgot that those were the haunts of idlers,
and thought of the stormy actions affecting the history of the world of
which they had been the scene; hours when I confided to you, as I
confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my
follies in the present, alas! were hourly tending to frustrate."
"Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the
Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,--it was on the Pont de la Concorde,
on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you
said, pointing towards the walls of the _Corps Legislatif_, 'Paul, when I
once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First
Minister of France?'"
"Did I say so?--possibly; but I was too young then for admission to the
Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle
loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass over these circumstances. You
became in love with Louise. I told you her troubled history; it did not
diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out
for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards; then fell the thunderbolt
which shattered my existence, and we have never met again till this hour.
You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier."
"But," said Louvier, falteringly, "but since you refer to that
thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that--that--"
"I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who have known me as
well as you did to assist me now to refute."
"If it be really a calumny."
"Heavens, man! could you ever doubt that?" cried De Mauleon, with heat;
"ever doubt that I would rather have blown out my brains than allowed
them even to conceive the idea of a crime so base?"
"Pardon me," answered Louvier, meekly, "but I did not return to Paris for
months after you had disappeared. My mind was unsettled by the news that
awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it by travel,--visited Holland
and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard of your
story was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own account.
You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse de ------'s
jewels; and your friend M. de ----- never sold them to one jeweller and
obtained their substitutes in paste from another?"
The Vicomte made a perceptible effort to repress an impulse of rage;
then reseating himself in his chair, and with that slight shrug of the
shoulder by which a Frenchman implies to himself that rage would be out
of place, replied calmly, "M. de N. did as you say, but of course not
employed by me, nor with my knowledge. Listen; the truth is this,--the
time has come to tell it. Before you left Paris for Aix I found myself
on the brink of ruin. I had glided towards it with my characteristic
recklessness, with that scorn of money for itself, that sanguine
confidence in the favour of fortune, which are vices common to every _roi
des viveurs_. Poor mock Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in youth!
we divide all we have among others, and when asked by some prudent
friend, 'What have you left for your own share?' answer, 'Hope.' I knew,
of course, that my patrimony was rapidly vanishing; but then my horses
were matchless. I had enough to last me for years on their chance of
winning--of course they would win. But you may recollect when we parted
that I was troubled,--creditors' bills before me--usurers' bills too,--
and you, my dear Louvier, pressed on me your purse, were angry when I
refused it. How could I accept? All my chance of repayment was in the
speed of a horse. I believed in that chance for myself; but for a
trustful friend, no. Ask your own heart now,--nay, I will not say
heart,--ask your own common-sense, whether a man who then put aside your
purse--spendthrift, _vaurien_, though he might be--was likely to steal or
accept a woman's jewels. Va, mon pauvre Louvier, again I say, 'Fors non
mutat genus.'"
Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, such
reminiscences of his visitor's motley character--irregular, turbulent,
the reverse of severe, but, in its own loose way, grandly generous and
grandly brave--struck both on the common-sense and the heart of the
listener; and the Frenchman recognized the Frenchman. Louvier doubted
De Mauleon's word no more, bowed his head, and said, "Victor de Mauleon,
I have wronged you; go on."
"On the day after you left for Aix came that horse-race on which my all
depended: it was lost. The loss absorbed the whole of my remaining
fortune; it absorbed about twenty thousand francs in excess, a debt of
honour to De N., whom you called my friend. Friend he was not; imitator,
follower, flatterer, yes. Still I deemed him enough my friend to say to
him, 'Give me a little time to pay the money; I must sell my stud, or
write to my only living relation from whom I have expectations.' You
remember that relation,--Jacques de Mauleon, old and unmarried. By De
N.'s advice I did write to my kinsman. No answer came; but what did come
were fresh bills from creditors. I then calmly calculated my assets.
The sale of my stud and effects might suffice to pay every sou that I
owed, including my debt to De N.; but that was not quite certain. At all
events, when the debts were paid I should be beggared. Well, you know,
Louvier, what we Frenchmen are: how Nature has denied to us the quality
of patience; how involuntarily suicide presents itself to us when hope is
lost; and suicide seemed to me here due to honour, namely, to the certain
discharge of my liabilities,--for the stud and effects of Victor de
Mauleon, _roi des viveurs_, would command much higher prices if he died
like Cato than if he ran away from his fate like Pompey. Doubtless De N.
guessed my intention from my words or my manner; but on the very day in
which I had made all preparations for quitting the world from which
sunshine had vanished, I received in a blank envelope bank-notes
amounting to seventy thousand francs, and the post-mark on the envelope
was that of the town of Fontainebleau, near to which lived my rich
kinsman Jacques. I took it for granted that the sum came from him.
Displeased as he might have been with my wild career, still I was his
natural heir. The sum sufficed to pay my debt to De N., to all
creditors, and leave a surplus. My sanguine spirits returned. I would
sell my stud; I would retrench, reform, go to my kinsman as the penitent
son. The fatted calf would be killed, and I should wear purple yet. You
understand that, Louvier?"
"Yes, yes; so like you. Go on."
"Now, then, came the thunderbolt! Ah! in those sunny days you used to
envy me for being so spoilt by women. The Duchesse de ------ had
conceived for me one of those romantic fancies which women without
children and with ample leisure for the waste of affection do sometimes
conceive for very ordinary men younger than themselves, but in whom they
imagine they discover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt. I had been
honoured by some notes from the Duchesse in which this sort of romance
was owned. I had not replied to them encouragingly. In truth, my heart
was then devoted to another,--the English girl whom I had wooed as my
wife; who, despite her parents' retraction of their consent to our union
when they learned how dilapidated were my fortunes, pledged herself to
remain faithful to me, and wait for better days." Again De Mauleon
paused in suppressed emotion, and then went on hurriedly: "No, the
Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me
with an affectionate respect. I felt that she was by nature meant to be
a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that moment wholly
misled from her right place amongst women by an illusion of mere
imagination about a man who happened then to be very much talked about,
and perhaps resembled some Lothario in the novels which she was always
reading. We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house."
"Yes, I remember. I remember how you once took me to a great ball given
by the Duchesse; how handsome I thought her, though no longer young; and
you say right--how I did envy you, that night!"
"From that night, however, the Duc, not unnaturally, became jealous. He
reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable manner towards a _mauvais
sujet_ like myself, and forbade her in future to receive my visits. It
was then that these notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me
by her maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies.
"But to proceed. In the flush of my high spirits, and in the insolence
of magnificent ease with which I paid De N------ the trifle I owed him,
something he said made my heart stand still."
"I told him that the money received had come from Jacques de Mauleon, and
that I was going down to his house that day to thank him. He replied,
'Don't go; it did not come from him.' 'It must; see the post-mark of the
envelope,--Fontainebleau.' 'I posted it at Fontainebleau.' 'You sent me
the money, you!' 'Nay, that is beyond my means. Where it came from,'
said this _miserable_, 'much more may yet come;' and then be narrated,
with that cynicism so in vogue at Paris, how he had told the Duchesse
(who knew him as my intimate associate) of my stress of circumstance,
of his fear that I meditated something desperate; how she gave him the
jewels to sell and to substitute; how, in order to baffle my suspicion
and frustrate my scruples, he had gone to Fontainebleau and there posted
the envelope containing the bank-notes, out of which he secured for
himself the payment he deemed otherwise imperilled. De N. having made
this confession, hurried down the stairs swiftly enough to save himself a
descent by the window. Do you believe me still?"
"Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so considerate of self,
I believe you implicitly."
"Of course I did what any man would do; I wrote a hasty letter to the
Duchesse, stating all my gratitude for an act of pure friendship so
noble; urging also the reasons that rendered it impossible for a man of
honour to profit by such an act. Unhappily, what had been sent was paid
away ere I knew the facts; but I could not bear the thought of life till
my debt to her was acquitted; in short, Louvier, conceive for yourself
the sort of letter which I--which any honest man--would write, under
circumstances so cruel."
"H'm!" grunted Louvier.
"Something, however, in my letter, conjoined with what De N. had told her
as to my state of mind, alarmed this poor woman, who had deigned to take
in me an interest so little deserved. Her reply, very agitated and
incoherent, was brought to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, and
by whom, as I before said, our correspondence had been of late carried
on. In her reply she implored me to decide, to reflect on nothing till I
had seen her; stated how the rest of her day was pre-engaged; and since
to visit her openly had been made impossible by the Due's interdict,
enclosed the key to the private entrance to her rooms, by which I could
gain an interview with her at ten o'clock that night, an hour at which
the Duc had informed her he should be out till late at his club. Now,
however great the indiscretion which the Duchesse here committed, it is
due to her memory to say that I am convinced that her dominant idea was
that I meditated self-destruction; that no time was to be lost to save me
from it; and for the rest she trusted to the influence which a woman's
tears and adjurations and reasonings have over even the strongest and
hardest men. It is only one of those coxcombs in whom the world of
fashion abounds who could have admitted a thought that would have done
wrong to the impulsive, generous, imprudent eagerness of a woman to be in
time to save from death by his own hand a fellow-being for whom she had
conceived an interest. I so construed her note. At the hour she named I
admitted myself into the rooms by the key she sent. You know the rest: I
was discovered by the Duc and by the agents of police in the cabinet in
which the Duchesse's jewels were kept. The key that admitted me into the
cabinet was found in my possession."
De Mauleon's voice here faltered, and he covered his face with a
convulsive hand. Almost in the same breath he recovered from visible
sign of emotion, and went on with a half laugh.
"Ah! you envied me, did you, for being spoiled by the women? Enviable
position indeed was mine that night! The Duc obeyed the first impulse of
his wrath. He imagined that I had dishonoured him; he would dishonour me
in return. Easier to his pride, too, a charge against the robber of
jewels than against a favoured lover of his wife. But when I, obeying
the first necessary obligation of honour, invented on the spur of the
moment the story by which the Duchesse's reputation was cleared from
suspicion, accused myself of a frantic passion and the trickery of a
fabricated key, the Due's true nature of gentilhomme came back. He
retracted the charge which he could scarcely even at the first blush have
felt to be well-founded; and as the sole charge left was simply that
which men _comme il faut_ do not refer to criminal courts and police
investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested and retreat to my
own rooms, awaiting there such communciations as the Duc might deem it
right to convey to me on the morrow.
"But on the morrow the Duc, with his wife and personal suite, quitted
Paris en route for Spain; the bulk of his retinue, including the
offending Abigail, was discharged; and, whether through these servants or
through the police, the story before evening was in the mouth of every
gossip in club or cafe,--exaggerated, distorted, to my ignominy and
shame. My detection in the cabinet, the sale of the jewels, the
substitution of paste by De N., who was known to be my servile imitator
and reputed to be my abject tool, all my losses on the turf, my debts,--
all these scattered fibres of flax were twisted together in a rope that
would have hanged a dog with a much better name than mine. If some
disbelieved that I could be a thief, few of those who should have known
me best held me guiltless of a baseness almost equal to that of theft,--
the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish woman."
"But you could have told your own tale, shown the letters you had
received from the Duchesse, and cleared away every stain on your honour."
"How?--shown her letters, ruined her character, even stated that she had
caused her jewels to be sold for the uses of a young roue! Ah, no,
Louvier! I would rather have gone to the galleys."
"H'm!" grunted Louvier again.
"The Duc generously gave me better means of righting myself. Three days
after he quitted Paris I received a letter from him, very politely
written, expressing his great regret that any words implying the
suspicion too monstrous and absurd to need refutation should have escaped
him in the surprise of the moment; but stating that since the offence I
had owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under the necessity
of asking the only reparation I could make. That if it 'deranged' me to
quit Paris, he would return to it for the purpose required; but that if I
would give him the additional satisfaction of suiting his convenience, he
should prefer to await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was detained by
the indisposition of the Duchesse."
"You have still that letter?" asked Louvier, quickly. "Yes; with other
more important documents constituting what I may call my pieces
justificatives.
"I need not say that I replied stating the time at which I should arrive
at Bayonne, and the hotel at which I should await the Duc's command.
Accordingly I set out that same day, gained the hotel named, despatched
to the Duc the announcement of my arrival, and was considering how I
should obtain a second in some officer quartered in the town--for my
soreness and resentment at the marked coldness of my former acquaintances
at Paris had forbidden me to seek a second among any of that faithless
number--when the Due himself entered my room. Judge of my amaze at
seeing him in person; judge how much greater the amaze became when he
advanced with a grave but cordial smile, offering me his hand!
"'Monsieur de Mauleon,' said he, 'since I wrote to you, facts have become
known to me which would induce me rather to ask your friendship than call
on you to defend your life. Madame la Duchesse has been seriously ill
since we left Paris, and I refrained from all explanations likely to add
to the hysterical excitement under which she was suffering. It is only
this day that her mind became collected, and she herself then gave me her
entire confidence. Monsieur, she insisted on my reading the letters that
you addressed to her. Those letters, Monsieur, suffice to prove your
innocence of any design against my peace. The Duchesse has so candidly
avowed her own indiscretion, has so clearly established the distinction
between indiscretion and guilt, that I have granted her my pardon with a
lightened heart and a firm belief that we shall be happier together than
we have been yet.'
"The Due continued his journey the next day, but he subsequently honoured
me with two or three letters written as friend to friend, and in which
you will find repeated the substance of what I have stated him to say by
word of mouth."
"But why not then have returned to Paris? Such letters, at least, you
might have shown, and in braving your calumniators you would have soon
lived them down."
"You forget that I was a ruined man. When, by the sale of my horses,
etc., my debts, including what was owed to the Duchesse, and which I
remitted to the Duc, were discharged, the balance left to me would not
have maintained me a week at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so
indignant. Paris and the Parisians had become to me so hateful. And to
crown all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose
fidelity I had so counted--well, I received a letter from her, gently but
coldly bidding me farewell forever. I do not think she believed me
guilty of theft; but doubtless the offence I had confessed, in order to
save the honour of the Duchesse, could but seem to her all sufficient!
Broken in spirit, bleeding at heart to the very core, still self-
destruction was no longer to be thought of. I would not die till I could
once more lift up my head as Victor de Mauleon."
"What then became of you, my poor Victor?"
"Ah! that is a tale too long for recital. I have played so many parts
that I am puzzled to recognize my own identity with the Victor de Mauleon
whose name I abandoned. I have been a soldier in Algeria, and won my
cross on the field of battle,--that cross and my colonel's letter are
among my _pieces justificatives_; I have been a gold-digger in
California, a speculator in New York, of late in callings obscure and
humble. But in all my adventures, under whatever name, I have earned
testimonials of probity, could manifestations of so vulgar a virtue be
held of account by the enlightened people of Paris. I come now to a
close. The Vicomte de Mauleon is about to re-appear in Paris, and the
first to whom he announces that sublime avatar is Paul Louvier. When
settled in some modest apartment, I shall place in your hands my _pieces
justificatives_. I shall ask you to summon my surviving relations or
connections, among which are the Counts de Vandemar, Beauvilliers, De
Passy, and the Marquis de Rochebriant, with any friends of your own who
sway the opinions of the Great World. You will place my justification
before them, expressing your own opinion that it suffices; in a word, you
will give me the sanction of your countenance. For the rest, I trust to
myself to propitiate the kindly and to silence the calumnious. I have
spoken; what say you?"
"You overrate my power in society. Why not appeal yourself to your high-
born relations?"
"No, Louvier; I have too well considered the case to alter my decision.
It is through you, and you alone, that I shall approach my relations.
My vindicator must be a man of whom the vulgar cannot say, 'Oh, he is a
relation,--a fellow-noble; those aristocrats whitewash each other.' It
must be an authority with the public at large,--a bourgeois, a
millionaire, a _roi de la Bourse_. I choose you, and that ends the
discussion."
Louvier could not help laughing good-humouredly at the _sang froid_ of
the Vicomte. He was once more under the domination of a man who had for
a time dominated all with whom he lived.
De Mauleon continued: "Your task will be easy enough. Society changes
rapidly at Paris. Few persons now exist who have more than a vague
recollection of the circumstances which can be so easily explained to my
complete vindication when the vindication comes from a man of your solid
respectability and social influence. Besides, I have political objects
in view. You are a Liberal; the Vandemars and Rochebriants are
Legitimists. I prefer a godfather on the Liberal side. _Pardieu, mon
ami_, why such coquettish hesitation? Said and done. Your hand on it."
"There is my hand then. I will do all I can to help you."
"I know you will, old friend; and you do both kindly and wisely." Here
De Mauleon cordially pressed the hand he held, and departed.
On gaining the street, the Vicomte glided into a neighbouring courtyard,
in which he had left his fiacre, and bade the coachman drive towards the
Boulevard Sebastopol. On the way, he took from a small bag that he had
left in the carriage the flaxen wig and pale whiskers which distinguished
M. Lebeau, and mantled his elegant habiliments in an immense cloak, which
he had also left in the fiacre. Arrived at the Boulevard Sebastopol, he
drew up the collar of the cloak so as to conceal much of his face,
stopped the driver, paid him quickly, and, bag in hand, hurried on to
another stand of fiacres at a little distance, entered one, drove to the
Faubourg Montmartre, dismissed the vehicle at the mouth of a street not
far from M. Lebeau's office, and gained on foot the private side-door of
the house, let himself in with his latchkey, entered the private room on
the inner side of his office, locked the door, and proceeded leisurely to
exchange the brilliant appearance which the Vicomte de Mauleon had borne
on his visit to the millionaire for the sober raiment and bourgeois air
of M. Lebeau, the letter-writer.
Then after locking up his former costume in a drawer of his secretaire,
he sat himself down and wrote the following lines:--
DEAR MONSIEUR GEORGES,--I advise you strongly, from information that
has just reached me, to lose no time in pressing M. Savarin to repay
the sum I recommended you to lend him, and for which you hold his
bill due this day. The scandal of legal measures against a writer
so distinguished should be avoided if possible. He will avoid it
and get the money somehow; but he must be urgently pressed. If you
neglect this warning, my responsibility is past. _Agreez mes
sentimens les plus sinceres_.
J. L.
