CHAPTER III.
When the door had closed on the Chevalier, Frederic's countenance became
very grave. Drawing his chair near to Alain, he said: "We have not seen
much of each other lately,--nay, no excuses; I am well aware that it
could scarcely be otherwise. Paris has grown so large and so subdivided
into sets, that the best friends belonging to different sets become as
divided as if the Atlantic flowed between them. I come to-day in
consequence of something I have just heard from Duplessis. Tell me, have
you got the money for the wood you sold to M. Collot a year ago?"
"No," said Alain, falteringly.
"Good heavens! none of it?"
"Only the deposit of ten per cent., which of course I spent, for it
formed the greater part of my income. What of Collot? Is he really
unsafe?"
"He is ruined, and has fled the country. His flight was the talk of the
Bourse this morning. Duplessis told me of it."
Alain's face paled. "How is Louvier to be paid? Read that letter!"
Lemercier rapidly scanned his eye over the contents of Louvier's letter.
"It is true, then, that you owe this man a year's interest--more than
7,000 louis?"
"Somewhat more--yes. But that is not the first care that troubles me
--Rochebriant may be lost, but with it not my honour. I owe the Russian
Prince 300 louis, lost to him last night at _ecarte_. I must find a
purchaser for my coupe and horses; they cost me 600 louis last year,--do
you know any one who will give me three?"
"Pooh! I will give you six; your _alezan_ alone is worth half the
money!"
"My dear Frederic, I will not sell them to you on any account. But you
have so many friends--"
"Who would give their soul to say, 'I bought these horses of
Rochebriant.' Of course I do. Ha! young Rameau, you are acquainted with
him?"
"Rameau! I never heard of him!"
"Vanity of vanities, then what is fame? Rameau is the editor of Le Sens
Commun. You read that journal?"
"Yes, it has clever articles, and I remember how I was absorbed in the
eloquent _romance_ which appeared in it."
"Ah! by the Signora Cicogna, with whom I think you were somewhat smitten
last year."
"Last year--was I? How a year can alter a man! But my debt to the
Prince. What has Le Sens Commun to do with my horses?"
"I met Rameau at Savarin's the other evening. He was making himself out
a hero and a martyr! his coupe had been taken from him to assist in a
barricade in that senseless _emeute_ ten days ago; the _coupe_ got
smashed, the horses disappeared. He will buy one of your horses and
_coupe_.
"Leave it to me! I know where to dispose of the other two horses. At
what hour do you want the money?"
"Before I go to dinner at the club."
"You shall have it within two hours; but you must not dine at the club
to-day. I have a note from Duplessis to invite you to dine with him
to-day!"
"Duplessis! I know so little of him!"
"You should know him better. He is the only man who can give you sound
advice as to this difficulty with Louvier; and he will give it the more
carefully and zealously because he has that enmity to Louvier which one
rival financier has to another. I dine with him too. We shall find an
occasion to consult him quietly; he speaks of you most kindly. What a
lovely girl his daughter is!"
"I dare say. Ah! I wish I had been less absurdly fastidious. I wish I
had entered the army as a private soldier six months ago; I should have
been a corporal by this time! Still it is not too late. When
Rochebriant is gone, I can yet say with the _Mouszquetaire_ in the
melodrame: 'I am rich--I have my honour and my sword!'"
"Nonsense! Rochebriant shall be saved; meanwhile I hasten to Rameau.
_Au revoir_, at the Hotel Duplessis--seven o'clock."
Lemercier went, and in less than two hours sent the Marquis bank-notes
for 600 louis, requesting an order for the delivery of the horses and
carriage.
That order written and signed, Alain hastened to acquit himself of his
debt of honour, and contemplating his probable ruin with a lighter heart
presented himself at the Hotel Duplessis.
Duplessis made no pretensions to vie with the magnificent existence of
Louvier. His house, though agreeably situated and flatteringly styled
the Hotel Duplessis, was of moderate size, very unostentatiously
furnished; nor was it accustomed to receive the brilliant motley crowds
which assembled in the salons of the elder financier.
Before that year, indeed, Duplessis had confined such entertainments as
he gave to quiet men of business, or a few of the more devoted and loyal
partisans of the Imperial dynasty; but since Valerie came to live with
him he had extended his hospitalities to wider and livelier circles,
including some celebrities in the world of art and letters as well as of
fashion. Of the party assembled that evening at dinner were Isaura, with
the Signora Venosta, one of the Imperial Ministers, the Colonel whom
Alain had already met at Lemercier's supper, _Deputes_ (ardent
Imperialists), and the Duchesse de Tarascon; these, with Alain and
Frederic, made up the party. The conversation was not particularly gay.
Duplessis himself, though an exceedingly well-read and able man, had not
the genial accomplishments of a brilliant host. Constitutionally grave
and habitually taciturn--though there were moments in which he was roused
out of his wonted self into eloquence or wit--he seemed to-day absorbed
in some engrossing train of thought. The Minister, the _Deputes_ and the
Duchesse de Tarascon talked politics, and ridiculed the trumpery _emeute_
of the 14th; exulted in the success of the plebiscite; and admitting,
with indignation, the growing strength of Prussia, and--with scarcely
less indignation, but more contempt, censuring the selfish egotism of
England in disregarding the due equilibrium of the European balance of
power,--hinted at the necessity of annexing Belgium as a
set-off against the results of Sadowa.
Alain found himself seated next to Isaura--to the woman who had so
captivated his eye and fancy on his first arrival in Paris.
Remembering his last conversation with Graham nearly a year ago, he felt
some curiosity to ascertain whether the rich Englishman had proposed to
her, and if so, been refused or accepted.
The first words that passed between them were trite enough, but after a
little pause in the talk, Alain said:
"I think Mademoiselle and myself have an acquaintance in common-Monsieur
Vane, a distinguished Englishman. Do you know if he be in Paris at
present? I have not seen him for many months."
"I believe he is in London; at least, Colonel Morley met the other day a
friend of his who said so."
Though Isaura strove to speak in a tone of indifference, Alain's ear
detected a ring of pain in her voice; and watching her countenance, he
was impressed with a saddened change in its expression. He was touched,
and his curiosity was mingled with a gentler interest as he said "When I
last saw M. Vane I should have judged him to be too much under the spell
of an enchantress to remain long without the pale of the circle she draws
around her."
Isaura turned her face quickly towards the speaker, and her lips moved,
but she said nothing audibly.
"Can there have been quarrel or misunderstanding?" thought Alain; and
after that question his heart asked itself, "Supposing Isaura were free,
her affections disengaged, could he wish to woo and to win her?" and his
heart answered--"Eighteen months ago thou wert nearer to her than now.
Thou wert removed from her for ever when thou didst accept the world as a
barrier between you; then, poor as thou wert, thou wouldst have preferred
her to riches. Thou went then sensible only of the ingenuous impulses of
youth, but the moment thou saidst, 'I am Rochebriaut, and having once
owned the claims of birth and station, I cannot renounce them for love,
Isaura became but a dream. Now that ruin stares thee in the face--now
that thou must grapple with the sternest difficulties of adverse fate--
thou hast lost the poetry of sentiment which could alone give to that
dream the colours and the form of human life." He could not again think
of that fair creature as a prize that he might even dare to covet. And
as he met her inquiring eyes, and saw her quivering lip, he felt
instinctively that Graham was dear to her, and that the tender interest
with which she inspired himself was untroubled by one pang of jealousy.
He resumed:
"Yes, the last time I saw the Englishman he spoke with such respectful
homage of one lady, whose hand he would deem it the highest reward of
ambition to secure, that I cannot but feel deep compassion for him if
that ambition has been foiled; and thus only do I account for his absence
from Paris."
"You are an intimate friend of Mr. Vane's?"
"No, indeed, I have not that honour; our acquaintance is but slight, but
it impressed me with the idea of a man of vigorous intellect, frank
temper, and perfect honour."
Isaura's face brightened with the joy we feel when we hear the praise of
those we love.
At this moment, Duplessis, who had been observing the Italian and the
young Marquis, for the first time during dinner, broke silence.
"Mademoiselle," he said, addressing Isaura across the table, "I hope I
have not been correctly informed that your literary triumph has induced
you to forego the career in which all the best judges concur that your
successes would be not less brilliant; surely one art does not exclude
another."
Elated by Alain's report of Graham's words, by the conviction that these
words applied to herself, and by the thought that her renunciation of the
stage removed a barrier between them, Isaura answered, with a sort of
enthusiasm:
"I know not, M. Duplessis, if one art excludes another; if there be
desire to excel in each. But I have long lost all desire to excel in the
art you refer to, and resigned all idea of the career in which it opens."
"So M. Vane told me," said Alain, in a whisper.
"When?"
"Last year--on the day that he spoke in terms of admiration so merited of
the lady whom M. Duplessis has just had the honour to address."
All this while, Valerie, who was seated at the further end of the table
beside the Minister, who had taken her in to dinner, had been watching,
with eyes, the anxious tearful sorrow of which none but her father had
noticed, the low-voiced confidence between Alain and the friend, whom
till that day she had so enthusiastically loved. Hitherto she had been
answering in monosyllables all attempts of the great man to draw her into
conversation; but now, observing how Isaura blushed and looked down, that
strange faculty in women, which we men call dissimulation, and which in
them is truthfulness to their own nature, enabled her to carry off the
sharpest anguish she had ever experienced, by a sudden burst of levity of
spirit. She caught up some commonplace the Minister had adapted to what
he considered the poverty of her understanding, with a quickness of
satire which startled that grave man, and he gazed at her astonished. Up
to that moment he had secretly admired her as a girl well brought up--as
girls fresh from a French convent are supposed to be; now, hearing her
brilliant rejoinder to his stupid observation, he said inly: "Dame! the
low birth of a financier's daughter shows itself."
But, being a clever man himself, her retort put him on his mettle, and he
became, to his own amazement, brilliant himself. With that matchless
quickness which belongs to Parisians, the guests around him seized the
new esprit de conversation which had been evoked between the statesman
and the childlike girl beside him; and as they caught up the ball,
lightly flung among them, they thought within themselves how much more
sparkling the financier's pretty, lively daughter was than that dark-eyed
young muse, of whom all the journalists of Paris were writing in a chorus
of welcome and applause, and who seemed not to have a word to say worth
listening to, except to the handsome young Marquis, whom, no doubt, she
wished to fascinate.
Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in intellect and in wit; and neither
Valerie nor Isaura cared, to the value of a bean-straw, about that
distinction. Each was thinking only of the prize which the humblest
peasant women have in common with the most brilliantly accomplished of
their sex--the heart of a man beloved.
