The Immortal, Alphonse Daudet [books you have to read .txt] 📗

garrison of the mediaeval mansion. If Sammy's money had not yet come in, she might borrow of the Freydets, who would not refuse to advance it for a few days. That very morning the Paris papers in their foreign news had announced the marriage of the French Ambassador at St. Petersburg, mentioned the presence of the Grand Duke, described the bride's dresses, and given the name of the Polish Bishop who had bestowed his blessing on the happy pair. Mamma might imagine how the breakfast party at Mousseaux was affected by this news, known to every one, and read by the hostess in the eyes of her guests and in their persistent conversation on other topics.
The poor Duchess, who had hardly spoken during the meal, felt, when it was over, that she must rouse herself, and in spite of the heat had carried off all her visitors in three carriages to the Chateau de la Poissonniere, where the poet Ronsard was born. Ten miles' drive in the sun on a road all cracks and dust, for the pleasure of hearing that hideous old Lani-boire, hoisted on to an old stump as decayed as himself, recite 'Mignonne, allons voir si la rose.' On the way home they had paid a visit to the Agricultural Orphanage and Training School founded by old Padovani. Mamma must know it all well; they had been over the dormitory and laundry, and inspected the implements and the copy-books; and the whole place was so hot and smelly; and Laniboire made a speech to the Agricultural Orphans, cropped like convicts, in which he assured them that the world was good. To finish themselves up they stopped again at the furnaces near Onzain, and spent an hour between the heat of the setting sun and the smoke and smell of coal from three huge belching brick chimneys, stumbling over the rails and dodging the trucks and shovels full of molten metal in gigantic masses, which dropped fire like dissolving blocks of red ice, All the time the Duchess went on unwearied, but looked at nothing, listened to nothing. She seemed to be having an animated discussion with old Bretigny, whose arm she had taken, and paid as little attention to the furnaces and forges as to the poet Ronsard or the Agricultural Orphanage.
Paul had reached this point in his letter, painting with terrible force, to console his mother for her absence, the dullness of life this year at Mousseaux, when he heard a gentle knock at his door. He thought it was the young critic, or the Vicomte de Bretigny, or perhaps Laniboire, who had been very unquiet of late. All these had often prolonged the evening in his room, which was the largest and most convenient, and had a dainty smoking-room attached to it. He was very much surprised on opening his door to see by the light of the painted windows that the long corridor of the first floor was absolutely silent and deserted, right away to the guard-room, where a ray of moonlight showed the outline of the carving on the massive door. He was going back to his seat, when there came another knock. It came from the smoking-room, which communicated by a little door under the hangings with a narrow passage in the thickness of the wall leading to the rooms of the Duchess. The arrangement, dating much earlier than the restorations, was not known to him: and, as he remembered certain conversations during the last few days, when the men were alone, and especially some of the stories of old Laniboire, his first thought was 'Whew! I hope she did not hear us.' He drew the bolt and the Duchess passed him without a word, and laying down on the table where he had been writing a bundle of yellowish papers, with which her delicate fingers played nervously, she said in a serious voice:
'I want you to give me your advice; you are my friend, and I have no one else to confide in.'
No one but him--poor woman! And she did not take warning from the cunning watchful predatory glance, which shifted from the letter, imprudently left open on the table where she might have read it, to herself as she stood there with her arms bare and heavy hair coiled round and round her head. He was thinking, 'What does she want? What has she come for?' She, absorbed in the requickened wrath which had been rising and choking her since the morning, panted out in low broken sentences, 'Just before you came, he sent Lavaux--he did! he sent Lavaux--to ask for his letters!--I gave his impudent cheeks such a reception that he won't come again.--His letters, indeed!--these are what he wanted.'
She held out the roll, her brief, as it might be called, against the partner of her affections, showing what she had paid to raise the man out of the gutter.
'Take them, look at them! They are really quite interesting! 'He turned over the odd collection, smelling now of the boudoir, but better suited to Bos's shop-front; there were mortgageable debts to dealers in curiosities, private jewellers, laundresses, yacht-builders, agents for imitation-champagne from Touraine, receipts from stewards and club-waiters, in short, every device of usury by which a man about Paris comes to bankruptcy. Mari' Anto muttered under her breath, 'The restoration of this gentleman cost more than Mousseaux, you see!... I have had all these things in a drawer for years, because I never destroy anything; but I solemnly declare that. I never thought of using them. Now I have changed my mind. He is rich. I want my money and interest. If he does not pay, I will take proceedings. Don't you think I am justified?'
'Entirely justified,' said Paul, stroking the point of his fair beard, 'only--was not the Prince d'Athis incapable of contracting when he signed these bills?'
'Yes, yes, I know... Bretigny told me about that... for as he could get nothing through Lavaux, he wrote to Bretigny to ask him to arbitrate. A fellow Academician, you know!' She laughed a laugh of impartial scorn for the official dignities of the Ambassador and the ex-Minister. Then she burst out indignantly, 'It is true that I need not have paid, but I chose he should be clean. I don't want any arbitration. I paid and will be paid back, or else I go into court, where the name and title of our representative at St. Petersburg will be dragged through the dirt. If I can only degrade the wretch, I shall have won the suit I care about.'
'I can't understand,' said Paul as he put down the packet so as to hide the awkward letter to Mamma, 'I can't understand how such proofs should have been left in your hands by a man as clever----'
'As D'Athis?'
The shrug of her shoulders sufficiently completed the interjection. But the madness of a woman's anger may always lead to something, so he drew her on. 'Yet he was one of our best diplomatists.'
'It was I who put him up to it. He knows nothing of the business but what I taught him.'
She hid her face, as for shame, in her hands, checking her sobs and gasping with fury. 'To think, to think, twelve years of my life to a man like that! And now he leaves me; he casts me off! Cast off by him! Cast off by him!'
It is some hours later, and she is still there. The young man is upon his knees and is whispering tenderly: 'When you know that I love you--when you know that I loved you always. Think, think!' The striking of a clock is heard in the far distance and wakening sounds go by in the growing light. She flies in dismay from the room, not caring so much as to take with her the brief of her intended revenge.
Revenge herself now? On whom? and what for? There was an end of her hatred now, for had she not her love? From this day she was another woman, such an one as when she is seen with her lover or her husband, supporting her unhasty steps upon the tender cradle of his arm, makes the common people say, 'Well, _she_ has got what she wants.' There are not so many of them as people think, particularly in society. Not that the mistress of a great house could be thinking exclusively of her own happiness; there were guests going away and other guests arriving and settling in, a second instalment, more numerous and less intimate, the whole in fact of the Academic set. There were the Duke de Courson-Launay, the Prince and Princess de Fitz-Roy, the De Circourts, the Huchenards, Saint-Avol the diplomatist, Moser and his daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Henry of the American embassy. It was a hard task to provide entertainment and occupation for all these people and to fuse such different elements. No one understood the business better than she, but just now it was a burden and a weariness to her. She would have liked to keep quiet and meditate on her happiness, to think of nothing else: and she could devise no other amusements for her guests than the invariable. visit to the fish preserves, to Ronsard's castle, and to the Orphanage. Her own pleasure was complete when her hand touched Paul's, as accident brought them together in the same boat or the same carriage.
In the course of one such pompous expedition on the river, the little fleet from Mousseaux, sailing on a shimmering mirror of silken awnings and ducal pennons, had gone somewhat further than usual. Paul Astier was in the boat in front of his lady's. He was sitting in the stern beside Laniboire, and was receiving the Academician's confidences. Having been invited to stay at Mousseaux till his report was finished, the old fool fancied that he was making good progress towards the coveted succession; and as always happens in such cases, he chose Paul as the confidant of his hopes. After telling him what he had said and what she had answered, and one thing and another, he was just saying, 'Now, young man, what would you do, if you were me?' when a clear voice of low pitch rang over the water from the boat behind them.
'Monsieur Astier!'
'Yes, Duchess.'
'See yonder, among the reeds. It looks like Vedrine.'
Vedrine it was, painting away, with his wife and children at his side, on an old flat-bottomed boat moored to a willow branch alongside of a green islet, where the wagtails were chirping themselves hoarse. The boats drew quickly up beside him, any novelty being a break to the everlasting tedium of fashionable society: and while the Duchess greeted with her sweetest smile Madame Vedrine, who had once been her guest at Mousseaux, the ladies looked with interest at the artist's strange home and the beautiful children, born of its light and its love, as they lay in the shelter of their green refuge on the clear, placid stream, which reflected the picture of their happiness. After the first greetings, Vedrine, palette in hand, gave Paul an account of the doings at Clos Jallanges, which was visible through the mists of the river, half-way up the hill side--a long low white house with an Italian roof. 'My dear fellow, they have all gone crazy there! The vacancy has turned their heads. They spend their days ticking votes--your mother, Picheral, and the poor invalid in her wheelchair. She too has caught the Academic fever, and talks of moving to Paris, entertaining and giving parties to help her brother on.' So Vedrine, to escape the general madness, camped out all day and worked in the open air--children and all; and pointing to his old boat he said, with a simple unresentful laugh, 'My dahabeeah, you see; my trip to the Nile.'
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