The Parisians — Volume 06, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton [ebook reader android TXT] 📗

adventurous traveller; but you would not guess him to be a student, an author, an artist.

While Duplessis thus observed the Vicomte de Mauleon, all the while seeming to lend an attentive ear to the whispered voice of the Minister by his side, Alain passed on into the ball-room. He was fresh enough to feel the exhilaration of the dance. Enguerrand (who had survived that excitement, and who habitually deserted any assembly at an early hour for the cigar and whist of his club) had made his way to De Mauleon, and there stationed himself. The lion of one generation has always a mixed feeling of curiosity and respect for the lion of a generation before him, and the young Vandemar had conceived a strong and almost an affectionate interest in this discrowned king of that realm in fashion which, once lost, is never to be regained; for it is only Youth that can hold its sceptre and command its subjects.

"In this crowd, Vicomte," said Enguerrand, "there must be many old acquaintances of yours?"

"Perhaps so, but as yet I have only seen new faces."

As he thus spoke, a middle-aged man, decorated with the grand cross of the Legion and half-a-dozen foreign orders, lending his arm to a lady of the same age radiant in diamonds, passed by towards the ball-room, and in some sudden swerve of his person, occasioned by a pause of his companion to adjust her train, he accidentally brushed against De Mauleon, whom he had not before noticed. Turning round to apologize for his awkwardness, he encountered the full gaze of the Vicomte, started, changed countenance, and hurried on his companion.

"Do you not recognize his Excellency?" said Enguerrand, smiling. "His cannot be a new face to you."

"Is it the Baron de Lacy?" asked De Mauleon.

"The Baron de Lacy, now Comte d'Epinay, ambassador at the Court of ——-, and, if report speak true, likely soon to exchange that post for the porte feuille of Minister."

"He has got on in life since I saw him last, the little Baron. He was then my devoted imitator, and I was not proud of the imitation."

"He has got on by always clinging to the skirts of some one stronger than himself,—to yours, I dare say, when, being a parvenu despite his usurped title of baron, he aspired to the entree into clubs and salons. The entree thus obtained, the rest followed easily; he became a millionaire through a wife's dot, and an ambassador through the wife's lover, who is a power in the State."

"But he must have substance in himself. Empty bags can not be made to stand upright. Ah! unless I mistake, I see some one I knew better. Yon pale, thin man, also with the grand cross—surely that is Alfred Hennequin. Is he too a decorated Imperialist? I left him a socialistic Republican."

"But, I presume, even then an eloquent avocat. He got into the Chamber, spoke well, defended the coup-d'etat. He has just been made Prefet of the great department of the a popular appointment. He bears a high character. Pray renew your acquaintance with him; he is coming this way."

"Will so grave a dignitary renew acquaintance with me? I doubt it."

But as De Mauleon said this, he moved from the column, and advanced towards the Prefet. Enguerrand followed him, and saw the Vicomte extend his hand to his old acquaintance.

The Prefet stared, and said, with frigid courtesy, "Pardon me,—some mistake."

"Allow me, Monsieur Hennequin," said Enguerrand, interposing, and wishing good-naturedly to save De Mauleon the awkwardness of introducing himself,—"allow me to reintroduce you to my kinsman, whom the lapse of years may well excuse you for forgetting, the Vicomte de Mauleon."

Still the Prefet did not accept the hand. He bowed with formal ceremony, said, "I was not aware that Monsieur le Vicomte had returned to Paris," and moving to the doorway, made his salutation to the hostess and disappeared.

"The insolent!" muttered Enguerrand.

"Hush!" said De Mauleon, quietly, "I can fight no more duels,—especially with a Prefet. But I own I am weak enough to feel hurt at such a reception from Hennequin, for he owed me some obligations,—small, perhaps, but still they were such as might have made me select him, rather than Louvier, as the vindicator of my name, had I known him to be so high placed. But a man who has raised himself into an authority may well be excused for forgetting a friend whose character needs defence. I forgive him."

There was something pathetic in the Vicomte's tone which touched Enguerrand's warm if light heart. But De Mauleon did not allow him time to answer. He went on quickly through an opening in the gay crowd, which immediately closed behind him, and Enguerrand saw him no more that evening.

Duplessis ere this had quitted his seat by the Minister, drawn thence by a young and very pretty girl resigned to his charge by a cavalier with whom she had been dancing. She was the only daughter of Duplessis, and he valued her even more than the millions he had made at the Bourse. "The Princess," she said, "has been swept off in the train of some German Royalty; so, petit pere, I must impose myself on thee."

The Princess, a Russian of high rank, was the chaperon that evening of
Mademoiselle Valerie Duplessis.

"And I suppose I must take thee back into the ballroom," said the financier, smiling proudly, "and find thee partners."

"I don't want your aid for that, Monsieur; except this quadrille, my list is pretty well filled up."

"And I hope the partners will be pleasant. Let me know who they are," he whispered, as they threaded their way into the ball-room.

The girl glanced at her tablet.

"Well, the first on the list is milord somebody, with an unpronounceable
English name."

"Beau cavalier?"

"No; ugly, old too; thirty at least."

Duplessis felt relieved. He did not wish his daughter to fall in love with an Englishman.

"And the next?"

"The next?" she said hesitatingly, and he observed that a soft blush accompanied the hesitation.

"Yes, the next. Not English too?"

"Oh, no; the Marquis de Rochebriant."

"Ah! who presented him to thee?"

"Thy friend, petit pere, M. de Braze."

Duplessis again glanced at his daughter's face; it was bent over her bouquet.

"Is he ugly also?"

"Ugly!" exclaimed the girl, indignantly; "why, he is—" she checked herself and turned away her head.

Duplessis became thoughtful. He was glad that he had accompanied his child into the ball-room; he would stay there, and keep watch on her and Rochebriant also.

Up to that moment he had felt a dislike to Rochebriant. That young noble's too obvious pride of race had nettled him, not the less that the financier himself was vain of his ancestry. Perhaps he still disliked Alain, but the dislike was now accompanied with a certain, not hostile, interest; and if he became connected with the race, the pride in it might grow contagious.

They had not been long in the ball-room before Alain came up to claim his promised partner. In saluting Duplessis, his manner was the same as usual, not more cordial, not less ceremoniously distant. A man so able as the financier cannot be without quick knowledge of the human heart.

"If disposed to fall in love with Valerie," thought Duplessis, "he would have taken more pains to please her father. Well, thank heaven, there are better matches to be found for her than a noble without fortune and a Legitimist without career."

In fact, Alain felt no more for Valerie than for any other pretty girl in the room. In talking with the Vicomte de Braze in the intervals of the dance, he had made some passing remark on her beauty. De Braze had said, "Yes, she is charming; I will present you," and hastened to do so before Rochebriant even learned her name. So introduced, he could but invite her to give him her first disengaged dance, and when that was fixed, he had retired, without entering into conversation.

Now, as they took their places in the quadrille, he felt that effort of speech had become a duty, if not a pleasure; and of course, he began with the first commonplace which presented itself to his mind.

"Do you not think it a very pleasant ball, Mademoiselle?"

"Yes," dropped, in almost inaudible reply, from Valerie's rosy lips.

"And not over-crowded, as most balls are?"

Valerie's lips again moved, but this time quite inaudibly. The obligations of the figure now caused a pause. Alain racked his brains and began,

"They tell me the last season was more than usually gay; of that I cannot judge, for it was well-nigh over when I came to Paris for the first time."

Valerie looked up with a more animated expression than her childlike face had yet shown, and said, this time distinctly, "This is my first ball, Monsieur le Marquis."

"One has only to look at Mademoiselle to divine that fact," replied
Alain, gallantly.

Again the conversation was interrupted by the dance; but the ice between the two was now broken; and when the quadrille was concluded, and Rochebriant led the fair Valerie back to her father's side, she felt as if she had been listening to the music of the spheres, and that the music had now suddenly stopped. Alain, alas for her! was under no such pleasing illusion. Her talk had seemed to him artless indeed, but very insipid, compared with the brilliant conversation of the wedded Parisiennes with whom he more habitually danced; and it was with rather a sensation of relief that he made his parting bow, and receded into the crowd of bystanders.

Meanwhile De Mauleon had quitted the assemblage, walking slowly through the deserted streets towards his apartment. The civilities he had met at Louvier's dinner-party, and the marked distinction paid to him by kinsmen of rank and position so unequivocal as Alain and Enguerrand, had softened his mood and cheered his spirits. He had begun to question himself whether a fair opening to his political ambition was really forbidden to him under the existent order of things, whether it necessitated the employment of such dangerous tools as those to which anger and despair had reconciled his intellect. But the pointed way in which he had been shunned or slighted by the two men who belonged to political life—two men who in youth had looked up to himself, and whose dazzling career of honours was identified with the Imperial system—reanimated his fiercer passions and his more perilous designs. The frigid accost of Hennequin more especially galled him; it wounded not only his pride but his heart; it had the venom of ingratitude, and it is the peculiar privilege of ingratitude to wound hearts that have learned to harden themselves to the hate or contempt of men to whom no services have been rendered. In some private affair concerning his property, De Mauleon had had occasion to consult Hennequin, then a rising young avocat. Out of that consultation a friendship had sprung up, despite the differing habits and social grades of the two men. One day, calling on Hennequin, he found him in a state of great nervous excitement. The avocat had received a public insult in the salon of a noble, to whom De Mauleon had introduced him, from a man who pretended to the hand of a young lady to whom Hennequin was attached, and indeed almost affianced. The man was a notorious spadassin,—a duellist little less renowned for skill in all weapons than De Mauleon himself. The affair had been such that Hennequin's friends assured him he had no choice but to challenge this bravo. Hennequin, brave enough at the bar, was no hero before sword-point or pistol. He was utterly ignorant of the use of either weapon; his death in the encounter with an antagonist so formidable seemed to him certain, and life was so precious,—an honourable and distinguished career opening before him, marriage with the woman he loved. Still he had the Frenchman's point of honour. He had been told that he must fight; well, then, he must. He asked De Mauleon to be one of his seconds, and in asking him, sank in his chair, covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears.

"Wait till to-morrow," said De Mauleon; "take no step till then.
Meanwhile, you are in my hands, and I answer