Part 6 (1/2)
Nathan laughed; he, the maker of scenes, to be trapped into playing one himself!
”Comedy is no longer there,” he said, nodding at the stage; ”it is here, in you.”
He took his opera-gla.s.s and looked about the theatre to recover countenance.
”You are not angry with me, I hope?” said the marquise, giving him a sidelong glance. ”I should have had your secret somehow. Let us make peace. Come and see me; I receive every Wednesday, and I am sure the dear countess will never miss an evening if I let her know you will be there. So I shall be the gainer. Sometimes she comes between four and five o'clock, and I'll be kind and add you to the little set of favorites I admit at that hour.”
”Ah!” cried Raoul, ”how the world judges; it calls you unkind.”
”So I am when I need to be,” she replied. ”We must defend ourselves. But your countess I adore; you will be contented with her; she is charming.
Your name will be the first engraved upon her heart with that infantine joy that makes a lad cut the initials of his love on the barks of trees.”
Raoul was aware of the danger of such conversations, in which a Parisian woman excels; he feared the marquise would extract some admission from him which she would instantly turn into ridicule among her friends. He therefore withdrew, prudently, as Lady Dudley entered.
”Well?” said the Englishwoman to the marquise, ”how far have they got?”
”They are madly in love; he has just told me so.”
”I wish he were uglier,” said Lady Dudley, with a viperish look at Comte Felix. ”In other respects he is just what I want him: the son of a Jew broker who died a bankrupt soon after his marriage; but the mother was a Catholic, and I am sorry to say she made a Christian of the boy.”
This origin, which Nathan thought carefully concealed, Lady Dudley had just discovered, and she enjoyed by antic.i.p.ation the pleasure she should have in launching some terrible epigram against Vandenesse.
”Heavens! I have just invited him to my house!” cried Madame d'Espard.
”Didn't I receive him at my ball?” replied Lady Dudley. ”Some pleasures, my dear love, are costly.”
The news of the mutual attachment between Raoul and Madame de Vandenesse circulated in the world after this, but not without exciting denials and incredulity. The countess, however, was defended by her friends, Lady Dudley, and Mesdames d'Espard and de Manerville, with an unnecessary warmth that gave a certain color to the calumny.
On the following Wednesday evening Raoul went to Madame d'Espard's, and was able to exchange a few sentences with Marie, more expressive by their tones than their ideas. In the midst of the elegant a.s.sembly both found pleasure in those enjoyable sensations given by the voice, the gestures, the att.i.tude of one beloved. The soul then fastens upon absolute nothings. No longer do ideas or even language speak, but things; and these so loudly, that often a man lets another pay the small attentions--bring a cup of tea, or the sugar to sweeten it--demanded by the woman he loves, fearful of betraying his emotion to eyes that seem to see nothing and yet see all. Raoul, however, a man indifferent to the eyes of the world, betrayed his pa.s.sion in his speech and was brilliantly witty. The company listened to the roar of a discourse inspired by the restraint put upon him; restraint being that which artists cannot endure. This Rolandic fury, this wit which slashed down all things, using epigram as its weapon, intoxicated Marie and amused the circle around them, as the sight of a bull goaded with banderols amuses the company in a Spanish circus.
”You may kick as you please, but you can't make a solitude about you,”
whispered Blondet.
The words brought Raoul to his senses, and he ceased to exhibit his irritation to the company. Madame d'Espard came up to offer him a cup of tea, and said loud enough for Madame de Vandenesse to hear:--
”You are certainly very amusing; come and see me sometimes at four o'clock.”
The word ”amusing” offended Raoul, though it was used as the ground of an invitation. Blondet took pity on him.
”My dear fellow,” he said, taking him aside into a corner, ”you are behaving in society as if you were at Florine's. Here no one shows annoyance, or spouts long articles; they say a few words now and then, they look their calmest when most desirous of flinging others out of the window; they sneer softly, they pretend not to think of the woman they adore, and they are careful not to roll like a donkey on the high-road.
In society, my good Raoul, conventions rule love. Either carry off Madame de Vandenesse, or show yourself a gentleman. As it is, you are playing the lover in one of your own books.”
Nathan listened with his head lowered; he was like a lion caught in a toil.
”I'll never set foot in this house again,” he cried. ”That papier-mache marquise sells her tea too dear. She thinks me amusing! I understand now why Saint-Just wanted to guillotine this whole cla.s.s of people.”
”You'll be back here to-morrow.”
Blondet was right. Pa.s.sions are as mean as they are cruel. The next day after long hesitation between ”I'll go--I'll not go,” Raoul left his new partners in the midst of an important discussion and rushed to Madame d'Espard's house in the faubourg Saint-Honore. Beholding Rastignac's elegant cabriolet enter the court-yard while he was paying his cab at the gate, Nathan's vanity was stung; he resolved to have a cabriolet himself, and its accompanying tiger, too. The carriage of the countess was in the court-yard, and the sight of it swelled Raoul's heart with joy. Marie was advancing under the pressure of her desires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying the mainspring. He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in the little salon. Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, she looked at his reflection in a mirror.
”Monsieur le ministre,” said Madame d'Espard, addressing Nathan, and presenting him to de Marsay by a glance, ”was maintaining, when you came in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secret understanding.