Kitabı oku: «The Deputy of Arcis», sayfa 24

VIII. SOME OLD ACQUAINTANCES

A few evenings after the one on which Sallenauve and Marie-Gaston had taken Jacques Bricheteau to Saint-Sulpice to hear the Signora Luigia’s voice, the church was the scene of a curious little incident that passed by almost wholly unperceived. A young man entered hastily by a side-door; he seemed agitated, and so absorbed in some anxiety that he forgot to remove his hat. The beadle caught him by the arm, and his face became livid, but, turning round, he saw at once that his fears were causeless.

“Is your hat glued on your head, young man?” said the beadle, pompously.

“Oh, pardon me, monsieur,” he replied, snatching it off; “I forgot myself.”

Then he slipped into the thickest of the crowd and disappeared.

A few seconds after the irruption of this youth the same door gave access to a man around whose powerful, seamed face was the collar of a white beard, which, combined with a thick shock of hair, also white but slightly reddish in tone and falling almost to his shoulders, gave him very much the air of an old Conventional, or a Bernardin de Saint-Pierre who had had the small-pox. His face and his hair placed him in the sixties, but his robust figure, the energetic decision of his movements, and, above all, the piercing keenness of the glance which he cast about him on entering the church, showed a powerful organization on which the passage of years had made little or no impression. No doubt, he was in search of the young fellow who had preceded him; but he did not commit the mistake of entering the crowd, where he knew of course that the youth had lost himself. Like a practised hunter, he saw that pursuit was useless, and he was just about to leave the church when, after a short organ prelude, the contralto of the signora delivering its solemn notes gave forth that glorious harmony to which is sung the Litany of the Virgin. The beauty of the voice, the beauty of the chant, the beauty of the words of the sacred hymn, which the fine method of the singer brought out distinctly, made a singular impression on the stalwart stranger. Instead of leaving the church, he put himself in the shadow of a column, against which he leaned as he stood; but as the last notes of the divine canticle died away among the arches of the church, he knelt on the pavement, and whoever had chanced to look that way would have seen two heavy tears rolling slowly down his cheeks. The benediction given, and the crowd dispersing, he rose, wiped his eyes, and, muttering, “What a fool I am!” left the church. Then he went to the Place Saint-Sulpice, and, beckoning to a coach on the stand, he said to the driver, —

“Rue de Provence, my man, quick! there’s fat in it.”

Reaching the house, he went rapidly up the stairway, and rang at the door of an apartment on the first floor.

“Is my aunt at home?” he inquired of the Negro who opened it. Then he followed the man, and was presently ushered into a salon where the Negro announced, —

“Monsieur de Saint-Esteve.”

The salon which the famous chief of the detective police now entered was remarkable for the luxury, but still more for the horribly bad taste, of its appointments. Three women of advanced age were seated round a card-table earnestly employed in a game of dominoes. Three glasses and an empty silver bowl which gave forth a vinous odor showed that the worship of double-sixes was not without its due libations.

“Good evening, mesdames,” said the chief of police, sitting down; “for I have something to say to each of you.”

“We’ll listen presently,” said his aunt; “you can’t interrupt the game. It won’t be long; I play for four.”

“White all round!” said one of the hags.

“Domino!” cried the Saint-Esteve. “I win; you have four points between you two, and the whites are all out. Well, my dear, what is it?” she said, turning to her nephew, after a rather stormy reckoning among the witches was over.

“You, Madame Fontaine,” said the chief of police, addressing one of the venerable beings, whose head was covered with disorderly gray hair and a battered green bonnet, – “you neglect your duty; you have sent me no report, and, on the contrary, I get many complaints of you. The prefect has a great mind to close your establishment. I protect you on account of the services you are supposed to render us; but if you don’t render them, I warn you, without claiming any gifts of prediction, that your fate-shop will be shut up.”

“There now!” replied the pythoness, “you prevented me from hiring Mademoiselle Lenormand’s apartment in the rue de Tournon, and how can you expect me to make reports about the cooks and clerks and workmen and grisettes who are all I get where I am? If you had let me work among the great folks, I’d make you reports and plenty of them.”

“I don’t see how you can say that, Madame Fontaine,” said Madame de Saint-Esteve. “I am sure I send you all my clients. It was only the other day,” continued the matrimonial agent, “I sent you that Italian singer, living with a deputy who is against the government; why didn’t you report about that?”

“There’s another thing,” said the chief of police, “which appears in several of the complaints that I received about you, – that nasty animal – ”

“What, Astaroth?” said Madame Fontaine.

“Yes, that batrachian, that toad, to come down to his right name. It seems he nearly killed a woman who was pregnant – ”

“Well, well,” interrupted the sorceress, “if I am to tell fortunes alone, you might as well guillotine me at once. Because a fool of a woman lay-in with a dead child, must toads be suppressed in nature? Why did God make them?”

“My dear woman,” said the chief, “did you never hear that in 1617 a learned man was put to death for having a toad in a bottle?”

“Yes, I know that; but we are not in those light ages,” replied Madame Fontaine, facetiously.

“As for you, Madame Nourrisson, the complaint is that you gather your fruit unripe. You ought to know by this time the laws and regulations, and I warn you that everything under twenty-one years of age is forbidden. I wonder I have to remind you of it. Now, aunt, what I have to say to you is confidential.”

Thus dismissed, two of the Fates departed.

Since the days when Jacques Collin had abdicated his former kingship and had made himself, as they say, a new skin in the police force, Jacqueline Collin, though she had never put herself within reach of the law, had certainly never donned the robe of innocence. But having attained, like her nephew, to what might fairly be called opulence, she kept at a safe and respectful distance from the Penal Code, and under cover of an agency that was fairly avowable, she sheltered practices more or less shady, on which she continued to bestow an intelligence and an activity that were really infernal.

“Aunt,” said Vautrin, “I have so many things to say to you that I don’t know where to begin.”

“I should think so! It is a week since I’ve seen you.”

“In the first place, I must tell you that I have just missed a splendid chance.”

“What sort of chance?” asked Jacqueline.

“In the line of my odious calling. But this time the capture was worth making. Do you remember that little Prussian engraver about whom I sent you to Berlin?”

“The one who forged those Vienna bank bills in that wonderful way?”

“Yes. I just missed arresting him near Saint-Sulpice. But I followed him into the church, where I heard your Signora Luigia.”

“Ah!” said Jacqueline, “she has made up her mind at last, and has left that imbecile of a sculptor.”

“It is about her that I have come to talk to you,” said Vautrin. “Here are the facts. The Italian opera season in London has begun badly, – their prima donna is taken ill. Sir Francis Drake, the impresario, arrived in Paris yesterday, at the Hotel des Princes, rue de Richelieu, in search of a prima donna, at any rate pro tem. I have been to see him in the interests of the signora. Sir Francis Drake is an Englishman, very bald, with a red nose, and long yellow teeth. He received me with cold politeness, and asked in very good French what my business was.”

“Did you propose to him Luigia?”

“That was what I went for, – in the character, be it understood, of a Swedish nobleman. He asked if her talent was known. ‘Absolutely unknown,’ I replied. ‘It is risky,’ said Sir Francis; ‘nevertheless arrange to let me hear her.’ I told him that she was staying with her friend Madame de Saint-Esteve, at whose house I could take the liberty to invite him to dinner.”

“When?” asked Jacqueline.

“To-day is the 19th; I said the 21st. Order the dinner from Chevet for fifteen persons, and send for your client Bixiou to make you out the list. Tell him you want the chief men of the press, a lawyer to settle the terms of the contract, and a pianist to accompany the signora. Let her know what hangs upon it. Sir Francis Drake and I will make up the number. Useless to tell you that I am your friend Comte Halphertius, who, having no house in Paris, gives this dinner at yours. Mind that everything is done in the best taste.”

In designating Bixiou to his aunt as the recruiting-officer of the dinner, Vautrin knew that through the universality of his relations with writing, singing, designing, eating, living, and squirming Paris, no one was as capable as he of spreading the news of the dinner broadcast.

At seven o’clock precisely all the guests named by Desroches to Maxime, plus Desroches himself, were assembled in the salon of the rue de Provence, when the Negro footman opened the door and announced Sir Francis Drake and his Excellency the Comte Halphertius. The dress of the Swedish nobleman was correct to the last degree, – black coat, white cravat, and white waistcoat, on which glowed the ribbon of an order hanging from his neck; the rest of his decorations were fastened to his coat by chainlets. At the first glance which he cast upon the company, Vautrin had the annoyance of beholding that Jacqueline’s habits and instincts had been more potent than his express order, – for a species of green and yellow turban surmounted her head in a manner which he felt to be ridiculous; but thanks to the admirable manner in which the rest of his programme had been carried out, the luckless coiffure was forgiven.

As for Signora Luigia, dressed in black, which was customary with her, and having had the good sense to reject the services of a coiffeur, she was royally beautiful. An air of melancholy gravity, expressed by her whole person, inspired a sentiment of respect which surprised the men who on Bixiou’s invitation were there to judge of her. The only special presentation that was made among the guests was that of Desroches to Vautrin, which Bixiou made in the following lively formula: —

“Maitre Desroches, the most intelligent solicitor of modern times – Comte Halphertius of Sweden.”

As for Sir Francis Drake, he seemed at first inclined to disdain the influence of the dramatic newspapers, whose representatives were there assembled; but presently recognizing Felicien Vernou and Lousteau, two noted men of that secondary press, he greeted them heartily and shook them by the hand.

Before dinner was announced, Comte Halphertius judged it advisable to make a little speech.

“Dear madame,” he said to his aunt, “you are really a fairy godmother. This is the first time I have ever been in a Parisian salon, and here you have assembled to meet me all that literature, the arts, and the legal profession can offer of their best. I, who am only a northern barbarian, – though our country, too, can boast of its celebrities, – Linnaeus, Berzelius, Thorwaldsen, Tegner, Franzen, Geier, and the charming novelist Frederika Bremer, – I find myself a cipher in such company.”

“But in Bernadotte France and Sweden clasped hands,” replied Madame de Saint-Esteve, whose historical erudition went as far as that.

“It is very certain,” said Vautrin, “that our beloved sovereign, Charles XIV. – ”

The announcement of dinner by a majordomo, who threw open the double doors of the salon, put an end to this remark. Jacqueline took Vautrin’s arm, saying in a whisper as they walked along, —

“Have I done things all right?”

“Yes,” replied Vautrin, “it is all in good style, except that devil of a turban of yours, which makes you look like a poll-parrot.”

“Why, no,” said Jacqueline, “not at all; with my Javanese face” (she was born on the island of Java), “oriental things set me off.”

Madame de Saint-Esteve placed Sir Francis Drake upon her right, and Desroches on her left; Vautrin sat opposite, flanked on either side by Emile Blondet, of the “Debats,” and the Signoria Luigia; the rest of the company placed themselves as they pleased. The dinner, on the whole, was dull; Bixiou, at Madame de Saint-Esteve’s request, had warned the party to risk nothing that might offend the chaste ears of the pious Italian. Forced to mind their morals, as a celebrated critic once observed, these men of wit and audacity lost their spirit; and, taking refuge in the menu, which was excellent, they either talked together in a low voice, or let the conversation drag itself along in bourgeois commonplaces. They ate and they drank, but they did not dine. Bixiou, incapable of bearing this state of things during a whole dinner, determined to create a reaction. The appearance of this Swedish magnate, evidently on intimate terms with the Saint-Esteve, puzzled him. He noticed a certain insufficiency in Vautrin, and thought to himself that if he were really a great nobleman, he would be more equal to the occasion, and give a tone to the feast. He determined, therefore, to test him, and thus provide amusement, at any rate, for himself. So, at the end of the second course, he suddenly said from his end of the table, —

“Monsieur le comte, you are too young, of course, to have known Gustavus III., whom Scribe and Auber have set in opera, while the rest of us glorify him in a galop.”

“I beg your pardon,” replied Vautrin, jumping at the chance thus given him, “I am nearly sixty years of age, which makes me thirteen in 1792, when our beloved sovereign was killed by the assassin Ankarstroem, so that I can well remember that period.”

Thus, by means of a little volume entitled “Characters and Anecdotes of the Court of Sweden,” printed in 1808, and bought on the quays in the interests of his Swedish incarnation, the chief of the detective police evaded the trap. He did better. The faucet being open, he poured forth such an abundance of erudition and detailed circumstances, he related so many curious and secret anecdotes, especially relating to the coup d’etat by which, in 1772, Gustavus III. had freed his crown, – in short, he was so precise and so interesting that as they left the table Emile Blondet said to Bixiou, —

“I thought, as you did, that a foreign count in the hands of a marriage agent was a very suspicious character; but he knows the court of Sweden in a way that it was quite impossible to get out of books. He is evidently a man well born; one might make some interesting articles out of the stories he has just told.”

“Yes,” said Bixiou, “and I mean to cultivate his acquaintance; I could make a good deal out of him in the Charivari.”

“You have better find out first,” said Desroches, “whether he has enough French humor to like being caricatured.”

Presently the first notes of the piano gave notice that the Signora Luigia was about to mount the breach. She first sang the romance in “Saul” with a depth of expression which moved the whole company, even though that areopagus of judges were digesting a good dinner, as to which they had not restrained themselves. Emile Blondet, who was more of a political thinker than a man of imagination, was completely carried away by his enthusiasm. As the song ended, Felicien Vernou and Lousteau went up to Sir Francis Drake and reproached him for wishing to take such a treasure from France, at the same time flattering him for his cleverness as an impresario.

La Luigia then sang an air from the “Nina” of Paesiello; and in that – the part being very dramatic – she showed a talent for comedy second only to her vocal gift. It was received with truly genuine applause; but what assured and completed her success with these trained judges was her modesty and the sort of ignorance in which she still remained of her amazing talent, – in the midst, too, of praises which might have turned her head. Accustomed to frenzied self-love and the insolent pretensions of the veriest sparrow of the opera, these journalists were amazed and touched by the humility, the simplicity of this empress, who seemed quite astonished at the effect she produced.

The success of the trial passed all expectation. There was but one voice as to the desirability of immediately engaging her; and Sir Francis Drake, Vautrin, and Desroches presently passed into an adjoining room to draw up the terms of the contract. As soon as that was done, Vautrin returned to the salon for la diva, requesting her to hear the contract read and to affix her signature. Her departure for London without further delay was fixed for the following day in company with Sir Francis Drake.

A few days later the packet-boat from Boulogne conveyed to England another personage of this history. Jacques Bricheteau, having obtained Sallenauve’s present address from Madame de l’Estorade, and considering the danger which threatened the new deputy extremely urgent, decided not to write, but to go himself to England and confer with him in person. When he reached London, he was surprised to learn that Hanwell was the most celebrated insane asylum in Great Britain. Had he reflected on the mental condition of Marie-Gaston, he might have guessed the truth. As it was, he felt completely bewildered; but not committing the blunder of losing his time in useless conjectures, he went on without a moment’s delay to Hanwell, which establishment is only about nine miles from London, pleasantly situated at the foot of a hill on the borders of Middlesex and Surrey.

After a long detention in the waiting-room, he was at last enabled to see his friend at a moment when Marie-Gaston’s insanity, which for several days had been in the stages of mania, was yielding to the care of the doctor, and showed some symptoms of a probable recovery. As soon as Sallenauve was alone with the organist, he inquired the reason that led him to follow him; and he heard, with some emotion, the news of the intrigues which Maxime de Trailles had apparently organized against him. Returning to his original suspicions, he said to Jacques Bricheteau, —

“Are you really sure that that person who declared himself my father was the Marquis de Sallenauve, and that I am truly his son?”

“Mother Marie-des-Anges and Achille Pigoult, by whom I was warned of this plot, have no more doubt than I have of the existence of the Marquis de Sallenauve; this gossip with which they threaten you has, in my judgment, but one dangerous aspect. I mean that by your absence you are giving a free field to your adversaries.”

“But,” replied the deputy, “the Chamber will not condemn me without a hearing. I wrote to the president and asked for leave of absence, and I took the precaution to request de l’Estorade, who knows the reason of my absence, to be kind enough to guarantee me, should my absence be called in question.”

“I think you also wrote to Madame de l’Estorade, didn’t you?”

“I wrote only to her,” replied Sallenauve. “I wanted to tell her about the great misfortune of our mutual friend, and, at the same time, I asked her to explain to her husband the kind service I requested him to do for me.”

“If that is so,” said Bricheteau, “you need not count for one moment on the l’Estorades. A knowledge of this trick which is being organized against you has reached their ears and affected their minds, I am very sure.”

He then related the reception he had met with from Madame de l’Estorade, and the uncivil remarks she had made about Sallenauve, from which he concluded that in the struggle about to take place no assistance could be relied on from that direction.

“I have every reason to be surprised,” said Sallenauve, “after the warm assurances Madame de l’Estorade has given me of an unfailing good-will. However,” he added, philosophically, “everything is possible in this world; and calumny has often undermined friendship.”

“You understand, therefore,” said Bricheteau, “that it is all-important to start for Paris, without a moment’s delay. Your stay here, all things considered, is only relatively necessary.”

“On the contrary,” said Sallenauve, “the doctor considers that my presence here may be of the utmost utility. He has not yet let me see the patient, because he expects to produce some great result when I do see him.”

“That is problematical,” returned Jacques Bricheteau; “whereas by staying here you are compromising your political future and your reputation in the most positive manner. Such a sacrifice no friendship has the right to demand of you.”

“Let us talk of it with the doctor,” said Sallenauve, unable to deny the truth of what Bricheteau said.

On being questioned, the doctor replied that he had just seen symptoms in the patient which threatened another paroxysm.

“But,” cried Sallenauve, eagerly, “you are not losing hope of a cure, are you, doctor?”

“Far from that. I have perfect faith in the ultimate termination of the case; but I see more delay in reaching it than at first I expected,” replied the doctor.

“I have recently been elected to our Chamber of deputies,” said Sallenauve, “and I ought to be in my seat at the opening of the session; in fact, my interests are seriously concerned, and my friend Monsieur Bricheteau has come over to fetch me. If therefore I can be sure that my presence here is not essential – ”

“By all means go,” said the doctor. “It may be a long time before I could allow you to see the patient; therefore you can leave without the slightest self-reproach. In fact, you can really do nothing here at present. Trust him to Lord Lewin and me; I assure you that I shall make his recovery, of which I have no doubt, a matter of personal pride and self-love.”

Sallenauve pressed the doctor’s hand gratefully, and started for London without delay. Arriving there at five o’clock, the travellers were unable to leave before midnight; meantime their eyes were struck at every turn by those enormous posters which English puffism alone is able to produce, announcing the second appearance in Her Majesty’s theatre of the Signora Luigia. The name alone was enough to attract the attention of both travellers; but the newspapers to which they had recourse for further information furnished, as is customary in England, so many circumstantial details about the prima donna that Sallenauve could no longer doubt the transformation of his late housekeeper into an operatic star of the first magnitude.

Going to the box-office, which he found closed, every seat having been sold before mid-day, Sallenauve considered himself lucky to obtain two seats from a speculator, at the enormous cost of five pounds apiece. The opera was “La Pazza d’Amore” of Paesiello. When the curtain rose, Sallenauve, who had spent the last two weeks at Hanwell, among the insane, could all the more appreciate the remarkable dramatic talent his late housekeeper displayed in the part of Nina. Even Bricheteau, though annoyed at Sallenauve’s determination to be present, was so carried away by the power of the singer that he said to his companion rather imprudently, —

“Politics have no triumphs as that. Art alone is deity – ”

“And Luigia is its prophet!” added Sallenauve.

Never, perhaps, had the Italian opera-house in London presented a more brilliant sight; the whole audience was in a transport of enthusiasm, and bouquets fairly rained upon the stage.

As they left the theatre, Bricheteau looked at his watch; it was a quarter to eleven; they had thus ample time to take the steamer leaving, as the tide served, at midnight. But when the organist turned to make this remark to Sallenauve, who was behind him, he saw nothing of his man; the deputy had vanished!

Ten minutes later the maid of the Signora Luigia entered her mistress’s dressing-room, which was filled with distinguished Englishmen presented by Sir Francis Drake to the new star, and gave her a card. On reading the name the prima donna turned pale and whispered a few words to the waiting-woman; then she seemed so anxious to be rid of the crowd who were pressing round her that her budding adorers were inclined to be angry. But a great singer has rare privileges, and the fatigue of the part into which the diva had just put so much soul seemed so good an excuse for her sulkiness that her court dispersed without much murmuring.

Left alone, the signora rapidly resumed her usual dress, and the directors’ carriage took her back to the hotel where she had stayed since arriving in London. On entering her salon she found Sallenauve, who had preceded her.

“You in London, monsieur!” she said; “it is like a dream!”

“Especially to me,” replied Sallenauve, “who find you here, after searching hopelessly for you in Paris – ”

“Did you take that pains? – why?”

“You left me in so strange a manner, and your nature is so rash, you knew so little of Paris, and so many dangers might threaten your inexperience, that I feared for you.”

“Suppose harm did happen to me; I was neither your wife, nor your sister, nor your mistress; I was only your – ”

“I thought,” said Sallenauve, hastily, “that you were my friend.”

“I was – under obligation to you,” she replied. “I saw that I was becoming an embarrassment in your new situation. What else could I do but release you from it?”

“Who told you that you were an embarrassment to me? Have I ever said or intimated anything of the kind? Could I not speak to you, as I did, about your professional life without wounding so deeply your sensibility?”

“People feel things as they feel them,” replied Luigia. “I had the inward consciousness that you would rather I were out of your house than in it. My future you had already given me the means to secure; you see for yourself it is opening in a manner that ought to reassure you.”

“It seems to me so brilliant that I hope you will not think me indiscreet if I ask whose hand, more fortunate than mine, has produced this happy result.”

“That of a great Swedish nobleman,” replied Luigia, without hesitation. “Or rather, I should say, as the friend of a lady who took an interest in me, he procured me an engagement at Her Majesty’s Theatre; the kind encouragement of the public has done the rest.”

“Say, rather, your own talent; I was present at the performance this evening.”

Making him a coquettish courtesy, Luigia said, —

“I hope you were satisfied with your humble servant.”

“Your musical powers did not surprise me, for those I knew already; but those transports of dramatic passion, your powerful acting, so sure of itself, did certainly astonish me.”

“It comes from having suffered much,” replied Luigia; “suffering is a great teacher.”

“Suffered? Yes, I know you did, in Italy. But I have liked to feel that after your arrival in France – ”

“Always; I have always suffered,” she said in a voice of emotion. “I was not born under a happy star.”

“That ‘always’ seems like a reproach to me,” said Sallenauve, “and yet I do not know what wrong I can have done you.”

“You have done me no wrong; the harm was there!” she cried, striking her breast, – “within me!”

“Probably some foolish fancy, such as that of leaving my house suddenly, because your mistaken sense of honor made you think yourself in my way.”

“Not mistaken,” she replied. “I know what was in your thoughts. If only on account of what you had done for me, I knew I could never aspire to your esteem.”

“But, my dear Luigia, I call such ideas absurd. Have I ever shown you any want of consideration? How could I? Your conduct has always been exemplary.”

“Yes, I tried to do everything that would give you a good opinion of me; but I was none the less the widow of Benedetto.”

“What! can you suppose that that misfortune, the result of a just vengeance – ”

“Ah! no, it is not the death of that man that lowered me in your eyes; on the contrary. But I had been the wife of a buffoon, of a police-spy, of a base man, ready to sell me to any one who would give him money.”

“As long as that situation lasted, I thought you deeply to be pitied; but despised, never!”

“And,” continued the Italian, more excitedly, “we had lived two years under the same roof, you and I alone.”

“Yes, and I found my comfort in it.”

“Did you think me ugly?”

“You know better than that, for I made my finest statue from you.”

“Foolish?”

“No one was ever foolish who could act such a part as you did to-night.”

“Then you must see that you despised me.”

Sallenauve seemed wholly surprised by this deduction; he thought himself very clever in replying, —

“It seems to me that if I had behaved to you in any other manner you would have the right to say that I despised you.”

But he had to do with a woman who in everything, in her friendships, her hatreds, her actions, as in her words, went straight to her point. As if she feared not to be fully understood, she went on: —

“To-day, monsieur, I can tell you all, for I speak of the past; the future has opened before me, as you see. From the day you were good to me and by your generous protection I escaped an infamous outrage, my heart has been wholly yours.”

Sallenauve, who had never suspected that feeling, and, above all, was unable to understand how so artlessly crude an avowal of it could be made, knew not what to answer.

“I am not ignorant,” continued the strange woman, “that I should have difficulty in rising from the degradation in which I appeared to you at our first meeting. If, at the time you consented to take me with you to Paris, I had seen you incline to treat me with gallantry, had you shown any sign of turning to your profit the dangerous situation in which I had placed myself, my heart would instantly have retired; you would have seemed to me an ordinary man – ”