Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
The Parisians — Complete
CHAPTER VIII
Since the evening spent at the Savarins’, Graham had seen no more of Isaura. He had avoided all chance of seeing her; in fact, the jealousy with which he had viewed her manner towards Rameau, and the angry amaze with which he had heard her proclaim her friendship for Madame de Grantmesnil, served to strengthen the grave and secret reasons which made him desire to keep his heart yet free and his hand yet unpledged. But alas! the heart was enslaved already. It was under the most fatal of all spells,—first love conceived at first sight. He was wretched; and in his wretchedness his resolves became involuntarily weakened. He found himself making excuses for the beloved. What cause had he, after all, for that jealousy of the young poet which had so offended him; and if in her youth and inexperience Isaura had made her dearest friend of a great writer by whose genius she might be dazzled, and of whose opinions she might scarcely be aware, was it a crime that necessitated her eternal banishment from the reverence which belongs to all manly love? Certainly he found no satisfactory answers to such self-questionings. And then those grave reasons known only to himself, and never to be confided to another—why he should yet reserve his hand unpledged—were not so imperative as to admit of no compromise. They might entail a sacrifice, and not a small one to a man of Graham’s views and ambition. But what is love if it can think any sacrifice, short of duty and honour, too great to offer up unknown uncomprehended, to the one beloved? Still, while thus softened in his feelings towards Isaura, he became, perhaps in consequence of such softening, more and more restlessly impatient to fulfil the object for which he had come to Paris, the great step towards which was the discovery of the undiscoverable Louise Duval.
He had written more than once to M. Renard since the interview with that functionary already recorded, demanding whether Renard had not made some progress in the research on which he was employed, and had received short unsatisfactory replies preaching patience and implying hope.
The plain truth, however, was that M. Renard had taken no further pains in the matter. He considered it utter waste of time and thought to attempt a discovery to which the traces were so faint and so obsolete. If the discovery were effected, it must be by one of those chances which occur without labour or forethought of our own. He trusted only to such a chance in continuing the charge he had undertaken. But during the last day or two Graham had become yet more impatient than before, and peremptorily requested another visit from this dilatory confidant.
In that visit, finding himself pressed hard, and though naturally willing, if possible, to retain a client unusually generous, yet being on the whole an honest member of his profession, and feeling it to be somewhat unfair to accept large remuneration for doing nothing, M. Renard said frankly, “Monsieur, this affair is beyond me; the keenest agent of our police could make nothing of it. Unless you can tell me more than you have done, I am utterly without a clew. I resign, therefore, the task with which you honoured me, willing to resume it again if you can give me information that could render me of use.”
“What sort of information?”
“At least the names of some of the lady’s relations who may yet be living.”
“But it strikes me that, if I could get at that piece of knowledge, I should not require the services of the police. The relations would tell me what had become of Louise Duval quite as readily as they would tell a police agent.”
“Quite true, Monsieur. It would really be picking your pockets if I did not at once retire from your service. Nay, Monsieur, pardon me, no further payments; I have already accepted too much. Your most obedient servant.”
Graham, left alone, fell into a very gloomy revery. He could not but be sensible of the difficulties in the way of the object which had brought him to Paris, with somewhat sanguine expectations of success founded on a belief in the omniscience of the Parisian police, which is only to be justified when they have to deal with a murderess or a political incendiary. But the name of Louise Duval is about as common in France as that of Mary Smith in England; and the English reader may judge what would be the likely result of inquiring through the ablest of our detectives after some Mary Smith of whom you could give little more information than that she was the daughter of a drawing-master who had died twenty years ago, that it was about fifteen years since anything had been heard of her, that you could not say if through marriage or for other causes she had changed her name or not, and you had reasons for declining resort to public advertisements. In the course of inquiry so instituted, the probability would be that you might hear of a great many Mary Smiths, in the pursuit of whom your employee would lose all sight and scent of the one Mary Smith for whom the chase was instituted.
In the midst of Graham’s despairing reflections his laquais announced M. Frederic Lemercier.
“Cher Grarm-Varn. A thousand pardons if I disturb you at this late hour of the evening; but you remember the request you made me when you first arrived in Paris this season?”
“Of course I do,—in case you should ever chance in your wide round of acquaintance to fall in with a Madame or Mademoiselle Duval of about the age of forty, or a year or so less, to let me know; and you did fall in with two ladies of that name, but they were not the right one, not the person whom my friend begged me to discover; both much too young.”
“Eh bien, mon cher. If you will come with me to the bal champetre in the Champs Elysees to-night, I can show you a third Madame Duval,—her Christian name is Louise, too, of the age you mention,—though she does her best to look younger, and is still very handsome. You said your Duval was handsome. It was only last evening that I met this lady at a soiree given by Mademoiselle Julie Caumartin, coryphee distinguee, in love with young Rameau.”
“In love with young Rameau? I am very glad to hear it. He returns the love?”
“I suppose so. He seems very proud of it. But apropos of Madame Duval, she has been long absent from Paris, just returned, and looking out for conquests. She says she has a great penchant for the English; promises me to be at this ball. Come.”
“Hearty thanks, my dear Lemercier. I am at your service.”
CHAPTER IX
The bal champetre was gay and brilliant, as such festal scenes are at Paris. A lovely night in the midst of May, lamps below and stars above; the society mixed, of course. Evidently, when Graham has singled out Frederic Lemercier from all his acquaintances at Paris to conjoin with the official aid of M. Renard in search of the mysterious lady, he had conjectured the probability that she might be found in the Bohemian world so familiar to Frederic; if not as an inhabitant, at least as an explorer. Bohemia was largely represented at the bal champetre, but not without a fair sprinkling of what we call the “respectable classes,” especially English and Americans, who brought their wives there to take care of them. Frenchmen, not needing such care, prudently left their wives at home. Among the Frenchmen of station were the Comte de Passy and the Vicomte de Breze.
On first entering the gardens, Graham’s eye was attracted and dazzled by a brilliant form. It was standing under a festoon of flowers extended from tree to tree, and a gas jet opposite shone full upon the face,—the face of a girl in all the freshness of youth. If the freshness owed anything to art, the art was so well disguised that it seemed nature. The beauty of the countenance was Hebe-like, joyous, and radiant; and yet one could not look at the girl without a sentiment of deep mournfulness. She was surrounded by a group of young men, and the ring of her laugh jarred upon Graham’s ear. He pressed Frederic’s arm, and directing his attention to the girl, asked who she was.
“Who? Don’t you know? That is Julie Caumartin. A little while ago her equipage was the most admired in the Bois, and great ladies condescended to copy her dress or her coiffure; but she has lost her splendour, and dismissed the rich admirer who supplied the fuel for its blaze, since she fell in love with Gustave Rameau. Doubtless she is expecting him to-night. You ought to know her; shall I present you?”
“No,” answered Graham, with a compassionate expression in his manly face. “So young; seemingly so gay. How I pity her!”
“What! for throwing herself away on Rameau? True. There is a great deal of good in that girl’s nature, if she had been properly trained. Rameau wrote a pretty poem on her which turned her head and won her heart, in which she is styled the ‘Ondine of Paris,’—a nymph-like type of Paris itself.”
“Vanishing type, like her namesake; born of the spray, and vanishing soon into the deep,” said Graham. “Pray go and look for the Duval; you will find me seated yonder.”
Graham passed into a retired alley, and threw himself on a solitary bench, while Lemercier went in search of Madame Duval. In a few minutes the Frenchman reappeared. By his side was a lady well dressed, and as she passed under the lamps Graham perceived that, though of a certain age, she was undeniably handsome. His heart beat more quickly. Surely this was the Louise Duval he sought.
He rose from his seat, and was presented in due form to the lady, with whom Frederic then discreetly left him. “M. Lemercier tells me that you think that we were once acquainted with each other.”
“Nay, Madame; I should not fail to recognize you were that the case. A friend of mine had the honour of knowing a lady of your name; and should I be fortunate enough to meet that lady, I am charged with a commission that may not be unwelcome to her. M. Lemercier tells me your nom de bapteme is Louise.”
“Louise Corinne, Monsieur.”
“And I presume that Duval is the name you take from your parents?”
“No; my father’s name was Bernard. I married, when I was a mere child, M. Duval, in the wine trade at Bordeaux.”
“Ah, indeed!” said Graham, much disappointed, but looking at her with a keen, searching eye, which she met with a decided frankness. Evidently, in his judgment, she was speaking the truth.
“You know English, I think, Madame,” he resumed, addressing her in that language.
“A leetle; speak un peu.”
“Only a little?”
Madame Duval looked puzzled, and replied in French, with a laugh, “Is it that you were told that I spoke English by your countryman, Milord Sare Boulby? Petit scelerat, I hope he is well. He sends you a commission for me,—so he ought; he behaved to me like a monster.”
“Alas! I know nothing of Milord Sir Boulby. Were you never in England yourself?”
“Never,” with a coquettish side-glance; “I should like so much to go. I have a foible for the English in spite of that vilain petit Boulby. Who is it gave you the commission for me? Ha! I guess, le Capitaine Nelton.”
“No. What year, Madame, if not impertinent, were you at Aix-la-Chapelle?”
“You mean Baden? I was there seven years ago, when I met le Capitaine Nelton, bel homme aux cheveux rouges.”
“But you have been at Aix?”
“Never.”
“I have, then, been mistaken, Madame, and have only to offer my most humble apologies.”
“But perhaps you will favour me with a visit, and we may on further conversation find that you are not mistaken. I can’t stay now, for I am engaged to dance with the Belgian of whom, no doubt, M. Lemercier has told you.”
“No, Madame, he has not.”
“Well, then, he will tell you. The Belgian is very jealous; but I am always at home between three and four; this is my card.”
Graham eagerly took the card, and exclaimed, “Is this you’re your own handwriting, Madame?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Tres belle ecriture,” said Graham, and receded with a ceremonious bow. “Anything so unlike her handwriting! Another disappointment,” muttered the Englishman as the lady went back to the ball.
A few minutes later Graham joined Lemercier, who was talking with De Passy and De Breze.
“Well,” said Lemercier, when his eye rested on Graham, “I hit the right nail on the head this time, eh?”
Graham shook his head.
“What! is she not the right Louise Duval?”
“Certainly not.”
The Count de Passy overheard the name, and turned. “Louise Duval,” he said; “does Monsieur Vane know a Louise Duval?”
“No; but a friend asked me to inquire after a lady of that name whom he had met many years ago at Paris.” The Count mused a moment, and said, “Is it possible that your friend knew the family De Mauleon?”
“I really can’t say. What then?”
“The old Vicomte de Mauleon was one of my most intimate associates. In fact, our houses are connected. And he was extremely grieved, poor man, when his daughter Louise married her drawing-master, Auguste Duval.”
“Her drawing-master, Auguste Duval? Pray say on. I think the Louise Duval my friend knew must have been her daughter. She was the only child of a drawing-master or artist named Auguste Duval, and probably enough her Christian name would have been derived from her mother. A Mademoiselle de Mauleon, then, married M. Auguste Duval?”
“Yes; the old Vicomte had espoused en premieres noces Mademoiselle Camille de Chavigny, a lady of birth equal to his own; had by her one daughter, Louise. I recollect her well,—a plain girl, with a high nose and a sour expression. She was just of age when the first Vicomtesse died, and by the marriage settlement she succeeded at once to her mother’s fortune, which was not large. The Vicomte was, however, so poor that the loss of that income was no trifle to him. Though much past fifty, he was still very handsome. Men of that generation did not age soon, Monsieur,” said the Count, expanding his fine chest and laughing exultingly.
“He married, en secondes noces, a lady of still higher birth than the first, and with a much larger dot. Louise was indignant at this, hated her stepmother; and when a son was born by the second marriage she left the paternal roof, went to reside with an old female relative near the Luxembourg, and there married this drawing-master. Her father and the family did all they could to prevent it; but in these democratic days a woman who has attained her majority can, if she persist in her determination, marry to please herself and disgrace her ancestors. After that mesalliance her father never would see her again. I tried in vain to soften him. All his parental affections settled on his handsome Victor.
“Ah! you are too young to have known Victor de Mauleon during his short reign at Paris, as roi des viveurs.”
“Yes, he was before my time; but I have heard of him as a young man of great fashion; said to be very clever, a duellist, and a sort of Don Juan.”
“Exactly.”
“And then I remember vaguely to have heard that he committed, or was said to have committed, some villanous action connected with a great lady’s jewels, and to have left Paris in consequence.”
“Ah, yes; a sad scrape. At that time there was a political crisis; we were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed. But I am sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny. However, it is quite true that he left Paris, and I don’t know what has become of him since.” Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not been listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter with Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance.
“De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear Victor de Mauleon?—you knew him.”
“Knew him? I should think so. Who could be in the great world and not know le beau Victor? No; after he vanished I never heard more of him; doubtless long since dead. A good-hearted fellow in spite of all his sins.”
“My dear Monsieur de Breze, did you know his half-sister?” asked Graham,—“a Madame Duval?”
“No. I never heard he had a half-sister. Halt there; I recollect that I met Victor once, in the garden at Versailles, walking arm-in-arm with the most beautiful girl I ever saw; and when I complimented him afterwards at the Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied very gravely that the young lady was his niece. ‘Niece!’ said I; ‘why, there can’t be more than five or six years between you.’ ‘About that, I suppose,’ said he; ‘my half-sister, her mother, was more than twenty years older than I at the time of my birth.’ I doubted the truth of his story at the time; but since you say he really had a sister, my doubt wronged him.”
“Have you never seen that same young lady since?”
“Never.”
“How many years ago was this?”
“Let me see, about twenty or twenty-one years ago. How time flies!”
Graham still continued to question, but could learn no further particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound of which had then saddened him. Looking towards the quarter from which it came, he again saw the “Ondine of Paris.” She was not now the centre of a group. She had just found Gustave Rameau, and was clinging to his arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a child’s; and so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary lamplit alley, till lost to the Englishman’s lingering gaze.
CHAPTER X
The next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard. “Well,” he cried, when that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him, “chance has favoured me.”
“I always counted on chance, Monsieur. Chance has more wit in its little finger than the Paris police in its whole body.”
“I have ascertained the relations, on the mother’s side, of Louise Duval, and the only question is how to get at them.” Here Graham related what he had heard, and ended by saying, “This Victor de Mauleon is therefore my Louise Duval’s uncle. He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in the year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight of her in Paris; and surely he must know what became of her afterwards.”
“Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the discovery of Victor de Mauleon. You seem not to know the particulars of that story about the jewels which brought him into some connection with the police, and resulted in his disappearance from Paris.”
“No; tell me the particulars.”
“Victor de Mauleon was heir to some 60,000 or 70,000 francs a year, chiefly on the mother’s side; for his father, though the representative of one of the most ancient houses in Normandy, was very poor, having little of his own except the emoluments of an appointment in the Court of Louis Philippe.
“But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into that inheritance, he very largely forestalled it. His tastes were magnificent. He took to ‘sport,’ kept a famous stud, was a great favourite with the English, and spoke their language fluently. Indeed he was considered very accomplished, and of considerable intellectual powers. It was generally said that some day or other, when he had sown his wild oats, he would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man. Altogether he was a very strong creature. That was a very strong age under Louis Philippe. The viveurs of Paris were fine types for the heroes of Dumas and Sue,—full of animal life and spirits. Victor de Mauleon was a romance of Dumas, incarnated.”
“Monsieur Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to your taste in polite literature.”
“Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to my humble eminence if he be not something else than a professional. He must study mankind wherever they are described, even in les romans. To return to Victor de Mauleon. Though he was a ‘sportman,’ a gambler, a Don Juan, a duel list, nothing was ever said against his honour. On the contrary, on matters of honour he was a received oracle; and even though he had fought several duels (that was the age of duels), and was reported without a superior, almost without an equal, in either weapon, the sword or the pistol, he is said never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to have so used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely to wound, an antagonist.
“I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect; for it was much talked of at the time. One of your countrymen, who had never handled a fencing-foil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something M. de Mauleon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and called him out. Victor de Mauleon accepted the challenge, discharged his pistol, not in the air—that might have been an affront—but so as to be wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot at, and when missed, said, ‘Excuse the susceptibility of a Frenchman loath to believe that his countryman can be beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one gentleman can make to another for having forgotten the respect due to one of the most renowned of your national heroes.’ The Englishman’s name was Vane. Could it have been your father?”
“Very probably; just like my father to call out any man who insulted the honour of his country, as represented by its men. I hope the two combatants became friends?”
“That I never heard; the duel was over; there my story ends.”
“Pray go on.”
“One day—it was in the midst of political events which would have silenced most subjects of private gossip—the beau monde was startled by the news that the Vicomte (he was then, by his father’s death, Vicomte) de Mauleon had been given into the custody of the police on the charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a distinguished foreigner). It seems that some days before this event, the Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her birthday. He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace. Imagine his dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at that time in delicate health; and as the Duc’s suspicions naturally fell on the servants, especially on the femme de chambre, who was in great favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to put the servants on their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the matter in the hands of the famous ————, who was then the pride and ornament of the Parisian police. And the very night afterwards the Vicomte de Mauleon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at least a duplicate key, found in his possession. I should observe that M. de Mauleon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite. As soon as this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded) became public through the medium of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which he was accused. We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most startling reactions of feeling. The men we adore one day we execrate the next. The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one bestows on a hero to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty larcener. Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan. However, one compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society for the grave injuries he had done it. Society would attend his trial, witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his face when he was sentenced to the galleys. But, Monsieur, this wretch completed the measure of his iniquities. He was not tried at all. The Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte’s complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had confessed.”
“What did the Vicomte confess? You omitted to state that.”
“The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it, met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the same house to admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her dressing-room by means of a key which he had procured, made from an impression of the key-hole taken in wax.
“No evidence in support of any other charge against the Vicomte was forthcoming,—nothing, in short, beyond the infraction du domicile caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no prosecution. The law, therefore, could have little to say against him. But society was more rigid; and exceedingly angry to find that a man who had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted on believing that M. de Mauleon was guilty of the meaner, though not perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the two offences. I presume that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a dilemma from which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared. The sale of his stud and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for I will do him the justice to say that they were paid.”
“But though the Vicomte de Mauleon has disappeared, he must have left relations at Paris, who would perhaps know what has become of him and of his niece.”
“I doubt it. He had no very near relations. The nearest was an old celibataire of the same name, from whom he had some expectations, but who died shortly after this esclandre, and did not name the Vicomte in his will. M. Victor had numerous connections among the highest families, the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Passys, Beauvilliers; but they are not likely to have retained any connection with a ruined vaurien, and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a drawing-master. But now you have given me a clew, I will try to follow it up. We must find the Vicomte, and I am not without hope of doing so. Pardon me if I decline to say more at present. I would not raise false expectations; but in a week or two I will have the honour to call again upon Monsieur.”
“Wait one instant. You have really a hope of discovering M. de Mauleon?”
“Yes. I cannot say more at present.”
M. Renard departed. Still that hope, however faint it might prove, served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning desire to see more of her, to understand her better. Faded into thin air was the vague jealousy of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreasonably conceived; he felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the “Ondine of Paris” claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope to win an Isaura. He even forgot the friendship with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond, which a little while ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offence. He remembered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent; only the sweet voice, which had for the first time breathed music into his own soul; only the gentle hand, whose touch had for the first time sent through his veins the thrill which distinguishes from all her sex the woman whom we love. He went forth elated and joyous, and took his way to Isaura’s villa. As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he passed seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own delight. Perhaps it was rather the reverse: his own silent delight sympathized with all delight in awakening Nature. The lover seeking reconciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle has unreasonably estranged him, in a cloudless day of May,—if he be not happy enough to feel a brotherhood in all things happy,—a leaf in bloom, a bird in song,—then indeed he may call himself lover, but he does not know what is love.
