Chapter V
SUPPER AT THE BELLE ETOILE
The French army were in a rather savage temper just then. The English,especially, had but scant courtesy to expect at their hands. It wasplain, however, that the cadaverous gentleman who had just apostrophizedthe heraldry of the Count's carriage, with such mysterious acrimony, hadnot intended any of his malevolence for me. He was stung by some oldrecollection, and had marched off, seething with fury.
I had received one of those unacknowledged shocks which startle us,when, fancying ourselves perfectly alone, we discover on a sudden thatour antics have been watched by a spectator, almost at our elbow. Inthis case the effect was enhanced by the extreme repulsiveness of theface, and, I may add, its proximity, for, as I think, it almost touchedmine. The enigmatical harangue of this person, so full of hatred andimplied denunciation, was still in my ears. Here at all events was newmatter for the industrious fancy of a lover to work upon.
It was time now to go to the table-d'hote. Who could tell what lightsthe gossip of the supper-table might throw upon the subject thatinterested me so powerfully!
I stepped into the room, my eyes searching the little assembly, aboutthirty people, for the persons who specially interested me. It was noteasy to induce people, so hurried and overworked as those of the BelleEtoile just now, to send meals up to one's private apartments, in themidst of this unparalleled confusion; and, therefore, many people whodid not like it might find themselves reduced to the alternative ofsupping at the table-d'hote or starving.
The Count was not there, nor his beautiful companion; but the Marquisd'Harmonville, whom I hardly expected to see in so public a place,signed, with a significant smile, to a vacant chair beside himself. Isecured it, and he seemed pleased, and almost immediately entered intoconversation with me.
"This is, probably, your first visit to France?" he said.
I told him it was, and he said:
"You must not think me very curious and impertinent; but Paris is aboutthe most dangerous capital a high-spirited and generous young gentlemancould visit without a Mentor. If you have not an experienced friend as acompanion during your visit--." He paused.
I told him I was not so provided, but that I had my wits about me; thatI had seen a good deal of life in England, and that I fancied humannature was pretty much the same in all parts of the world. The Marquisshook his head, smiling.
"You will find very marked differences, notwithstanding," he said."Peculiarities of intellect and peculiarities of character, undoubtedly,do pervade different nations; and this results, among the criminalclasses, in a style of villainy no less peculiar. In Paris the class wholive by their wits is three or four times as great as in London; andthey live much better; some of them even splendidly. They are moreingenious than the London rogues; they have more animation andinvention, and the dramatic faculty, in which your countrymen aredeficient, is everywhere. These invaluable attributes place them upon atotally different level. They can affect the manners and enjoy theluxuries of people of distinction. They live, many of them, by play."
"So do many of our London rogues."
"Yes, but in a totally different way. They are the _habitues_ ofcertain gaming-tables, billiard-rooms, and other places, including yourraces, where high play goes on; and by superior knowledge of chances, bymasking their play, by means of confederates, by means of bribery, andother artifices, varying with the subject of their imposture, they robthe unwary. But here it is more elaborately done, and with a reallyexquisite _finesse_. There are people whose manners, style,conversation, are unexceptionable, living in handsome houses in the bestsituations, with everything about them in the most refined taste, andexquisitely luxurious, who impose even upon the Parisian bourgeois, whobelieve them to be, in good faith, people of rank and fashion, becausetheir habits are expensive and refined, and their houses are frequentedby foreigners of distinction, and, to a degree, by foolish youngFrenchmen of rank. At all these houses play goes on. The ostensible hostand hostess seldom join in it; they provide it simply to plunder theirguests, by means of their accomplices, and thus wealthy strangers areinveigled and robbed."
"But I have heard of a young Englishman, a son of Lord Rooksbury, whobroke two Parisian gaming tables only last year."
"I see," he said, laughing, "you are come here to do likewise. I,myself, at about your age, undertook the same spirited enterprise. Iraised no less a sum than five hundred thousand francs to begin with; Iexpected to carry all before me by the simple expedient of going ondoubling my stakes. I had heard of it, and I fancied that the sharpers,who kept the table, knew nothing of the matter. I found, however, thatthey not only knew all about it, but had provided against thepossibility of any such experiments; and I was pulled up before I hadwell begun by a rule which forbids the doubling of an original stakemore than four times consecutively."
"And is that rule in force still?" I inquired, chapfallen.
He laughed and shrugged, "Of course it is, my young friend. People wholive by an art always understand it better than an amateur. I see youhad formed the same plan, and no doubt came provided."
I confessed I had prepared for conquest upon a still grander scale.I had arrived with a purse of thirty thousand pounds sterling.
"Any acquaintance of my very dear friend, Lord R----, interests me; and,besides my regard for him, I am charmed with you; so you will pardonall my, perhaps, too officious questions and advice."
I thanked him most earnestly for his valuable counsel, and begged thathe would have the goodness to give me all the advice in his power.
"Then if you take my advice," said he, "you will leave your money in thebank where it lies. Never risk a Napoleon in a gaming house. The night Iwent to break the bank I lost between seven and eight thousand poundssterling of your English money; and my next adventure, I had obtained anintroduction to one of those elegant gaming-houses which affect to bethe private mansions of persons of distinction, and was saved from ruinby a gentleman whom, ever since, I have regarded with increasing respectand friendship. It oddly happens he is in this house at this moment. Irecognized his servant, and made him a visit in his apartments here, andfound him the same brave, kind, honorable man I always knew him. Butthat he is living so entirely out of the world, now, I should have madea point of introducing you. Fifteen years ago he would have been the manof all others to consult. The gentleman I speak of is the Comte de St.Alyre. He represents a very old family. He is the very soul of honor,and the most sensible man in the world, except in one particular."
"And that particular?" I hesitated. I was now deeply interested.
"Is that he has married a charming creature, at least five-and-fortyyears younger than himself, and is, of course, although I believeabsolutely without cause, horribly jealous."
"And the lady?"
"The Countess is, I believe, in every way worthy of so good a man," heanswered, a little dryly. "I think I heard her sing this evening."
"Yes, I daresay; she is very accomplished." After a few moments' silencehe continued.
"I must not lose sight of you, for I should be sorry, when next you meetmy friend Lord R----, that you had to tell him you had been pigeoned inParis. A rich Englishman as you are, with so large a sum at his Parisbankers, young, gay, generous, a thousand ghouls and harpies will becontending who shall be the first to seize and devour you."
At this moment I received something like a jerk from the elbow of thegentleman at my right. It was an accidental jog, as he turned in hisseat.
"On the honor of a soldier, there is no man's flesh in this companyheals so fast as mine."
The tone in which this was spoken was harsh and stentorian, and almostmade me bounce. I looked round and recognized the officer whose largewhite face had half scared me in the inn-yard, wiping his mouthfuriously, and then with a gulp of Magon, he went on:
"No one! It's not blood; it is ichor! it's miracle! Set aside stature,thew, bone, and muscle--set aside courage, and by all the angels ofdeath, I'd fight a lion nake
d, and dash his teeth down his jaws with myfist, and flog him to death with his own tail! Set aside, I say, allthose attributes, which I am allowed to possess, and I am worth six menin any campaign, for that one quality of healing as I do--rip me up,punch me through, tear me to tatters with bomb-shells, and nature has mewhole again, while your tailor would fine--draw an old coat._Parbleu_! gentlemen, if you saw me naked, you would laugh! Look atmy hand, a saber-cut across the palm, to the bone, to save my head,taken up with three stitches, and five days afterwards I was playingball with an English general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the wall ofthe convent of the Santa Maria de la Castita! At Arcola, by the greatdevil himself! that was an action. Every man there, gentlemen, swallowedas much smoke in five minutes as would smother you all in this room! Ireceived, at the same moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grapeshot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, apiece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilageof my right ribs, a cut-cut that carried away a pound of flesh from mychest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Prettywell, ha, ha! and all while you'd say bah! and in eight days and a halfI was making a forced march, without shoes, and only one gaiter, thelife and soul of my company, and as sound as a roach!"
"Bravo! Bravissimo! Per Bacco! un gallant' uomo!" exclaimed, in amartial ecstasy, a fat little Italian, who manufactured toothpicks andwicker cradles on the island of Notre Dame; "your exploits shall resoundthrough Europe! and the history of those wars should be written in yourblood!"
"Never mind! a trifle!" exclaimed the soldier. "At Ligny, the other day,where we smashed the Prussians into ten hundred thousand milliards ofatoms, a bit of a shell cut me across the leg and opened an artery. Itwas spouting as high as the chimney, and in half a minute I had lostenough to fill a pitcher. I must have expired in another minute, if Ihad not whipped off my sash like a flash of lightning, tied it round myleg above the wound, whipt a bayonet out of the back of a dead Prussian,and passing it under, made a tourniquet of it with a couple of twists,and so stayed the haemorrhage and saved my life. But, _sacrebleu_!gentlemen, I lost so much blood, I have been as pale as the bottom of aplate ever since. No matter. A trifle. Blood well spent, gentlemen." Heapplied himself now to his bottle of _vin ordinaire_.
The Marquis had closed his eyes, and looked resigned and disgusted,while all this was going on.
"_Garcon_," said the officer, for the first time speaking in a lowtone over the back of his chair to the waiter; "who came in thattraveling carriage, dark yellow and black, that stands in the middle ofthe yard, with arms and supporters emblazoned on the door, and a redstork, as red as my facings?"
The waiter could not say.
The eye of the eccentric officer, who had suddenly grown grim andserious, and seemed to have abandoned the general conversation to otherpeople, lighted, as it were accidentally, on me.
"Pardon me, Monsieur," he said. "Did I not see you examining the panelof that carriage at the same time that I did so, this evening? Can youtell me who arrived in it?"
"I rather think the Count and Countess de St. Alyre."
"And are they here, in the Belle Etoile?" he asked.
"They have got apartments upstairs," I answered.
He started up, and half pushed his chair from the table. He quickly satdown again, and I could hear him _sacre_-ing and muttering tohimself, and grinning and scowling. I could not tell whether he wasalarmed or furious.
I turned to say a word or two to the Marquis, but he was gone. Severalother people had dropped out also, and the supper party soon broke up.Two or three substantial pieces of wood smoldered on the hearth, for thenight had turned out chilly. I sat down by the fire in a great armchairof carved oak, with a marvelously high back that looked as old as thedays of Henry IV.
"_Garcon_," said I, "do you happen to know who that officer is?"
"That is Colonel Gaillarde, Monsieur."
"Has he been often here?"
"Once before, Monsieur, for a week; it is a year since."
"He is the palest man I ever saw."
"That is true, Monsieur; he has been often taken for a _revenant_."
"Can you give me a bottle of really good Burgundy?"
"The best in France, Monsieur."
"Place it, and a glass by my side, on this table, if you please. I maysit here for half-an-hour."
"Certainly, Monsieur."
I was very comfortable, the wine excellent, and my thoughts glowing andserene. "Beautiful Countess! Beautiful Countess! shall we ever be betteracquainted?"
The Room in the Dragon Volant Page 5