by Eugène Sue
The Count of Plouernel, having heard speak of Pradeline, invited her to sup the previous night with him and some of his friends. After the supper, which was prolonged until three in the morning, the right of hospitality for the night had been earned by the girl. After the hospitality came breakfast the following morning. The two companions were, accordingly, at table in a little boudoir fitted out in Louis XV style, and contiguous to the bed chamber. A good fire blazed in the marble-tipped hearth. Thick curtains of light blue damask, covered with roses, softened the glare of the daylight. Flowers filled large porcelain vases. The atmosphere was warm and perfumed. The wines were choice, the dishes toothsome. Pradeline and the Count of Plouernel were doing honor to both.
The colonel was a man of about thirty-eight years of age — tall, and at once lithe and robust. His face, though rather haggard, on that morning, was of a species of bold beauty, and strongly betrayed his German or Frankish stock, the characteristic traits of which Tacitus and Caesar frequently described. His hair was light blonde, his moustache long and reddish, his eyes light grey, and his nose hooked like an eagle’s beak.
Wrapped in a costly morning gown, the Count of Plouernel seemed no less hilarious than the young girl.
“Come, Pradeline,” said he, pouring out to her a glass of generous old Burgundy wine, “to the health of your lover.”
“Nonsense! Do you think I keep a lover?”
“You are right. To the health of your lovers!”
“You don’t seem to be jealous, darling!”
“And you?”
At this question Pradeline nonchalantly opened her red corsage, and clinking her glass with the blade of her knife she answered the Count of Plouernel with an improvisation to the tune then in vogue of La Rifla:
“For ague-cheeked Sir Fidelity
I only have duplicity.
When some gay lover pleases me,
’Tis quickly done! He pleases me —
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla,
La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla.”
“Bravo, my dear!” cried the colonel, laughing boisterously.
And joining in chorus with Pradeline, he sang, also clinking his glass with the edge of his knife:
“When some gay lover pleases me,
’Tis quickly done! He pleases me.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla,
La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla.”
“And now, my little girl,” he proceeded to say at the close of the refrain, “since you are not jealous, give me some advice — some friendly advice. I am in love — desperately in love.”
“Is it possible!”
“If she were a woman of the world I would not ask your advice, but—”
“Well! Well! Am I, perchance, not a woman? and of the world, too?”
“Of all the world, not true, my dear?”
“Naturally, seeing I’m here — which is little to your credit, my dear, and less creditable to me. But that matters not. Proceed, and don’t be rude again — if you can avoid it.”
“Oh! The little one gives me a lesson in politeness!”
“You want my advice; you see I can give you lessons. Proceed, what have you to say?”
“You must know I am in love with a shop-girl, that is to say, her father and mother keep a shop. You surely know the ways of such folks, their customs and habits. What means would you advise me to employ in order to succeed?”
“Make yourself beloved.”
“That takes too long. When a violent fancy seizes me, I find it impossible to wait.”
“Indeed! ’Tis wonderful, but, darling, you interest me greatly. Let’s see. First of all is the shop-girl poor? Is she in great want? Does she seem very hungry?”
“How? Whether she is hungry? What the devil do you mean?”
“Colonel, I can not deny your personal attractions — you’re handsome, you’re brilliant, you’re charming, you’re adorable, you’re delicious—”
“Irony?”
“What do you think! Would I dare to? Well, as I was saying, you’re delicious! But, in order for the poor girl to appreciate you duly, she must first be dying of hunger. You have no idea how hunger — helps to find people adorable.”
Whereupon Pradeline sailed in to improvise a new ditty, not, this time, in merry vein, but with marked bitterness, and keeping time with such a slow measure that her favorite tune sounded melancholic:
“You’re hungry and you weep,
Come, maid, and fall asleep;
Come, you’ll have plenty of gold,
Thyself to me be sold.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla—”
“The devil take that song! This one is not at all jolly,” remarked the Count of Plouernel, struck by the melancholic accents of the young girl, who, however, quickly resumed her reckless bearing and wonted cheerfulness. “I understand the allusion,” he added; “but my pretty shop-girl is not hungry.”
“The next thing — is she coquettish? Does she love to be prinked? Does she like jewelry, or theaters? These are famous means to blast a poor girl.”
“I presume she likes all those things. But she has a father and mother, and they probably keep a close watch over her. In view of all this I had a plan—”
“You? At last you have a plan of your own! And what is it?”
“It is to make frequent and large purchases in that shop, even to loan them money at a pinch, because I know those small traders must ever be hard pushed for cash to pay their bills.”
“In other words, you believe they will be ready to sell you their daughter — for cash?”
“No; but I figure that they will at least shut their eyes — I would then be able to dazzle the minx with presents, and proceed rapidly to my goal. Well, how does my plan strike you?”
“I’ll be blown! How can I tell?” answered Pradeline, affecting innocence. “If things are done in your upper world in that manner, if parents sell their daughters, perhaps the thing is done in the same way among the poorer folks. Still, I don’t believe it. These people are too bourgeois, they are too niggardly, you see?”
“My little girl,” said the Count of Plouernel haughtily, “you are emancipating yourself prodigiously.”
At this reproach the young girl broke out with a peal of laughter, which she interrupted to sing in merry notes this new improvisation:
“O! See that bold signor,
So full of pride, honor?
To such a haughty flea
All bourgeois bend the knee!
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla—”
After which Pradeline rose, took from the mantlepiece a cigar that she deftly lighted, and proceeded to hum her refrain between the puffs of smoke that she blew out of her cherry lips. She then stretched herself at full length upon a lounge, and drove in silence the bluish smoke of her choice Havana towards the ceiling.
Forgetting the anger with which he was seized shortly before, the Count of Plouernel could not avoid laughing at the originality displayed by the young girl, and said:
“Come, my little pet; let us talk seriously. I am not asking for songs, but for advice.”
“I must first be informed of the quarter of the town in which your love is located,” observed the young girl dogmatically, turning over on the lounge. “The knowledge of the quarter is very important in such matters. What may be done in one quarter, can not be done in another. Darling, there are prudish quarters, devout quarters, and decolleté quarters.”
“Profoundly reasoned, my charmer. The influence of a quarter upon the virtue of its women is considerable. Without running any risk I may tell you that my shop-girl lives on St. Denis Street.”
The young girl, who, stretched out upon the lounge, had been leisurely and nonchalantly rolling the clouds of smoke from her cigar before her, started at the mention of St. Denis Street, and rose so suddenly that the Count of Plouernel looked at her in astonishment, and cried:
“What the devil has come over
you?”
“What has come over me—” answered Pradeline, quickly recovering her composure and wonted nonchalance, “what has come over me is that your horrible cigar has burnt me — but that’s no matter. You were saying, darling, that your love is located in St. Denis Street? Well, now I have something to go by; but not yet enough.”
“And you shall not learn any more, my little beauty.”
“The pest take this cigar!” exclaimed Pradeline, again shaking her head. “It will blister me! It will blister me surely!”
“Would you like some cold water?”
“No, it will soon be over. So, then, your love lives in St. Denis Street. You should also let me know — is the place at the head or the foot of the street? There is quite some difference between the head and the foot of a street, you must admit. The proof is, that the prices of the shops are dear at one end and cheap at the other. According as the rent runs high or low, a lover’s generosity must keep step and be proportionately great or less so. You can not get over this positive fact.”
“It is a very positive fact. Well, I shall confide to you that my love lives not far from the St. Denis Gate.”
“I need put no further questions to render my opinion,” said Pradeline with a voice that she was at great pains to modulate into comical tones. Nevertheless, a closer observer than the Count of Plouernel would have noticed a vague shadow of uneasiness flit over the otherwise gay girl.
“Well, what is your advice?”
“First of all — you should—” but, suddenly breaking off, the young girl said:
“Someone raps at the door, darling.”
“You think so?”
“I am quite certain. Listen! Don’t you hear?”
In fact the rapping was renewed.
“Walk in!” cried the Count.
A valet presented himself, looking disconcerted, and said to the Count anxiously:
“Monsieur Count, his Eminence—”
“My uncle!” exclaimed the Count of Plouernel, looking no less disconcerted than his valet, and hastily rising to his feet.
“Yes, Monsieur Count. Monsignor the Cardinal arrived last night in the city from his trip abroad, and—”
“A Cardinal!” cried Pradeline, interrupting the valet with boisterous peals of laughter, already oblivious of the matters that seemed to preoccupy her mind a minute before. “A Cardinal! That’s a rare sight! That’s a thing one does not find every day at Mabille’s or at Valentino’s! A Cardinal! I’ve never seen one. I must give myself a treat.”
Whereupon she forthwith improvised to the tune of her favorite song:
“The young Queen Bacchanal
She saw a Cardinal,
And said: Let’s have some fun,
And make him dance and run —
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla,
La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla!”
So saying, Pradeline raised the hem of her dress and started to pirouet around the room with great grace and utterly unconstrained, all the while singing her latest improvisation, while the valet, standing motionless at the half-opened door was with difficulty keeping a serious face, and the Count of Plouernel, nettled at the freedom of the brazen minx, called to her:
“Come, my dear; that’s foolish; keep still.”
Cardinal Plouernel, just announced, not caring to be kept waiting in his nephew’s ante-chamber, and little imagining him to be in such profane company, had followed upon the heels of the valet, and entered the room just as Pradeline, throwing out her well shaped limb, undulated her upper body as she sang:
“Oh, let us have some fun,
And make him dance and run!
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla—”
At the sight of the Cardinal the Count of Plouernel ran to the door, and repeatedly and effusively embracing his uncle, gently pushed him back into the salon from which he came. The valet, like the experienced menial that he was, discreetly shut the door of the boudoir upon his master, and drew the bolt.
CHAPTER V.
CARDINAL AND COUNT.
CARDINAL PLOUERNEL WAS a man of sixty-five years of age, lean, lank and leathery of skin. Except for the difference in age, he was possessed of the identical type of face as his nephew. His long neck, bald head, large and crooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey, and wide-set, round and penetrating eyes, imparted to his physiognomy, if analyzed and the high grade of intelligence that they denoted left out of consideration, a singular resemblance to that of a vulture.
To sum up, the priest, if clad in his red robes of Prince of the Church, could not choose but present a fear-inspiring aspect. On a visit to his nephew, he was clad simply in a long black coat, strictly buttoned up to his throat.
“Pardon, dear uncle,” said the Count, smiling. “Not being aware of your return to town, I did not expect this matitudinal call.”
The Cardinal was not the man to be astonished at a colonel of dragoons keeping a mistress. He made answer in his brief manner:
“I am pressed for time. Let us talk to the point. On my way from abroad I made a wide tour through France. We are on the verge of a revolution.”
“Indeed, uncle?” asked the colonel incredulously. “Do you really believe—”
“I believe a revolution is at hand.”
“But, uncle—”
“Have you available funds about you? If not, I can help you out.”
“Funds — what for?”
“To exchange into gold, or for good drafts upon London. The latter are more convenient on a voyage.”
“What! A voyage, uncle? What voyage?”
“The voyage that you are to make by keeping me company. We shall depart this evening.”
“Depart — this evening!”
“Would you prefer to serve the Republic?”
“The Republic!” exclaimed the Count of Plouernel. “What Republic?”
“The one that will be proclaimed in Paris, within shortly, after the downfall of Louis Philippe.”
“The downfall of Louis Philippe! The Republic in France — and within shortly!”
“Yes, the French Republic — one, and indivisible — proclaimed in our interest — provided we know how to wait—”
And the Cardinal indulged in a singular smile as he inhaled a pinch of snuff.
The Count contemplated him dumbfounded. He looked as if he had just dropped down from the clouds.
“I see, my poor Gonthram, you must have been either blind or deaf,” the Cardinal proceeded, shrugging his shoulders. “Do you see nothing in those revolutionary banquets that have succeeded one another throughout the principal cities of France during the last three months?”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! uncle,” answered the Count, laughing out aloud; “do you take those bibbers of blue wine, those swallowers of veal — at twenty sous a plate — to be capable of making a revolution?”
“The simpletons — I can not blame them, so much the worse — the simpletons have turned the heads of the bigger simpletons who listened to them. There is nothing, in and of itself, so stupid as gunpowder; is there? Yet that does not prevent it from exploding. Well, these banqueters have played with gunpowder. The mine is about to explode, and it will blow up the throne of the Orleans dynasty.”
“You are joking, uncle. There are fifty thousand soldiers in the city. If the mob but raise a finger it will be mowed down like grass. Everybody is so completely at ease regarding the state of Paris that, despite the seeming commotion of yesterday, the troops have not even been furnished with passwords in the barracks.”
“Is that so? Well, so much the better!” put in the Cardinal, rubbing his hands. “If their government is seized with the vertigo, these Orleans will quickly vacate their seats for the Republic, and our turn will come all the sooner.”
At this point his Eminence was interrupted by two raps given at the door of the salon that communicated with the boudoir. Promptly upon the raps followed the following ditty, still to the tune of La Rifla, and s
ung by Pradeline in measured rhythm on the other side of the door:
“To get out of this scrape —
I sorely need my cape,
On this occa-si-on,
Your bene-dic-ti-on.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla!”
“Oh, uncle!” said the colonel in anger, “Pay no attention, I beg you, to the insolence of that foolish little minx.”
And rising, the Count of Plouernel took from the sofa where they had lain since the previous evening the cape and hat of the brazen girl, rang the bell quickly, and, throwing the articles at the valet who answered the summons, said to him:
“Deliver these traps to the hussy, and have her leave the house instantly.”
And then, returning to his Eminence, who had remained impassive, and was at the moment in the act of opening his snuff-box, he continued:
“I assure you, uncle, that I am ashamed. But droll creatures like that respect nothing.”
“She has very well shaped limbs,” mused the Cardinal, taking his snuff; “she is quite comely, the droll creature. Nevertheless, in the Fifteenth Century, we would have ordered her roasted alive like a little Jewess, in reward for such a joke. But patience. Oh, my friend, never — never before were our chances so favorable!”
“Our chances favorable if the Orleans dynasty is chased away and the Republic is proclaimed?”
The Cardinal again shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to explain:
“Either one thing or the other will happen — either the Republic of the bare-footed mob will be anarchy, the dictatorship, emigration, pillage, paper money, the guillotine, and war with all Europe — and then the thing will last six months at the longest, and Henry V will be brought back triumphantly by the Holy Alliance; or, on the contrary, their Republic will be benign, stupid, legal and moderate with universal suffrage for its foundation—”
“And, if so, uncle?”
“If so, it will last longer, but we shall lose nothing by waiting. Wielding our influence as large landed proprietors, and operating through the lower clergy upon the peasants, we shall become masters at the hustings, obtain the majority in the Chamber, and hamper the passage of every measure that might, I will not say cause the Republic to be loved, but even cause such a revolutionary state of things to seem tolerable. We shall sow the seeds of mistrust and fear in all minds. Soon, with its credit destroyed, with universal ruin, with disaster on all sides, a chorus of curses will rise against the infamous Republic that will then die peaceably after a trial that will for all time disgust the people with it. At that psychologic moment we shall step forward. The hungering people, the bourgeois, frightened out of their senses, will throw themselves at our feet, praying to us with clasped hands for Henry V, the savior of France. Finally, the hour for stipulating conditions will arrive. These will be ours: Royalty, at least such as it existed before 1789, that is, no more bourgeois insolent and clamorous Chamber, holding the reins of government as much as the King, seeing it decides upon appropriations and taxes — an ignominious state of things; an end of the present mongrel system — all or nothing, and we want all, to wit, an absolute King resting upon an omnipotent clergy; a strong aristocracy and a merciless army; a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand foreign troops, if needed; the Holy Alliance will lend them to us. Misery will be so frightful, fear so intense, the general lassitude such, that our conditions will be accepted as soon as imposed. Thereupon we shall take prompt and terrible measures — the only effective ones in such emergencies. Our measures will be these: First of all, provost courts; reinstitution of the laws pronouncing sacrilege and lese majesté capital crimes, and making them retroactive, back to 1830; execution to follow verdict within twenty-four hours, in order to smother in their own poison all revolutionists, all people tainted with impiousness; it will be an era of terror — another St. Bartholomew, if necessary. France will not die under the knife; on the contrary, she is suffering of plethora, she needs a bleeding from time to time. The second measure will be to assign public instruction to the Society of Jesus — it alone is able to emasculate the human species. The third measure will be to break the sheaf of centralization; in it lay the strength of the Revolution; our effort must be, on the contrary, to isolate the provinces as much as possible from the small centers, where, unmolested, we shall hold sway through the lower clergy; or, by virtue of our large holdings, restrain, prevent, if at all possible, the intercommunication of one section of the country with another. It is not helpful to us for people to draw together and meet each other with frequency. With the view of dividing and keeping them divided, we shall assiduously rekindle the rivalries, jealousies, and where needed, the old provincial hatreds. To that end an occasional little douse of civil war will be a helpful expedient. It breeds and nurses the germs of implacable animosity.”