Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

  “She was taken back to her home in madame’s carriage.”

  “And you say she has never been at the Hôtel de Beaumesnil since?”

  “No, M. le marquis.”

  After remaining silent for some time, the hunchback turned to Madame Dupont, and asked:

  “What did you say this woman’s name was?”

  “Madame Barbançon.”

  The hunchback wrote down the name in his note-book, then asked:

  “And she lives where?”

  “In the Batignolles.”

  “The street and number, if you please.”

  “I do not know, M. le marquis. I only remember that the footman told us that the house where she lived was in a very quiet street, and that there was a garden, into which one could look through a small latticed gate.”

  The hunchback, after jotting down these items in his note-book, said:

  “I thank you very much for this information, though it may be of little or no assistance to me in my search. If you should at any time recall other facts which you think may be of service, I hope you will notify me at once.”

  “I will not fail to do so, M. le marquis.”

  M. de Maillefort, having rewarded Madame Dupont handsomely, called a cab and ordered the coachman to drive him to the Batignolles.

  After two hours of persistent inquiry and assiduous search the marquis at last discovered Commander Bernard’s house, where he found only Madame Barbançon at home.

  Olivier had left Paris several days before in company with his master mason, and the veteran had just gone out for his daily walk.

  The housekeeper on opening the door was so unpleasantly impressed by the visitor’s deformity, that, instead of inviting him in, she remained standing upon the threshold, thus barring M. de Maillefort’s passage.

  That gentleman, noting the unfavourable impression he was making upon the housekeeper, bowed very politely, and said:

  “Have I the honour of speaking to Madame Barbançon?”

  “Yes, monsieur; and what do you want of Madame Barbançon?”

  “I am desirous that you should grant me the honour of a few minutes’ conversation.”

  “And why, monsieur?” demanded the housekeeper, eyeing the stranger distrustfully.

  “I wish to confer with you, madame, on a very important matter.”

  “But I do not even know you.”

  “I have the advantage of knowing you, though only by name, it is true.”

  “A fine story that! I, too, know the Grand Turk by name.”

  “My dear Madame Barbançon, will you permit me to say that we could talk very much more at our ease inside, than out here on the doorstep.”

  “I only care to be at ease with persons I like, monsieur,” retorted the housekeeper, tartly.

  “I can understand your distrust, my dear madame,” replied the marquis, concealing his impatience, “so I will vouch for myself by a name that is not entirely unknown to you.”

  “What name is that?”

  “That of Madame la Comtesse de Beaumesnil.”

  “Do you come at her request, monsieur?” asked the housekeeper, quickly.

  “At her request? No, madame,” sadly replied the hunchback, shaking his head, “Madame de Beaumesnil is dead.”

  “Dead! And when did the poor, dear lady die?”

  “Let us step inside and I will then answer your question,” said the marquis, in an authoritative manner that rather awed Madame Barbançon; besides, she was very anxious to hear the particulars of Madame de Beaumesnil’s death.

  “And you say that Madame de Beaumesnil is dead?” exclaimed the housekeeper, as soon as they had entered the house.

  “She died several days ago — the very next day after her interview with you.”

  “What, monsieur, you know?”

  “I know that Madame de Beaumesnil had a long conversation with you, and I am fulfilling her last wishes in asking you to accept these twenty-five napoleons from her.”

  And the hunchback showed Madame Barbançon a small silk purse filled with shining gold.

  The words “twenty-five napoleons” grievously offended the housekeeper’s ears. Had the marquis said twenty-five louis the effect would probably have been entirely different.

  So instead of taking the proffered gold, Madame Barbançon, feeling all her former doubts revive, answered majestically, as she waved aside the purse with an expression of superb disdain:

  “I do not accept napoleons,” accenting the detested name strongly; “no, I do not accept napoleons from the first person that happens to come along — without knowing — do you understand, monsieur?”

  “Without knowing what, my dear madame?”

  “Without knowing who these people are who say napoleons as if it would scorch their mouths if they should utter the word louis. But it is all plain enough now,” she added, sardonically. “Tell me who you go with and I will tell you who you are. Now what do you want with me? I have my soup pot to watch.”

  “As I told you before, madame, I came to bring you a slight token of Madame de Beaumesnil’s gratitude for the discretion and reserve you displayed in a certain affair.”

  “What affair?”

  “You know very well.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.”

  “Come, come, my dear Madame Barbançon, why will you not be perfectly frank with me? I was one of Madame de Beaumesnil’s most intimate friends, and I know all about that orphan — you know — that orphan.”

  “That orphan?”

  “Yes, that young girl, I need say no more. You see I know all about it.”

  “Then if you know all about it, why do you come here to question me?”

  “I come in the interest of the young girl — you know who I mean — to ask you to give me her address, as I have a very important communication to make to her.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Well, well, did anybody ever hear the equal of that?” snorted the housekeeper, indignantly.

  “But my dear Madame Barbançon, what is there so very extraordinary in what I am saying to you?”

  “This,” yelled the housekeeper, “this — that you are nothing more or less than a miserable old roué!”

  “I?”

  “Yes, a miserable scoundrel who is trying to bribe me, and make me blab all I know by promises of gold.”

  “But, my dear madame, I assure you—”

  “But understand me once for all: if that hump of yours was stuffed with napoleons, and you authorised me to help myself to all I wanted, I wouldn’t tell you a word more than I chose to. That is the kind of a woman I am!”

  “But, Madame Barbançon, do pray listen to me. You are a worthy and honest woman.”

  “Yes, I flatter myself that I am.”

  “And very justly, I am sure. That being the case, if you would only hear me to the end you would answer very differently, I am sure, for—”

  “I should do nothing of the kind. Oh, I understand, you came here intending to pump me and get all you could out of me, but, thank Heaven, I was smart enough to see through you from the very first, and now I tell you once for all you had better let me alone.”

  “But one word, I beg, my dear friend,” pleaded the marquis, trying to take his irascible companion’s hand.

  “Don’t touch me, you vile libertine,” shrieked the housekeeper, springing back in prudish terror. “I know you now for the serpent that you are! First it was ‘madame,’ and then ‘my dear madame,’ and now ‘my dear friend,’ and you’ll wind up with ‘my treasure,’ I suppose!”

  “But Madame Barbançon, I do assure you—”

  “I have always heard it said that humpbacked people were worse than monkeys,” exclaimed the housekeeper, recoiling still further. “If you don’t take yourself off, sir, and at once, I’ll call the neighbours; I’ll yell for the police; I’ll cry fire!”

  “You must be crazy, woman,” exclaimed the marquis, e
xasperated by the complete failure of his efforts so far as Madame Barbançon was concerned. “What the devil do you mean by all this pretended indignation and prudery? You are very nearly as ugly as I am, and we are not calculated to tempt each other. I say once more, and for the last time, and you had better weigh my words well, I came here in the hope of being of assistance to a poor and worthy young girl whom you must know. And if you do know her, you are doing her an irreparable wrong — do you understand me? — by refusing to tell me where she is and to assist me in finding her. Consider well — the future of this young girl is in your hands, and I am sure you are really too kind-hearted to wish to injure a worthy girl who has never harmed you.”

  M. de Maillefort spoke with so much feeling, his tone was so earnest and sincere, that Madame Barbançon began to feel that there was really no just cause for her distrust, after all.

  “Well, monsieur, I may have been mistaken in thinking that you were trying to make love to me,” she began.

  “You certainly were.”

  “But as for telling you anything I oughtn’t to tell you, you won’t make me do that, however hard you may try. It is quite possible that you’re a respectable man, and that your intentions are good, but I’m an honest woman, too, and I know what I ought and what I ought not to tell; so, though you might cut me in pieces, you wouldn’t get a treacherous word out of me. That is the kind of a woman I am!”

  “Where the devil can one hope to find a woman of sense?” M. de Maillefort said to himself as he left Madame Barbançon, quite despairing of getting any information out of the worthy housekeeper, and realising only too well the futility of his first efforts to discover Madame de Beaumesnil’s illegitimate child.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  UNEXPECTED CONSOLATION.

  TWO MONTHS HAD elapsed since the death of Madame de Beaumesnil, and great activity reigned in the house of M. le Baron de la Rochaiguë, who had been appointed guardian of Ernestine de Beaumesnil at a family council convoked shortly after the demise of the countess.

  The servants of the household were hurrying to and fro arranging articles of furniture, under the superintendence of the baron, his wife, and his sister, Mlle. Helena de la Rochaiguë, an old maid about forty-five years of age, whose plain black dress, downcast eyes, white, pinched face, and severely arranged white hair made her look very much like a religieuse, though she had never taken monastic vows.

  M. de la Rochaiguë, a very tall, thin man, between sixty and seventy years of age, was quite bald. He had a receding forehead and chin, prominent blue eyes, and a long nose. His lips were wreathed in a perpetual smile, which displayed exceedingly white, but unusually long, teeth, that imparted a decidedly sheep-like character to his physiognomy. He had an excellent figure, and by holding himself rigidly erect and buttoning his long black coat straight up to his white cravat, he managed to make himself a living copy of the portrait of Canning, “the perfect type of a gentleman statesman,” as the baron often remarked.

  M. de la Rochaiguë was not a statesman, however, though he had long aspired to become one. In fact, this ambition had developed into a sort of mania with him. Believing himself an unknown Canning, and being unable to air his eloquence in the councils of the nation, he took advantage of each and every opportunity to make a speech, and always assumed a parliamentary tone and attitude in discussing the most trivial matter.

  One of the most salient characteristics of the baron’s oratory was a redundancy of adjectives and adverbs, which seemed to him to treble the effect of his finest thoughts, though if we might venture to adopt the baron’s phraseology, we could truly say that nothing could be more insignificant, more commonplace, and more void of meaning than what he styled his thoughts.

  Madame de la Rochaiguë, who was now about forty-five, had been extremely pretty, coquettish, and charming. Her figure was still slender and graceful, but the youthfulness and elaborateness of her toilets seemed ill-suited to one of her mature years.

  The baroness was passionately fond of luxury and display. There was nothing that she loved better than to organise and preside at magnificent entertainments, but unfortunately, her fortune, though considerable, did not correspond with her very expensive tastes. Besides, she had no intention of impoverishing herself; so being an extremely shrewd and economical woman, she managed to enjoy the prestige which lavish expenditure imparts to one by frequently acting as the patroness of the many obscure but enormously rich foreigners or provincials — meteors — who, after dazzling Paris a few years, vanish for ever in darkness and oblivion.

  Madame de la Rochaiguë in such cases did not allow her protégés the slightest liberty, even in the selection of their guests. She gave them a list of the persons they were to entertain, not even granting them permission to invite such of their friends or compatriots as she did not consider worthy to appear in aristocratic society.

  The baroness, holding a high social position herself, could easily launch her clients in the best society, but in the meantime she was really the mistress of their house. It was she alone who planned their entertainments, and it was to her that persons applied for a place on the list of guests bidden to these sumptuous and exclusive reunions.

  It is needless to say that she considered a box at the opera and other fashionable places of amusement an absolute necessity, and, in this box, the best seat was always reserved for her. It was the same at the races, and in the frequent visits to the seashore and other fashionable watering-places. Her protégés rented a house, and sent down chefs, servants, and horses and carriages, and in these admirably appointed establishments Madame de la Rochaiguë kept open house for her friends.

  So insatiable is the longing for pleasure in society, even the most fashionable society, that, instead of revolting at the idea of a woman of noble birth devoting herself to the shameful robbing of these unfortunate people whose foolish vanity was leading them on to ruin, society flattered Madame de la Rochaiguë, the dispenser of all this lavish hospitality, and the lady herself was not a little proud of the advantages she derived from her patronage; besides being clever, witty, shrewd, and remarkably self-possessed, Madame de la Rochaiguë was one of the seven or eight brilliant women who exerted a real influence over what is known as Parisian society.

  The three persons above referred to were engaged in adding the finishing touches to a spacious suite of superbly appointed apartments that occupied the entire first floor of a mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain.

  M. and Madame de la Rochaiguë had relinquished these rooms and established themselves on the second floor, a part of which was occupied by Mlle. de la Rochaiguë, while the rest had heretofore served as quarters for the baron’s daughter and son-in-law, when they left their estates, where they resided most of the year, for a two months’ sojourn in Paris.

  These formerly rather dilapidated and very parsimoniously furnished apartments had been entirely renovated and superbly decorated for Mlle. Ernestine de Beaumesnil, whose health had become sufficiently restored to admit of her return to France, and who was expected to arrive from Italy that very day, accompanied by her governess, and a sort of steward or courier whom M. de la Rochaiguë had despatched to Naples to bring the orphan home.

  The extreme care which the baron and his wife and sister were bestowing on the arrangement of the rooms was almost ludicrous, so plainly did it show the intense eagerness and obsequiousness with which Mlle. de Beaumesnil was awaited, though there was something almost depressing in the thought that all this splendour was for a mere child of sixteen, who seemed likely to be almost lost in these immense rooms.

  After a final survey of the apartments, M. de la Rochaiguë summoned all the servants, and, seeing a fine opportunity for a speech, uttered the following memorable words with all his wonted majesty of demeanour:

  “I here assemble my people together, to say, declare, and signify to them that Mlle. de Beaumesnil, my cousin and ward, is expected to arrive this evening. I desire also to say to them that Madame de la Rochaig
uë and myself intend, desire, and wish that our people should obey Mlle. de Beaumesnil’s orders even more scrupulously than our own. In other words, I desire to say to our people that anything and everything Mlle. de Beaumesnil may say, order, or command, they are to obey as implicitly, unhesitatingly, and blindly as if the order had been given by Madame de la Rochaiguë or myself. I count upon the zeal, intelligence, and exactitude of my people in this particular, and we shall reward handsomely all who manifest hearty good-will, solicitude, and unremitting zeal in Mlle. de Beaumesnil’s service.”

  After this eloquent adjuration the servants were dismissed, and the cooks were ordered to have everything in readiness to serve either a hot or cold repast in case Mlle. de Beaumesnil should desire something to eat on her arrival.

  These preparations concluded, Madame de la Rochaiguë suggested to her husband that they go up to their own apartments.

  “I was about to make the same proposition to you,” responded M. de la Rochaiguë, smiling, and showing his long teeth with the most affable air imaginable.

  As the baron and baroness and Mlle. de la Rochaiguë were leaving the apartment, a servant stepped up to M. de la Rochaiguë, and said:

  “There is a young woman here who wishes to speak with madame.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She did not give her name. She came to return something belonging to the late Comtesse de Beaumesnil.”

  “Admit her,” said the baroness.

  Then, turning to her husband and sister-in-law, she said:

  “I wonder who it can be?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, but we shall soon know.”

  “Some claim on the estate, probably,” remarked the baroness. “It should have been sent to the notary.”

  Almost at the same instant the servant opened the door, and announced:

  “Mademoiselle Herminie.”

  Though beautiful under any and all circumstances, the lovely face of the “duchess,” wan from the profound grief caused by the death of her mother, wore an expression of intense sadness. Her lovely golden hair, which she usually wore in long curls, was wound smoothly around her head, for, in her bitter sorrow, the poor child for the last two months had entirely forgotten the innocent vanities of youth. Another trivial but highly significant detail, — Herminie’s white and beautifully shaped hands were bare; the shabby little gloves so often and carefully mended were no longer wearable, and her increasing poverty would not permit her to purchase others.