by Emile Zola
“Oh, Léonide!” Countess Sabine, with her faint smile, contented herself with murmuring. A slight shrug of the shoulders completed her thought. It was not after having lived in it seventeen years that she would think of altering her drawing-room. Now, it would remain the same as her mother-in-law had wished it should be during her life-time. Then, resuming the conversation, she observed, “I have been told that we shall also have the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Russia.”
“Yes, it is announced that there will be great festivities,” said Madame du Joncquoy.
The banker Steiner, recently introduced into the house by Léonide de Chezelles, who knew every one, was conversing seated on a sofa between two windows. He was questioning a deputy,w from whom he was cunningly trying to extract some news relative to a stock exchange affair of which he had an inkling; whilst Count Muffat, standing in front of them, was listening in silence, looking blacker than ever. Four or five young men formed another group near the door, surrounding Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who, in a hushed voice, was relating to them some adventure, rather improper, no doubt, for they were all making great efforts to smother their laughter. All alone, in the middle of the room, a stout man, the head of a department at the Ministry of the Interior, was ponderously seated in an arm-chair, asleep with his eyes open. But one of the young men having seemed to throw doubt on Vandeuvres’s story, the latter raised his voice, and exclaimed:
“You are too sceptical, Foucarmont; you will spoil all your pleasures.”
And with a laugh he moved towards the ladies. The last of a great race, effeminate and intelligent, he was then devouring a fortune with the rage of an appetite that nothing could appease. His racing-stable, one of the most celebrated of Paris, cost him an enormous sum; his losings at the Imperial Club amounted each month to a most unpleasant number of louis; his mistresses every year, good or bad, relieved him of a farm and several acres of meadow or forest land, making quite a hole in his vast estates in Picardy.
“You do well to call others sceptical, you who believe in nothing,” said Leonide, making room for him beside her. “It is you who spoil your pleasures.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “I want others to profit by my experience.
But he was made to stop. He was scandalizing M. Venot. Then, some of the ladies moving, disclosed to view, on a sort of sofa-chair, a little man of sixty, with bad teeth and a cunning smile. He was installed there just as though he were at home, listening to every one and never uttering a word. With a gesture he notified that he was not scandalized. Vandeuvres assumed his most dignified look, and gravely added, “M. Venot knows very well that I believe that which I ought to believe.”
It was an act of religious faith. Léonide herself appeared satisfied. The young men at the end of the room no longer laughed. It was a strait-laced place, and they did not amuse themselves much there. A coldness had passed over all. In the midst of the silence arose the sound of Steiner’s snuffling voice, the deputy’s discretion having ended by putting the banker in a rage. For a few minutes Countess Sabine looked into the fire, then she renewed the conversation.
“I saw the King of Prussia last year, at Baden. He is still full of vigour for his years.”
“Count Bismarckx will accompany him,” said Madame Du Joncquoy. “Do you know the count? I lunched with him at my brother’s, oh! a long time ago, when he was representing Prussia at Paris. I cannot understand such a man achieving the great success he has.”
“Why?” asked Madame Chantereau.
“Well! I scarcely know how to tell you. He does not please me. He has a brutish look, and is ill-mannered. Besides, for myself, I think him stupid.”
Then everyone talked about Count Bismarck. The opinions were very divided. Vandeuvres knew him, and asserted that he was a hard drinker and a good player. But, at the height of the discussion, the door opened and Hector de la Faloise appeared. Fauchery, who accompanied him, approached the countess, and bowing, said, “Madame I did not forget your gracious invitation.”
She greeted him with a smile and a kind word. The journalist,after shaking hands with the count, stood for a moment like a fish out of water, in the midst of the company of whom he only recognised Steiner. Vandeuvres, having turned round, came and greeted him; and, happy at the meeting, and seized with a desire to be communicative, Fauchery at once drew him aside, saying in a low voice:
“It’s for to-morrow; are you going?”
“Of course!”
“At midnight at her place.”
“I know, I know. I’m going with Blanche.”
He wished to escape to rejoin the ladies and give another argument in Count Bismarck’s favour. But Fauchery detained him.
“You will never guess what invitation she has asked me to deliver.”
And he slightly nodded his head in the direction of Count Muffat, who at that moment was discussing the budget with the deputy and Steiner.
“It can’t be!” said Vandeuvres, amazed, but at the same time highly amused.
“On my honour! I had to swear I would bring him. I have called partly on that account.”
They both had a quiet laugh, and then Vandeuvres, hastening to rejoin the ladies, exclaimed,
“I assure you, on the contrary, that Count Bismarck is very witty. For instance, he made one night, in my hearing, a most delightful pun—”
La Faloise, however, having overheard the few rapid words exchanged in a low voice between the two friends, looked at Fauchery, hoping for an explanation which came not. Whom were they talking of? What was going to take place the next day at midnight? He stuck to his cousin wherever he went. The latter had gone and sat down. Countess Sabine especially interested him. She had often been talked about in his presence. He knew that, married when she was only seventeen, she would then be thirty-four, and that ever since her marriage she had led a sort of cloistered existence between her husband and her mother-in-law. In society, some said she was as cold as a devotee, but others pitied her as they recalled her merry laughter, her big, sparkling eyes, in the days before she was shut up in that old house. Fauchery examined her and hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had been recently killed in Mexico, y had imparted to him after dinner, on the eve of his departure, one of those brutal secrets which the most discreet men let out at certain moments. But Fauchery’s recollection of the matter was very vague; they had both dined well that evening, and he had his doubts as he watched the countess, dressed in black, with her quiet smile, in the middle of that old-fashioned drawing-room. A lamp placed behind her detached her sharp profile, that of a plump brunette, of which the lips alone, slightly thick, had a sort of imperious sensuality.
“What’s the matter with them and their Bismarck!” murmured La Faloise, who always pretended to be very much bored when in society. “It’s awfully slow here. It was a queer idea of yours to want to come!”
All at once Fauchery questioned him, “I say, the countess, has she got any lover?”
“Oh! no, my dear fellow; oh! no,” he stammered, visibly upset, and quite forgetting his off-hand style. “Wherever do you think you are?” Then he became aware that his indignation was not quite the thing for a man of the world like himself, so, leaning back on the sofa, he added, “Well! I say no; but really I’m not sure of anything. There’s a fellow over there, that Foucarmont, who’s always to be found about the place. One has seen stranger things than that, that’s certain. For myself, I don’t care a hang. Anyhow, if the countess does amuse herself in that way, she must be very cunning, for no one has ever found it out; she is never talked about.”
Then, without Fauchery taking the trouble to question him further, he related all he knew respecting the Muffats. He spoke in a very low voice in the midst of the tittle-tattle of the ladies gathered round the fire; and one would have thought, seeing them in their white ties and gloves, that they were discussing some serious matter in the most select words. Mamma Muffat, whom La Faloise had known intimately, was an insupportable old wom
an, always mixed up with priests. As for Muffat, the tardy son of a general, made count by Napoleon I., he naturally found himself in favour after December 2nd.z He also was not very gay; but he was considered to be a very worthy and honest man. With that he possessed opinions belonging to another world, and had such a high idea of his post at court, of his dignities and of his virtues, that he carried his head like the holy sacrament. It was Mamma Muffat who had given him that beautiful education—confession every day, no youth, no sprees of any kind. He was most religious; he had frequent fits of faith of great violence, similar to attacks of brain fever. Then, to finish his portrait with a last detail, La Faloise whispered a word in his cousin’s ear.
“It’s not possible!” said the latter.
“On my honour, I was assured of it! He had it still when he married.”
Fauchery laughed as he glanced at the count, whose face, surrounded with whiskers and without moustache, looked squarer and harder than ever as he quoted figures and totals to Steiner, who disputed them.
“Well, he looks like one of that sort,” he murmured. “A fine present he made to his wife! Ah, poor little thing! how he must have bored her! I bet she doesn’t know anything at all!”
Just then Countess Sabine spoke to him, but he was so interested and amused with what he had been told about the count that he did not hear her. She repeated her question.
“M. Fauchery, have you not written an article on Count Bismarck? You have spoken to him, have you not?”
He rose from his seat quickly, and joined the ladies, trying to compose his features, at the same time, however, finding a reply with ease.
“Really, madame, I must at once own that I wrote that article by the aid of some of his biographies published in Germany. I have never seen Count Bismarck.”
He remained next to the countess, and whilst talking with her he continued his reflections. She did not look her age; one would have thought her twenty-eight years old at most; her eyes, which her long lashes shaded with a blue shadow, especially retained a sparkle of youth. Brought up by parents living apart, spending one month with the Marquis de Chouard and the next with the Marchioness, she married when very young, shortly after her mother’s death, incited thereto, no doubt, by her father, in whose way she was. He was a terrible man, the marquis, and strange stories were beginning to circulate about him, in spite of his great show of piety! Fauchery asked if he would have the honour of seeing him. Certainly, her father would come, though very late; he had so much work to attend to! The journalist, who thought he knew where the old man spent his evenings, preserved his gravity; but a mark he noticed on the countess’s left cheek near her mouth, surprised him greatly. Nana had the same—exactly. It was funny. On the mark were some little curly hairs, only the hairs on Nana were light, whilst those on the other were as black as jet. But, no matter, this woman hadn’t a lover.
“I always had a wish to know Queen Augusta,” said she. “I have heard that she is so good and so pious. Do you think that she will accompany the king?”
“It is said that she will not, madame,” he replied.
She had no lover—that was evident to all. It was sufficient to see her there, beside her daughter, so inert and so unnatural on her stool. The sepulchral drawing-room, with its church-like odour, told sufficiently under what an iron hand, in what a rigid existence, she passed her life. There was nothing of hers in that antiquated abode, blackened with damp. It was Muffat who domineered and who governed, with his bigoted education, his penances, and his fasts. But the sight of the little old man with bad teeth and cunning smile, whom Fauchery noticed just then in the easy-chair behind the ladies, appeared to him a more forcible argument still. He knew the fellow, Théophile Venot, an ex-attorney who had had the speciality of ecclesiastical causes. Having retired with a very handsome fortune, he now led a rather mysterious existence, was received everywhere, treated with great respect, and even slightly feared, as though he represented a great power—an occult one which, so to say, could be felt about him. Besides that, he affected great humility; he was a church-warden at the Madeleine, and had merely taken a situation as adjunct to the mayor of the ninth arrondissement to occupy his leisure, so he said. The countess was well protected, and no mistake! there was nothing to be done in that quarter.
“You are right; one is bored to death here,” said Fauchery to his cousin, when he had succeeded in escaping from the ladies. “We’ll be off.”
But Steiner, whom Count Muffat and the deputy had just left, came towards him looking furious, all in a perspiration, and grumbling in a low voice. “Confound them! they can keep their information to themselves if they want to. I shall find plenty of others who will speak.” Then, pushing the journalist into a corner, he said in a victorious tone of voice, “Well! it’s for to-morrow. I shall be there, my buck!”
“Ah!” murmured Fauchery, surprised.
“You didn’t know? Oh! I had an awful job to find her at home! Besides that, Mignon stuck to me wherever I went.”
“But they are going, the Mignons.”
“Yes; so she told me. Well, she at length received me, and invited me. At midnight precisely, after the theatre.” The banker looked beaming with delight. He winked his eye, and added, giving to each word a peculiar significance, “And you, did it come off?”
“What do you mean?” asked Fauchery, who affected not to understand. “She wished to thank me for my article, so she came to call on me.”
“Yes, yes. You are lucky, you fellows; you are rewarded. By the way, who is it who pays to-morrow?”
The journalist opened his arms, as though to declare that no one had been able to find out. Here Vandeuvres called to Steiner, who knew Count Bismarck. Madame du Joncquoy was almost convinced. She ended by saying:
“He made a bad impression on my mind; I think he looks wicked. However, I am willing to believe he has plenty of wit. That will explain his great successes.”
“No doubt,” said the banker—a Frankfort Jew, with a ghastly smile.
This time, however, La Faloise plucked up courage to question his cousin, and following him closely, whispered in his ear, “So there’s to be a supper at some woman’s to-morrow night? At whose place is it, eh? at whose place?”
Fauchery signalled to him that some one was listening; they must observe the proprieties. Again the door had opened, and an old lady entered, followed by a youth, whom the journalist recognised as the youngster fresh from college, who, on the first night of the “Blonde Venus,” had uttered the famous “Isn’t she stunning!” which was still talked about. The lady’s arrival caused quite a commotion in the drawing-room. Countess Sabine hastily rose from her chair to meet her. She took hold of her hands, and called her her dear Madame Hugon. Seeing his cousin watch this scene rather curiously, La Faloise, with the view of impressing him, explained it in a few words. Madame Hugon was a notary’s widow, and had retired to a place called Les Fondettes, an estate which had long belonged to her family, and which was situated near Orleans. She had kept up a small establishment in Paris, in a house belonging to her in the Rue de Richelieu, and was now passing a few weeks there for the purpose of arranging everything for her younger son, who was studying for the bar. She had been the Marchioness de Chouard’s great friend, and had been present at the countess’s birth. The latter had often spent months with her, up to the time of her marriage with the count, and they were still very intimate together.
“I have brought George to see you,” Madame Hugon was saying to Sabine. “I fancy you will find him grown!”
The youth, with his bright eyes and fair curls, looking like a girl dressed up as a boy, greeted the countess, not at all bashfully, and recalled to her recollection a game at battledore and shuttle-cockaa that they had played together, two years before, at Les Fondettes.
“Is Philip not in Paris?” asked Count Muffat.
“Oh, no!” replied the old lady. “He is still with the garrison at Bourges.”
She had seated herse
lf, and talked with pride of her elder son, a big fellow, who, after enlisting in a hasty moment, had rapidly attained the rank of lieutenant. All the ladies surrounded her with a respectful sympathy. The conversation became nicer and more agreeable; and Fauchery, seeing there that worthy Madame Hugon, with her white hair, and her maternal face lighted up with such a sweet smile, thought himself highly ridiculous for having for a moment suspected Countess Sabine. However, the big crimson silk easy-chair, in which the countess had re-seated herself, attracted his attention. He thought it looked too loud, and altogether out of place, in that smoky old drawing-room. For certain, it was not the count who had introduced such a means of gratifying a voluptuous indolence. One might have thought it a sort of experiment, the commencement of a desire and of an enjoyment. Then his thoughts went dreamily back to the past, returning, in spite of himself, to that story told one evening in a private room at a restaurant. He had sought to become acquainted with the Muffat family, prompted by a sensual curiosity; for, since his friend had been killed in Mexico, who knew what might happen? it was for him to see. There was probably nothing in it after all. The thought of it, however, disturbed and attracted him, and all the vice in his nature was awakened. The big easy-chair had a tumbled look and a curve in the back which now rather amused him.
“Well! shall we go?” asked La Faloise, with the intention of asking, when they got outside, the name of the woman who was to give the supper.
“In a little while,” replied Fauchery.
And he no longer hurried himself, but took as a pretext for staying the invitation with which he had been charged, and which it was not at all easy to deliver. The ladies were talking of a young girl who had recently become a nun. The ceremony, which was a very touching one, had affected all fashionable Paris for three days past. She was the eldest daughter of the Baroness de Fougeray, and had joined the Carmelites, having an irresistible calling to do so. Madame Chantereau, the cousin in a remote degree of the Fougerays, was relating that the baroness had been obliged to take to her bed on the following day, being so overcome by her emotion.