CHAPTER II
Such was the Abbé Girod, the type of a class. The Duc de Frontignan, with whom he was dining on the evening this story opens, was, or rather is, in many ways a no less remarkable personage in Paris society.
Possessing rank, birth, and a splendid income, he had been blessed with more than a fair share of the good gifts of providence, being endowed, not only with considerable mental power, but with the tact to use that power to the best advantage. Although beyond doubt clever, he was universally esteemed a much more intellectual man than he really was, and this through no voluntary and willful deceitfulness on his part, but simply owing to a method he had unconsciously adopted of exhibiting his wares with their most favorable aspect to the front.
He was well read, but not deeply read, and yet all Paris considered him a profound scholar; he was quick and epigrammatic in his appreciation and expression of ideas, as men of cultivation and varied experience are apt to be; but he enjoyed the reputation of being a wit without ever having said a really good thing; and finally, having merely lounged through the world, impelled by a spirit of restlessness begotten of great wealth and idleness, society looked upon him as a bold and adventurous traveler. Only the day before we have the pleasure of introducing him to our readers, he had politely declined to leave Paris and conduct an expedition to the North Pole, but had generously volunteered to give a large sum to anyone who cared to risk his life in endeavoring to discover that inestimable boon to suffering humanity known as the North-West Passage, for which we are all so hungrily longing, and which Millais, aided and abetted by Trelawny, asserts to be the bounden duty of England to find out; at the same time promising to take care of and provide for the widows and orphans of such adventurers as might find the climate of the Pole, or the appetites of the indigenous bears, a serious impediment to their safe return and ultimate reception of the conqueror’s laurels, with which we should all so eagerly greet them. One gift he most certainly possessed, and that to an eminent degree: he was vastly amusing and entertaining, and resembled in that respect the Abbé Galiani, as described by Diderot, for he was indeed “a treasure on rainy days; and if the cabinetmakers made such things, nobody would be without one in the country.”
He not only knew everybody in Paris, but he possessed that precious, rare, and extraordinary faculty of drawing people out, and of forcing them to make themselves amusing. No man, indeed, was in his society long before—often to his own great surprise—openly discussing his most cherished hobby with a new and unwonted eloquence hatched by apparent sympathy, or airily scattering as seed for trivial conversation the fruit of long years of experience and reflection. From what has been said, it may be superfluous to add that the Hotel de Frontignan, in the Rue de Varenne, was the resort, lounging-place, and almshouse of all that was most remarkable and extraordinary in the fashionable, the artistic, the diplomatic, and the scientific world.
His intimacy with the Abbé Girod was one of long standing: they were bound together by one bond of union which (alas! how rarely it is forged!) is stronger and more enduring than many cemented by vows, prayers, and tears—they mutually amused each other; and while, on the one side, the keen intellect of the priest found much that was interesting in the shallow, but attractive and brilliant, nature of the layman, the duke, on the other, entertained feelings of the warmest admiration for a man who, having risen from nothing, enlivened the most exclusive coteries with his graceful learning and charming wit.
It was one of the peculiar whims of Octave de Frontignan never to have an even number of guests at his dinner-table. His soirées, indeed, were attended by hundreds, but his dinner-parties rarely exceeded seven (including himself), and in many cases he only invited two.
On this especial occasion the only guest asked to meet the Abbé Girod was the celebrated diplomatist and millionaire, the Prince Paul Pomerantseff.
This most extraordinary personage had for the past six years kept Europe in a constant state of excitement by reason of his munificence, eccentricity, and power.
Brought up under the direct personal supervision of the Emperor of Russia, he had escaped the emasculating influence engendered by the atmosphere of the Corps des Pages, and had learnt at an early age to rely upon himself for his virtues, while ever ready to generously extend an indulgent confidence in his friends to be ready to provide him with the requisite amount of vices. He had distinguished himself as a diplomatist and as a soldier, and had left traces of his indomitable will in many State papers, as on many an enemy’s face, during the period of the Crimean war.
In London, but perhaps more especially in “the Shires,” his face was well known and liked, and his method of negotiating fences was as clean and clever as the negotiator himself. Duchesses’ daughters had sighed for him, but in vain; and to the “endless desolation and impotent disdain” of mothers, the continuance of his celibacy appeared to be as certain as the splendor of his fortune. Pomerantseff had, moreover,—and this is really worthy of note,—escaped altogether from that most terrible because most hopeless and incurable of maladies, ennui; and he owed this miraculous immunity from the disease which almost always overwhelms the young, rich, prosperous, and powerful, to his lucky spirit of insouciance, which he had carefully cultivated from early youth—from, in fact, the moment when he had met with his first disappointment.
The monotony of happiness is perhaps the most hideous monotony of all to a thinking man; and the reason of this is obvious—it is unnatural. Pleasure, with its thousand subtle perfumes, exhausts the moral atmosphere as flowers absorb the oxygen in a closed room j and we all know what the copybooks tell us about the feeling of diffidence entertained by nature as regards a vacuum. Then, again, the man who finds happiness, as it were, an inseparable accident of his life, like dining, will surely begin by fatal degrees to criticize and analyze the nature of it, as he will carefully choose the vintages of his wines. When he has reached this state he is lost; for, as Champ fort truly says, “Celui qui veut trop faire dependre son bonheur de sa raison, qui le soumet à l’examen, qui chicane, pour ainsi dire, ses jouissances, et n’admet que des plaisirs delicats finit par n’en plus avoir. C’est un homme qui a force de faire carder son matelas le voit diminuer et finit par coucher sur la dure.” But Pomerantseff carefully avoided this phylloxera of the lucky: in riding to hounds he always looked at the fence he was going to take; in love he invariably ignored the heart he was supposed to be about to awaken; so that, both in jumping and kissing, he met with but few “croppers.” He had, moreover, one great and precious gift, that of making himself well beloved by his friends, and healthily feared by his enemies; and the Abbé Girod, who had known him for many years, proved no exception to the general rule; for, although their friendship had never ripened into great intimacy, there was perhaps no man in the wide circle of his acquaintance in whose society the priest took a more lively pleasure.
“Late as usual!” cried the duke, as Girod hurried into the room ten minutes after the appointed time. “Prince, if you were so unpunctual in your diplomatic duties as the abbé is in his social (and, I fear, in his spiritual!), where would the world be?”
The abbé stopped short, pulled out his watch, and looked at it with a comically contrite air.
“Only ten minutes late; and I am sure when you think of the amount of business I have to transact, and the nature of it, you can afford to forgive me,” he said, as he advanced and shook hands warmly with his friends.
“To my mind,” said Pomerantseff, smiling, “dining being the most serious of our transient worldly pleasures, as it certainly the most harmless,—for indigestion is the malady of fools, and does not concern the man qui sait manger,—anything that interferes with the proper enjoyment of it should be seriously punished as a crime of lèse-volupté.”
“You are right,” said the duke; “and as regards that, one of the most striking proofs of Shakespeare’s subtle insight int
o human nature is to be found in Macbeth. It is more than probable that a man so steeped in murder, and one who had contracted the rather dreary habit of consorting with witches, would, under ordinary circumstances, have treated with well-merited contempt the ghostly visitations of that utterly uninteresting Banquo; but to be annoyed at the supper-table was intolerable. This view, to my mind, gives the keynote to the latter part of the play.”
“Capital!” cried the abbé. “That is quite a new idea. Fancy the Eumenides in the pot au feu! You cannot conceive,” he continued, throwing himself lazily down upon a lounge, “you have no idea, of the amount of folly I am forced to listen to in a day. Every woman whose bad temper has got her into trouble with her husband, and every man whose stupidity has led him into quarrelling with his wife—one and all they come to me, pour out their misfortunes into my ears, and expect me to arrange their affairs.”
But here the servant, announcing “M. le Duc est servi,” interrupted the poor abbé’s complaints.
CHAPTER III
“I tell you what I should do,” said Pomerantseff, when they were seated at table, the Cossack coming out, as it had annoyed him to have to wait. “I should say to every man and woman who came to mc on such errands, ‘My dear friend, my business is with your spiritual welfare and with that alone. The doctor and solicitor must take care of your worldly concerns. It is my duty to ensure your eternal felicity, when the tedium of delirium tremens and the divorce court is all over, and that is really all one man can do.’”
“Very well; but suppose they should reply to me,” answered the abbé, quoting his favorite Novalis, “that ‘life is a disease of the spirit.’”
“By the way,” broke in the duke, “talking of spiritual matters, Pomerantseff has been telling me his experiences with a man you detest, abbé.”
“I detest no man.”
“I can only judge from your own words,” rejoined Frontignan. “Did you not tell me years ago that you thought Home a more serious evil than the typhoid fever?”
“Ah, Home the medium!” cried Girod, in great disgust. “I admit you are right. It is not possible, prince, that you encourage Octave in his absurd spiritualism?”
But just at that moment came a whisper from a better world—
“Chateau Margaux, M. l’Abbé?” murmured the butler in his ear.
“Wait!” cried the duke, as Girod was about to smile assent; “I have some wine I want you to try.” Then, turning to the butler, “Bring that Laffite Duglere sent in yesterday, Gregoire. Now, abbé, taste that I want your opinion before touching it myself or giving it to others. It is of the famous comet year, and of course you know the story of the sale. Duglere sent me up a dozen yesterday as a present, with a charming note to say that he wanted the opinion of my friends, and especially of yourself. He added, that of course he could not think of charging me for it, since he bought it at such a ruinous price that no serious man would think of buying a bottle. He keeps it, therefore, merely as an advertisement, and to give to friends. He says, moreover, that although of course too old, it is still a generous wine.”
The abbé looked carefully at the glass, and daintily swallowed a thimbleful; and then, after a pause of half a second, shook his head at the duke and said, smiling—
“Duglere for once spoke the truth. It is a generous wine; far too generous, for it has given away all its best. Margaux, Gregoire.”
“Capital!” laughed the duke. “I shall tell Duglere your opinion, and he will probably sell out his stock at once. It cost him two hundred francs a bottle.”
“It is possible to keep even wine too long,” replied the abbé: and then added with a sweet smile, “here below all is but ephemeral and transitory, as you know.”
You asked me just now, abbé, if I encouraged our friend here in his spiritualism, did you not?” asked Pomerantseff.
“I did.”
The prince smiled gravely.
“Do not you know me well enough to know that I should never dare to presume to encourage any man in anything, mon cher abbé?”
“But you cannot believe in it?”
“I do most certainly believe in it.”
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Girod. “What folly! What are we all coming to? If men like you and Octave encourage such vulgar jugglery, it will become so paying a game that we poor priests will stand no chance against the prestidigitateurs. Robert Houdin will get the best of all the fathers of the Church in a week!”
“It has always struck me as most remarkable,” said the duke, “that with all your taste for the curious and unknown, you have never been tempted into investigating the matter, abbé.”
“I am, as you say, a lover of the curious,” replied the priest, “but not of such empty trash as spiritualism. I have quite enough cares with the realities of this world, without bringing upon myself the misery which would surely be entailed by investigating the possibilities of the next.”
“That is a sentiment worthy of the Abbé Dubois,” said Pomerantseff, laughing; and then the duke suddenly making some inquiry relative to the train which was to take him and the prince to Brunoy on a shooting expedition the following morning, the subject for the nonce was dropped.
When dinner was over, they repaired to the fumoir, which Frontignan had furnished with all the soft sensualism befitting such a temple of selfishness; and a man might, if so inclined, have not inaptly murmured to himself, on lighting his cigar and sinking into one of the voluptuous arm-chairs which embraced your limbs with a chatterie quite their own, “Moi seul, et c’est assez!”
But Pomerantseff strode towards the piano and opened it. “I want to sing you a rather pretty ballad a friend sent me from London yesterday,” he said; “and as you both understand English perfectly, you will see that the words are rather above the ordinary level. They are written by a very dear friend of mine—a most extraordinary man—Tresilyan.”
“Ah! Tresilyan is a friend of yours, is he?” said the duke.
“One of my dearest. Do you know him?”
“Hardly—although I have, of course, met him scores of times. He promised to stay with me for a few days last year at Chataigneraye”—one of the duke’s places—”on his return from the leaden races; but he wrote to excuse himself It was a bore, for I had asked two of the princes to meet him.”
“Oh, of course,” laughed Pomerantseff, seating himself at the piano. “One can never catch him: he has so many engagements and friends, that his life is passed in saying in that wonderful voice of his, ‘Je le regrette, je ne demanderais pas mieux, mais c’est impossible!’ But one thing I will say for him: he does not pretend to be a poet; never publishes anything, and only writes for his own amusement, I am indeed one of the few men who know he writes verses at all. This thing he calls, I believe, ‘Æstas Captiva.’” And the prince hummed, in a clear, true, but unpretentious baritone voice, the following:—
I
I had thought when we met (for the year was moved
By the tears October must always bring),
I the lover, and you the loved,
I had said good-bye to spring.
II
“How could I foresee what I now well know.
That you’d caught and imprisoned all summer’s best?
That June, beguiled by your bosom’s snow.
Lay throbbing within your breast?
III
That those blue-grey eyes could the sun eclipse;
Hide him away, with his heat increased
Though the roses peeped from your pouting lips,
Burning to be released?
IV
“That the secret of all the sweet flowers had said,
Only awaited one kiss of mine,
To awaken and thrill when I bowed my head,
Where you c
an well divine?
V
“But thus it chanced, as we both now know,
With a kiss from me and a kiss from you,
June lay revealed in your blushes’ glow;
Shall we keep her October through?”
“You must not think me rude,” said the abbé, when Pomerantseff had got through his ditty; “but whenever I hear any sentiment of that kind I think perforce of that profound but unappreciated remark of Voltaire, ‘The first man who compared a woman to a rose was a poet, the second a fool!’”
“Il est impayable, ce cher abbé!” said Pomerantseff to the duke, with a laugh, as he rose from his seat and resumed his still-lighted cigar. “What can we do, duke, to make this wretched little pagan less material in his views?”
“Convert him to spiritualism,” said Frontignan.
“Never!” cried the abbé.
“It is absurd for you to disbelieve, for you know nothing about it, since you have never been willing to attend a séance, as you yourself admit.”
“I feel it is absurd, and that is enough—for me at least.”
“Certum est quia impossibile,” murmured Pomerantseff, striking a match.
“I myself do not exactly believe in spirits,” said Frontignan, thoughtfully.
“À la bonne heure! Of course not?” cried the abbé. “You see, prince, he is not quite mad after all!”
The prince said nothing.
“I cannot doubt the existence of some extraordinary phenomena,” continued the young duke thoughtfully, “simply because I cannot bring myself to such an exquisite pitch of philosophical imbecility as to doubt my own senses; but, to my thinking, the exact nature of the phenomena remains as yet an open question. It is some phase of electro-biology which we do not yet understand. I have a theory of my own about it, and although it may be absurd and fantastical, it is certainly no more so than that which would have us believe that the spirits of the dear old lazy dead come back to the scenes of their human hopes and disappointments, their lives and miseries, to pull our noses and play on tambourines.”
The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK ®: 25 Modern and Classic Tales Page 29