Books: Cosmopolis, v4
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Paul Bourget >> Cosmopolis, v4
It was, therefore, that on the day following the evening on which
imprudent Ardea had jested so persistently upon a subject sacred to her
that she rang at the door of the apartment which Monseigneur Guerillot
occupied in the large mansion on Rue des Quatre-Fontaines. There was no
question of incriminating the spirit of those pleasantries, nor of
relating her humiliating observations on the Prince's intoxication. No.
She wished to ease her mind, on which rested a shade of sorrow. At the
time of her betrothal, she had fancied she loved Ardea, for the emotion
of her religious life at length freed had inspired her with gratitude for
him who was, however, only the pretext of that exemption. She trembled
to-day, not only at not loving him any more, but at hating him, and above
all she felt herself a prey to that repugnance for the useless cares of
the world, to that lassitude of transitory hopes, to that nostalgia of
repose in God, undeniable signs of true vocations.
At the thought that she might, if she survived her father and she
remained free, retire to the 'Dames du Cenacle,' she felt at her
approaching marriage an inward repugnance, which augmented still more the
proof of her future husband's deplorable character. Had she the right to
form such bonds with such feelings? Would it be honorable to break,
without further developments, the betrothal which had been between her
and her father the condition of her baptism? She was already there,
after so few days! And her wound was deeper after the night on which the
Prince had, uttered his careless jests.
"It is permitted you to withdraw," replied Monsieur Guerillot, "but you
are not permitted to lack charity in your judgment."
There was within Fanny too much sincerity, her faith was too simple and
too deep for her not to follow out that advice to the letter, and she
conformed to it in deeds as well as in intentions. For, before taking a
walk in the afternoon with Alba, she took the greatest care to remove all
traces which the little scene of the day before could have left in her
friend's mind. Her efforts went very far. She would ask pardon of her
fiance.... Pardon! For what? For having been wounded by him, wounded
to the depths of her sensibility? She felt that the charity of judgment
recommended by the pious Cardinal was a difficult virtue. It exercises a
discipline of the entire heart, sometimes irreconcilable with the
clearness of the intelligence. Alba looked at her friend with a glance
full of an astonishment, almost sorrowful, and she embraced her, saying:
"Peppino is not worthy even to kiss the ground on which you tread, that
is my opinion, and if he does not spend his entire life in trying to be
worthy of you, it will be a crime."
As for the Prince himself, the impulses which dictated to his fiancee
words of apology when he was in the wrong, were not unintelligible to
him, as they would have been to Hafner. He thought that the latter had
lectured his daughter, and he congratulated himself on having cut short
at once that little comedy of exaggerated religious feeling.
"Never mind that," said he, with condescension, "it is I who have failed
in form. For at heart you have always found me respectful of that which
my fathers respected. But times have changed, and certain fanaticisms
are no longer admissible. That is what I have wished to say to you in
such a manner that you could take no offence."
And he gallantly kissed Fanny's tiny hand, not divining that he had
redoubled the melancholy of that too-generous child. The discord
continued to be excessive between the world of ideas in which she moved
and that in which the ruined Prince existed. As the mystics say with so
much depth, they were not of the same heaven.
Of all the chimeras which had lasted hours, God alone remained. It
sufficed the noble creature to say: "My father is so happy, I will not
mar his joy."
"I will do my duty toward my husband. I will be so good a wife that I
will transform him. He has religion. He has heart. It will be my role
to make of him a true Christian. And then I shall have my children and
the poor." Such were the thoughts which filled the mind of the envied
betrothed. For her the journals began to describe the dresses already
prepared, for her a staff of tailors, dressmakers, needlewomen and
jewellers were working; she would have on her contract the same signature
as a princess of the blood, who would be a princess herself and related
to one of the most glorious aristocracies in the world. Such were the
thoughts she would no doubt have through life, as she walked in the
garden of the Palais Castagna, that historical garden in which is still
to be seen a row of pear-trees, in the place where Sixte-Quint, near
death, gathered some fruit. He tasted it, and he said to Cardinal
Castagna--playing on their two names, his being Peretti--"The pears are
spoiled. The Romans have had enough. They will soon eat chestnuts."
That family anecdote enchanted Justus Hafner. It seemed to him full of
the most delightful humor. He repeated it to his colleagues at the club,
to his tradesmen, to it mattered not whom. He did not even mistrust
Dorsenne's irony.
"I met Hafner this morning on the Corso," said the latter to Alba at one
of the soirees at the end of the month, "and I had my third edition of
the pleasantry on the pears and chestnuts. And then, as we took a few
steps in the same direction, he pointed out to me the Palais Bonaparte,
saying, 'We are also related to them.'.... Which means that a grand-
nephew of the Emperor married a cousin of Peppino.... I swear he thinks
he is related to Napoleon!.... He is not even proud of it. The
Bonapartes are nowhere when it is a question of nobility!.... I await
the time when he will blush."
"And I the time when he will be punished as he deserves," interrupted
Alba Steno, in a mournful voice. "He is insolently triumphant. But no.
....He will succeed.... If it be true that his fortune is one immense
theft, think of those he has ruined. In what can they believe in the
face of his infamous happiness?"
"If they are philosophers," replied Dorsenne, laughing still more gayly,
"this spectacle will cause them to meditate on the words uttered by one
of my friends: 'One can not doubt the hand of God, for it created the
world.' Do you remember a certain prayer-book of Montluc's?"
"The one which your friend Montfanon bought to vex the poor little
thing?"
"Precisely. The old-leaguer has returned it to Ribalta; the latter told
me so yesterday; no doubt in a spirit of mortification. I say no doubt
for I have not seen the poor, dear man since the duel, which his
impatience toward Ardea and Hafner rendered in evitable. He retired,
I know not for how many days, to the convent of Mount Olivet, near
Sienna, where he has a friend, one Abbe de Negro, of whom he always
speaks as of a saint. I learned, through Rebalta, that he has returned,
but is invisible. I tried to force an entrance. In short, the volume
is again in the shop of the curiosity-seeker in the Rue Borgognona, if
Mademoiselle Hafner still wants it!"
"What good fortune!" exclaimed Fanny, with a sparkle of delight in her
eyes. "I did not know what present to offer my dear Cardinal. Shall we
make the purchase at once?"
"Montluc's prayer-book?" repeated old Ribalta, when the two young ladies
had alighted from the carriage before his small book-shop, more dusty,
more littered than ever with pamphlets, in which he still was, with his
face more wrinkled, more wan and more proud, peering from beneath his
broad-brimmed hat, which he did not raise. "How do you know it is here?
Who has told you? Are there spies everywhere?"
"It was Monsieur Dorsenne, one of Monsieur de Montfanon's friends," said
Fanny, in her gentle voice.
"Sara sara," replied the merchant with his habitual insolence, and,
opening the drawer of the chest in which he kept the most incongruous
treasures, he drew from it the precious volume, which he held toward
them, without giving it up. Then he began a speech, which reproduced the
details given by Montfanon himself. "Ah, it is very authentic. There is
an indistinct but undeniable signature. I have compared it with that
which is preserved in the archives of Sienna. It is Montluc's writing,
and there is his escutcheon with the turtles.... Here, too, are the
half-moons of the Piccolomini.... This book has a history...."
"The Marshal gave it, after the famous siege, to one of the members of
that illustrious family. And it was for one of the descendants that I
was commissioned to buy it.... They will not give it up for less than
two thousand francs."
"What a cheat!" said Alba to her companion, in English. "Dorsenne told
me that Monsieur de Monfanon bought it for four hundred."
"Are you sure?" asked Fanny, who, on receiving a reply in the
affirmative, addressed the bookseller, with the same gentleness, but with
reproach in her accent: "Two thousand francs, Monsieur Ribalta? But it
is not a just price, since you sold it to Monsieur de Montfanon for one-
fifth of that sum."
"Then I am a liar and a thief," roughly replied the old man; "a thief and
a liar," he repeated. "Four hundred francs! You wish to have this book
for four hundred francs? I wish Monsieur de Montfanon was here to tell
you how much I asked him for it."
The old bookseller smiled cruelly as he replaced the prayerbook in the
drawer, the key of which he turned, and turning toward the two young
girls, whose delicate beauty, heightened by their fine toilettes,
contrasted so delightfully with the sordid surroundings, he enveloped
them with a glance so malicious that they shuddered and instinctively
drew nearer one another. Then the bookseller resumed, in a voice hoarser
and deeper than ever: "If you wish to spend four hundred francs I have a
volume which is worth it, and which I propose to take to the Palais
Savorelli one of these days.... Ha, ha! It must be one of the very
last, for the Baron has bought them all." In uttering, those enigmatical
words, he opened the cup board which formed the lower part of the chest,
and took from one of the shelves a book wrapped in a newspaper. He then
unfolded the journal, and, holding the volume in his enormous hand with
his dirty nails, he disclosed the title to the two young girls: 'Hafner
and His Band; Some Reflections on the Scandalous Acquittal. By a
Shareholder.' It was a pamphlet, at that date forgotten, but which
created much excitement at one time in the financial circles of Paris,
of London and of Berlin, having been printed at once in three languages
--in French, in German and in English--on the day after the suit of the
'Credit Austro Dalmate.' The dealer's chestnut-colored eyes twinkled
with a truly ferocious joy as he held out the volume and repeated:
"It is worth four hundred francs."
"Do not read that book, Fanny," said Alba quickly, after having read the
title of the work, and again speaking in English; "it is one of those
books with which one should not even pollute one's thoughts."
"You may keep the book, sir," she continued, "since you have made
yourself the accomplice of those who have written it, by speculating on
the fear you hoped it would inspire. Mademoiselle Hafner has known of it
long, and neither she nor her father will give a centime."
"Very well! So much the better, so much the better," said Ribalta,
wrapping up his volume again; "tell your father I will keep it at his
service."
"Ah, the miserable man!" said Alba, when Fanny and she had left the shop
and reentered the carriage. "To dare to show you that!"
"You saw," replied Fanny, "I was so surprised I could not utter a word.
That the man should offer me that infamous work is very impertinent. My
father?.... You do not know his scrupulousness in business. It is the
honor of his profession. There is not a sovereign in Europe who has not
given him a testimonial."
That impassioned protestation was so touching, the generous child's
illusion was so sincere, that Alba pressed her hand with a deeper
tenderness. When Alba found herself that evening with her friend
Dorsenne, who again dined at Madame Steno's, she took him aside to relate
to him the tragical scene, and to ask him: "Have you seen that pamphlet?"
"To-day," said the writer. "Montfanon, whom I have found at length, has
just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The old
leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the
question.... I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It
was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on
me, for that is truth."
"But he was acquitted."
"Yes," replied Dorsenne, "though it is none the less true that he ruined
hundreds and hundreds of persons."
"Then, by the account given you of the case, it is clear to you that he
is dishonest," interrupted Alba,
"As clear as that you are here, Contessina," replied Dorsenne, "if to
steal means to plunder one's neighbors and to escape justice. But that
would be nothing. The sinister corner in this affair is the suicide of
one Schroeder, a brave citizen of Vienna, who knew our Baron intimately,
and who invested, on the advice of his excellent friend, his entire
fortune, three hundred thousand florins, in the scheme. He lost them,
and, in despair, killed himself, his wife, and their three children."
"My God!" cried Alba, clasping her hands. "And Fanny might have read
that letter in the book."
"Yes," continued Julien, "and all the rest with proof in support of it.
But rest assured, she shall not have the volume. I will go to that
anarchist of a Ribalta to-morrow and I will buy the last copy, if Hafner
has not already bought it."
Notwithstanding his constant affectation of irony, and, notwithstanding,
his assumption of intellectual egotism, Julien was obliging. He never
hesitated to render any one a service. He had not told his little friend
an untruth when he promised her to buy the dangerous work, and the
following morning he turned toward the Rue Borgognona, furnished with the
twenty louis demanded by the bookseller. Imagine his feelings when the
latter said to him:
"It is too late, Monsieur Dorsenne. The young lady was here last night.
She pretended not to prefer one volume to the other. It was to bargain,
no doubt. Ha, ha! But she had to pay the price. I would have asked the
father more. One owes some consideration to a young girl."
"Wretch!" exclaimed the novelist. "And you can jest after having
committed that Judas-like act! To inform a child of her father's
misdeeds, when she is ignorant of them!.... Never, do you hear, never
any more will Monsieur de Montfanon and I set foot in your shop, nor
Monseigneur Guerillot, nor any of the persons of my acquaintance. I will
tell the whole world of your infamy. I will write it, and it shall
appear in all the journals of Rome. I will ruin you, I will force you to
close this dusty old shop."
During the entire day, Dorsenne vainly tried to shake off the weight of
melancholy which that visit to the brigand of the Rue Borgognona had left
upon his heart.
On crossing, at nine o'clock, the threshold of the Villa Steno to give an
account of his mission to the Contessina, he was singularly moved. There
was no one there but the Maitlands, two tourists and two English
diplomatists, on their way to posts in the East.
"I was awaiting you," said Alba to her friend, as soon as she could speak
with him in a corner of the salon. "I need your advice. Last night a
tragical incident took place at the Hafner's."
"Probably," replied Dorsenne. "Fanny has bought Ribalta's book."
"She has bought the book!" said Alba, changing color and trembling.
"Ah, the unhappy girl; the other thing was not sufficient!"
"What other thing?" questioned Julien.
"You remember," said the young girl, "that I told you of that Noe Ancona,
the agent who served Hafner as a tool in selling up Ardea, and in thus
forcing the marriage. Well, it seems this personage did not think
himself sufficiently well-paid for his complicity. He demanded of the
Baron a large sum, with which to found some large swindling scheme, which
the latter refused point-blank. The other threatened to relate their
little dealing to Ardea, and he did so."
"And Peppino was angry?" asked Dorsenne, shaking his head. "That is not
like him."
"Indignant or not," continued Alba, "last night he went to the Palais
Savorelli to make a terrible scene with his future father-in-law."
"And to obtain an increase of dowry," said Julian.
"He was not by any means tactful, then," replied Alba, "for even in the
presence of Fanny, who entered in the midst of their conversation, he did
not pause. Perhaps he had drunk a little more than he could stand, which
has of late become common with him. But, you see, the poor child was
initiated into the abominable bargain with regard to her future, to her
happiness, and if she has read the book, too! It is too dreadful!"
"What a violent scene!" exclaimed Dorsenne. "So the engagement has been
broken off?"
"Not officially. Fanny is ill in bed from the excitement. Ardea came
this morning to see my mother, who has also seen Hafner. She has
reconciled them by proving to them, which she thinks true, that they have
a common interest in avoiding all scandal, and arranging matters. But it
rests with the poor little one. Mamma wished me to go, this afternoon,
to beseech her to reconsider her resolution. For she has told her father
she never wishes to hear the Prince's voice again. I have refused.
Mamma insists. Am I not right?"
"Who knows?" replied Julien. "What would be her life alone with her
father, now that her illusions with regard to him have been swept away?"
The touching scene had indeed taken place, and less than twenty-four
hours after the novelist had thus expressed to himself the regret of not
assisting at it. Only he was mistaken as to the tenor of the dialogue,
in a manner which proved that the subtlety of intelligence will never
divine the simplicity of the heart. The most dolorous of all moral
tragedies knit and unknit the most often in silence. It was in the
afternoon, toward six o'clock, that a servant came to announce
Mademoiselle Hafner's visit to the Contessina, busy at that moment
reading for the tenth time the 'Eglogue Mondaine,' that delicate story by
Dorsenne. When Fanny entered the room, Alba could see what a trial her
charming god-daughter of the past week had sustained, by the surprising
and rapid alteration in that expressive and noble visage. She took her
hand at first without speaking to her, as if she was entirely ignorant of
the cause of her friend's real indisposition. She then said:
"How pleased I am to see you! Are you better?"
"I have never been ill," replied Fanny, who did not know how to tell an
untruth. "I have had pain, that is all." Looking at Alba, as if to beg
her to ask no question, she added:
"I have come to bid you adieu."
"You are going away?" asked the Contessina. "Yes," said Fanny, "I am
going to spend the summer at one of our estates in Styria. "And, in a
low voice: "Has your mother told you that my engagement is broken?"
"Yes," replied Alba, and both were again silent. After several moments
Fanny was the first to ask: "And how shall you spend your summer?"--"We
shall go to Piove, as usual," was Alba's answer. "Perhaps Dorsenne will
be there, and the Maitlands will surely be." A third pause ensued. They
gazed at one another, and, without uttering another word, they distinctly
read one another's hearts. The martyrdom they suffered was so similar,
they both knew it to be so like, that they felt the same pity possess
them at the same moment. Forced to condemn with the most irrevocable
condemnation, the one her father, the other, her mother, each felt
attracted toward the friend, like her, unhappy, and, falling into one
another's arms, they both sobbed.
CHAPTER XI
THE LAKE DI PORTO
Her friend's tears had relieved sad Alba's heart while she held that
friend in her arms, quivering with sorrow and pity; but when she was
gone, and Madame Steno's daughter was alone, face to face with her
thoughts, a greater distress seized her. The pity which her companion in
misery had shown for her--was it not one more proof that she was right in
mistrusting her mother? Alas! The miserable child did not know that
while she was plunged in despair, there was in Rome and in her immediate
vicinity a creature bent upon realizing a mad vow. And that creature was
the same who had not recoiled before the infamy of an anonymous letter,
pretty and sinister Lydia Maitland--that delicate, that silent young
woman with the large brown eyes, always smiling, always impenetrable in
the midst of that dull complexion which no emotion, it seemed, had ever
tinged. The failure of her first attempt had exasperated her hatred
against her husband and against the Countess to the verge of fury, but a
concentrated fury, which was waiting for another occasion to strike, for
weeks, patiently, obscurely. She had thought to wreak her vengeance by
the return of Gorka, and in what had it ended? In freeing Lincoln from a
dangerous rival and in imperilling the life of the only being for whom
she cared!
The sojourn at the country-seat of her husband's mistress exasperated
Lydia's hidden anger. She suffered so that she cried aloud, like an
imprisoned animal beating against the bars, when she pictured to herself
the happiness which the two lovers would enjoy in the intimacy of the
villa, with the beauties of the Venetian scenery surrounding them. No
doubt the wife could provoke a scandal and obtain a divorce, thanks to
proofs as indisputable as those with which she had overwhelmed Maud. It
would be sufficient to carry to a lawyer the correspondence in the
Spanish escritoire. But of what use? She would not be avenged on her
husband, to whom a divorce would be a matter of indifference now that he
earned as much money as he required, and she would lose her brother. In
vain Lydia told herself that, warned as Alba had been by her letter, her
doubt of Madame Steno's misconduct would no longer be impossible. She
was convinced by innumerable trifling signs that the Contessina still
doubted, and then she concluded:
"It is there that the blow must be struck. But how?"
Yes. How? There was at the service of hatred in that delicate woman, in
appearance oblivious of worldliness, that masculine energy in decision
which is to be found in all families of truly military origin. The blood
of Colonel Chapron stirred within her and gave her the desire to act.
By dint of pondering upon those reasonings, Lydia ended by elaborating
one of those plans of a simplicity really infernal, in which she revealed
what must be called the genius of evil, for there was so much clearness
in the conception and of villainy in the execution. She assured herself
that it was unnecessary to seek any other stage than the studio for the
scene she meditated. She knew too well the fury of passion by which
Madame Steno was possessed to doubt that, as soon as she was alone with
Lincoln, she did not refuse him those kisses of which their
correspondence spoke. The snare to be laid was very simple. It required
that Alba and Lydia should be in some post of observation while the
lovers believed themselves alone, were it only for a moment. The
position of the places furnished the formidable woman with the means of
obtaining the place of espionage in all security. Situated on the second
floor, the studio occupied most of the depth of the house. The wall,
which separated it from the side of the apartments, ended in a partition
formed of colored glass, through which it was impossible to see. That
glass lighted a dark corridor adjoining the linen-room. Lydia employed
several hours of several nights in cutting with a diamond a hole, the
size of a fifty centime-piece, in one of those unpolished squares.
Her preparations had been completed several days when, notwithstanding
her absence of scruple in the satiating of her hatred, she still
hesitated to employ that mode of vengeance, so much atrocious cruelty was
there in causing a daughter to spy upon her mother. It was Alba herself
who kindled the last spark of humanity with which that dark conscience
was lighted up, and that by the most innocent of conversations. It was
the very evening of the afternoon on which she had exchanged that sad
adieu with Fanny Hafner. She was more unnerved than usual, and she was
conversing with Dorsenne in that corner of the long hall. They did not
heed the fact that Lydia drew near them, by a simple change of seat which
permitted her, while herself conversing with some guest, to lend an ear
to the words uttered by the Contessina.
It was Florent who was the subject of their conversation, and she said to
Dorsenne, who was praising him: