Francezka Part 38

"It is very superb, I know," she replied, but a shade came over her face. "Is it not trying, Babache, to have one's lightest word taken seriously? Here is the story of this coach. I had a handsome one--fine enough for any one--but happening to say one day, in pure carelessness, that I should like to have a gilt coach, Gaston orders this one for me, secretly, and it arrives this morning, to my astonishment. Moreover, in order to do it, Gaston, himself, went without some horses he needs. He is by no means so well mounted as he should be."

"At least, Madame," I replied, "few wives have your cause of complaint."

I noticed then some dissatisfaction in Francezka's face; the pursuit of pleasure, night and day, is bound to leave its marks on the strongest frame, and the best balanced nerves. I suspected Francezka was in the mood to find fault.

"Yes," she replied to my last words, "few wives can complain of too great complaisance on the part of their husbands. But it is, surely, not a comfortable way to live, for a woman, to watch and weigh her words with her husband, lest he act upon the most lightly expressed wish. Depend upon it, Babache, a great pa.s.sion is a great burden."

Francezka said this to me--Francezka, less than a year after Gaston's return. Oh, how strange a thing is a great pa.s.sion after all!

In a minute or two more, I heard Gaston's voice over my shoulder. He was standing on the coach step below me, and looked smiling and triumphant.

"I see you approve of this equipage," said he to me. "It is not unworthy even of Francezka."

I agreed with him; admired the horses--six superb roans--and then the time came to move on, and I sprang to the ground, while Gaston stepped into the coach.

As I walked away, I reflected that the money to pay for the gilt coach and six came out of Francezka's estate. But Gaston, I knew, had the management of it; and it is not the husband of every heiress who is satisfied to keep indifferent horses for himself, and provide his wife with six for her coach, and four for her outriders, to say nothing of the finest coach in Paris.

But was Francezka happy? Her air that day did not indicate it, but rather weariness, and disgust of the pleasures she followed so a.s.siduously. It is never a sign of happiness to follow pleasure madly.

In walking and riding about the streets of Paris I kept a lookout for Jacques Haret. I had not forgotten my promise to give him a good beating the next time I saw him, and felt conscientious scruples that I had not done it when I had met him the spring before. But the news he gave me on that occasion was so startling it put my duty out of my head. I had not the slightest doubt that some time or other he would drift back to Paris. Fellows of Jacques Haret's kidney can no more keep away from Paris than cats can keep away from cream.

So I watched for him, and one evening, soon after the carnival, as I was walking along the Rue St. Jacques, I came face to face with Jacques Haret. It was dusk, but the lamps which hung across the street had not yet been lighted. Jacques Haret was stepping debonairly along, whistling cheerfully _Sur le pont d'Avignon_. I noticed, even in the dim February evening, that he was shabbily dressed, but bore the marks of good eating and drinking on his face. When we came face to face he involuntarily halted. I stepped up to him and said:

"Where will you take it?"

The fellow knew I meant the beating I had promised. I continued:

"Here in the public street, where we shall be recognized, arrested, and Count Saxe will see that I come to no harm, while you will cool your heels in the Chatelet prison where you belong; or in the Luxembourg gardens which are deserted now, and where I can beat you more at my leisure, but not the less hard?"

"In the Luxembourg gardens," said the scoundrel, coolly, after a pause.

I have ever admired Jacques Haret's courage and I admired it now. He knew I meant to thrash him, that I had the strength to do it, and that if he killed me Count Saxe would tear him limb from limb. He had lost that nice honor of a gentleman, which would make a man accept death rather than a blow, but reasoning philosophically, as a rogue often does, concluded to take his punishment as best he might. Kings often reason thus, but few private men do.

We marched along the dark street, Jacques Haret in front, I behind. He resumed his whistling of _Sur le pont d'Avignon_.

There were no lanterns inside the Luxembourg gardens. When we reached the spot light streamed from many of the windows of the palace, but it did not penetrate the far recesses of the gardens, behind the tall hedges and the summer houses. I motioned Jacques Haret to the farthest corner, behind a grove of dwarf cedars. Once there I began stripping off my coat, and told him to strip off his coat also.

"Now, Babache," said this fellow, remonstrating, "don't be unreasonable; it is unworthy of you. Here I have come with you quietly, and I could have made a devil of a row, except I grew tired of dodging you through the streets of Paris; but really I don't think it good for my health to take your blows with nothing but my shirt between your fist and my skin."

It was difficult to be serious with Jacques Haret, although his crimes were serious enough, of which his behavior to poor old Peter and the unfortunate Lisa were crimes in every sense. Nevertheless, I made him take off his coat, which he did, grumbling excessively. And in the shadow of the cedars I gave him as sound a beating as any man ever got on this planet. All the while I was thinking of the satisfaction it would give Francezka to know of it.

He had made no active resistance, although he skilfully avoided some of my hardest blows. He uttered no oath, nor prayer, nor remonstrance; he had long known that some time or other I should give him a beating, that I was physically twice the man he was, and in the way he took his punishment he exemplified that singular form of courage in which a rogue often surpa.s.ses an honest man.

When I was through with him he presented a very battered appearance.

"I am now in the cla.s.s with Monsieur Voltaire," he said, as he wiped the blood from his nose. "He has had two beatings so far and so have I. But faith! the world is so unjust! It will not sympathize with me as it did with Voltaire. However, he was beaten by the Duc de Rohan's lackeys, while I was pummeled by a prince, a Tatar prince born in the Marais."

"I ought to have run you through," I said, "except that I am squeamish about taking human life. Now, go your ways, Jacques Haret, but if you do not want this dose repeated keep out of my way."

He bowed to the ground.

"My dear sir," he said, "I never sought your society in my life, nor even that of your master. The inducement which you offer me to keep out of your way is sufficient. I hope I shall never see you or your cross eye again."

As I turned and went into my lodgings I felt how futile a thing I had done; the dog should have been killed, but as I said, I am squeamish about taking human life. However, I knew that such punishment as I had given him would mightily please Francezka, and I determined to take the first occasion of telling her.

It came the next night, when there was to be a great mi-careme rout and ball at the Hotel Kirkpatrick. I did not usually go to these b.a.l.l.s unless commanded by my master, and he was a merciful man; but on this night I went with him of my own free will. It was a very splendid company, and few there were not above my quality. Madame Riano, who had just returned from Rome, sparkled with diamonds like a walking Golconda; but Francezka wore only a few gems, but those exquisite. She looked very weary; the months of gaiety and dissipation she had led were telling on her. Gaston was a n.o.ble host, attentive to all, and not forgetting the kind and quality of respect due to each.

When the rout was at its height, and the floor of the dancing saloon crowded, I had occasion to pa.s.s through the great suite of rooms, which were nearly deserted for the ball room. There was a little curtained alcove, in which either the lights had been forgotten or had been put out, and from that place, dark and still, although the wild racket of the ball was going on in the same building, I heard Francezka's voice calling me. I went in and found her sitting on a sofa.

"I am so very tired," she said. "I came here for a moment's rest, not thinking I should be fortunate enough to have a word with my Babache."

I sat down by her and told her the story of my beating Jacques Haret.

I could not see her face in the darkness, but she clapped her hands joyously.

"I am afraid I want vengeance to be mine instead of the Lord's," she cried with her old spirit. "I am like my Aunt Peggy in that. Thank you for every blow you gave Jacques Haret. I shall tell Peter, but not poor Lisa. That girl has the nature of a spaniel. I believe she reproaches herself for having thrown in his face the silver snuff-box Jacques Haret gave her."

I knew that Francezka and Gaston had been invited to visit Chambord in the spring, and I expressed a wish that they might come.

"No," replied Francezka, relapsing into the weary tone she had first used. "We have declined the invitation. I am so tired of b.a.l.l.s and hunting parties and ballets, and everything in the world, that I feel sometimes as if I wished to be a hermit."

I listened in sorrow, but hardly in surprise. It is as true as the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid that to give a human being all he or she wants of anything is to cure all liking for it. Francezka's natural taste, however, was so strongly in favor of gaiety and splendor, and she had tasted so little of it, that I thought satiety would spare her longer than most. There was a pause, after which I said:

"You will be missed at Chambord, but Capello is so sweet in the spring and summer."

"Yes," answered Francezka, "but even there I shall not be able to escape people. Do you remember how they flocked there when Gaston came home? And I verily believe half Paris means to follow us to Capello.

Gaston has invited many persons to visit us."

"Against your wish Madame?" I asked in surprise.

"Oh, no, he never does anything against my wish, but he never knows what my wish is--since his return. Before he went away he always knew my wishes in advance. Sometimes he combatted them. We had our little wrangles from the time we first met and loved, and often showed temper, one to the other, until his return. Now we never have any wrangles. As soon as I express my will Gaston immediately makes it his will. That, you will grant, is an unnatural way for two merely human creatures to live."

"At least not many are afflicted with that form of unhappiness, Madame."

"It is a form of unhappiness, though. I dare not express the smallest disapproval of a thing or a person that Gaston does not seem to take it as law. The most casual wish is fulfilled, but, as I say, he has not the clairvoyance of love with all this devotion. He might have seen that I longed for rest and quiet at Capello, but he did not. Now, if I express the slightest distaste for company there he will withdraw every invitation. To have one's lightest word taken seriously, and one's smallest inclination influence the conduct of another person, is highly uncomfortable."

I knew not what to say. Francezka's grievance appeared to me to be a strange one though not wholly unreasoning. But I saw what gave me the sharpest pain. It flashed upon me that she no longer loved Gaston Cheverny. As if she had the clairvoyance that she complained of Gaston's lacking, she continued:

"Yes; outwardly, all is the same; inwardly, all is changed. I have a growing sense of strangeness with my husband. At first I felt the same intimate friendship I had felt during our short married life, but by insensible degrees I have come to feel that I do not know Gaston, nor does Gaston know me. It is an appalling feeling."

"I should think so," I replied, and fell silent.

It was all strange and painful to me. I knew Francezka's faults well, but I had never seen in her any deficiency in good sense. Even her obstinate hanging on to the belief that Gaston was alive when the world believed him dead had been justified, and her course had been most practical during it all. But this new disgust at life, this fault-finding with her husband, seemed to me lacking in reason. Yet there was undoubtedly something changed in Gaston's personality. As this thought pa.s.sed through my mind she answered it, again as if by intuition:

"You remember, Babache, you always told me you loved Gaston from the moment you beheld him. But you don't love him now. You have not loved him since his return."

Oh, what a misfortune it is to be too quick of wit!

Francezka then rose and said to me: