Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Part 83

"Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?" cried the Marquise, affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.

"Alas! they say she is quite mad," said Amelie. "If you could persuade the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King.... Then Camusot's enemies would be reduced to silence."

"But who are Camusot's enemies?" asked Madame d'Espard.

"The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy."

"Very good, my dear," replied Madame d'Espard, who owed to Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as a lunatic, "I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my friends."

She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in. The Marquise hastily scrawled a few lines.

"Tell G.o.dard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the Chancellor's office.--There is no reply," said she to the maid.

The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order, remained at the door for some minutes.

"There are great mysteries going forward then?" asked Madame d'Espard.

"Tell me all about it, dear child. Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a finger in the pie?"

"You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has told me nothing. He only told me he was in danger. It would be better for us that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain mad."

"Poor woman!" said the Marquise. "But was she not mad already?"

Women of the world, by a hundred ways of p.r.o.nouncing the same phrase, ill.u.s.trate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes.

The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates in light and in air--the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice. By the tone she gave to the two words, "Poor woman!" the Marquise betrayed the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh! what woes did she not wish to befall Lucien's protectress. Revenge, which nothing can a.s.suage, which can survive the person hated, fills us with dark terrors.

And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself, vindictive, and quarrelsome, was overwhelmed. She could find nothing to say, and was silent.

"Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison," Madame d'Espard went on. "The dear d.u.c.h.ess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours yesterday in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, says dreadful things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of rank ought not to give way to such attacks.--Bah! A purely physical pa.s.sion.--The d.u.c.h.ess came to see me as pale as death; she really was very brave. There are monstrous things connected with this business."

"My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows for his own justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and he, Madame la Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge always has to question people in private at the time fixed by law! He had to ask the poor little wretch something, if only for form's sake, and the young fellow did not understand, and confessed things----"

"He was an impertinent fool!" said Madame d'Espard in a hard tone.

The judge's wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.

"Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in Lunacy, it was not Camusot's fault, I shall never forget that," said the Marquise after a pause. "It was Lucien, Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan, and Monsieur de Granville who overthrew us. With time G.o.d will be on my side; all those people will come to grief.--Be quite easy, I will send the Chevalier d'Espard to the Keeper of the Seals that he may desire your husbands's presence immediately, if that is of any use."

"Oh! madame----"

"Listen," said the Marquise. "I promise you the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at once--to-morrow. It will be a conspicuous testimonial of satisfaction with your conduct in this affair. Yes, it implies further blame on Lucien; it will prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang themselves for the pleasure of it.--Now, good-bye, my pretty dear----"

Ten minutes later Madame Camusot was in the bedroom of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to bed till one, and at nine o'clock had not yet slept.

However insensible d.u.c.h.esses may be, even these women, whose hearts are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being painfully impressed by it.

And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the d.u.c.h.ess that the poor boy's disastrous end had been to her also a fearful blow. All night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so charming, so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover--painted as Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. She had letters from Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating letters worthy to compare with Mirabeau's to Sophie, but more literary, more elaborate, for Lucien's letters had been dictated by the most powerful of pa.s.sions--Vanity.

Having the most bewitching of d.u.c.h.esses for his mistress, and seeing her commit any folly for him--secret follies, of course--had turned Lucien's head with happiness. The lover's pride had inspired the poet. And the d.u.c.h.ess had treasured these touching letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake of their extravagant praise of all that was least d.u.c.h.ess-like in her nature.

"And he died in a squalid prison!" cried she to herself, putting the letters away in a panic when she heard her maid knocking gently at her door.

"Madame Camusot," said the woman, "on business of the greatest importance to you, Madame la d.u.c.h.esse."

Diane sprang to her feet in terror.

"Oh!" cried she, looking at Amelie, who had a.s.sumed a duly condoling air, "I guess it all--my letters! It is about my letters. Oh, my letters, my letters!"

She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in the extravagance of her pa.s.sion, she had answered Lucien in the same vein, had lauded the man's poetry as he has sung the charms of the woman, and in what a strain!

"Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than life--your honor. Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the d.u.c.h.esse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person compromised."

"But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the letters found at poor Lucien's."

"But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!" cried the magistrate's wife. "You always forget that horrible companionship which beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man's end. That Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head! Monsieur Camusot is convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all the most compromising letters written by you ladies to his----"

"His friend," the d.u.c.h.ess hastily put in. "You are right, my child.

We must hold council at the Grandlieus'. We are all concerned in this matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid."

Extreme peril--as we have observed in the scenes in the Conciergerie--has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of powerful reagents over the body. It is a mental Voltaic battery. The day, perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered by which feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the electric fluid.

The phenomena were the same in the convict and the d.u.c.h.ess. This crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular over her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and the presence of mind of a general under fire. Diane chose her gown and got through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her own waiting-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady's-maid stood for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge's wife discern through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect as that of Canova's Venus. It was like a gem in a fold of tissue paper. Diane suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put that fastened in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time and fatigue of being laced. She had arranged the lace tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of her shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting on her gown. While Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman brought out a pair of thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a bonnet. Amelie and the maid each drew on a stocking.

"You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!" said Amelie, insidiously kissing Diane's elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.

"Madame has not her match!" cried the maid.

"There, there, Josette, hold your tongue," replied the d.u.c.h.ess.--"Have you a carriage?" she went on, to Madame Camusot. "Then come along, my dear, we can talk on the road."

And the d.u.c.h.ess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan, putting on her gloves as she went--a thing she had never been known to do.

"To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast," said she to one of her men, signing to him to get up behind.

The footman hesitated--it was a hackney coach.

"Ah! Madame la d.u.c.h.esse, you never told me that the young man had letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded differently..."

"Leontine's state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself entirely.

The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday; imagine the effect on her of this tragical termination. If you could only know, child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is enough to make one forswear love!--Yesterday Leontine and I were dragged across Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a domineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her there: 'Is not this enough to make us fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de Nucingen, when she went through one of those awful Mediterranean storms on her way to Naples, "Dear G.o.d, save me this time, and never again----!"'

"These two days will certainly have shortened my life.--What fools we are ever to write!--But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire the heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze! Prudence deserts us--we reply----"

"But why reply when you can act?" said Madame Camusot.

"It is grand to lose oneself utterly!" cried the d.u.c.h.ess with pride. "It is the luxury of the soul."

"Beautiful women are excusable," said Madame Camusot modestly. "They have more opportunities of falling than we have."

The d.u.c.h.ess smiled.

"We are always too generous," said Diane de Maufrigneuse. "I shall do just like that odious Madame d'Espard."