“You are a political triangle,” said de Marsay, with a laugh, when he met him at the Opera; “that geometrical form is the peculiar property of the deity, who can afford to be idle; but a man who wants to get on should adopt a curve, which is the shortest road in politics.”
Beheld from afar, Raoul Nathan was a resplendent meteor. The fashion of the day justified his manner and appearance. His pose as a Republican gave him, for the moment, that puritan ruggedness assumed by champions of the popular cause, men whom Nathan in his heart derided. This is not without attraction for women, who love to perform prodigies, such as shattering rocks, melting an iron will. Raoul’s moral costume, therefore, was in keeping with the external. He was bound to be, and he was, for this Eve, listless in her paradise of the Rue du Rocher, the insidious serpent, bright to the eye and flattering to the ear, with magnetic gaze and graceful motion, who ruined the first woman.
Marie, on seeing Raoul, at once felt that inward shock, the violence of which is almost terrifying. This would-be great man, by a mere glance, sent a thrill right through to her heart, causing a delicious flutter there. The regal mantle which fame had for the moment draped on Nathan’s shoulders dazzled this simple-minded woman. When tea came Marie left the group of chattering women, among whom she had stood silent since the appearance of this wonderful being—a fact which did not escape her so-called friends. The Countess drew near the ottoman in the centre of the room where Raoul was perorating. She remained standing, her arm linked in that of Mme. Octave de Camps, an excellent woman, who kept the secret of the nervous quivering by which Marie betrayed her strong emotion. Despite the sweet magic distilled from the eye of the woman who loves or is startled into self-betrayal, Raoul was just then entirely occupied with a regular display of fireworks. He was far too busy letting off epigrams like rockets, winding and unwinding indictments like Catherine-wheels, and tracing blazing portraits in lines of fire, to notice the naive admiration of a little Eve, lost in the crowd of women surrounding him. The love of novelty which would bring Paris flocking to the Zoological Gardens, if a unicorn had been brought there from those famous Mountains of the Moon, virgin yet of European tread, intoxicates minds of a lower stamp, as much as it saddens the truly wise. Raoul was enraptured and far too much engrossed with women in general to pay attention to one woman in particular.
“Take care, dear, you had better come away,” her fair companion, sweetest of women, whispered to Marie.
The Countess turned to her husband and, with one of those speaking glances which husbands are sometimes slow in interpreting, begged for his arm. Félix led her away.
“Well, you are in luck, my good friend,” said Mme. d’Espard in Raoul’s ear. “You’ve done execution in more than one quarter tonight, and, best of all, with that charming Countess who has just left us so abruptly.”
“Do you know what the Marquise d’Espard meant?” asked Raoul of Blondet, repeating the great lady’s remark, when almost all the other guests had departed, between one and two in the morning.
“Why, yes, I have just heard that the Comtesse de Vandenesse has fallen wildly in love with you. Lucky dog!”
“I did not see her,” said Raoul.
“Ah! but you will see her, you rascal,” said Émile Blondet, laughing. “Lady Dudley has invited you to her great ball with the very purpose of bringing about a meeting.”
Raoul and Blondet left together, and joining Rastignac, who offered them a place in his carriage, the three made merry over this conjunction of an eclectic Undersecretary of State with a fierce Republican and a political sceptic.
“Suppose we sup at the expense of law and order?” said Blondet, who had a fancy for reviving the old-fashioned supper.
Rastignac took them to Véry’s, and dismissed his carriage; the three then sat down to table and set themselves to pull to pieces their contemporaries amidst Rabelaisian laughter. During the course of supper Rastignac and Blondet urged their counterfeit opponent not to neglect the magnificent opportunity thrown in his way. The story of Marie de Vandenesse was caricatured by these two profligates, who applied the scalpel of epigram and the keen edge of mockery to that transparent childhood, that happy marriage. Blondet congratulated Raoul on having found a woman who so far had been guilty only of execrable red-chalk drawings and feeble watercolor landscapes, of embroidering slippers for her husband, and performing sonatas with a most ladylike absence of passion; a woman who had been tied for eighteen years to her mother’s apron-strings, pickled in devotion, trained by Vandenesse, and cooked to a turn by marriage for the palate of love. At the third bottle of champagne Raoul Nathan became more expansive than he had ever shown himself before.
“My dear friends,” he said, “you know my relations with Florine, you know my life, you will not be surprised to hear me confess that I have never yet seen the color of a Countess’ love. It has often been a humiliating thought to me that only in poetry could I find a Beatrice, a Laura! A pure and noble woman is like a spotless conscience, she raises us in our own estimation. Elsewhere we may be soiled, with her we keep
