“What a donkey he is to sign such things! … ‘Bond for bills,’ ” cried Florine, reading the document. “Ah! yes, you shall have your fill of Countesses! And I, who worked myself to death, body and soul, raising money in the provinces for him—I, who slaved like a broker to save him! That’s a man all over; go to the devil for him, and he’ll trample you under foot! I shall have it out with him for this.”
Mme. de Vandenesse had fled with the letters.
“Hi, there! pretty domino! leave me one, if you please, just to throw in his face.”
“That is impossible now,” said Vandenesse.
“And why, pray?”
“The other domino is your late rival.”
“You don’t say so! Well, she might have said ‘Thank you!’ ” cried Florine.
“And what then do you call the forty thousand francs?” said Vandenesse, with a polite bow.
It very seldom happens that a young fellow who has once attempted suicide cares to taste for a second time its discomforts. When suicide does not cure a man of life altogether, it cures him of a self-sought death. Thus Raoul no longer thought of making away with himself even after Florine’s possession of Schmucke’s guarantee—plainly through the intervention of Vandenesse—had reduced him to a still worse plight than that from which he had tried to escape. He made an attempt to see the Countess again in order to explain to her the nature of the love which burned brighter than ever in his breast. But the first time they met in society, the Countess fixed Raoul with that stony, scornful glance which makes an impassable barrier between a man and a woman. With all his audacity, Nathan made no further attempt during the winter to address the Countess.
He unburdened his soul, however, to Blondet, discoursing to him of Laura and Beatrice, whenever the name of Mme. de Vandenesse occurred. He paraphrased that beautiful passage of one of the greatest poets of his day—
“Dream of the soul, blue flower with golden heart, whose spreading roots, finer a thousandfold than fairies’ silken tresses, pierce to the inmost being and draw their life from all that is purest there: flower sweet and bitter! To uproot thee is to draw the heart’s blood, oozing in ruddy drops from thy broken stem! Ah! cursed flower, how thou hast thriven on my soul!”
“You’re driveling, old boy,” said Blondet. “I grant you there was a pretty enough flower, only it has nothing to do with the soul; and instead of crooning like a blind man before an empty shrine, you had better be thinking how to get out of this scrape, so as to put yourself straight with the authorities and settle down. You are too much of the artist to make a politician. You have been played on by men who are your inferiors. Go and get yourself played on some other stage.”
“Marie can’t prevent my loving her,” said Nathan. “She shall be my Beatrice.”
“My dear fellow, Beatrice was a child of twelve, whom Dante never saw again; otherwise, would she have been Beatrice? If we are to make a divinity of a woman, we must not see her today in a mantle, tomorrow in a low-necked dress, the day after on the Boulevards, cheapening toys for her last baby. While there is Florine handy to play by turns a comedy duchess, a tragedy middle-class wife, a negress, a marchioness, a colonel, a Swiss peasant girl, a Peruvian virgin of the sun (the only virginity she knows much about), I don’t know why one should bother about society women.”
Du Tillet, by means of a forced sale, compelled the penniless Nathan to surrender his share in the paper. The great man received only five votes in the constituency which elected du Tillet.
When the Comtesse de Vandenesse, after a long and delightful time of travel in Italy, returned in the following winter to Paris, Nathan had exactly carried out the forecast of Félix. Following Blondet’s advice, he was negotiating with the party in power. His personal affairs were so embarrassed that, one day in the Champs-Élysées, the Comtesse Marie saw her ancient adorer walking in the sorriest plight, with Florine on his arm. In the eyes of a woman, the man to whom she is indifferent is always more or less ugly; but the man whom she has ceased to love is a monster, especially if he is of the type to which Nathan belonged. Mme. de Vandenesse felt a pang of shame as she remembered her fancy for Raoul. Had she not been cured before of any unlawful passion, the contrast which this man, already declining in popular estimation, then offered to her husband, would have sufficed to give the latter precedence over an angel.
At the present day this ambitious author, of ready pen but halting character, has at last capitulated and installed himself in a sinecure like any ordinary being. Having supported every scheme of disintegration, he now lives in peace beneath the shade of a ministerial broadsheet. The Cross of the Legion of Honor, fruitful text of his mockery, adorns his buttonhole. “Peace at any price,” the stock-in-trade of his denunciation as editor of a revolutionary organ, has now become the theme of his laudatory articles. The hereditary principle, butt of his Saint-Simonian oratory, is defended by him today in weighty arguments. This inconsistency has its origin and explanation in the change of front of certain men who, in the course of our latest political developments, have acted as Raoul did.
Endnotes
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The magistrature assise consists of the judges who sit in court, and are appointed for life. The members of the magistrature amovible conduct the examination and prosecution of accused persons. They address the court standing, and are not appointed for life. ↩
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The term is applied to all the substitutes of the procureur général, or Attorney General.
