It was difficult to realize that this polished and discreet and somewhat patronizing young man of the world was the jolly dog who had gone after Little Billee’s hat on all fours in the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres and brought it back in his mouth—the Caryhatide!
Little Billee little knew that Monsieur le Duc de la Rochemartel-Boisségur had quite recently delighted a very small and select and most august imperial supper-party at Compiègne with this very story, not blinking a single detail of his own share in it—and had given a most touching and sympathetic description of “le joli petit peintre anglais qui s’appelait Litrebili, et ne pouvait pas se tenir sur ses jambes—et qui pleurait d’amour fraternel dans les bras de mon copain Dodor!”
“Ah! Monsieur Gontran, ce que je donnerais pour avoir vu ça!” had said the greatest lady in France; “un de mes zouaves—à quatre pattes—dans la rue—un chapeau dans la bouche—oh—c’est impayable!”
Zouzou kept these blackguard bohemian reminiscences for the imperial circle alone—to which it was suspected that he was secretly rallying himself. Among all outsiders—especially within the narrow precincts of the cream of the noble Faubourg (which remained aloof from the Tuileries)—he was a very proper and gentlemanlike person indeed, as his brother had been—and, in his mother’s fond belief, “très bien pensant, très bien vu, à Frohsdorf et à Rome.”
On lui aurait donné le bon Dieu sans confession—as Madame Vinard had said of Little Billee—they would have shriven him at sight, and admitted him to the holy communion on trust!
He did not present Little Billee and the Laird to his mother, nor to Mrs. and Miss Hunks; that honor was reserved for “the Man of Blood” alone; nor did he ask where they were staying, nor invite them to call on him. But in parting he expressed the immense pleasure it had given him to meet them again, and the hope he had of some day shaking their hands in London.
As the friends walked back to Paris together, it transpired that “the Man of Blood” had been invited by Madame Duchesse Mère (Maman Duchesse, as Zouzou called her) to dine with her next day, and meet the Hunkses at a furnished apartment she had taken in the Place Vendôme; for they had let (to the Hunkses) the Hôtel de la Rochemartel in the Rue de Lille; they had also been obliged to let their place in the country, le château de Boisségur (to Monsieur Despoires, or “des Poires,” as he chose to spell himself on his visiting-cards—the famous soap-manufacturer—“Un très brave homme, à ce qu’on dit!” and whose only son, by-the-way, soon after married Mademoiselle Jeanne-Adélaïde d’Amaury-Brissac de Roncesvaulx de Boisségur de la Rochemartel).
“Il ne fait pas gras chez nous à présent—je vous assure!” Madame Duchesse Mère had pathetically said to Taffy—but had given him to understand that things would be very much better for her son, in the event of his marriage with Miss Hunks.
“Good heavens!” said Little Billee, on hearing this; “that grotesque little bogy in blue? Why, she’s deformed—she squints—she’s a dwarf, and looks like an idiot! Millions or no millions, the man who marries her is a felon! As long as there are stones to break and a road to break them on, the able-bodied man who marries a woman like that for anything but pity and kindness—and even then—dishonors himself, insults his ancestry, and inflicts on his descendants a wrong that nothing will ever redeem—he nips them in the bud—he blasts them forever! He ought to be cut by his fellow-men—sent to Coventry—to jail—to penal servitude for life! He ought to have a separate hell to himself when he dies. He ought to—”
“Shut up, you little blaspheming ruffian!” said the Laird. “Where do you expect to go to, yourself, with such frightful sentiments? And what would become of your beautiful old twelfth-century dukedoms, with a hundred yards of back-frontage opposite the Louvre, on a beautiful historic river, and a dozen beautiful historic names, and no money—if you had your way?” and the Laird wunk his historic wink.
“Twelfth-century dukedoms be damned!” said Taffy au grand sérieux, as usual. “Little Billee’s quite right, and Zouzou makes me sick! Besides, what does she marry him for—not for his beauty either, I guess! She’s his fellow-criminal, his deliberate accomplice, particeps delicti, accessory before the act and after! She has no right to marry at all! tar and feathers and a rail for both of them—and for Maman Duchesse too—and I suppose that’s why I refused her invitation to dinner! and now let’s go and dine with Dodor— … anyhow Dodor’s young woman doesn’t marry him for a dukedom—or even his ‘de’—mais bien pour ses beaux yeux! and if the Rigolots of the future turn out less nice to look at than their sire, and not quite so amusing, they will probably be a great improvement on him in many other ways. There’s room enough—and to spare!”
“ ’Ear! ’ear!” said Little Billee (who always grew flippant when Taffy got on his high horse). “Your ’ealth and song, sir—them’s my sentiments to a T! What shall we ’ave the pleasure of drinkin’, after that wery nice ’armony?”
After which they walked on in silence, each, no doubt, musing on the general contrariness of things, and imagining what splendid little Wynnes, or Bagots, or McAlisters might have been ushered into a decadent world for its regeneration if fate had so willed it that a certain magnificent and singularly gifted grisette, etc., etc., etc. …
Mrs. and Miss Hunks passed them as they walked along, in a beautiful blue barouche with C springs—un “huit-ressorts”; Maman Duchesse passed them in a hired fly; Zouzou passed them on horseback; tout Paris
