“Caroline,” said she, “go and find out who left this letter for me.”
“Madame, I took it from M. le Baron de Rastignac’s manservant.”
There was a long silence.
“Will madame dress now?”
“No.”
“He must be excessively impertinent!” thought the Marquise.—I may ask any woman to make her own commentary.
Madame de Listomère closed hers with a formal resolution to shut her door on Monsieur Eugène, and, if she should meet him in company, to treat him with more than contempt; for his audacity was not to be compared with any of the other instances which the Marquise had at last forgiven. At first she thought she would keep the letter, but, on due reflection, she burned it.
“Madame has just received such a flaming love-letter, and she read it!” said Caroline to the housemaid.
“I never should have thought it of madame,” said the old woman, quite astonished.
That evening the Marquise was at the house of the Marquis de Beauséant, where she would probably meet Rastignac. It was a Saturday. The Marquis de Beauséant was distantly related to Monsieur de Rastignac, so the young man could not fail to appear in the course of the evening. At two in the morning, Madame de Listomère, who had stayed so late solely to crush Eugène by her coldness, had waited in vain. A witty writer, Stendahl, has given the whimsical name of crystallization to the process worked out by the Marquise’s mind before, during, and after this evening.
Four days later Eugène was scolding his manservant.
“Look here, Joseph; I shall be obliged to get rid of you, my good fellow.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“You do nothing but blunder. Where did you take the two letters I gave you on Friday?”
Joseph was bewildered. Like a statue in a cathedral porch he stood motionless, wholly absorbed in the travail of his ideas. Suddenly he smiled foolishly, and said:
“Monsieur, one was for Madame la Marquise de Listomère, Rue Saint-Dominique, and the other was for Monsieur’s lawyer—”
“Are you sure of what you say?”
Joseph stood dumbfounded. I must evidently interfere—happening to be present at the moment.
“Joseph is right,” said I. Eugène turned round to me. “I read the addresses quite involuntarily, and—”
“And,” said Eugène, interrupting me, “was not one of them for Madame de Nucingen?”
“No, by all the devils! And so I supposed, my dear boy, that your heart had pirouetted from the Rue Saint-Lazare to the Rue Saint-Dominique.”
Eugène struck his forehead with the palm of his hand, and began to smile. Joseph saw plainly that the fault was none of his.
Now, there are certain moral reflections on which all young men should meditate. Mistake the first: Eugène thought it amusing to have made Madame de Listomère laugh at the blunder that had put her in possession of a love-letter which was not intended for her. Mistake the second: He did not go to see Madame de Listomère till four days after the misadventure, thus giving the thoughts of a virtuous young woman time to crystallize. And there were a dozen more mistakes which must be passed over in silence to give ladies ex professo the pleasure of deducing them for the benefit of those who cannot guess them.
Eugène arrived at the Marquise’s door; but as he was going in, the porter stopped him, and told him that Madame de Listomère was out. As he was getting into his carriage again, the Marquis came in.
“Come up, Eugène,” said he; “my wife is at home.”
Oh! forgive the Marquis. A husband, however admirable, scarcely ever attains to perfection.
Rastignac as he went upstairs discerned the ten fallacies in worldly logic which stood on this page of the fair book of his life.
When Madame de Listomère saw her husband come in with Eugène, she could not help coloring. The young Baron observed the sudden flush. If the most modest of men never quite loses some little dregs of conceit, which he can no more get rid of than a woman can throw off her inevitable vanities, who can blame Eugène for saying to himself, “What! this stronghold too?” and he settled his head in his cravat. Though young men are not very avaricious, they all love to add a head to their collection of medals.
Monsieur de Listomère seized on the Gazette de France, which he saw in a corner by the fireplace, and went to the window to form, by the help of the newspaper, an opinion of his own as to the state of France. No woman, not even a prude, is long in embarrassment even in the most difficult situation in which she can find herself; she seems always to carry in her hand the fig-leaf given to her by our mother Eve. And so, when Eugène, having interpreted the orders given to the porter in a sense flattering to his vanity, made his bow to Madame de Listomère with a tolerably deliberate air, she was able to conceal all her thoughts behind one of those feminine smiles, which are more impenetrable than a King’s speech.
“Are you unwell, madame? You had closed your door.”
“No, monsieur.”
“You were going out perhaps?”
“Not at all.”
“You are expecting somebody?”
“Nobody.”
“If my visit is ill timed, you have only the Marquis to blame. I was obeying your mysterious orders when he himself invited me into the sanctuary.”
“Monsieur de Listomère was not in my confidence. There are certain secrets which it is not always prudent to share with one’s husband.”
The firm, mild tone in which the Marquise spoke these words, and the imposing dignity of her glance, were enough to make Rastignac feel that he had been in too much haste to plume himself.
“I understand, madame,” said he, laughing; “I must therefore congratulate myself all the more on having met Monsieur le Marquis; he has procured me an opportunity for offering you an explanation,
