Béatrix

so well brought up! Speaking English, German, and Italian, she was versed in foreign literature; she could pit herself, without discomfiture, against pianists of the second class. And, note the point! she behaved as regarded her talents like a woman of breeding; she never talked about them. In a painter’s studio she would take up a brush in fun, and sketch a head with so much go as to amaze the company. As a pastime, when she was pining as a school teacher, she had dabbled in some sciences, but her life as a kept mistress had sown salt over all this good seed, and, of course, she laid the flower of these precious growths, revived for him, at Arthur’s feet. Thus did Aurélie at first make a display of disinterestedness to match the pleasures she could give, which enabled this light corvette to cast her grappling-irons firmly on board the statelier craft. Still, even at the end of the first year, she made a vulgar noise in the anteroom, managing to come in just when the Marquis was waiting for her, and tried to hide the disgracefully muddy hem of her gown in such a way as to make it more conspicuous. In short, she so cleverly contrived to persuade her Gros Papa that her utmost ambition, after so many vicissitudes, was to enjoy a simple, middle-class existence, that by the end of ten months the second phase of their connection began.

Then Madame Schontz had a fine apartment in the Rue Saint-Georges. Arthur, who could no longer conceal from her the fact of his wealth, gave her handsome furniture, a service of plate, twelve hundred francs a month, and a little low carriage, with a single horse, by the week, and he granted her a little groom with a fairly good grace. She knew what this munificence was worth; she detected the motives of her Arthur’s conduct, and saw in them the calculations of a closefisted man. Tired of living at restaurants, where the food is generally execrable, where the simplest dinner of any refinement costs sixty francs, and two hundred for a party of four friends, Rochefide offered Madame Schontz forty francs a day for his dinner and a friend’s, wine included. Aurélie had no mind to refuse. After getting all her moral bills of exchange accepted, drawn on Monsieur de Rochefide’s habits at a year’s date, she was favorably heard when she asked for five hundred francs a year more for dress, on the plea that her Gros Papa, whose friends all belonged to the Jockey Club, might not be ashamed of her.

“A pretty thing, indeed,” said she, “if Rastignac, Maxime de Trailles, la Roche-Hugon, Ronquerolles, Laginski, Lenoncourt, and the rest should see you with a Madame Évrard! Put your trust in me, Gros Père, and you will be the gainer.”

And Aurélie did, in fact, lay herself out for a fresh display of virtues in these new circumstances. She sketched a part for herself as the housewife, in which she won ample credit. She made both ends meet, said she, at the end of the month, and had no debts, on two thousand five hundred francs, such a thing as had never been seen in the Faubourg Saint-Germain of the Thirteenth Arrondissement⁠—the upper ten of the demirep’s world; and she gave dinners infinitely better than Nucingen’s, with first-class wines at ten and twelve francs a bottle. So that Rochefide, amazed and delighted to be able to ask his friends pretty often to his mistress’ house as a matter of economy, would say to her, with his arm round her waist, “You are a perfect treasure!”

Before long he took a third share in an opera box for her, and at last went with her to first-night performances. He began to take counsel of his Aurélie, acknowledging the soundness of her advice; she allowed him to appropriate the wit she was always ready with; and her sallies, being new, won him the reputation for being an amusing man. At last he felt perfectly sure that she loved him truly, and for himself. Aurélie refused to make a Russian prince happy at the rate of five thousand francs a month.

“You are a happy man, my dear Marquis,” cried old Prince Galathionne as they ended a rubber of whist at the club. “Yesterday, when you left us together, I tried to get her away from you; but ‘Mon Prince,’ said she, ‘you are not handsomer than Rochefide though you are older; you would beat me, and he is like a father to me; show me then the quarter of a good reason for leaving him! I do not love Arthur with the crazy passion I had for the young rogues with patent leather boots, whose bills I used to pay; but I love him as a wife loves her husband when she is a decent woman.’⁠—And she showed me to the door.”

This speech, which had no appearance of exaggeration, had the effect of adding considerably to the state of neglect and shabbiness that disfigured the home of the Rochefides. Ere long Arthur had transplanted his existence and his pleasures to Madame Schontz’s lodgings, and found it answer; for by the end of three years he had four hundred thousand francs to invest.

Then began the third phase. Madame Schontz became the kindest of mothers to Arthur’s son; she fetched him from school and took him back herself; she loaded him with presents, sweetmeats, and pocket money; and the child, who adored her, called her his “little mamma.” She advised her Arthur in the management of his money-matters, making him buy consols at the fall before the famous treaty of London, which led to the overthrow of the Ministry on the 1st of March. Arthur made two hundred thousand francs, and Aurélie did not ask for a sou. Rochefide, being a gentleman, invested his six hundred thousand francs in Bank bills, half of them in the name of