“You want her letters?” said the young Count.
“Ah, you are a man after my own heart!” cried Maxime. “No. That is not what is wanted.”
“I am really to love her?”
“Yes, really and truly.”
“If I am to go beyond aesthetics, it is quite impossible,” said la Palférine. “With regard to women, you see, I have a kind of honesty; we may trick them, but not—”
“Then I have not been mistaken,” exclaimed Maxime. “Do you suppose I am the man to scheme for some little tu’pence meanness? … No, you must go, you must dazzle and conquer. … I give you twenty thousand, and ten days to win in.—Till this evening at Madame Schontz’s.”
“I am dining there.”
“Good,” said Maxime. “By and by, when you want me, you will find me, Monsieur le Comte,” he added, with the air of a king pledging his word rather than promising.
“The poor woman has done you some terrible mischief then?” asked la Palférine.
“Do not try to sound the depth of my waters, my son; but let me tell you that, if you succeed, you will secure such powerful interest, that when you are tired of your Bohemian life you may, like me, retire on the strength of a rich marriage.”
“Does a time come, then, when we are tired of amusing ourselves,” said la Palférine, “of being nothing, of living as the birds live, of hunting in Paris like wild men, and laughing at all that turns up?”
“We tire of everything, even of hell!” said Maxime with a laugh.—“Till this evening.”
The two scamps, the old one and the young one, rose. As Maxime got into his one-horse cab, he said to himself:
“Madame d’Espard cannot endure Béatrix; she will help me.—To the Hôtel Grandlieu,” he cried to the coachman, seeing Rastignac pass. Find a great man without a weakness.
Maxime found the Duchess, Madame du Guénic, and Clotilde in tears.
“What has happened?” he asked the Duchess.
“Calyste did not come in—it is the first time, and my poor Sabine is in despair.”
“Madame la Duchesse,” said Maxime, drawing the pious lady into a window-bay, “in the name of God, who will judge us, do not breathe a word as to my devotion; pledge d’Ajuda to secrecy; never let Calyste know anything of our plots, or we shall fight a duel to the death. When I told you this would not cost you much, I meant that you would not have to spend any monstrous sum. I want about twenty thousand francs, but everything else is my business; you may have to find some good appointments—one Receiver-General’s, perhaps.”
The Duchess and Maxime left the room. When Madame de Grandlieu came back to her two daughters, she heard a fresh lament from Sabine, full of domestic details, even more heartbreaking than those which had put an end to the young wife’s happiness.
“Be calm, my child,” said the Duchess to her daughter; “Béatrix will pay dearly for all your tears and misery; she will endure ten humiliations for each one of yours.”
Madame Schontz had sent word to Claude Vignon, who had frequently expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of Maxime de Trailles; she invited Couture, Fabien, Bixiou, Léon de Lora, la Palférine, and Nathan, whom Rochefide begged to have for Maxime’s benefit. Thus she had a party of nine, all of the first water, excepting du Ronceret; but the Heir’s Norman vanity and brutality were a match for Claude Vignon’s literary force, for Nathan’s poetry, la Palférine’s acumen, Couture’s keen eye to the main chance, Bixiou’s wit, Finot’s foresight, Maxime’s depth, and Léon de Lora’s genius.
Madame Schontz, who aimed at appearing young and handsome, fortified herself in such a toilet as women of that class alone can achieve—a point-lace cape of spiderweb fineness, a blue velvet dress, of which the elegant bodice was buttoned with opals, her hair in smooth bands, and shining like ebony. Madame Schontz owed her fame as a beauty to the brilliancy and color of a warm, creamy complexion like a Creole’s, a face full of original details, with the clean-cut, firm features—of which the Comtesse de Merlin was the most famous example and the most perennially young—peculiar perhaps to southern faces. Unluckily, since her life had been so calm, so easy, little Madame Schontz had grown decidedly fat. Her neck and shoulders, bewitchingly round, were getting coarse. Still, in France a woman’s face is thought all-important, and a fine head will secure a long life to an ungraceful shape.
“My dear child,” said Maxime as he came in and kissed Aurélie on the forehead, “Rochefide wanted me to see your home, where I have not yet been; it is almost worthy of his income of four hundred thousand francs. Well, he had less by fifty thousand a year when he first knew you; in less than five years you have gained for him as much as any other woman—Antonia, Malaga, Cadine, or Florentine—would have devoured.”
“I am not a baggage—I am an artist!” said Madame Schontz, with some dignity. “I hope to end by founding a family of respectable folks, as they say in the play.”
“It is dreadful, we all getting married,” said Maxime, dropping into a chair by the fire. “Here am I within a few days of making a Comtesse Maxime.”
“Oh! how I should like to see her!” cried Madame Schontz. —“But allow me,” she went on, “to introduce Monsieur Claude Vignon—Monsieur Claude Vignon, Monsieur de Trailles.”
“Ah, it was you who let Camille Maupin—mine hostess of literature—go into a convent?” cried Maxime. “After you, God!—No one ever did me so much honor. Mademoiselle des Touches made a Louis XIV of you, monsieur.”
“And this is how history is written!” said Claude Vignon. “Did you not know that her fortune was spent in releasing Monsieur du Guénic’s estates? If she knew that Calyste had fallen into the arms of her ex-friend!—” Maxime kicked the critic’s foot, looking at Monsieur de Rochefide, “on my word, I believe she would come out of her nunnery to snatch him from her.”
“I declare, my dear Rochefide,”
