In these circles where trifles are of such importance, a gesture or a word at the outset is enough to ruin a newcomer. It is the principal merit of fine manners and the highest breeding that they produce the effect of a harmonious whole, in which every element is so blended that nothing is startling or obtrusive. Even those who break the laws of this science, either through ignorance or carried away by some impulse, must comprehend that it is with social intercourse as with music, a single discordant note is a complete negation of the art itself, for the harmony exists only when all its conditions are observed down to the least particular.
“Who is that gentleman?” asked Mme. d’Espard, looking towards Châtelet. “And have you made Mme. de Sérizy’s acquaintance already?”
“Oh! is that the famous Mme. de Sérizy who has had so many adventures and yet goes everywhere?”
“An unheard-of-thing, my dear, explicable but unexplained. The most formidable men are her friends, and why? Nobody dares to fathom the mystery. Then is this person the lion of Angoulême?”
“Well, M. le Baron du Châtelet has been a good deal talked about,” answered Mme. de Bargeton, moved by vanity to give her adorer the title which she herself had called in question. “He was M. de Montriveau’s traveling companion.”
“Ah!” said the Marquise d’Espard, “I never hear that name without thinking of the Duchesse de Langeais, poor thing. She vanished like a falling star.—That is M. de Rastignac with Mme. de Nucingen,” she continued, indicating another box; “she is the wife of a contractor, a banker, a city man, a broker on a large scale; he forced his way into society with his money, and they say that he is not very scrupulous as to his methods of making it. He is at endless pains to establish his credit as a staunch upholder of the Bourbons, and has tried already to gain admittance into my set. When his wife took Mme. de Langeais’ box, she thought that she could take her charm, her wit, and her success as well. It is the old fable of the jay in the peacock’s feathers!”
“How do M. and Mme. de Rastignac manage to keep their son in Paris, when, as we know, their income is under a thousand crowns?” asked Lucien, in his astonishment at Rastignac’s elegant and expensive dress.
“It is easy to see that you come from Angoulême,” said Mme. d’Espard, ironically enough, as she continued to gaze through her opera-glass.
Her remark was lost upon Lucien; the all-absorbing spectacle of the boxes prevented him from thinking of anything else. He guessed the comments made upon Mme. de Bargeton, and saw that he himself was an object of no small curiosity. Louise, on the other hand, was exceedingly mortified by the evident slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien’s beauty.
“He cannot be so handsome as I thought him,” she said to herself; and between “not so handsome” and “not so clever as I thought him” there was but one step.
The curtain fell. Châtelet was now paying a visit to the Duchesse de Carigliano in an adjourning box; Mme. de Bargeton acknowledged his bow by a slight inclination of the head. Nothing escapes a woman of the world; Châtelet’s air of distinction was not lost upon Mme. d’Espard. Just at that moment four personages, four Parisian celebrities, came into the box, one after another.
The most striking feature of the first comer, M. de Marsay, famous for the passions which he had inspired, was his girlish beauty; but its softness and effeminacy were counteracted by the expression of his eyes, unflinching, steady, untamed, and hard as a tiger’s. He was loved and he was feared. Lucien was no less handsome; but Lucien’s expression was so gentle, his blue eyes so limpid, that he scarcely seemed to possess the strength and the power which attract women so strongly. Nothing, moreover, so far had brought out the poet’s merits; while de Marsay, with his flow of spirits, his confidence in his power to please, and appropriate style of dress, eclipsed every rival by his presence. Judge, therefore, the kind of figure that Lucien, stiff, starched, unbending in clothes as new and unfamiliar as his surroundings, was likely to cut in de Marsay’s vicinity. De Marsay with his wit and charm of manner was privileged to be insolent. From Mme. d’Espard’s reception of this personage his importance was at once evident to Mme. de Bargeton.
The second comer was a Vandenesse, the cause of the scandal in which Lady Dudley was concerned. Félix de Vandenesse, amiable, intellectual, and modest, had none of the characteristics on which de Marsay prided himself, and owed his success to diametrically opposed qualities. He had been warmly recommended to Mme. d’Espard by her cousin Mme. de Mortsauf.
The third was General de Montriveau, the author of the Duchesse de Langeais’ ruin.
The fourth, M. de Canalis, one of the most famous poets of the day, and as yet a newly risen celebrity, was prouder of his birth than of his genius, and dangled in Mme. d’Espard’s train by way of concealing his love for the Duchesse de Chaulieu. In spite of his graces and the affectation that spoiled them, it was easy to discern the vast, lurking ambitions that plunged him at a later day into the storms of political life. A face that might be called insignificantly pretty and caressing manners thinly disguised the man’s deeply-rooted egoism and habit of continually calculating the chances of a career which at that time looked problematical enough; though his choice of Mme. de Chaulieu (a woman past forty) made interest for him at Court, and brought him the applause of the Faubourg Saint-Germain and the gibes of the Liberal party, who dubbed him “the poet of the sacristy.”
Mme. de Bargeton, with
