“But charming English women!” replied Madame de la Baudraye with a smile. “Here is my mother, I will introduce you,” said she, seeing Madame Piédefer coming towards them.
Having introduced the two Paris lions to the ambitious skeleton that called itself woman under the name of Madame Piédefer—a tall, lean personage, with a red face, teeth that were doubtfully genuine, and hair that was undoubtedly dyed, Dinah left her visitors to themselves for a few minutes.
“Well,” said Gatien to Lousteau, “what do you think of her?”
“I think that the clever woman of Sancerre is simply the greatest chatterbox,” replied the journalist.
“A woman who wants to see you deputy!” cried Gatien. “An angel!”
“Forgive me, I forgot you were in love with her,” said Lousteau. “Forgive the cynicism of an old scamp.—Ask Bianchon; I have no illusions left. I see things as they are. The woman has evidently dried up her mother like a partridge left to roast at too fierce a fire.”
Gatien de Boirouge contrived to let Madame de la Baudraye know what the journalist had said of her in the course of the dinner, which was copious, not to say splendid, and the lady took care not to talk too much while it was proceeding. This lack of conversation betrayed Gatien’s indiscretion. Étienne tried to regain his footing, but all Dinah’s advances were directed to Bianchon.
However, halfway through the evening, the Baroness was gracious to Lousteau again. Have you never observed what great meanness may be committed for small ends? Thus the haughty Dinah, who would not sacrifice herself for a fool, who in the depths of the country led such a wretched life of struggles, of suppressed rebellion, of unuttered poetry, who to get away from Lousteau had climbed the highest and steepest peak of her scorn, and who would not have come down if she had seen the sham Byron at her feet, suddenly stepped off it as she recollected her album.
Madame de la Baudraye had caught the mania for autographs; she possessed an oblong volume which deserved the name of album better than most, as two-thirds of the pages were still blank. The Baronne de Fontaine, who had kept it for three months, had with great difficulty obtained a line from Rossini, six bars written by Meyerbeer, the four lines that Victor Hugo writes in every album, a verse from Lamartine, a few words from Béranger, Calypso ne pouvait se consoler du depart d’Ulysse (the first words of Télémaque) written by George Sand, Scribe’s famous lines on the Umbrella, a sentence from Charles Nodier, an outline of distance by Jules Dupré, the signature of David d’Angers, and three notes written by Hector Berlioz. Monsieur de Clagny, during a visit to Paris, added a song by Lacenaire—a much coveted autograph, two lines from Fieschi, and an extremely short note from Napoleon, which were pasted on to pages of the album. Then Monsieur Gravier, in the course of a tour, had persuaded Mademoiselle Mars to write her name on this album, with Mademoiselles Georges, Taglioni, and Grisi, and some distinguished actors, such as Frédérick Lemaître, Monrose, Bouffé, Rubini, Lablache, Nourrit, and Arnal; for he knew a set of old fellows brought up in the seraglio, as they phrased it, who did him this favor.
This beginning of a collection was all the more precious to Dinah because she was the only person for ten leagues round who owned an album. Within the last two years, however, several young ladies had acquired such books, in which they made their friends and acquaintances write more or less absurd quotations or sentiments. You who spend your lives in collecting autographs, simple and happy souls, like Dutch tulip fanciers, you will excuse Dinah when, in her fear of not keeping her guests more than two days, she begged Bianchon to enrich the volume she handed to him with a few lines of his writing.
The doctor made Lousteau smile by showing him this sentence on the first page:
“What makes the populace dangerous is that it has in its pocket an absolution for every crime.
“We will second the man who is brave enough to plead in favor of the Monarchy,” Desplein’s great pupil whispered to Lousteau, and he wrote below:
“The distinction between Napoleon and a water-carrier is evident only to Society; Nature takes no account of it. Thus Democracy, which resists inequality, constantly appeals to Nature.”
“Ah!” cried Dinah, amazed, “you rich men take a gold piece out of your purse as poor men bring out a farthing. … I do not know,” she went on, turning to Lousteau, “whether it is taking an unfair advantage of a guest to hope for a few lines—”
“Nay, madame, you flatter me. Bianchon is a great man, but I am too insignificant!—Twenty years hence my name will be more difficult to identify than that of the Public Prosecutor whose axiom, written in your album, will designate him as an obscurer Montesquieu. And I should want at least twenty-four hours to improvise some sufficiently bitter reflections, for I could only describe what I feel.”
“I wish you needed a fortnight,” said Madame de la Baudraye graciously, as she handed him the book. “I should keep you here all the longer.”
At five next morning all the party in the Château d’Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a day’s sport for the Parisians—less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty thousand francs a year in the returns of the estate of Anzy.
“Do you know why the Public Prosecutor has not come out with us?” asked Gatien Boirouge of Monsieur Gravier.
“Why he told us that he was obliged to sit today; the minor cases are before the
