Very early one Tuesday morning in the middle of spring in the year ’16 (to use his own expression), the Chevalier was just slipping on his dressing-gown, an old-fashioned green silk damask of a flowered pattern, when, in spite of the cotton in his ears, he heard a girl’s light footstep on the stairs. In another moment someone tapped discreetly three times on the door, and then, without waiting for an answer, a very handsome damsel slipped like a snake into the old bachelor’s apartment.
“Ah, Suzanne, is that you?” said the Chevalier de Valois, continuing to strop his razor. “What are you here for, deal little jewel of mischief?”
“I have come to tell you something which perhaps will give you as much pleasure as annoyance.”
“Is it something about Césarine?”
“Much I trouble myself about your Césarine,” pouted she, half careless, half in earnest.
The charming Suzanne, whose escapade was to exercise so great an influence on the lives of all the principal characters in this story, was one of Mme. Lardot’s laundry girls. And now for a few topographical details.
The whole ground floor of the house was given up to the laundry. The little yard was a drying-ground where embroidered handkerchiefs, collarettes, muslin slips, cuffs, frilled shirts, cravats, laces, embroidered petticoats, all the fine washing of the best houses in the town, in short, hung out along the lines of hair rope. The Chevalier used to say that he was kept informed of the progress of the receiver-general’s wife’s flirtations by the number of slips thus brought to light; and the amount of frilled shirts and cambric cravats varied directly with the petticoats and collarettes. By this system of double entry, as it were, he detected all the assignations in the town; but the Chevalier was always discreet, he never let fall an epigram that might have closed a house to him. And yet he was a witty talker! For which reason you may be sure that M. de Valois’ manners were of the finest, while his talents, as so often happens, were thrown away upon a narrow circle. Still, for he was only human after all, he sometimes could not resist the pleasure of a searching side glance which made women tremble, and nevertheless they liked him when they found out how profoundly discreet he was, how full of sympathy for their pretty frailties.
Mme. Lardot’s forewoman and factotum, an alarmingly ugly spinster of five-and-forty, occupied the rest of the second floor with the Chevalier. Her door on the landing was exactly opposite his; and her apartment, like his own, consisted of two rooms, looking respectively upon the street and the yard. Above, there was nothing but the attics where the linen was dried in winter. Below lodged Mme. Lardot’s grandfather. The old man, Grévin by name, had been a privateer in his time, and had served under Admiral Simeuse in the Indies; now he was paralyzed and stone deaf. Mme. Lardot herself occupied the rooms beneath her forewoman, and so great was her weakness for people of condition, that she might be said to be blind where the Chevalier was concerned. In her eyes, M. de Valois was an absolute monarch, a king that could do no wrong; even if one of her own workgirls had been said to be guilty of finding favor in his sight, she would have said, “He is so amiable!”
And so, if M. de Valois, like most people in the provinces, lived in a glass house, it was secret as a robber’s cave so far as he at least was concerned. A born confidant of the little intrigues of the laundry, he never passed the door—which almost always stood ajar—without bringing something for his pets—chocolate, bonbons, ribbons, laces, a gilt cross, and the jokes that grisettes love. Wherefore the little girls adored the Chevalier. Women can tell by instinct whether a man is attracted to anything that wears a petticoat; they know at once the kind of man who enjoys the mere sense of their presence, who never thinks of making blundering demands of repayment for his gallantry. In this respect womankind has a canine faculty; a dog in any company goes straight to the man who respects animals. The Chevalier de Valois in his poverty preserved something of his former life; he was as unable to live without some fair one under his protection as any grand seigneur of a bygone age. He clung to the traditions of the petite maison. He loved to give to women, and women alone can receive gracefully, perhaps because it is always in their power to repay.
In these days, when every lad on leaving school tries his hand at unearthing symbols or sifting legends, is it not extraordinary that no one has explained that portent, the Courtesan of the Eighteenth Century? What was she but the tournament of the Sixteenth in another shape? In 1550 the knights displayed their prowess for their ladies; in 1750 they displayed their mistresses at Longchamps; today they run their horses over the course. The noble of every age has done his best to invent a life which he, and he only, can live. The painted shoes of the Fourteenth Century are the talons rouges of the Eighteenth; the parade of a mistress was one fashion in ostentation; the sentiment of chivalry and the knight errant was another.
The Chevalier de Valois
