came on a visit to the mother of the bride, Madame la Generale D’Hubert communicated to her beloved old uncle the true story she had obtained without any difficulty from her husband.
The Chevalier listened with deep attention to the end, took a pinch of snuff, flicked the grains of tobacco from the frilled front of his shirt, and asked, calmly, “And that’s all it was?”
“Yes, uncle,” replied Madame la Generale, opening her pretty eyes very wide. “Isn’t it funny? C’est insensé—to think what men are capable of!”
“H’m!” commented the old émigré. “It depends what sort of men. That Bonaparte’s soldiers were savages. It is insensé. As a wife, my dear, you must believe implicitly what your husband says.”
But to Leonie’s husband the Chevalier confided his true opinion. “If that’s the tale the fellow made up for his wife, and during the honeymoon, too, you may depend on it that no one will ever know now the secret of this affair.”
Considerably later still, General D’Hubert judged the time come, and the opportunity propitious to write a letter to General Feraud. This letter began by disclaiming all animosity. “I’ve never,” wrote the General Baron D’Hubert, “wished for your death during all the time of our deplorable quarrel. Allow me,” he continued, “to give you back in all form your forfeited life. It is proper that we two, who have been partners in so much military glory, should be friendly to each other publicly.”
The same letter contained also an item of domestic information. It was in reference to this last that General Feraud answered from a little village on the banks of the Garonne, in the following words:
“If one of your boy’s names had been Napoleon—or Joseph—or even Joachim, I could congratulate you on the event with a better heart. As you have thought proper to give him the names of Charles Henri Armand, I am confirmed in my conviction that you never loved the Emperor. The thought of that sublime hero chained to a rock in the middle of a savage ocean makes life of so little value that I would receive with positive joy your instructions to blow my brains out. From suicide I consider myself in honour debarred. But I keep a loaded pistol in my drawer.”
Madame la Generale D’Hubert lifted up her hands in despair after perusing that answer.
“You see? He won’t be reconciled,” said her husband. “He must never, by any chance, be allowed to guess where the money comes from. It wouldn’t do. He couldn’t bear it.”
“You are a brave homme, Armand,” said Madame la Generale, appreciatively.
“My dear, I had the right to blow his brains out; but as I didn’t, we can’t let him starve. He has lost his pension and he is utterly incapable of doing anything in the world for himself. We must take care of him, secretly, to the end of his days. Don’t I owe him the most ecstatic moment of my life? … Ha! ha! ha! Over the fields, two miles, running all the way! I couldn’t believe my ears! … But for his stupid ferocity, it would have taken me years to find you out. It’s extraordinary how in one way or another this man has managed to fasten himself on my deeper feelings.”
Il Conde
A Pathetic Tale
Vedi Napoli e poi mori.
The first time we got into conversation was in the National Museum in Naples, in the rooms on the ground floor containing the famous collection of bronzes from Herculaneum and Pompeii: that marvellous legacy of antique art whose delicate perfection has been preserved for us by the catastrophic fury of a volcano.
He addressed me first, over the celebrated Resting Hermes which we had been looking at side by side. He said the right things about that wholly admirable piece. Nothing profound. His taste was natural rather than cultivated. He had obviously seen many fine things in his life and appreciated them: but he had no jargon of a dilettante or the connoisseur. A hateful tribe. He spoke like a fairly intelligent man of the world, a perfectly unaffected gentleman.
We had known each other by sight for some few days past. Staying in the same hotel—good, but not extravagantly up to date—I had noticed him in the vestibule going in and out. I judged he was an old and valued client. The bow of the hotelkeeper was cordial in its deference, and he acknowledged it with familiar courtesy. For the servants he was Il Conde. There was some squabble over a man’s parasol—yellow silk with white lining sort of thing—the waiters had discovered abandoned outside the dining-room door. Our gold-laced doorkeeper recognized it and I heard him directing one of the lift boys to run after Il Conde with it. Perhaps he was the only Count staying in the hotel, or perhaps he had the distinction of being the Count par excellence, conferred upon him because of his tried fidelity to the house.
Having conversed at the Museo—(and by the by he had expressed his dislike of the busts and statues of Roman emperors in the gallery of marbles: their faces were too vigorous, too pronounced for him)—having conversed already in the morning I did not think I was intruding when in the evening, finding the dining-room very full, I proposed to share his little table. Judging by the quiet urbanity of his consent he did not think so either. His smile was very attractive.
He dined in an evening waistcoat and a “smoking” (he called it so) with a black tie. All this of very good cut, not new—just as these things should be. He was, morning or evening, very correct in his dress. I have no doubt that his whole existence had been correct, well ordered and conventional, undisturbed by startling events. His white hair brushed upwards off a lofty forehead gave him the air of an idealist, of an
