de Beuville in order to distinguish her from the count's mother, who
had died the year before, was wont to receive every Tuesday in her
house in the Rue Miromesnil at the corner of the Rue de Pentievre.
It was a great square building, and the Muffats had lived in it for
a hundred years or more. On the side of the street its frontage
seemed to slumber, so lofty was it and dark, so sad and conventlike,
with its great outer shutters, which were nearly always closed. And
at the back in a little dark garden some trees had grown up and were
straining toward the sunlight with such long slender branches that
their tips were visible above the roof.
This particular Tuesday, toward ten o'clock in the evening, there
were scarcely a dozen people in the drawing room. When she was only
expecting intimate friends the countess opened neither the little
drawing room nor the dining room. One felt more at home on such
occasions and chatted round the fire. The drawing room was very
large and very lofty; its four windows looked out upon the garden,
from which, on this rainy evening of the close of April, issued a
sensation of damp despite the great logs burning on the hearth. The
sun never shone down into the room; in the daytime it was dimly lit
up by a faint greenish light, but at night, when the lamps and the
chandelier were burning, it looked merely a serious old chamber with
its massive mahogany First Empire furniture, its hangings and chair
coverings of yellow velvet, stamped with a large design. Entering
it, one was in an atmosphere of cold dignity, of ancient manners, of
a vanished age, the air of which seemed devotional.
Opposite the armchair, however, in which the count's mother had
died--a square armchair of formal design and inhospitable padding,
which stood by the hearthside--the Countess Sabine was seated in a
deep and cozy lounge, the red silk upholsteries of which were soft
as eider down. It was the only piece of modern furniture there, a
fanciful item introduced amid the prevailing severity and clashing
with it.
"So we shall have the shah of Persia," the young woman was saying.
They were talking of the crowned heads who were coming to Paris for
the exhibition. Several ladies had formed a circle round the
hearth, and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just
fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some details about the
court of Nazr-ed-Din.
"Are you out of sorts, my dear?" asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of
an ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing
pale as she did so.
"Oh no, not at all," replied the latter, smiling. "I felt a little
cold. This drawing room takes so long to warm."
And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls
from floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-
looking girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted
the large footstool on which she was sitting and silently came
and propped up one of the logs which had rolled from its place.
But Mme de Chezelles, a convent friend of Sabine's and her junior by
five years, exclaimed:
"Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as
yours! At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only
build boxes nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!"
She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would
alter the hangings, the seats--everything, in fact. Then she would
give balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her
husband, a magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was
rumored that she deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her
offense and received her just the same, because, they said, "she's
not answerable for her actions."
"Oh that Leonide!" the Countess Sabine contented herself by
murmuring, smiling her faint smile the while.
With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her.
After having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not
alter her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as
her mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime.
Then returning to the subject of conversation:
"I have been assured," she said, "that we shall also have the king
of Prussia and the emperor of Russia."
'Yes, some very fine fetes are promised," said Mme du Joncquoy.
The banker Steiner, not long since introduced into this circle by
Leonide de Chezelles, who was acquainted with the whole of Parisian
society, was sitting chatting on a sofa between two of the windows.
He was questioning a deputy, from whom he was endeavoring with much
adroitness to elicit news about a movement on the stock exchange of
which he had his suspicions, while the Count Muffat, standing in
front of them, was silently listening to their talk, looking, as he
did so, even grayer than was his wont.
Four or five young men formed another group near the door round the
Count Xavier de Vandeuvres, who in a low tone was telling them an
anecdote. It was doubtless a very risky one, for they were choking
with laughter. Companionless in the center of the room, a stout
man, a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, sat heavily in
an armchair, dozing with his eyes open. But when one of the young
men appeared to doubt the truth of the anecdote Vandeuvres raised
his voice.
"You are too much of a skeptic, Foucarmont; you'll spoil all your
pleasures that way."
And he returned to the ladies with a laugh. Last scion of a great
family, of feminine manners and witty tongue, he was at that time
running through a fortune with a rage of life and appetite which
nothing could appease. His racing stable, which was one of the best
known in Paris, cost him a fabulous amount of money; his betting
losses at the Imperial Club amounted monthly to an alarming number
of pounds, while taking one year with another, his mistresses would
be always devouring now a farm, now some acres of arable land or
forest, which amounted, in fact, to quite a respectable slice of his
vast estates in Picardy.
"I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don't believe
a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little
space in which to sit down at her side.
"It's you who spoil your own pleasures."
"Exactly," he replied. "I wish to make others benefit by my
experience."
But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M.
Venot. And, the ladies having changed their positions, a little old
man of sixty, with bad teeth and a subtle smile, became visible in
the depths of an easy chair. There he sat as comfortably as in his
own house, listening to everybody's remarks and making none himself.
With a slight gesture he announced himself by no means scandalized.
Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added
gravely:
"Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one's duty
to believe."
It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The
young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were
old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there. A cold breath
of wind had passed over them, and amid the ensuing silence Steiner's
nasal voice became audible. The deputy's discreet answers were at
last driving him to desperation. For a second or two the Countess
Sabine looked at the fire; then she resumed the conversation.
"I saw the king of Prussia at Baden-Baden last year. He's still
full of vigor for his age."
"Count Bismarck is to accompany him," said Mme du Joncquoy. "Do you
know the count? I lunched with him at my brother's ages ago, when
he was representative of Prussia in Paris. There's a man now whose
latest successes I cannot in the least understand."
"But why?" asked Mme Chantereau.
"Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn't please me. His
appearance is boorish and underbred. Besides, so far as I am
concerned, I find him stupid."
With that the whole room spoke of Count Bismarck, and opinions
differed considerably. Vandeuvres knew him and assured the company
that he was great in his cups and at play. But when the discussion
was at its height the door was opened, and Hector de la Falois made
his appearance. Fauchery, who followed in his wake, approached the
countess and, bowing:
"Madame," he said, "I have not forgotten your extremely kind
invitation."
She smiled and made a pretty little speech. The journalist, after
bowing to the count, stood for some moments in the middle of the
drawing room. He only recognized Steiner and accordingly looked
rather out of his element. But Vandeuvres turned and came and shook
hands with him. And forthwith, in his delight at the meeting and
with a sudden desire to be confidential, Fauchery buttonholed him
and said in a low voice:
"It's tomorrow. Are you going?"
"Egad, yes."
"At midnight, at her house.
"I know, I know. I'm going with Blanche."
He wanted to escape and return to the ladies in order to urge yet
another reason in M. de Bismarck's favor. But Fauchery detained
him.
"You never will guess whom she has charged me to invite."
And with a slight nod he indicated Count Muffat, who was just then
discussing a knotty point in the budget with Steiner and the deputy.
"It's impossible," said Vandeuvres, stupefaction and merriment in
his tones. "My word on it! I had to swear that I would bring him
to her. Indeed, that's one of my reasons for coming here."
Both laughed silently, and Vandeuvres, hurriedly rejoining the
circle of ladies, cried out:
"I declare that on the contrary Monsieur de Bismarck is exceedingly
witty. For instance, one evening he said a charmingly epigrammatic
thing in my presence."
La Faloise meanwhile had heard the few rapid sentences thus
whisperingly interchanged, and he gazed at Fauchery in hopes of an
explanation which was not vouchsafed him. Of whom were they
talking, and what were they going to do at midnight tomorrow? He
did not leave his cousin's side again. The latter had gone and
seated himself. He was especially interested by the Countess
Sabine. Her name had often been mentioned in his presence, and he
knew that, having been married at the age of seventeen, she must now
be thirty-four and that since her marriage she had passed a
cloistered existence with her husband and her mother-in-law. In
society some spoke of her as a woman of religious chastity, while
others pitied her and recalled to memory her charming bursts of
laughter and the burning glances of her great eyes in the days prior
to her imprisonment in this old town house. Fauchery scrutinized
her and yet hesitated. One of his friends, a captain who had
recently died in Mexico, had, on the very eve of his departure, made
him one of those gross postprandial confessions, of which even the
most prudent among men are occasionally guilty. But of this he only
retained a vague recollection; they had dined not wisely but too
well that evening, and when he saw the countess, in her black dress
and with her quiet smile, seated in that Old World drawing room, he
certainly had his doubts. A lamp which had been placed behind her
threw into clear relief her dark, delicate, plump side face, wherein
a certain heaviness in the contours of the mouth alone indicated a
species of imperious sensuality.
"What do they want with their Bismarck?" muttered La Faloise, whose
constant pretense it was to be bored in good society. "One's ready
to kick the bucket here. A pretty idea of yours it was to want to
come!"
Fauchery questioned him abruptly.
"Now tell me, does the countess admit someone to her embraces?"
"Oh dear, no, no! My dear fellow!" he stammered, manifestly taken
aback and quite forgetting his pose. "Where d'you think we are?"
After which he was conscious of a want of up-to-dateness in this
outburst of indignation and, throwing himself back on a great sofa,
he added:
"Gad! I say no! But I don't know much about it. There's a little
chap out there, Foucarmont they call him, who's to be met with
everywhere and at every turn. One's seen faster men than that,
though, you bet. However, it doesn't concern me, and indeed, all I
know is that if the countess indulges in high jinks she's still
pretty sly about it, for the thing never gets about--nobody talks."
Then although Fauchery did not take the trouble to question him, he
told him all he knew about the Muffats. Amid the conversation of
the ladies, which still continued in front of the hearth, they both
spoke in subdued tones, and, seeing them there with their white
cravats and gloves, one might have supposed them to be discussing in
chosen phraseology some really serious topic. Old Mme Muffat then,
whom La Faloise had been well acquainted with, was an insufferable
old lady, always hand in glove with the priests. She had the grand
manner, besides, and an authoritative way of comporting herself,
which bent everybody to her will. As to Muffat, he was an old man's
child; his father, a general, had been created count by Napoleon I,
and naturally he had found himself in favor after the second of
December. He hadn't much gaiety of manner either, but he passed for
a very honest man of straightforward intentions and understanding.
Add to these a code of old aristocratic ideas and such a lofty
conception of his duties at court, of his dignities and of his
virtues, that he behaved like a god on wheels. It was the Mamma
