Paz (La Fausse Maitresse)

PAZ

(La Fausse Maitresse)

By Honore De Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the Comtesse Clara Maffei.

PAZ

(LA FAUSSE MAITRESSE)

I

In September, 1835, one of the richest heiresses of the faubourg

Saint-Germain, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, the only daughter of the Marquis

du Rouvre, married Comte Adam Mitgislas Laginski, a young Polish exile.

We ask permission to write these Polish names as they are pronounced,

to spare our readers the aspect of the fortifications of consonants

by which the Slave language protects its vowels,--probably not to lose

them, considering how few there are.

The Marquis du Rouvre had squandered nearly the whole of a princely

fortune, which he obtained originally through his marriage with a

Demoiselle de Ronquerolles. Therefore, on her mother’s side Clementine

du Rouvre had the Marquis de Ronquerolles for uncle, and Madame de

Serizy for aunt. On her father’s side she had another uncle in the

eccentric person of the Chevalier du Rouvre, a younger son of the house,

an old bachelor who had become very rich by speculating in lands and

houses. The Marquis de Ronquerolles had the misfortune to lose both

his children at the time of the cholera, and the only son of Madame

de Serizy, a young soldier of great promise, perished in Africa in

the affair of the Makta. In these days rich families stand between the

danger of impoverishing their children if they have too many, or of

extinguishing their names if they have too few,--a singular result of

the Code which Napoleon never thought of. By a curious turn of fortune

Clementine became, in spite of her father having squandered his

substance on Florine (one of the most charming actresses in Paris), a

great heiress. The Marquis de Ronquerolles, a clever diplomatist under

the new dynasty, his sister, Madame de Serizy, and the Chevalier du

Rouvre agreed, in order to save their fortunes from the dissipations of

the marquis, to settle them on their niece, to whom, moreover, they each

pledged themselves to pay ten thousand francs a year from the day of her

marriage.

It is quite unnecessary to say that the Polish count, though an exile,

was no expense to the French government. Comte Adam Laginski belonged

to one of the oldest and most illustrious families in Poland, which was

allied to many of the princely houses of Germany,--Sapieha, Radziwill,

Mniszech, Rzewuski, Czartoryski, Leczinski, Lubormirski, and all the

other great Sarmatian SKIS. But heraldic knowledge is not the most

distinguishing feature of the French nation under Louis-Philippe, and

Polish nobility was no great recommendation to the bourgeoisie who were

lording it in those days. Besides, when Adam first made his appearance,

in 1833, on the boulevard des Italiens, at Frascati, and at the

Jockey-Club, he was leading the life of a young man who, having lost his

political prospects, was taking his pleasure in Parisian dissipation. At

first he was thought to be a student.

The Polish nationality had at this period fallen as low in French

estimation, thanks to a shameful governmental reaction, as the

republicans had sought to raise it. The singular struggle of the

Movement against Resistance (two words which will be inexplicable thirty

years hence) made sport of what ought to have been truly respected,--the

name of a conquered nation to whom the French had offered hospitality,

for whom fetes had been given (with songs and dances by subscription),

above all, a nation which in the Napoleonic struggle between France and

Europe had given us six thousand men, and what men!

Do not infer from this that either side is taken here; either that

of the Emperor Nicholas against Poland, or that of Poland against the

Emperor. It would be a foolish thing to slip political discussion into

tales that are intended to amuse or interest. Besides, Russia and Poland

were both right,--one to wish the unity of its empire, the other

to desire its liberty. Let us say in passing that Poland might have

conquered Russia by the influence of her morals instead of fighting her

with weapons; she should have imitated China which, in the end, Chinesed

the Tartars, and will, it is to be hoped, Chinese the English. Poland

ought to have Polonized Russia. Poniatowski tried to do so in the

least favorable portion of the empire; but as a king he was little

understood,--because, possibly, he did not fully understand himself.

But how could the Parisians avoid disliking an unfortunate people who

were the cause of that shameful falsehood enacted during the famous

review at which all Paris declared its will to succor Poland? The Poles

were held up to them as the allies of the republican party, and they

never once remembered that Poland was a republic of aristocrats. From

that day forth the bourgeoisie treated with base contempt the exiles of

the nation it had worshipped a few days earlier. The wind of a riot

is always enough to veer the Parisians from north to south under any

regime. It is necessary to remember these sudden fluctuations of feeling

in order to understand why it was that in 1835 the word “Pole” conveyed

a derisive meaning to a people who consider themselves the wittiest and

most courteous nation on earth, and their city of Paris the focus of

enlightenment, with the sceptre of arts and literature within its grasp.

There are, alas! two sorts of Polish exiles,--the republican Poles,

sons of Lelewel, and the noble Poles, at the head of whom is Prince Adam

Czartoryski. The two classes are like fire and water; but why complain

of that? Such divisions are always to be found among exiles, no matter

of what nation they may be, or in what countries they take refuge. They

carry their countries and their hatreds with them. Two French priests,

who had emigrated to Brussels during the Revolution, showed the utmost

horror of each other, and when one of them was asked why, he replied

with a glance at his companion in misery: “Why? because he’s a

Jansenist!” Dante would gladly have stabbed a Guelf had he met him in

exile. This explains the virulent attacks of the French against the

venerable Prince Adam Czartoryski, and the dislike shown to the better

class of Polish exiles by the shopkeeping Caesars and the licensed

Alexanders of Paris.

In 1834, therefore, Adam Mitgislas Laginski was something of a butt for

Parisian pleasantry.

“He is rather nice, though he is a Pole,” said Rastignac.

“All these Poles pretend to be great lords,” said Maxime de Trailles,

“but this one does pay his gambling debts, and I begin to think he must

have property.”

Without wishing to offend these banished men, it may be allowable to

remark that the light-hearted, careless inconsistency of the Sarmatian

character does justify in some degree the satire of the Parisians, who,

by the bye, would behave in like circumstances exactly as the Poles do.

The French aristocracy, so nobly succored during the Revolution by the

Polish lords, certainly did not return the kindness in 1832. Let us

have the melancholy courage to admit this, and to say that the faubourg

Saint-Germain is still the debtor of Poland.

Was Comte Adam rich, or was he poor, or was he an adventurer?

This problem was long unsolved. The diplomatic salons, faithful to

instructions, imitated the silence of the Emperor Nicholas, who held

that all Polish exiles were virtually dead and buried. The court of the

Tuileries, and all who took their cue from it, gave striking proof of

the political quality which was then dignified by the name of sagacity.

They turned their backs on a Russian prince with whom they had all been

on intimate terms during the Emigration, merely because it was said that

the Emperor Nicholas gave him the cold shoulder. Between the caution

of the court and the prudence of the diplomates, the Polish exiles of

distinction lived in Paris in the Biblical solitude of “super flumina

Babylonis,” or else they haunted a few salons which were the neutral

ground of all opinions. In a city of pleasure, like Paris, where

amusements abound on all sides, the heedless gayety of a Pole finds

twice as many encouragements as it needs to a life of dissipation.

It must be said, however, that Adam had two points against him,--his

appearance, and his mental equipment. There are two species of Pole, as

there are two species of Englishwoman. When an Englishwoman is not

very handsome she is horribly ugly. Comte Adam belonged in the second

category of human beings. His small face, rather sharp in expression,

looked as if it had been pressed in a vise. His short nose, and fair

hair, and reddish beard and moustache made him look all the more like a

goat because he was small and thin, and his tarnished yellow eyes caught

you with that oblique look which Virgil celebrates. How came he, in

spite of such obvious disadvantages, to possess really exquisite manners

and a distinguished air? The problem is solved partly by the care and

elegance of his dress, and partly by the training given him by his

mother, a Radziwill. His courage amounted to daring, but his mind

was not more than was needed for the ephemeral talk and pleasantry of

Parisian conversation. And yet it would have been difficult to find

among the young men of fashion in Paris a single one who was his

superior. Young men talk a great deal too much in these days of horses,

money, taxes, deputies; French _conversation_ is no longer what it was.

Brilliancy of mind needs leisure and certain social inequalities to

bring it out. There is, probably, more real conversation in Vienna or

St. Petersburg than in Paris. Equals do not need to employ delicacy or

shrewdness in speech; they blurt out things as they are. Consequently

the dandies of Paris did not discover the great seigneur in the rather

heedless young fellow who, in their talks, would flit from one subject

to another, all the more intent upon amusement because he had just

escaped from a great peril, and, finding himself in a city where his

family was unknown, felt at liberty to lead a loose life without the

risk of disgracing his name.

But one fine day in 1834 Adam suddenly bought a house in the rue de la

Pepiniere. Six months later his style of living was second to none in

Paris. About the time when he thus began to take himself seriously he

had seen Clementine du Rouvre at the Opera and had fallen in love with

her. A year later the marriage took place. The salon of Madame d’Espard

was the first to sound his praises. Mothers of daughters then learned

too late that as far back as the year 900 the family of the Laginski was

among the most illustrious of the North. By an act of prudence which was

very unPolish, the mother of the young count had mortgaged her entire

property on the breaking out of the insurrection for an immense sum

lent by two Jewish bankers in Paris. Comte Adam was now in possession of

eighty thousand francs a year. When this was discovered society ceased

to be surprised at the imprudence which had been laid to the charge

of Madame de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, and the Chevalier du

Rouvre in yielding to the foolish passion of their niece. People jumped,

as usual, from one extreme of judgment to the other.

During the winter of 1836 Comte Adam was the fashion, and Clementine

Laginska one of the queens of Paris. Madame Laginska is now a member

of that charming circle of young women represented by Mesdames de

Lestorade, de Portenduere, Marie de Vandenesse, du Guenic, and de

Maufrigneuse, the flowers of our present Paris, who live at such

immeasurable distance from the parvenus, the vulgarians, and the

speculators of the new regime.

This preamble is necessary to show the sphere in which was done one

of those noble actions, less rare than the calumniators of our time

admit,--actions which, like pearls, the fruit of pain and suffering, are

hidden within rough shells, lost in the gulf, the sea, the tossing waves

of what we call society, the century, Paris, London, St. Petersburg,--or

what you will.

If the axiom that architecture is the expression of manner and morals

was ever proved, it was certainly after the insurrection of 1830, during

the present reign of the house of Orleans. As all the old fortunes

are diminishing in France, the majestic mansions of our ancestors are

constantly being demolished and replaced by species of phalansteries, in

which the peers of July occupy the third floor above some newly

enriched empirics on the lower floors. A mixture of styles is confusedly

employed. As there is no longer a real court or nobility to give the

tone, there is no harmony in the production of art. Never, on the other

hand, has architecture discovered so many economical ways of imitating

the real and the solid, or displayed more resources, more talent, in

distributing them. Propose to an architect to build upon the garden

at the back of an old mansion, and he will run you up a little Louvre

overloaded with ornament. He will manage to get in a courtyard, stables,

and if you care for it, a garden. Inside the house he will accommodate a

quantity of little rooms and passages. He is so clever in deceiving the

eye that you think you will have plenty of space; but it is only a nest

of small rooms, after all, in which a ducal family has to turn itself

about in the space that its own bakehouse formerly occupied.

The hotel of the Comtesse Laginska, rue de la Pepiniere, is one of these

creations, and stands between court and garden. On the right, in the

court, are the kitchens and offices; to the left the coachhouse and

stables. The porter’s lodge is between two charming portes-cocheres. The

chief luxury of the house is a delightful greenhouse contrived at the

end of a boudoir on the ground-floor which opens upon an admirable

suite of reception rooms. An English philanthropist had built this

architectural bijou, designed the garden, added the greenhouse, polished

the doors, bricked the courtyard, painted the window-frames green,

and realized, in short, a dream which resembled (proportions excepted)

George the Fourth’s Pavilion at Brighton. The inventive and industrious

Parisian workmen had moulded the doors and window-frames; the ceilings

were imitated from the middle-ages or those of a Venetian palace; marble

veneering abounded on the outer walls. Steinbock and Francois Souchet

had designed the mantel-pieces and the panels above the doors; Schinner

had painted the ceilings in his masterly manner. The beauties of the

staircase, white as a woman’s arm, defied those of the hotel Rothschild.

On account of the riots and the unsettled times, the cost of this folly

was only about eleven hundred thousand francs,--to an Englishman a mere

nothing. All this luxury, called princely by persons who do not know

what real princes are, was built in the garden of the house of a

purveyor made a Croesus by the Revolution, who had escaped to Brussels

and died there after going into bankruptcy. The Englishman died in

Paris, of Paris; for to many persons Paris is a disease,--sometimes

several diseases. His widow, a Methodist, had a horror of the little

nabob establishment, and ordered it to be sold. Comte Adam bought it at

a bargain; and how he came to do so shall presently be made known, for

bargains were not at all in his line as a grand seigneur.

Behind the house lay the verdant velvet of an English lawn shaded at

the lower end by a clump of exotic trees, in the midst of which stood a

Chinese pagoda with soundless belfries and motionless golden eggs. The

greenhouse concealed the garden wall on the northern side, the opposite

wall was covered with climbing plants trained upon poles painted green

and connected with crossway trellises. This lawn, this world of flowers,

the gravelled paths, the simulated forest, the verdant palisades, were

contained within the space of five and twenty square rods, which are

worth to-day four hundred thousand francs,--the value of an actual

forest. Here, in this solitude in the middle of Paris, the birds

sang, thrushes, nightingales, warblers, bulfinches, and sparrows. The

greenhouse was like an immense jardiniere, filling the air with perfume

in winter as in summer. The means by which its atmosphere was made

to order, torrid as in China or temperate as in Italy, were cleverly

concealed. Pipes in which hot water circulated, or steam, were either

hidden under ground or festooned with plants overhead. The boudoir was a

large room. The miracle of the modern Parisian fairy named Architecture

is to get all these many and great things out of a limited bit of

ground.

The boudoir of the young countess was arranged to suit the taste of the

artist to whom Comte Adam entrusted the decoration of the house. It is

too full of pretty nothings to be a place for repose; one scarce knows

where to sit down among carved Chinese work-tables with their myriads

of fantastic figures inlaid in ivory, cups of yellow topaz mounted on

filagree, mosaics which inspire theft, Dutch pictures in the style which

Schinner has adopted, angels such as Steinbock conceived but often could

not execute, statuettes modelled by genius pursued by creditors (the

real explanation of the Arabian myth), superb sketches by our best

artists, lids of chests made into panels alternating with fluted

draperies of Italian silk, portieres hanging from rods of old oak

in tapestried masses on which the figures of some hunting scene are

swarming, pieces of furniture worthy to have belonged to Madame de

Pompadour, Persian rugs, et cetera. For a last graceful touch, all these

elegant things were subdued by the half-light which filtered through

embroidered curtains and added to their charm. On a table between the

windows, among various curiosities, lay a whip, the handle designed

by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, which proved that the countess rode on

horseback.

Such is a lady’s boudoir in 1837,--an exhibition of the contents of many

shops, which amuse the eye, as if ennui were the one thing to be dreaded

by the social world of the liveliest and most stirring capital in

Europe. Why is there nothing of an inner life? nothing which leads to

revery, nothing reposeful? Why indeed? Because no one in our day is sure

of the future; we are living our lives like prodigal annuitants.

One morning Clementine appeared to be thinking of something. She was

lying at full length on one of those marvellous couches from which it

is almost impossible to rise, the upholsterer having invented them for

lovers of the “far niente” and its attendant joys of laziness to sink

into. The doors of the greenhouse were open, letting the odors of

vegetation and the perfume of the tropics pervade the room. The young

wife was looking at her husband who was smoking a narghile, the only

form of pipe she would have suffered in that room. The portieres, held

back by cords, gave a vista through two elegant salons, one white and

gold, comparable only to that of the hotel Forbin-Janson, the other in

the style of the Renaissance. The dining-room, which had no rival in

Paris except that of the Baron de Nucingen, was at the end of a short

gallery decorated in the manner of the middle-ages. This gallery opened

on the side of the courtyard upon a large antechamber, through which

could be seen the beauties of the staircase.

The count and countess had just finished breakfast; the sky was a sheet

of azure without a cloud, April was nearly over. They had been married

two years, and Clementine had just discovered for the first time that

there was something resembling a secret or a mystery in her household.

The Pole, let us say it to his honor, is usually helpless before a

woman; he is so full of tenderness for her that in Poland he becomes her

inferior, though Polish women make admirable wives. Now a Pole is still

more easily vanquished by a Parisian woman. Consequently Comte Adam,

pressed by questions, did not even attempt the innocent roguery of

selling the suspected secret. It is always wise with a woman to get

some good out of a mystery; she will like you the better for it, as a

swindler respects an honest man the more when he finds he cannot swindle

him. Brave in heart but not in speech, Comte Adam merely stipulated that

he should not be compelled to answer until he had finished his narghile.

“If any difficulty occurred when we were travelling,” said Clementine,

“you always dismissed it by saying, ‘Paz will settle that.’ You never

wrote to any one but Paz. When we returned here everybody kept saying,

‘the captain, the captain.’ If I want the carriage--‘the captain.’ Is

there a bill to pay--‘the captain.’ If my horse is not properly

bitted, they must speak to Captain Paz. In short, it is like a game of

dominoes--Paz is everywhere. I hear of nothing but Paz, but I never see

Paz. Who and what is Paz? Why don’t you bring forth your Paz?”

“Isn’t everything going on right?” asked the count, taking the

“bocchettino” of his narghile from his lips.

“Everything is going on so right that other people with an income of two

hundred thousand francs would ruin themselves by going at our pace, and

we have only one hundred and ten thousand.”

So saying she pulled the bell-cord (an exquisite bit of needlework). A

footman entered, dressed like a minister.

“Tell Captain Paz that I wish to see him.”

“If you think you are going to find out anything that way--” said Comte

Adam, laughing.

It is well to mention that Adam and Clementine, married in December,

1835, had gone soon after the wedding to Italy, Switzerland, and

Germany, where they spent the greater part of two years. Returning to

Paris in November, 1837, the countess entered society for the first time

as a married woman during the winter which had just ended, and she then

became aware of the existence, half-suppressed and wholly dumb but very

useful, of a species of factotum who was personally invisible, named

Paz,--spelt thus, but pronounced “Patz.”

“Monsieur le capitaine Paz begs Madame la comtesse to excuse him,” said

the footman, returning. “He is at the stables; as soon as he has changed

his dress Comte Paz will present himself to Madame.”

“What was he doing at the stables?”

“He was showing them how to groom Madame’s horse,” said the man. “He was

not pleased with the way Constantin did it.”

The countess looked at the footman. He was perfectly serious and did not

add to his words the sort of smile by which servants usually comment

on the actions of a superior who seems to them to derogate from his

position.

“Ah! he was grooming Cora.”

“Madame la comtesse intends to ride out this morning?” said the footman,

leaving the room without further answer.

“Is Paz a Pole?” asked Clementine, turning to her husband, who nodded by

way of affirmation.

Madame Laginska was silent, examining Adam. With her feet extended upon

a cushion and her head poised like that of a bird on the edge of

its nest listening to the noises in a grove, she would have seemed

enchanting even to a blase man. Fair and slender, and wearing her

hair in curls, she was not unlike those semi-romantic pictures in

the Keepsakes, especially when dressed, as she was this morning, in a

breakfast gown of Persian silk, the folds of which could not disguise

the beauty of her figure or the slimness of her waist. The silk with its

brilliant colors being crossed upon the bosom showed the spring of the

neck,--its whiteness contrasting delightfully against the tones of a

guipure lace which lay upon her shoulders. Her eyes and their long

black lashes added at this moment to the expression of curiosity which

puckered her pretty mouth. On the forehead, which was well modelled,

an observer would have noticed a roundness characteristic of the true

Parisian woman,--self-willed, merry, well-informed, but inaccessible

to vulgar seductions. Her hands, which were almost transparent, were

hanging down at the end of each arm of her chair; the tapering fingers,

slightly turned up at their points, showed nails like almonds, which

caught the light. Adam smiled at his wife’s impatience, and looked at

her with a glance which two years of married life had not yet chilled.

Already the little countess had made herself mistress of the situation,

for she scarcely paid attention to her husband’s admiration. In fact,

in the look which she occasionally cast at him, there seemed to be the

consciousness of a Frenchwoman’s ascendancy over the puny, volatile, and

red-haired Pole.

“Here comes Paz,” said the count, hearing a step which echoed through

the gallery.

The countess beheld a tall and handsome man, well-made, and bearing

on his face the signs of pain which come of inward strength and secret

endurance of sorrow. He wore one of those tight, frogged overcoats which

were then called “polonaise.” Thick, black hair, rather unkempt, covered

his square head, and Clementine noticed his broad forehead shining like

a block of white marble, for Paz held his visored cap in his hand.

The hand itself was like that of the Infant Hercules. Robust health

flourished on his face, which was divided by a large Roman nose and

reminded Clementine of some handsome Transteverino. A black silk cravat

added to the martial appearance of this six-foot mystery, with eyes of

jet and Italian fervor. The amplitude of his pleated trousers, which

allowed only the tips of his boots to be seen, revealed his faithfulness

to the fashions of his own land. There was something really burlesque

to a romantic woman in the striking contrast no one could fail to remark

between the captain and the count, the little Pole with his pinched face

and the stalwart soldier.

“Good morning, Adam,” he said familiarly. Then he bowed courteously as

he asked Clementine what he could do for her.

“You are Laginski’s friend!” exclaimed the countess.

“For life and death,” answered Paz, to whom the count threw a smile of

affection as he drew a last puff from his perfumed pipe.

“Then why don’t you take your meals with us? why did you not accompany

us to Italy and Switzerland? why do you hide yourself in such a way that

I am unable to thank you for the constant services that you do for us?”

said the countess, with much vivacity of manner but no feeling.

In fact, she thought she perceived in Paz a sort of voluntary servitude.

Such an idea carried with it in her mind a certain contempt for a social

amphibian, a being half-secretary, half-bailiff, and yet neither the one

nor the other, a poor relation, an embarrassing friend.

“Because, countess,” he answered with perfect ease of manner, “there are

no thanks due. I am Adam’s friend, and it gives me pleasure to take care

of his interests.”

“And you remain standing for your pleasure, too,” remarked Comte Adam.

Paz sat down on a chair near the door.

“I remember seeing you about the time I was married, and afterwards

in the courtyard,” said Clementine. “But why do you put yourself in a

position of inferiority,--you, Adam’s friend?”

“I am perfectly indifferent to the opinion of the Parisians,” he

replied. “I live for myself, or, if you like, for you two.”

“But the opinion of the world as to a friend of my husband is not

indifferent to me--”

“Ah, madame, the world will be satisfied if you tell them I am ‘an

original.’”

After a moment’s silence he added, “Are you going out to-day?”

“Will you come with us to the Bois?”

“Certainly.”

So saying, Paz bowed and withdrew.

“What a good soul he is!” said Adam. “He has all the simplicity of a

child.”

“Now tell me all about your relations with him,” said Clementine.

“Paz, my dear,” said Laginski, “belongs to a noble family as old and

illustrious as our own. One of the Pazzi of Florence, at the time of

their disasters, fled to Poland, where he settled with some of his

property and founded the Paz family, to which the title of count was

granted. This family, which distinguished itself greatly in the glorious

days of our royal republic, became rich. The graft from the tree that

was felled in Italy flourished so vigorously in Poland that there are

several branches of the family still there. I need not tell you that

some are rich and some are poor. Our Paz is the scion of a poor branch.

He was an orphan, without other fortune than his sword, when he served

in the regiment of the Grand Duke Constantine at the time of our

revolution. Joining the Polish cause, he fought like a Pole, like a

patriot, like a man who has nothing,--three good reasons for fighting

well. In his last affair, thinking he was followed by his men, he dashed

upon a Russian battery and was taken prisoner. I was there. His brave

act roused me. ‘Let us go and get him!’ I said to my troop, and we

charged the battery like a lot of foragers. I got Paz--I was the seventh

man; we started twenty and came back eight, counting Paz. After Warsaw

was sold we were forced to escape those Russians. By a curious chance,

Paz and I happened to come together again, at the same hour and the same

place, on the other side of the Vistula. I saw the poor captain arrested

by some Prussians, who made themselves the blood-hounds of the Russians.

When we have fished a man out of the Styx we cling to him. This new

danger for poor Paz made me so unhappy that I let myself be taken too,

thinking I could help him. Two men can get away where one will

perish. Thanks to my name and some family connections in Prussia, the

authorities shut their eyes to my escape. I got my dear captain through

as a man of no consequence, a family servant, and we reached Dantzic.

There we got on board a Dutch vessel and went to London. It took us two

months to get there. My mother was ill in England, and expecting me.

Paz and I took care of her till her death, which the Polish troubles

hastened. Then we left London and came to France. Men who go through

such adversities become like brothers. When I reached Paris, at

twenty-two years of age, and found I had an income of over sixty

thousand francs a year, without counting the proceeds of the diamonds

and the pictures sold by my mother, I wanted to secure the future of

my dear Paz before I launched into dissipation. I had often noticed the

sadness in his eyes--sometimes tears were in them. I had had good reason

to understand his soul, which is noble, grand, and generous to the core.

I thought he might not like to be bound by benefits to a friend who

was six years younger than himself, unless he could repay them. I was

careless and frivolous, just as a young fellow is, and I knew I was

certain to ruin myself at play, or get inveigled by some woman, and Paz

and I might then be parted; and though I had every intention of always

looking out for him, I knew I might sometime or other forget to provide

for him. In short, my dear angel, I wanted to spare him the pain and

mortification of having to ask me for money, or of having to hunt me up

if he got into distress. SO, one morning, after breakfast, when we were

sitting with our feet on the andirons smoking pipes, I produced,--with

the utmost precaution, for I saw him look at me uneasily,--a certificate

of the Funds payable to bearer for a certain sum of money a year.”

Clementine jumped up and went and seated herself on Adam’s knee, put

her arms round his neck, and kissed him. “Dear treasure!” she said, “how

handsome he is! Well, what did Paz do?”

“Thaddeus turned pale,” said the count, “but he didn’t say a word.”

“Oh! his name is Thaddeus, is it?”

“Yes; Thaddeus folded the paper and gave it back to me, and then he

said: ‘I thought, Adam, that we were one for life or death, and that we

should never part. Do you want to be rid of me?’ ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘if you

take it that way, Thaddeus, don’t let us say another word about it. If

I ruin myself you shall be ruined too.’ ‘You haven’t fortune enough to

live as a Laginski should,’ he said, ‘and you need a friend who will

take care of your affairs, and be a father and a brother and a trusty

confidant.’ My dear child, as Paz said that he had in his look and

voice, calm as they were, a maternal emotion, and also the gratitude

of an Arab, the fidelity of a dog, the friendship of a savage,--not

displayed, but ever ready. Faith! I seized him, as we Poles do, with

a hand on each shoulder, and I kissed him on the lips. ‘For life and

death, then! all that I have is yours--do what you will with it.’ It was

he who found me this house and bought it for next to nothing. He sold my

Funds high and bought in low, and we have paid for this barrack with

the profits. He knows horses, and he manages to buy and sell at such

advantage that my stable really costs very little; and yet I have the

finest horses and the most elegant equipages in all Paris. Our servants,

brave Polish soldiers chosen by him, would go through fire and water

for us. I seem, as you say, to be ruining myself; and yet Paz keeps the

house with such method and economy that he has even repaired some of my

foolish losses at play,--the thoughtless folly of a young man. My dear,

Thaddeus is as shrewd as two Genoese, as eager for gain as a Polish Jew,

and provident as a good housekeeper. I never could force him to live as

I did when I was a bachelor. Sometimes I had to use a sort of friendly

coercion to make him go to the theatre with me when I was alone, or to

the jovial little dinners I used to give at a tavern. He doesn’t like

social life.”

“What does he like, then?” asked Clementine.

“Poland; he loves Poland and pines for it. His only spendings are

sums he gives, more in my name than in his own, to some of our poor

brother-exiles.”

“Well, I shall love him, the fine fellow!” said the countess, “he looks

to me as simple-hearted as he is grand.”

“All these pretty things you have about you,” continued Adam, who

praised his friend in the noblest sincerity, “he picked up; he bought

them at auction, or as bargains from the dealers. Oh! he’s keener than

they are themselves. If you see him rubbing his hands in the courtyard,

you may be sure he has traded away one good horse for a better. He lives

for me; his happiness is to see me elegant, in a perfectly appointed

equipage. The duties he takes upon himself are all accomplished without

fuss or emphasis. One evening I lost twenty thousand francs at whist.

‘What will Paz say?’ thought I as I walked home. Paz paid them to me,

not without a sigh; but he never reproached me, even by a look. But

that sigh of his restrained me more than the remonstrances of uncles,

mothers, or wives could have done. ‘Do you regret the money?’ I said

to him. ‘Not for you or me, no,’ he replied; ‘but I was thinking

that twenty poor Poles could have lived a year on that sum.’ You must

understand that the Pazzi are fully the equal of the Laginski, so I

couldn’t regard my dear Paz as an inferior. I never went out or came in

without going first to Paz, as I would to my father. My fortune is his;

and Thaddeus knows that if danger threatened him I would fling myself

into it and drag him out, as I have done before.”

“And that is saying a good deal, my dear friend,” said the countess.

“Devotion is like a flash of lightning. Men devote themselves in battle,

but they no longer have the heart for it in Paris.”

“Well,” replied Adam, “I am always ready, as in battle, to devote

myself to Paz. Our two characters have kept their natural asperities

and defects, but the mutual comprehension of our souls has tightened the

bond already close between us. It is quite possible to save a man’s life

and kill him afterwards if we find him a bad fellow; but Paz and I know

THAT of each other which makes our friendship indissoluble. There’s

a constant exchange of happy thoughts and impressions between us; and

really, perhaps, such a friendship as ours is richer than love.”

A pretty hand closed the count’s mouth so promptly that the action was

somewhat like a blow.

“Yes,” he said, “friendship, my dear angel, knows nothing of bankrupt

sentiments and collapsed joys. Love, after giving more than it has, ends

by giving less than it receives.”

“One side as well as the other,” remarked Clementine laughing.

“Yes,” continued Adam, “whereas friendship only increases. You need not

pucker up your lips at that, for we are, you and I, as much friends as

lovers; we have, at least I hope so, combined the two sentiments in our

happy marriage.”

“I’ll explain to you what it is that has made you and Thaddeus such good

friends,” said Clementine. “The difference in the lives you lead

comes from your tastes and from necessity; from your likings, not your

positions. As far as one can judge from merely seeing a man once, and

also from what you tell me, there are times when the subaltern might

become the superior.”

“Oh, Paz is truly my superior,” said Adam, naively; “I have no advantage

over him except mere luck.”

His wife kissed him for the generosity of those words.

“The extreme care with which he hides the grandeur of his feelings is

one form of his superiority,” continued the count. “I said to him once:

‘You are a sly one; you have in your heart a vast domain within which

you live and think.’ He has a right to the title of count; but in Paris

he won’t be called anything but captain.”

“The fact is that the Florentine of the middle-ages has reappeared in

our century,” said the countess. “Dante and Michael Angelo are in him.”

“That’s the very truth,” cried Adam. “He is a poet in soul.”

“So here I am, married to two Poles,” said the young countess, with a

gesture worthy of some genius of the stage.

“Dear child!” said Adam, pressing her to him, “it would have made me

very unhappy if my friend did not please you. We were both rather afraid

of it, he and I, though he was delighted at my marriage. You will

make him very happy if you tell him that you love him,--yes, as an old

friend.”

“I’ll go and dress, the day is so fine; and we will all three ride

together,” said Clementine, ringing for her maid.

II

Paz was leading so subterranean a life that the fashionable world of

Paris asked who he was when the Comtesse Laginska was seen in the Bois

de Boulogne riding between her husband and a stranger. During the ride

Clementine insisted that Thaddeus should dine with them. This caprice of

the sovereign lady compelled Paz to make an evening toilet. Clementine

dressed for the occasion with a certain coquetry, in a style that

impressed even Adam himself when she entered the salon where the two

friends awaited her.

“Comte Paz,” she said, “you must go with us to the Opera.”

This was said in the tone which, coming from a woman means: “If you

refuse we shall quarrel.”

“Willingly, madame,” replied the captain. “But as I have not the fortune

of a count, have the kindness to call me captain.”

“Very good, captain; give me your arm,” she said,--taking it and

leading the way to the dining-room with the flattering familiarity which

enchants all lovers.

The countess placed the captain beside her; his behavior was that of

a poor sub-lieutenant dining at his general’s table. He let Clementine

talk, listened deferentially as to a superior, did not differ with her

in anything, and waited to be questioned before he spoke at all. He

seemed actually stupid to the countess, whose coquettish little ways

missed their mark in presence of such frigid gravity and conventional

respect. In vain Adam kept saying: “Do be lively, Thaddeus; one would

really suppose you were not at home. You must have made a wager to

disconcert Clementine.” Thaddeus continued heavy and half asleep.

When the servants left the room at the end of the dessert the captain

explained that his habits were diametrically opposite to those of

society,--he went to bed at eight o’clock and got up very early in the

morning; and he excused his dulness on the ground of being sleepy.

“My intention in taking you to the Opera was to amuse you, captain; but

do as you prefer,” said Clementine, rather piqued.

“I will go,” said Paz.

“Duprez sings ‘Guillaume Tell,’” remarked Adam. “But perhaps you would

rather go to the ‘Varietes’?”

The captain smiled and rang the bell. “Tell Constantin,” he said to the

footman, “to put the horses to the carriage instead of the coupe. We

should be rather squeezed otherwise,” he said to the count.

“A Frenchman would have forgotten that,” remarked Clementine, smiling.

“Ah! but we are Florentines transplanted to the North,” answered

Thaddeus with a refinement of accent and a look in his eyes which

made his conduct at table seem assumed for the occasion. There was

too evident a contrast between his involuntary self-revelation in this

speech and his behavior during dinner. Clementine examined the captain

with a few of those covert glances which show a woman’s surprise and

also her capacity for observation.

It resulted from this little incident that silence reigned in the salon

while the three took their coffee, a silence rather annoying to Adam,

who was incapable of imagining the cause of it. Clementine no longer

tried to draw out Thaddeus. The captain, on the other hand, retreated

within his military stiffness and came out of it no more, neither on the

way to the Opera nor in the box, where he seemed to be asleep.

“You see, madame, that I am a very stupid man,” he said during the dance

in the last act of “Guillaume Tell.” “Am I not right to keep, as the

saying is, to my own specialty?”

“In truth, my dear captain, you are neither a talker nor a man of the

world, but you are perhaps Polish.”

“Therefore leave me to look after your pleasures, your property, your

household--it is all I am good for.”

“Tartufe! pooh!” cried Adam, laughing. “My dear, he is full of ardor;

he is thoroughly educated; he can, if he chooses, hold his own in any

salon. Clementine, don’t believe his modesty.”

“Adieu, comtesse; I have obeyed your wishes so far; and now I will take

the carriage and go home to bed and send it back for you.”

Clementine bowed her head and let him go without replying.

“What a bear!” she said to the count. “You are a great deal nicer.”

Adam pressed her hand when no one was looking.

“Poor, dear Thaddeus,” he said, “he is trying to make himself

disagreeable where most men would try to seem more amiable than I.”

“Oh!” she said, “I am not sure but what there is some _calculation_ in

his behavior; he would have taken in an ordinary woman.”

Half an hour later, when the chasseur, Boleslas, called out “Gate!” and

the carriage was waiting for it to swing back, Clementine said to her

husband, “Where does the captain perch?”

“Why, there!” replied Adam, pointing to a floor above the porte-cochere

which had one window looking on the street. “His apartments are over the

coachhouse.”

“Who lives on the other side?” asked the countess.

“No one as yet,” said Adam; “I mean that apartment for our children and

their instructors.”

“He didn’t go to bed,” said the countess, observing lights in Thaddeus’s

rooms when the carriage had passed under the portico supported by

columns copied from those of the Tuileries, which replaced a vulgar zinc

awning painted in stripes like cloth.

The captain, in his dressing-gown with a pipe in his mouth, was watching

Clementine as she entered the vestibule. The day had been a hard one for

him. And here is the reason why: A great and terrible emotion had taken

possession of his heart on the day when Adam made him go to the Opera

to see and give his opinion on Mademoiselle du Rouvre; and again when he

saw her on the occasion of her marriage, and recognized in her the woman

whom a man is forced to love exclusively. For this reason Paz strongly

advised and promoted the long journey to Italy and elsewhere after the

marriage. At peace so long as Clementine was away, his trial was renewed

on the return of the happy household. As he sat at his window on this

memorable night, smoking his latakia in a pipe of wild-cherry wood

six feet long, given to him by Adam, these are the thoughts that were

passing through his mind:--

“I, and God, who will reward me for suffering in silence, alone know

how I love her! But how shall I manage to have neither her love nor her

dislike?”

And his thoughts travelled far on this strange theme.

It must not be supposed that Thaddeus was living without pleasure, in

the midst of his sufferings. The deceptions of this day, for instance,

were a source of inward joy to him. Since the return of the count and

countess he had daily felt ineffable satisfactions in knowing himself

necessary to a household which, without his devotion to its interests,

would infallibly have gone to ruin. What fortune can bear the strain of

reckless prodigality? Clementine, brought up by a spendthrift father,

knew nothing of the management of a household which the women of the

present day, however rich or noble they are, are often compelled to

undertake themselves. How few, in these days, keep a steward. Adam, on

the other hand, son of one of the great Polish lords who let themselves

be preyed on by the Jews, and are wholly incapable of managing even the

wreck of their vast fortunes (for fortunes are vast in Poland), was

not of a nature to check his own fancies or those of his wife. Left to

himself he would probably have been ruined before his marriage. Paz had

prevented him from gambling at the Bourse, and that says all.

Under these circumstances, Thaddeus, feeling that he loved Clementine

in spite of himself, had not the resource of leaving the house and

travelling in other lands to forget his passion. Gratitude, the key-note

of his life, held him bound to that household where he alone could look

after the affairs of the heedless owners. The long absence of Adam

and Clementine had given him peace. But the countess had returned

more lovely than ever, enjoying the freedom which marriage brings to a

Parisian woman, displaying the graces of a young wife and the nameless

attraction she gains from the happiness, or the independence, bestowed

upon her by a young man as trustful, as chivalric, and as much in

love as Adam. To know that he was the pivot on which the splendor the

household depended, to see Clementine when she got out of her carriage

on returning from some fete, or got into it in the morning when she took

her drive, to meet her on the boulevards in her pretty equipage,

looking like a flower in a whorl of leaves, inspired poor Thaddeus with

mysterious delights, which glowed in the depths of his heart but gave no

signs upon his face.

How happened it that for five whole months the countess had never

perceived the captain? Because he hid himself from her knowledge, and

carefully concealed the pains he took to avoid her. Nothing so resembles

the Divine love as hopeless human love. A man must have great depth of

heart to devote himself in silence and obscurity to a woman. In such

a heart is the worship of love for love’s sake only--sublime avarice,

sublime because ever generous and founded on the mysterious existence

of the principles of creation. _Effect_ is nature, and nature is

enchanting; it belongs to man, to the poet, the painter, the lover. But

_Cause_, to a few privileged souls and to certain mighty thinkers,

is superior to nature. Cause is God. In the sphere of causes live

the Newtons and all such thinkers as Laplace, Kepler, Descartes,

Malebranche, Spinoza, Buffon; also the true poets and solitarys of

the second Christian century, and the Saint Teresas of Spain, and such

sublime ecstatics. All human sentiments bear analogy to these conditions

whenever the mind abandons Effect for Cause. Thaddeus had reached this

height, at which all things change their relative aspect. Filled with

the joys unutterable of a creator he had attained in his love to all

that genius has revealed to us of grandeur.

“No,” he was thinking to himself as he watched the curling smoke of his

pipe, “she was not entirely deceived. She might break up my friendship

with Adam if she took a dislike to me; but if she coquetted with me to

amuse herself, what would become of me?”

The conceit of this last supposition was so foreign to the modest

nature and Teutonic timidity of the captain that he scolded himself for

admitting it, and went to bed, resolved to await events before deciding

on a course.

The next day Clementine breakfasted very contentedly without Paz, and

without even noticing his disobedience to her orders. It happened to be

her reception day, when the house was thrown open with a splendor that

was semi-royal. She paid no attention to the absence of Comte Paz, on

whom all the burden of these parade days fell.

“Good!” thought he, as he heard the last carriages driving away at two

in the morning; “it was only the caprice or the curiosity of a Parisian

woman that made her want to see me.”

After that the captain went back to his ordinary habits and ways, which

had been somewhat upset by this incident. Diverted by her Parisian

occupations, Clementine appeared to have forgotten Paz. It must not be

thought an easy matter to reign a queen over fickle Paris. Does any one

suppose that fortunes alone are risked in the great game? The winters

are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the

Empire. What works of art and genius are expended on a gown or a garland

in which to make a sensation! A fragile, delicate creature will wear

her stiff and brilliant harness of flowers and diamonds, silk and steel,

from nine at night till two and often three o’clock in the morning. She

eats little, to attract remark to her slender waist; she satisfied her

hunger with debilitating tea, sugared cakes, ices which heat her, or

slices of heavy pastry. The stomach is made to yield to the orders of

coquetry. The awakening comes too late. A fashionable woman’s whole life

is in contradiction to the laws of nature, and nature is pitiless. She

has no sooner risen than she makes an elaborate morning toilet, and

thinks of the one which she means to wear in the afternoon. The moment

she is dressed she has to receive and make visits, and go to the Bois

either on horseback or in a carriage. She must practise the art of

smiling, and must keep her mind on the stretch to invent new compliments

which shall seem neither common nor far-fetched. All women do not

succeed in this. It is no surprise, therefore, to find a young woman who

entered fashionable society fresh and healthy, faded and worn out at the

end of three years. Six months spent in the country will hardly heal the

wounds of the winter. We hear continually, in these days, of mysterious

ailments,--gastritis, and so forth,--ills unknown to women when they

busied themselves about their households. In the olden time women only

appeared in the world at intervals; now they are always on the scene.

Clementine found she had to struggle for her supremacy. She was cited,

and that alone brought jealousies; and the care and watchfulness exacted

by this contest with her rivals left little time even to love her

husband. Paz might well be forgotten. Nevertheless, in the month of

May, as she drove home from the Bois, just before she left Paris for

Ronquerolles, her uncle’s estate in Burgundy, she noticed Thaddeus,

elegantly dressed, sauntering on one of the side-paths of the

Champs-Elysees, in the seventh heaven of delight at seeing his beautiful

countess in her elegant carriage with its spirited horses and sparkling

liveries,--in short, his beloved family the admired of all.

“There’s the captain,” she said to her husband.

“He’s happy!” said Adam. “This is his delight. He knows there’s no

equipage more elegant than ours, and he is rejoicing to think that some

people envy it. Have you only just noticed him? I see him there nearly

every day.”

“I wonder what he is thinking about now,” said Clementine.

“He is thinking that this winter has cost a good deal, and that it is

time we went to economize with your old uncle Ronquerolles,” replied

Adam.

The countess stopped the carriage near Paz, and bade him take the seat

beside her. Thaddeus grew as red as a cherry.

“I shall poison you,” he said; “I have been smoking.”

“Doesn’t Adam poison me?” she said.

“Yes, but he is Adam,” returned the captain.

“And why can’t Thaddeus have the same privileges?” asked the countess,

smiling.

That divine smile had a power which triumphed over the heroic

resolutions of poor Paz; he looked at Clementine with all the fire of

his soul in his eyes, though, even so, its flame was tempered by the

angelic gratitude of the man whose life was based upon that virtue.

The countess folded her arms in her shawl, lay back pensively on her

cushions, ruffling the feathers of her pretty bonnet, and looked at the

people who passed her. That flash of a great and hitherto resigned soul

reached her sensibilities. What was Adam’s merit in her eyes? It was

natural enough to have courage and generosity. But Thaddeus--surely

Thaddeus possessed, or seemed to possess, some great superiority

over Adam. They were dangerous thoughts which took possession of the

countess’s mind as she again noticed the contrast of the fine presence

that distinguished Thaddeus, and the puny frame in which Adam showed

the degenerating effects of intermarriage among the Polish aristocratic

families. The devil alone knew the thoughts that were in Clementine’s

head, for she sat still, with thoughtful, dreamy eyes, and without

saying a word until they reached home.

“You will dine with us; I shall be angry if you disobey me,” she said as

the carriage turned in. “You are Thaddeus to me, as you are to Adam. I

know your obligations to him, but I also know those we are under to you.

Both generosities are natural--but you are generous every day and all

day. My father dines here to-day, also my uncle Ronquerolles and my aunt

Madame de Serizy. Dress yourself therefore,” she said, taking the hand

he offered to assist her from the carriage.

Thaddeus went to his own room to dress with a joyful heart, though

shaken by an inward dread. He went down at the last moment and behaved

through dinner as he had done on the first occasion, that is, like a

soldier fit only for his duties as a steward. But this time Clementine

was not his dupe; his glance had enlightened her. The Marquis de

Ronquerolles, one of the ablest diplomates after Talleyrand, who had

served with de Marsay during his short ministry, had been informed by

his niece of the real worth and character of Comte Paz, and knew how

modestly he made himself the steward of his friend Laginski.

“And why is this the first time I have the pleasure of seeing Comte

Paz?” asked the marquis.

“Because he is so shy and retiring,” replied Clementine with a look at

Paz telling him to change his behavior.

Alas! that we should have to avow it, at the risk of rendering the

captain less interesting, but Paz, though superior to his friend

Adam, was not a man of parts. His apparent superiority was due to his

misfortunes. In his lonely and poverty-stricken life in Warsaw he had

read and taught himself a good deal; he had compared and meditated. But

the gift of original thought which makes a great man he did not possess,

and it can never be acquired. Paz, great in heart only, approached in

heart to the sublime; but in the sphere of sentiments, being more a man

of action than of thought, he kept his thoughts to himself; and they

only served therefore to eat his heart out. What, after all, is a

thought unexpressed?

After Clementine’s little speech, the Marquis de Ronquerolles and his

sister exchanged a singular glance, embracing their niece, Comte Adam,

and Paz. It was one of those rapid scenes which take place only in

France and Italy,--the two regions of the world (all courts excepted)

where eyes can say everything. To communicate to the eye the full power

of the soul, to give it the value of speech, needs either the pressure

of extreme servitude, or complete liberty. Adam, the Marquis du Rouvre,

and Clementine did not observe this luminous by-play of the old coquette

and the old diplomatist, but Paz, the faithful watchdog, understood

its meaning. It was, we must remark, an affair of two seconds; but to

describe the tempest it roused in the captain’s soul would take far too

much space in this brief history.

“What!” he said to himself, “do the aunt and uncle think I might be

loved? Then my happiness only depends on my own audacity! But Adam--”

Ideal love and desire clashed with gratitude and friendship, all equally

powerful, and, for a moment, love prevailed. The lover would have his

day. Paz became brilliant, he tried to please, he told the story of the

Polish insurrection in noble words, being questioned about it by the

diplomatist. By the end of dinner Paz saw Clementine hanging upon

his lips and regarding him as a hero, forgetting that Adam too, after

sacrificing a third of his vast fortune, had been an exile. At nine

o’clock, after coffee had been served, Madame de Serizy kissed her niece

on the forehead, pressed her hand, and went away, taking Adam with her

and leaving the Marquis de Ronquerolles and the Marquis du Rouvre, who

soon followed. Paz and Clementine were alone together.

“I will leave you now, madame,” said Thaddeus. “You will of course

rejoin them at the Opera?”

“No,” she answered, “I don’t like dancing, and they give an odious

ballet to-night ‘La Revolte au Serail.’”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Two years ago Adam would not have gone to the Opera without me,” said

Clementine, not looking at Paz.

“He loves you madly,” replied Thaddeus.

“Yes, and because he loves me madly he is all the more likely not to

love me to-morrow,” said the countess.

“How inexplicable Parisian women are!” exclaimed Thaddeus. “When they

are loved to madness they want to be loved reasonably: and when they are

loved reasonably they reproach a man for not loving them at all.”

“And they are quite right. Thaddeus,” she went on, smiling, “I know

Adam well; I am not angry with him; he is volatile and above all grand

seigneur. He will always be content to have me as his wife and he will

never oppose any of my tastes, but--”

“Where is the marriage in which there are no ‘buts’?” said Thaddeus,

gently, trying to give another direction to Clementine’s mind.

The least presuming of men might well have had the thought which came

near rendering this poor lover beside himself; it was this: “If I do not

tell her now that I love her I am a fool,” he kept saying to himself.

Neither spoke; and there came between the pair one of those deep

silences that are crowded with thoughts. The countess examined Paz

covertly, and Paz observed her in a mirror. Buried in an armchair like

a man digesting his dinner, the image of a husband or an indifferent

old man, Paz crossed his hands upon his stomach and twirled his thumbs

mechanically, looking stupidly at them.

“Why don’t you tell me something good of Adam?” cried Clementine

suddenly. “Tell me that he is not volatile, you who know him so well.”

The cry was fine.

“Now is the time,” thought poor Paz, “to put an insurmountable barrier

between us. Tell you good of Adam?” he said aloud. “I love him; you

would not believe me; and I am incapable of telling you harm. My

position is very difficult between you.”

Clementine lowered her head and looked down at the tips of his varnished

boots.

“You Northern men have nothing but physical courage,” she said

complainingly; “you have no constancy in your opinions.”

“How will you amuse yourself alone, madame?” said Paz, assuming a

careless air.

“Are not you going to keep me company?”

“Excuse me for leaving you.”

“What do you mean? Where are you going?”

The thought of a heroic falsehood had come into his head.

“I--I am going to the Circus in the Champs Elysees; it opens to-night,

and I can’t miss it.”

“Why not?” said Clementine, questioning him by a look that was

half-anger.

“Must I tell you why?” he said, coloring; “must I confide to you what I

hide from Adam, who thinks my only love is Poland.”

“Ah! a secret in our noble captain?”

“A disgraceful one--which you will perhaps understand, and pity.”

“You, disgraced?”

“Yes, I, Comte Paz; I am madly in love with a girl who travels all over

France with the Bouthor family,--people who have the rival circus to

Franconi; but they play only at fairs. I have made the director at the

Cirque-Olympique engage her.”

“Is she handsome?”

“To my thinking,” said Paz, in a melancholy tone. “Malaga (that’s her

stage name) is strong, active, and supple. Why do I prefer her to all

other women in the world?--well, I can’t tell you. When I look at her,

with her black hair tied with a blue satin ribbon, floating on her bare

and olive-colored shoulders, and when she is dressed in a white tunic

with a gold edge, and a knitted silk bodice that makes her look like a

living Greek statue, and when I see her carrying those flags in her hand

to the sound of martial music, and jumping through the paper hoops which

tear as she goes through, and lighting so gracefully on the galloping

horse to such applause,--no hired clapping,--well, all that moves me.”

“More than a handsome woman in a ballroom?” asked Clementine, with

amazement and curiosity.

“Yes,” answered Paz, in a choking voice. “Such agility, such grace under

constant danger seems to me the height of triumph for a woman. Yes,

madame, Cinti and Malibran, Grisi and Taglioni, Pasta and Ellsler, all

who reign or have reigned on the stage, can’t be compared, to my mind,

with Malaga, who can jump on or off a horse at full gallop, or stand

on the point of one foot and fall easily into the saddle, and knit

stockings, break eggs, and make an omelette with the horse at full

speed, to the admiration of the people,--the real people, peasants and

soldiers. Malaga, madame, is dexterity personified; her little wrist or

her little foot can rid her of three or four men. She is the goddess of

gymnastics.”

“She must be stupid--”

“Oh, no,” said Paz, “I find her as amusing as the heroine of ‘Peveril

of the Peak.’ Thoughtless as a Bohemian, she says everything that comes

into her head; she thinks no more about the future than you do of

the sous you fling to the poor. She says grand things sometimes. You

couldn’t make her believe that an old diplomatist was a handsome young

man, not if you offered her a million of francs. Such love as hers is

perpetual flattery to a man. Her health is positively insolent, and she

has thirty-two oriental pearls in lips of coral. Her muzzle--that’s what

she calls the lower part of her face--has, as Shakespeare expresses

it, the savor of a heifer’s nose. She can make a man unhappy. She likes

handsome men, strong men, Alexanders, gymnasts, clowns. Her trainer, a

horrible brute, used to beat her to make her supple, and graceful, and

intrepid--”

“You are positively intoxicated with Malaga.”

“Oh, she is called Malaga only on the posters,” said Paz, with a piqued

air. “She lives in the rue Saint-Lazare, in a pretty apartment on the

third story, all velvet and silk, like a princess. She has two lives,

her circus life and the life of a pretty woman.”

“Does she love you?”

“She loves me--now you will laugh--solely because I’m a Pole. She saw

an engraving of Poles rushing with Poniatowski into the Elster,--for all

France persists in thinking that the Elster, where it is impossible

to get drowned, is an impetuous flood, in which Poniatowski and his

followers were engulfed. But in the midst of all this I am very unhappy,

madame.”

A tear of rage fell from his eyes and affected the countess.

“You men have such a passion for singularity.”

“And you?” said Thaddeus.

“I know Adam so well that I am certain he could forget me for some

mountebank like your Malaga. Where did you first see her?”

“At Saint-Cloud, last September, on the fete-day. She was at a corner of

a booth covered with flags, where the shows are given. Her comrades,

all in Polish costumes, were making a horrible racket. I watched her

standing there, silent and dumb, and I thought I saw a melancholy

expression in her face; in truth there was enough about her to sadden a

girl of twenty. That touched me.”

The countess was sitting in a delicious attitude, pensive and rather

melancholy.

“Poor, poor Thaddeus!” she exclaimed. Then, with the kindliness of a

true great lady she added, not without a malicious smile, “Well go, go

to your Circus.”

Thaddeus took her hand, kissed it, leaving a hot tear upon it, and went

out.

Having invented this passion for a circus-rider, he bethought him

that he must give it some reality. The only truth in his tale was the

momentary attention he had given to Malaga at Saint-Cloud; and he had

since seen her name on the posters of the Circus, where the clown, for

a tip of five francs, had told him that the girl was a foundling, stolen

perhaps. Thaddeus now went to the Circus and saw her again. For ten

francs one of the grooms (who take the place in circuses of the dressers

at a theatre) informed him that Malaga was named Marguerite Turquet, and

lived on the fifth story of a house in the rue des Fosses-du-Temple.

The following day Paz went to the faubourg du Temple, found the house,

and asked to see Mademoiselle Turquet, who during the summer was

substituting for the leading horsewoman at the Cirque-Olympique, and a

supernumerary at a boulevard theatre in winter.

“Malaga!” cried the portress, rushing into the attic, “there’s a fine

gentleman wanting you. He is getting information from Chapuzot, who is

playing him off to give me time to tell you.”

“Thank you, M’ame Chapuzot; but what will he think of me if he finds me

ironing my gown?”

“Pooh! when a man’s in love he loves everything about us.”

“Is he an Englishman? they are fond of horses.”

“No, he looks to me Spanish.”

“That’s a pity; they say Spaniards are always poor. Stay here with me,

M’ame Chapuzot; I don’t want him to think I’m deserted.”

“Who is it you are looking for, monsieur?” asked Madame Chapuzot,

opening the door for Thaddeus, who had now come upstairs.

“Mademoiselle Turquet.”

“My dear,” said the portress, with an air of importance, “here is some

one to see you.”

A line on which the clothes were drying caught the captain’s hat and

knocked it off.

“What is it you wish, monsieur?” said Malaga, picking up the hat and

giving it to him.

“I saw you at the Circus,” said Thaddeus, “and you reminded me of a

daughter whom I have lost, mademoiselle; and out of affection for my

Heloise, whom you resemble in a most striking manner, I should like to

be of some service to you, if you will permit me.”

“Why, certainly; pray sit down, general,” said Madame Chapuzot; “nothing

could be more straightforward, more gallant.”

“But I am not gallant, my good lady,” exclaimed Paz. “I am an

unfortunate father who tries to deceive himself by a resemblance.”

“Then am I to pass for your daughter?” said Malaga, slyly, and not in

the least suspecting the perfect sincerity of his proposal.

“Yes,” said Paz, “and I’ll come and see you sometimes. But you shall be

lodged in better rooms, comfortably furnished.”

“I shall have furniture!” cried Malaga, looking at Madame Chapuzot.

“And servants,” said Paz, “and all you want.”

Malaga looked at the stranger suspiciously.

“What countryman is monsieur?”

“I am a Pole.”

“Oh! then I accept,” she said.

Paz departed, promising to return.

“Well, that’s a stiff one!” said Marguerite Turquet, looking at Madame

Chapuzot; “I’m half afraid he is wheedling me, to carry out some fancy

of his own--Pooh! I’ll risk it.”

A month after this eccentric interview the circus-rider was living in

a comfortable apartment furnished by Comte Adam’s own upholsterer, Paz

having judged it desirable to have his folly talked about at the hotel

Laginski. Malaga, to whom this adventure was like a leaf out of the

Arabian Nights, was served by Monsieur and Madame Chapuzot in the double

capacity of friends and servants. The Chapuzots and Marguerite were

constantly expecting some result of all this; but at the end of three

months none of them were able to make out the meaning of the Polish

count’s caprice. Paz arrived duly and passed about an hour there once

a week, during which time he sat in the salon, and never went

into Malaga’s boudoir nor into her bedroom, in spite of the clever

manoeuvring of the Chapuzots and Malaga to get him there. The count

would ask questions as to the small events of Marguerite’s life, and

each time that he came he left two gold pieces of forty francs each on

the mantel-piece.

“He looks as if he didn’t care to be here,” said Madame Chapuzot.

“Yes,” said Malaga, “the man’s as cold as an icicle.”

“But he’s a good fellow all the same,” cried Chapuzot, who was happy in

a new suit of clothes made of blue cloth, in which he looked like the

servant of some minister.

The sum which Paz deposited weekly on the mantel-piece, joined to

Malaga’s meagre salary, gave her the means of sumptuous living compared

with her former poverty. Wonderful stories went the rounds of the Circus

about Malaga’s good-luck. Her vanity increased the six thousand francs

which Paz had spent on her furniture to sixty thousand. According to

the clowns and the supers, Malaga was squandering money; and she now

appeared at the Circus wearing burnous and shawls and elegant scarfs.

The Pole, it was agreed on all sides, was the best sort of man a

circus-rider had ever encountered, not fault-finding nor jealous, and

willing to let Malaga do just what she liked.

“Some women have the luck of it,” said Malaga’s rival, “and I’m not one

of them,--though I do draw a third of the receipts.”

Malaga wore pretty things, and occasionally “showed her head” (a term in

the lexicon of such characters) in the Bois, where the fashionable young

men of the day began to remark her. In fact, before long Malaga was

very much talked about in the questionable world of equivocal women, who

presently attacked her good fortune by calumnies. They said she was

a somnambulist, and the Pole was a magnetizer who was using her to

discover the philosopher’s stone. Some even more envenomed scandals

drove her to a curiosity that was greater than Psyche’s. She reported

them in tears to Paz.

“When I want to injure a woman,” she said in conclusion, “I don’t

calumniate her; I don’t declare that some one magnetizes her to get

stones out of her, but I say plainly that she is humpbacked, and I prove

it. Why do you compromise me in this way?”

Paz maintained a cruel silence. Madame Chapuzot was not long in

discovering the name and title of Comte Paz; then she heard certain

positive facts at the hotel Laginski: for instance, that Paz was a

bachelor, and had never been known to have a daughter, alive or dead,

in Poland or in France. After that Malaga could not control a feeling of

terror.

“My dear child,” Madame Chapuzot would say, “that monster--” (a man who

contented himself with only looking, in a sly way,--not daring to come

out and say things,--and such a beautiful creature too, as Malaga,--of

course such a man was a monster, according to Madame Chapuzot’s ideas)

“--that monster is trying to get a hold upon you, and make you do

something illegal and criminal. Holy Father, if you should get into

the police-courts! it makes me tremble from head to foot; suppose they

should put you in the newspapers! I’ll tell you what I should do in your

place; I’d warn the police.”

One particular day, after many foolish notions had fermented for

some time in Malaga’s mind, Paz having laid his money as usual on the

mantel-piece, she seized the bits of gold and flung them in his face,

crying out, “I don’t want stolen money!”

The captain gave the gold to Chapuzot, went away without a word, and did

not return.

Clementine was at this time at her uncle’s place in Burgundy.

When the Circus troop discovered that Malaga had lost her Polish count,

much excitement was produced among them. Malaga’s display of honor was

considered folly by some, and shrewdness by others. The conduct of the

Pole, however, even when discussed by the cleverest of women, seemed

inexplicable. Thaddeus received in the course of the next week

thirty-seven letters from women of their kind. Happily for him, his

astonishing reserve did not excite the curiosity of the fashionable

world, and was only discussed in the demi-mondaine regions.

Two weeks later the handsome circus-rider, crippled by debt, wrote the

following letter to Comte Paz, which, having fallen into the hands

of Comte Adam, was read by several of the dandies of the day, who

pronounced it a masterpiece:--

“You, whom I still dare to call my friend, will you not pity me

after all that has passed,--which you have so ill understood? My

heart disavows whatever may have wounded your feelings. If I was

fortunate enough to charm you and keep you beside me in the past,

return to me; otherwise, I shall fall into despair. Poverty has

overtaken me, and you do not know what _horrid things_ it brings

with it. Yesterday I lived on a herring at two sous, and one sou

of bread. Is that a breakfast for the woman you loved? The

Chapuzots have left me, though they seemed so devoted. Your

desertion has caused me to see to the bottom of all human

attachments. The dog we feed does not leave us, but the Chapuzots

have gone. A sheriff has seized everything on behalf of the

landlord, who has no heart, and the jeweller, who refused to wait

even ten days,--for when we lose the confidence of such as you,

credit goes too. What a position for women who have nothing to

reproach themselves with but the happiness they have given! My

friend, I have taken all I have of any value to _my uncle’s_; I have

nothing but the memory of you left, and here is the winter coming

on. I shall be fireless when it turns cold; for the boulevards are

to play only melodramas, in which I have nothing but little bits

of parts which don’t _pose_ a woman. How could you misunderstand the

nobleness of my feelings for you?--for there are two ways of

expressing gratitude. You who seemed so happy in seeing me

well-off, how can you leave me in poverty? Oh, my sole friend on

earth, before I go back to the country fairs with Bouthor’s circus,

where I can at least make a living, forgive me if I wish to know

whether I have lost you forever. If I were to let myself think of

you when I jump through the hoops, I should be sure to break my legs

by losing _a time_. Whatever may be the result, I am yours for life.

“Marguerite Turquet.”

“That letter,” thought Thaddeus, shouting with laughter, “is worth the

ten thousand francs I have spent upon her.”

III

Clementine came home the next day, and the day after that Paz beheld her

again, more beautiful and graceful than ever. After dinner, during which

the countess treated Paz with an air of perfect indifference, a little

scene took place in the salon between the count and his wife when

Thaddeus had left them. On pretence of asking Adam’s advice, Thaddeus

had left Malaga’s letter with him, as if by mistake.

“Poor Thaddeus!” said Adam, as Paz disappeared, “what a misfortune for

a man of his distinction to be the plaything of the lowest kind of

circus-rider. He will lose everything, and get lower and lower, and

won’t be recognizable before long. Here, read that,” added the count,

giving Malaga’s letter to his wife.

Clementine read the letter, which smelt of tobacco, and threw it from

her with a look of disgust.

“Thick as the bandage is over his eyes,” continued Adam, “he must have

found out something; Malaga tricked him, no doubt.”

“But he goes back to her,” said Clementine, “and he will forgive her! It

is for such horrible women as that that you men have indulgence.”

“Well, they need it,” said Adam.

“Thaddeus used to show some decency--in living apart from us,” she

remarked. “He had better go altogether.”

“Oh, my dear angel, that’s going too far,” said the count, who did not

want the death of the sinner.

Paz, who knew Adam thoroughly, had enjoined him to secrecy, pretending

to excuse his dissipations, and had asked his friend to lend him a few

thousand francs for Malaga.

“He is a very firm fellow,” said Adam.

“How so?” asked Clementine.

“Why, for having spent no more than ten thousand francs on her, and

letting her send him that letter before he would ask me for enough to

pay her debts. For a Pole, I call that firm.”

“He will ruin you,” said Clementine, in the sharp tone of a Parisian

woman, when she shows her feline distrusts.

“Oh, I know him,” said Adam; “he will sacrifice Malaga, if I ask him.”

“We shall see,” remarked the countess.

“If it is best for his own happiness, I sha’n’t hesitate to ask him to

leave her. Constantin says that since Paz has been with her he, sober

as he is, has sometimes come home quite excited. If he takes to

intoxication I shall be just as grieved as if he were my own son.”

“Don’t tell me anything more about it,” cried the countess, with a

gesture of disgust.

Two days later the captain perceived in the manner, the tones of voice,

but, above all, in the eyes of the countess, the terrible results of

Adam’s confidences. Contempt had opened a gulf between the beloved woman

and himself. He was suddenly plunged into the deepest distress of mind,

for the thought gnawed him, “I have myself made her despise me!” His own

folly stared him in the face. Life then became a burden to him, the very

sun turned gray. And yet, amid all these bitter thoughts, he found again

some moments of pure joy. There were times when he could give himself

up wholly to his admiration for his mistress, who paid not the

slightest attention to him. Hanging about in corners at her parties

and receptions, silent, all heart and eyes, he never lost one of her

attitudes, nor a tone of her voice when she sang. He lived in her life;

he groomed the horse which _she_ rode, he studied the ways and means of

that splendid establishment, to the interests of which he was now more

devoted than ever. These silent pleasures were buried in his heart like

those of a mother, whose heart a child never knows; for is it knowing

anything unless we know it all? His love was more perfect than the love

of Petrarch for Laura, which found its ultimate reward in the treasures

of fame, the triumph of the poem which she had inspired. Surely the

emotion that the Chevalier d’Assas felt in dying must have been to him

a lifetime of joy. Such emotions as these Paz enjoyed daily,--without

dying, but also without the guerdon of immortality.

But what is Love, that, in spite of all these ineffable delights, Paz

should still have been unhappy? The Catholic religion has so magnified

Love that she has wedded it indissolubly to respect and nobility of

spirit. Love is therefore attended by those sentiments and qualities

of which mankind is proud; it is rare to find true Love existing where

contempt is felt. Thaddeus was suffering from the wounds his own hand

had given him. The trial of his former life, when he lived beside his

mistress, unknown, unappreciated, but generously working for her, was

better than this. Yes, he wanted the reward of his virtue, her respect,

and he had lost it. He grew thin and yellow, and so ill with constant

low fever that during the month of January he was obliged to keep his

bed, though he refused to see a doctor. Comte Adam became very uneasy

about him; but the countess had the cruelty to remark: “Let him alone;

don’t you see it is only some Olympian trouble?” This remark, being

repeated to Thaddeus, gave him the courage of despair; he left his bed,

went out, tried a few amusements, and recovered his health.

About the end of February Adam lost a large sum of money at the

Jockey-Club, and as he was afraid of his wife, he begged Thaddeus to let

the sum appear in the accounts as if he had spent it on Malaga.

“There’s nothing surprising in your spending that sum on the girl;

but if the countess finds out that I have lost it at cards I shall be

lowered in her opinion, and she will always be suspicious in future.”

“Ha! this, too!” exclaimed Thaddeus, with a sigh.

“Now, Thaddeus, if you will do me this service we shall be forever

quits,--though, indeed, I am your debtor now.”

“Adam, you will have children; don’t gamble any more,” said Paz.

“So Malaga has cost us another twenty thousand francs,” cried the

countess, some time later, when she discovered this new generosity to

Paz. “First, ten thousand, now twenty more,--thirty thousand! the income

of which is fifteen hundred! the cost of my box at the Opera, and the

whole fortune of many a bourgeois. Oh, you Poles!” she said, gathering

some flowers in her greenhouse; “you are really incomprehensible. Why

are you not furious with him?”

“Poor Paz is--”

“Poor Paz, poor Paz, indeed!” she cried, interrupting him, “what good

does he do us? I shall take the management of the household myself. You

can give him the allowance he refused, and let him settle it as he likes

with his Circus.”

“He is very useful to us, Clementine. He has certainly saved over forty

thousand francs this last year. And besides, my dear angel, he has

managed to put a hundred thousand with Nucingen, which a steward would

have pocketed.”

Clementine softened down; but she was none the less hard in her feelings

to Thaddeus. A few days later, she requested him to come to that boudoir

where, one year earlier, she had been surprised into comparing him with

her husband. This time she received him alone, without perceiving the

slightest danger in so doing.

“My dear Paz,” she said, with the condescending familiarity of the great

to their inferiors, “if you love Adam as you say you do, you will do

a thing which he will not ask of you, but which I, his wife, do not

hesitate to exact.”

“About Malaga?” said Thaddeus, with bitterness in his heart.

“Well, yes,” she said; “if you wish to end your days in this house

and continue good friends with us, you must give her up. How an old

soldier--”

“I am only thirty-five, and haven’t a white hair.”

“You look old,” she said, “and that’s the same thing. How so careful a

manager, so distinguished a--”

The horrible part of all this was her evident intention to rouse a sense

of honor in his soul which she thought extinct.

“--so distinguished a man as you are, Thaddeus,” she resumed after a

momentary pause which a gesture of his hand had led her to make, “can

allow yourself to be caught like a boy! Your proceedings have made that

woman celebrated. My uncle wanted to see her, and he did see her. My

uncle is not the only one; Malaga receives a great many gentlemen. I did

think you such a noble soul. For shame! Will she be such a loss that you

can’t replace her?”

“Madame, if I knew any sacrifice I could make to recover your esteem I

would make it; but to give up Malaga is not one--”

“In your position, that is what I should say myself, if I were a man,”

replied Clementine. “Well, if I accept it as a great sacrifice there can

be no ill-will between us.”

Paz left the room, fearing he might commit some great folly, and feeling

that wild ideas were getting the better of him. He went to walk in the

open air, lightly dressed in spite of the cold, but without being able

to cool the fire in his cheeks or on his brow.

“I thought you had a noble soul,”--the words still rang in his ears.

“A year ago,” he said to himself, “she thought me a hero who could fight

the Russians single-handed!”

He thought of leaving the hotel Laginski, and taking service with the

spahis and getting killed in Africa, but the same great fear checked

him. “Without me,” he thought, “what would become of them? they would

soon be ruined. Poor countess! what a horrible life it would be for her

if she were reduced to even thirty thousand francs a year. No, since all

is lost for me in this world,--courage! I will keep on as I am.”

Every one knows that since 1830 the carnival in Paris has undergone a

transformation which has made it European, and far more burlesque

and otherwise lively than the late Carnival of Venice. Is it that the

diminishing fortunes of the present time have led Parisians to invent a

way of amusing themselves collectively, as for instance at their clubs,

where they hold salons without hostesses and without manners, but very

cheaply? However this may be, the month of March was prodigal of balls,

at which dancing, joking, coarse fun, excitement, grotesque figures, and

the sharp satire of Parisian wit, produced extravagant effects. These

carnival follies had their special Pandemonium in the rue Saint-Honore

and their Napoleon in Musard, a small man born expressly to lead an

orchestra as noisy as the disorderly audience, and to set the time for

the galop, that witches’ dance, which was one of Auber’s triumphs, for

it did not really take form or poesy till the grand galop in “Gustave”

was given to the world. That tremendous finale might serve as the symbol

of an epoch in which for the last fifty years all things have hurried by

with the rapidity of a dream.

Now, it happened that the grave Thaddeus, with one divine and immaculate

image in his heart, proposed to Malaga, the queen of the carnival

dances, to spend an evening at the Musard ball; because he knew the

countess, disguised to the teeth, intended to come there with two

friends, all three accompanied by their husbands, and look on at the

curious spectacle of one of these crowded balls.

On Shrove Tuesday, of the year 1838, at four o’clock in the morning, the

countess, wrapped in a black domino and sitting on the lower step of the

platform in the Babylonian hall, where Valentino has since then given

his concerts, beheld Thaddeus, as Robert Macaire, threading the galop

with Malaga in the dress of a savage, her head garnished with plumes

like the horse of a hearse, and bounding through the crowd like a

will-o-the-wisp.

“Ah!” said Clementine to her husband, “you Poles have no honor at all!

I did believe in Thaddeus. He gave me his word that he would leave that

woman; he did not know that I should be here, seeing all unseen.”

A few days later she requested Paz to dine with them. After dinner Adam

left them alone together, and Clementine reproved Paz and let him know

very plainly that she did not wish him to live in her house any longer.

“Yes, madame,” said Paz, humbly, “you are right; I am a wretch; I did

give you my word. But you see how it is; I put off leaving Malaga till

after the carnival. Besides, that woman exerts an influence over me

which--”

“An influence!--a woman who ought to be turned out of Musard’s by the

police for such dancing!”

“I agree to all that; I accept the condemnation and I’ll leave your

house. But you know Adam. If I give up the management of your property

you must show energy yourself. I may have been to blame about Malaga,

but I have taken the whole charge of your affairs, managed your

servants, and looked after the very least details. I cannot leave you

until I see you prepared to continue my management. You have now

been married three years, and you are safe from the temptations to

extravagance which come with the honeymoon. I see that Parisian

women, and even titled ones, do manage both their fortunes and their

households. Well, as soon as I am certain not so much of your capacity

as of your perseverance I shall leave Paris.”

“It is Thaddeus of Warsaw, and not that Circus Thaddeus who speaks now,”

said Clementine. “Go, and come back cured.”

“Cured! never,” said Paz, his eyes lowered and fixed on Clementine’s

pretty feet. “You do not know, countess, what charm, what unexpected

piquancy of mind she has.” Then, feeling his courage fail him, he added

hastily, “There is not a woman in society, with her mincing airs, that

is worth the honest nature of that young animal.”

“At any rate, I wish nothing of the animal about me,” said the countess,

with a glance like that of an angry viper.

After that evening Comte Paz showed Clementine the exact state of

her affairs; he made himself her tutor, taught her the methods and

difficulties of the management of property, the proper prices to pay for

things, and how to avoid being cheated by her servants. He told her

she could rely on Constantin and make him her major-domo. Thaddeus had

trained the man thoroughly. By the end of May he thought the countess

fully competent to carry on her affairs alone; for Clementine was one of

those far-sighted women, full of instinct, who have an innate genius as

mistress of a household.

This position of affairs, which Thaddeus had led up to naturally, did

not end without further cruel trials; his sufferings were fated not to

be as sweet and tender as he was trying to make them. The poor lover

forgot to reckon on the hazard of events. Adam fell seriously ill, and

Thaddeus, instead of leaving the house, stayed to nurse his friend. His

devotion was unwearied. A woman who had any interest in employing her

perspicacity might have seen in this devotion a sort of punishment

imposed by a noble soul to repress an involuntary evil thought; but

women see all, or see nothing, according to the condition of their

souls--love is their sole illuminator.

During forty-five days Paz watched and tended Adam without appearing

to think of Malaga, for the very good reason that he never did think of

her. Clementine, feeling that Adam was at the point of death though he

did not die, sent for all the leading doctors of Paris in consultation.

“If he comes safely out of this,” said the most distinguished of them

all, “it will only be by an effort of nature. It is for those who nurse

him to watch for the moment when they must second nature. The count’s

life is in the hands of his nurses.”

Thaddeus went to find Clementine and tell her this result of the

consultation. He found her sitting in the Chinese pavilion, as much for

a little rest as to leave the field to the doctors and not embarrass

them. As he walked along the winding gravelled path which led to the

pavilion, Thaddeus seemed to himself in the depths of an abyss described

by Dante. The unfortunate man had never dreamed that the possibility

might arise of becoming Clementine’s husband, and now he had drowned

himself in a ditch of mud. His face was convulsed, when he reached

the kiosk, with an agony of grief; his head, like Medusa’s, conveyed

despair.

“Is he dead?” said Clementine.

“They have given him up; that is, they leave him to nature. Do not go

in; they are still there, and Bianchon is changing the dressings.”

“Poor Adam! I ask myself if I have not sometimes pained him,” she said.

“You have made him very happy,” said Thaddeus; “you ought to be easy on

that score, for you have shown every indulgence for him.”

“My loss would be irreparable.”

“But, dear, you judged him justly.”

“I was never blind to his faults,” she said, “but I loved him as a wife

should love her husband.”

“Then you ought, in case you lose him,” said Thaddeus, in a voice which

Clementine had never heard him use, “to grieve for him less than if you

lost a man who was your pride, your love, and all your life,--as some

men are to you women. Surely you can be frank at this moment with a

friend like me. I shall grieve, too; long before your marriage I had

made him my child, I had sacrificed my life to him. If he dies I shall

be without an interest on earth; but life is still beautiful to a widow

of twenty-four.”

“Ah! but you know that I love no one,” she said, with the impatience of

grief.

“You don’t yet know what it is to love,” said Thaddeus.

“Oh, as husbands are, I have sense enough to prefer a child like my poor

Adam to a superior man. It is now over a month that we have been saying

to each other, ‘Will he live?’ and these alternations have prepared me,

as they have you, for this loss. I can be frank with you. Well, I would

give my life to save Adam. What is a woman’s independence in Paris?

the freedom to let herself be taken in by ruined or dissipated men who

pretend to love her. I pray to God to leave me this husband who is so

kind, so obliging, so little fault-finding, and who is beginning to

stand in awe of me.”

“You are honest, and I love you the better for it,” said Thaddeus,

taking her hand which she yielded to him, and kissing it. “In solemn

moments like these there is unspeakable satisfaction in finding a woman

without hypocrisy. It is possible to converse with you. Let us look to

the future. Suppose that God does not grant your prayer,--and no one

cries to him more than I do, ‘Leave me my friend!’ Yes, these fifty

nights have not weakened me; if thirty more days and nights are needed

I can give them while you sleep,--yes, I will tear him from death if, as

the doctors say, nursing can save him. But suppose that in spite of you

and me, the count dies,--well, then, if you were loved, oh, adored, by a

man of a heart and soul that are worthy of you--”

“I may have wished for such love, foolishly, but I have never met with

it.”

“Perhaps you are mistaken--”

Clementine looked fixedly at Thaddeus, imagining that there was less of

love than of cupidity in his thoughts; her eyes measured him from head

to foot and poured contempt upon him; then she crushed him with the

words, “Poor Malaga!” uttered in tones which a great lady alone can

find to give expression to her disdain. She rose, leaving Thaddeus half

unconscious behind her, slowly re-entered her boudoir, and went back to

Adam’s chamber.

An hour later Paz returned to the sick-room, and began anew, with death

in his heart, his care of the count. From that moment he said nothing.

He was forced to struggle with the patient, whom he managed in a way

that excited the admiration of the doctors. At all hours his watchful

eyes were like lamps always lighted. He showed no resentment to

Clementine, and listened to her thanks without accepting them; he seemed

both dumb and deaf. To himself he was saying, “She shall owe his life to

me,” and he wrote the thought as it were in letters of fire on the walls

of Adam’s room. On the fifteenth day Clementine was forced to give up

the nursing, lest she should utterly break down. Paz was unwearied. At

last, towards the end of August, Bianchon, the family physician, told

Clementine that Adam was out of danger.

“Ah, madame, you are under no obligation to me,” he said; “without his

friend, Comte Paz, we could not have saved him.”

The day after the meeting of Paz and Clementine in the kiosk, the

Marquis de Ronquerolles came to see his nephew. He was on the eve of

starting for Russia on a secret diplomatic mission. Paz took occasion

to say a few words to him. The first day that Adam was able to drive

out with his wife and Thaddeus, a gentleman entered the courtyard as the

carriage was about to leave it, and asked for Comte Paz. Thaddeus, who

was sitting on the front seat of the caleche, turned to take a letter

which bore the stamp of the ministry of Foreign affairs. Having read it,

he put it into his pocket in a manner which prevented Clementine or Adam

from speaking of it. Nevertheless, by the time they reached the porte

Maillot, Adam, full of curiosity, used the privilege of a sick man

whose caprices are to be gratified, and said to Thaddeus: “There’s no

indiscretion between brothers who love each other,--tell me what there

is in that despatch; I’m in a fever of curiosity.”

Clementine glanced at Thaddeus with a vexed air, and remarked to her

husband: “He has been so sulky with me for the last two months that I

shall never ask him anything again.”

“Oh, as for that,” replied Paz, “I can’t keep it out of the newspapers,

so I may as well tell you at once. The Emperor Nicholas has had the

grace to appoint me captain in a regiment which is to take part in the

expedition to Khiva.”

“You are not going?” cried Adam.

“Yes, I shall go, my dear fellow. Captain I came, and captain I return.

We shall dine together to-morrow for the last time. If I don’t start at

once for St. Petersburg I shall have to make the journey by land, and I

am not rich, and I must leave Malaga a little independence. I ought to

think of the only woman who has been able to understand me; she thinks

me grand, superior. I dare say she is faithless, but she would jump--”

“Through the hoop, for your sake and come down safely on the back of her

horse,” said Clementine sharply.

“Oh, you don’t know Malaga,” said the captain, bitterly, with a

sarcastic look in his eyes which made Clementine thoughtful and uneasy.

“Good-by to the young trees of this beautiful Bois, which you Parisians

love, and the exiles who find a home here love too,” he said,

presently. “My eyes will never again see the evergreens of the avenue de

Mademoiselle, nor the acacias nor the cedars of the rond-points. On

the borders of Asia, fighting for the Emperor, promoted to the command,

perhaps, by force of courage and by risking my life, it may happen that

I shall regret these Champs-Elysees where I have driven beside you, and

where you pass. Yes, I shall grieve for Malaga’s hardness--the Malaga of

whom I am now speaking.”

This was said in a manner that made Clementine tremble.

“Then you do love Malaga very much?” she asked.

“I have sacrificed for her the honor that no man should ever sacrifice.”

“What honor?”

“That which we desire to keep at any cost in the eyes of our idol.”

After that reply Thaddeus said no more; he was silent until, as they

passed a wooden building on the Champs Elysees, he said, pointing to it,

“That is the Circus.”

He went to the Russian Embassy before dinner, and thence to the Foreign

office, and the next morning he had started for Havre before the count

and countess were up.

“I have lost a friend,” said Adam, with tears in his eyes, when he heard

that Paz had gone,--“a friend in the true meaning of the word. I don’t

know what has made him abandon me as if a pestilence were in my house.

We are not friends to quarrel about a woman,” he said, looking intently

at Clementine. “You heard what he said yesterday about Malaga. Well, he

has never so much as touched the little finger of that girl.”

“How do you know that?” said Clementine.

“I had the natural curiosity to go and see Mademoiselle Turquet, and

the poor girl can’t explain even to herself the absolute reserve which

Thad--”

“Enough!” said the countess, retreating into her bedroom. “Can it be

that I am the victim of some noble mystification?” she asked herself.

The thought had hardly crossed her mind when Constantin brought her the

following letter written by Thaddeus during the night:--

“Countess,--To seek death in the Caucasus and carry with me your

contempt is more than I can bear. A man should die untainted. When

I saw you for the first time I loved you as we love a woman whom

we shall love forever, even though she be unfaithful to us. I

loved you thus,--I, the friend of the man you had chosen and were

about to marry; I, poor; I, the steward,--a voluntary service, but

still the steward of your household.

“In this immense misfortune I found a happy life. To be to you an

indispensable machine, to know myself useful to your comfort, your

luxury, has been the source of deep enjoyments. If these

enjoyments were great when I thought only of Adam, think what they

were to my soul when the woman I loved was the mainspring of all I

did. I have known the pleasures of maternity in my love. I

accepted life thus. Like the paupers who live along the great

highways, I built myself a hut on the borders of your beautiful

domain, though I never sought to approach you. Poor and lonely,

struck blind by Adam’s good fortune, I was, nevertheless, the

giver. Yes, you were surrounded by a love as pure as a

guardian-angel’s; it waked while you slept; it caressed you with a

look as you passed; it was happy in its own existence,--you were

the sun of my native land to me, poor exile, who now writes to you

with tears in his eyes as he thinks of the happiness of those first

days.

“When I was eighteen years old, having no one to love, I took for

my ideal mistress a charming woman in Warsaw, to whom I confided

all my thoughts, my wishes; I made her the queen of my nights and

days. She knew nothing of all this; why should she? I loved my

love.

“You can fancy from this incident of my youth how happy I was

merely to live in the sphere of your existence, to groom your

horse, to find the new-coined gold for your purse, to prepare the

splendor of your dinners and your balls, to see you eclipsing the

elegance of those whose fortunes were greater than yours, and all

by my own good management. Ah! with what ardor I have ransacked

Paris when Adam would say to me, ‘_She_ wants this or that.’ It was

a joy such as I can never express to you. You wished for a trifle

at one time which kept me seven hours in a cab scouring the city;

and what delight it was to weary myself for you. Ah! when I saw

you, unseen by you, smiling among your flowers, I could forget

that no one loved me. On certain days, when my happiness turned my

head, I went at night and kissed the spot where, to me, your feet

had left their luminous traces. The air you had breathed was

balmy; in it I breathed in more of life; I inhaled, as they say

persons do in the tropics, a vapor laden with creative principles.

“I _must_ tell you these things to explain the strange presumption

of my involuntary thoughts,--I would have died rather than avow it

until now.

“You will remember those few days of curiosity when you wished to

know the man who performed the household miracles you had

sometimes noticed. I thought,--forgive me, madame,--I believed you

might love me. Your good-will, your glances interpreted by me, a

lover, seemed to me so dangerous--for me--that I invented that

story of Malaga, knowing it was the sort of liaison which women

cannot forgive. I did it in a moment when I felt that my love

would be communicated, fatally, to you. Despise me, crush me with

the contempt you have so often cast upon me when I did not deserve

it; and yet I am certain that, if, on that evening when your aunt

took Adam away from you, I had said what I have now written to

you, I should, like the tamed tiger that sets his teeth once more

in living flesh, and scents the blood, and--

“Midnight.”

“I could not go on; the memory of that hour is still too living.

Yes, I was maddened. Was there hope for me in your eyes? then

victory with its scarlet banners would have flamed in mine and

fascinated yours. My crime has been to think all this; perhaps

wrongly. You alone can judge of that dreadful scene when I drove

back love, desire, all the most invincible forces of our manhood,

with the cold hand of gratitude,--gratitude which must be eternal.

“Your terrible contempt has been my punishment. You have shown me

there is no return from loathing or disdain. I love you madly. I

should have gone had Adam died; all the more must I go because he

lives. A man does not tear his friend from the arms of death to

betray him. Besides, my going is my punishment for the thought

that came to me that I would let him die, when the doctors said

that his life depended on his nursing.

“Adieu, madame; in leaving Paris I lose all, but you lose nothing

now in my being no longer near you.

“Your devoted

“Thaddeus Paz.”

“If my poor Adam says he has lost a friend, what have I lost?” thought

Clementine, sinking into a chair with her eyes fixed on the carpet.

The following letter Constantin had orders to give privately to the

count:--

“My dear Adam,--Malaga has told me all. In the name of all your

future happiness, never let a word escape you to Clementine about

your visits to that girl; let her think that Malaga has cost me a

hundred thousand francs. I know Clementine’s character; she will

never forgive you either your losses at cards or your visits to

Malaga.

“I am not going to Khiva, but to the Caucasus. I have the spleen;

and at the pace at which I mean to go I shall be either Prince

Paz in three years, or dead. Good-by; though I have taken

sixty-thousand francs from Nucingen, our accounts are even.

“Thaddeus.”

“Idiot that I was,” thought Adam; “I came near to cutting my throat just

now, talking about Malaga.”

It is now three years since Paz went away. The newspapers have as yet

said nothing about any Prince Paz. The Comtesse Laginska is immensely

interested in the expeditions of the Emperor Nicholas; she is Russian to

the core, and reads with a sort of avidity all the news that comes from

that distant land. Once or twice every winter she says to the Russian

ambassador, with an air of indifference, “Do you know what has become of

our poor Comte Paz?”

Alas! most Parisian women, those beings who think themselves so clever

and clear-sighted, pass and repass beside a Paz and never recognize

him. Yes, many a Paz is unknown and misconceived, but--horrible to think

of!--some are misconceived even though they are loved. The simplest

women in society exact a certain amount of conventional sham from

the greatest men. A noble love signifies nothing to them if rough and

unpolished; it needs the cutting and setting of a jeweller to give it

value in their eyes.

In January, 1842, the Comtesse Laginska, with her charm of gentle

melancholy, inspired a violent passion in the Comte de La Palferine, one

of the most daring and presumptuous lions of the day. La Palferine was

well aware that the conquest of a woman so guarded by reserve as the

Comtesse Laginska was difficult, but he thought he could inveigle this

charming creature into committing herself if he took her unawares, by

the assistance of a certain friend of her own, a woman already jealous

of her.

Quite incapable, in spite of her intelligence, of suspecting such

treachery, the Comtesse Laginska committed the imprudence of going with

her so-called friend to a masked ball at the Opera. About three in the

morning, led away by the excitement of the scene, Clementine, on whom La

Palferine had expended his seductions, consented to accept a supper,

and was about to enter the carriage of her faithless friend. At this

critical moment her arm was grasped by a powerful hand, and she was

taken, in spite of her struggles, to her own carriage, the door of which

stood open, though she did not know it was there.

“He has never left Paris!” she exclaimed to herself as she recognized

Thaddeus, who disappeared when the carriage drove away.

Did any woman ever have a like romance in her life? Clementine is

constantly hoping she may again see Paz.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Bianchon, Horace

Father Goriot

The Atheist’s Mass

Cesar Birotteau

The Commission in Lunacy

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

A Bachelor’s Establishment

The Secrets of a Princess

The Government Clerks

Pierrette

A Study of Woman

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Honorine

The Seamy Side of History

The Magic Skin

A Second Home

A Prince of Bohemia

Letters of Two Brides

The Muse of the Department

The Middle Classes

Cousin Betty

The Country Parson

In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the following:

Another Study of Woman

La Grande Breteche

Laginski, Comte Adam Mitgislas

Another Study of Woman

Cousin Betty

La Palferine, Comte de

A Prince of Bohemia

A Man of Business

Cousin Betty

Beatrix

Lelewel

The Seamy Side of History

Nathan, Madame Raoul

The Muse of the Department

Lost Illusions

A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

The Government Clerks

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Ursule Mirouet

Eugenie Grandet

A Prince of Bohemia

A Daughter of Eve

The Unconscious Humorists

Paz, Thaddee

Cousin Betty

Ronquerolles, Marquis de

The Peasantry

Ursule Mirouet

A Woman of Thirty

Another Study of Woman

The Thirteen

The Member for Arcis

Rouvre, Marquis du

A Start in Life

Ursule Mirouet

Rouvre, Chevalier du

Ursule Mirouet

Schinner, Hippolyte

The Purse

A Bachelor’s Establishment

Pierre Grassou

A Start in Life

Albert Savarus

The Government Clerks

Modeste Mignon

The Unconscious Humorists

Serizy, Comtesse de

A Start in Life

The Thirteen

Ursule Mirouet

A Woman of Thirty

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life

Another Study of Woman

Serizy, Vicomte de

A Start in Life

Modeste Mignon

Souchet, Francois

The Purse

A Daughter of Eve

Steinbock, Count Wenceslas

Cousin Betty

Turquet, Marguerite

The Muse of the Department

A Man of Business

Cousin Betty