The Parisians — Complete

“But, dear Madre, the jacket is certainly very handsome, and will make an effect in a little dinner at the Savarins or Mrs. Morley’s; but in a great formal reception like M. Louvier’s will it not look—”

“Splendid!” interrupted the Signora.

“But singolare.”

“So much the better; did not that great English Lady wear such a jacket, and did not every one admire her, piu tosto invidia the compassione?”

Isaura sighed. Now the jacket of the Signora was a subject of disquietude to her friend. It so happened that a young English lady of the highest rank and the rarest beauty had appeared at M. Louvier’s, and indeed generally in the beau monde of Paris, in a Greek jacket that became her very much. The jacket had fascinated, at M. Louvier’s, the eyes of the Signora. But of this Isaura was unaware. The Signora, on returning home from M. Louvier’s, had certainly lamented much over the mesquin appearance of her old-fashioned Italian habiliments compared with the brilliant toilette of the gay Parisiennes; and Isaura—quite woman enough to sympathize with woman in such womanly vanities—proposed the next day to go with the Signora to one of the principal couturieres of Paris, and adapt the Signora’s costume to the fashions of the place. But the Signora having predetermined on a Greek jacket, and knowing by instinct that Isaura would be disposed to thwart that splendid predilection, had artfully suggested that it would be better to go to the couturiere with Madame Savarin, as being a more experienced adviser,—and the coupe only held two.

As Madame Savarin was about the same age as the Signora, and dressed as became her years and in excellent taste, Isaura thought this an admirable suggestion; and pressing into her chaperon’s hand a billet de banque sufficient to re-equip her cap-a pie, dismissed the subject from her mind. But the Signora was much too cunning to submit her passion for the Greek jacket to the discouraging comments of Madame Savarin. Monopolizing the coupe, she became absolute mistress of the situation. She went to no fashionable couturiere’s. She went to a magasin that she had seen advertised in the Petites Afiches as supplying superb costumes for fancy-balls and amateur performers in private theatricals. She returned home triumphant, with a jacket still more dazzling to the eye than that of the English lady.

When Isaura first beheld it, she drew back in a sort of superstitious terror, as of a comet or other blazing portent.

“Cosa stupenda!” (stupendous thing!) She might well be dismayed when the Signora proposed to appear thus attired in M. Louvier’s salon. What might be admired as coquetry of dress in a young beauty of rank so great that even a vulgarity in her would be called distinguee, was certainly an audacious challenge of ridicule in the elderly ci-devant music-teacher.

But how could Isaura, how can any one of common humanity, say to a woman resolved upon wearing a certain dress, “You are not young and handsome enough for that?” Isaura could only murmur, “For many reasons I would rather stay at home, dear Madre.”

“Ah! I see you are ashamed of me,” said the Signora, in softened tones: “very natural. When the nightingale sings no more, she is only an ugly brown bird;” and therewith the Signora Venosta seated herself submissively, and began to cry.

On this Isaura sprang up, wound her arms round the Signora’s neck, soothed her with coaxing, kissed and petted her, and ended by saying, “Of course we will go;” and, “but let me choose you another dress,—a dark-green velvet trimmed with blonde: blonde becomes you so well.”

“No, no: I hate green velvet; anybody can wear that. Piccola, I am not clever like thee; I cannot amuse myself like thee with books. I am in a foreign land. I have a poor head, but I have a big heart” (another burst of tears); “and that big heart is set on my beautiful Greek jacket.”

“Dearest Madre,” said Isaura, half weeping too, “forgive me, you are right. The Greek jacket is splendid; I shall be so pleased to see you wear it: poor Madre! so pleased to think that in the foreign land you are not without something that pleases you!”

CHAPTER V

CONFORMABLY with his engagement to meet M. Louvier, Alain found himself on the day and at the hour named in M. Gandrin’s salon. On this occasion Madame Gandrin did not appear. Her husband was accustomed to give diners d’hommes. The great man had not yet arrived. “I think, Marquis,” said M. Gandrin, “that you will not regret having followed my advice: my representations have disposed Louvier to regard you with much favour, and he is certainly flattered by being permitted to make your personal acquaintance.”

The avoue had scarcely finished this little speech, when M. Louvier was announced. He entered with a beaming smile, which did not detract from his imposing presence. His flatterers had told him that he had a look of Louis Philippe; therefore he had sought to imitate the dress and the bonhomie of that monarch of the middle class. He wore a wig, elaborately piled up, and shaped his whiskers in royal harmony with the royal wig. Above all, he studied that social frankness of manner with which the able sovereign dispelled awe of his presence or dread of his astuteness. Decidedly he was a man very pleasant to converse and to deal with—so long as there seemed to him something to gain and nothing to lose by being pleasant. He returned Alain’s bow by a cordial offer of both expansive hands, into the grasp of which the hands of the aristocrat utterly disappeared. “Charmed to make your acquaintance, Marquis; still more charmed if you will let me be useful during your sejour at Paris. Ma foi, excuse my bluntness, but you are a fort beau garcon. Monsieur your father was a handsome man, but you beat him hollow. Gandrin, my friend, would not you and I give half our fortunes for one year of this fine fellow’s youth spent at Paris? Peste! what love-letters we should have, with no need to buy them by billets de banque!” Thus he ran on, much to Alain’s confusion, till dinner was announced. Then there was something grandiose in the frank bourgeois style wherewith he expanded his napkin and twisted one end into his waistcoat; it was so manly a renunciation of the fashions which a man so repandu in all circles might be supposed to follow,—as if he were both too great and too much in earnest for such frivolities. He was evidently a sincere bon vivant, and M. Gandrin had no less evidently taken all requisite pains to gratify his taste. The Montrachet served with the oysters was of precious vintage; that vin de madere which accompanied the potage a la bisque would have contented an American. And how radiant became Louvier’s face when amongst the entrees he came upon laitances de carpes! “The best thing in the world,” he cried, “and one gets it so seldom since the old Rocher de Cancale has lost its renown. At private houses, what does one get now? blanc de poulet, flavourless trash. After all, Gandrin, when we lose the love-letters, it is some consolation that laitances de carpes and sautes de foie gras are still left to fill up the void in our hearts. Marquis, heed my counsel; cultivate betimes the taste for the table,—that and whist are the sole resources of declining years. You never met my old friend Talleyrand—ah, no! he was long before your time. He cultivated both, but he made two mistakes. No man’s intellect is perfect on all sides. He confined himself to one meal a day, and he never learned to play well at whist. Avoid his errors, my young friend,—avoid them. Gandrin, I guess this pineapple is English,—it is superb.”

“You are right,—a present from the Marquis of H———-.”

“Ah! instead of a fee, I wager. The Marquis gives nothing for nothing, dear man! Droll people the English. You have never visited England, I presume, cher Rochebriant?” The affable financier had already made vast progress in familiarity with his silent fellow-guest.

When the dinner was over and the three men had reentered the salon for coffee and liqueurs, Gandrin left Louvier and Alain alone, saying he was going to his cabinet for cigars which he could recommend. Then Louvier, lightly patting the Marquis on the shoulder, said with what the French call effusion, “My dear Rochebriant, your father and I did not quite understand each other. He took a tone of grand seigneur that sometimes wounded me; and I in turn was perhaps too rude in asserting my rights—as creditor, shall I say?—no, as fellow-citizen; and Frenchmen are so vain, so over-susceptible; fire up at a word; take offence when none is meant. We two, my dear boy, should be superior to such national foibles. Bref—I have a mortgage on your lands. Why should that thought mar our friendship? At my age, though I am not yet old, one is flattered if the young like us, pleased if we can oblige them, and remove from their career any little obstacle in its way. Gandrin tells me you wish to consolidate all the charges on your estate into one on a lower rate of interest. Is it so?”

“I am so advised,” said the Marquis.

“And very rightly advised; come and talk with me about it some day next week. I hope to have a large sum of money set free in a few days. Of course, mortgages on land don’t pay like speculations at the Bourse; but I am rich enough to please myself. We will see, we will see.”

Here Gandrin returned with the cigars; but Alain at that time never smoked, and Louvier excused himself, with a laugh and a sly wink, on the plea that he was going to pay his respects—as doubtless that joli garcon was going to do likewise—to a belle dame who did not reckon the smell of tobacco among the perfumes of Houbigant or Arabia.

“Meanwhile,” added Louvier, turning to Gandrin, “I have something to say to you on business about the contract for that new street of mine. No hurry,—after our young friend has gone to his ‘assignation.’”

Alain could not misinterpret the hint; and in a few moments took leave of his host, more surprised than disappointed that the financier had not invited him, as Graham had assumed he would, to his soiree the following evening.

When Alain was gone, Louvier’s jovial manner disappeared also, and became bluffly rude rather than bluntly cordial. “Gandrin, what did you mean by saying that that young man was no muscadin! Muscadin, aristocrate, offensive from top to toe.”

“You amaze me; you seemed to take to him so cordially.”

“And pray, were you too blind to remark with what cold reserve he responded to my condescensions; how he winced when I called him Rochebriant; how he coloured when I called him ‘dear boy’? These aristocrats think we ought to thank them on our knees when they take our money, and” here Louvier’s face darkened—“seduce our women.” “Monsieur Louvier, in all France I do not know a greater aristocrat than yourself.”

I don’t know whether M. Gandrin meant that speech as a compliment, but M. Louvier took it as such,—laughed complacently and rubbed his hands. “Ay, ay, millionnaires are the real aristocrats, for they have power, as my beau Marquis will soon find. I must bid you good night. Of course I shall see Madame Gandrin and yourself to-morrow. Prepare for a motley gathering,—lots of democrats and foreigners, with artists and authors, and such creatures.”

“Is that the reason why you did not invite the Marquis?”

“To be sure; I would not shock so pure a Legitimist by contact with the sons of the people, and make him still colder to myself. No; when he comes to my house he shall meet lions and viveurs of the haut ton, who will play into my hands by teaching him how to ruin himself in the quickest manner and in the genre Regence. Bon soir, mon vieux.”

CHAPTER VI

The next night Graham in vain looked round for Alain in M. Louvier’s salons, and missed his high-bred mien and melancholy countenance. M. Louvier had been for some four years a childless widower, but his receptions were not the less numerously attended, nor his establishment less magnificently monde for the absence of a presiding lady: very much the contrary; it was noticeable how much he had increased his status and prestige as a social personage since the death of his unlamented spouse.

To say truth, she had been rather a heavy drag on his triumphal car. She had been the heiress of a man who had amassed a great deal of money,—not in the higher walks of commerce, but in a retail trade.

Louvier himself was the son of a rich money-lender; he had entered life with an ample fortune and an intense desire to be admitted into those more brilliant circles in which fortune can be dissipated with eclat. He might not have attained this object but for the friendly countenance of a young noble who was then—

“The glass of fashion and the mould of form;”

but this young noble, of whom later we shall hear more, came suddenly to grief, and when the money-lender’s son lost that potent protector, the dandies, previously so civil, showed him a very cold shoulder.

Louvier then became an ardent democrat, and recruited the fortune he had impaired by the aforesaid marriage, launched into colossal speculations, and became enormously rich. His aspirations for social rank now revived, but his wife sadly interfered with them. She was thrifty by nature; sympathized little with her husband’s genius for accumulation; always said he would end in a hospital; hated Republicans; despised authors and artists, and by the ladies of the beau monde was pronounced common and vulgar.

So long as she lived, it was impossible for Louvier to realize his ambition of having one of the salons which at Paris establish celebrity and position. He could not then command those advantages of wealth which he especially coveted. He was eminently successful in doing this now. As soon as she was safe in Pere la Chaise, he enlarged his hotel by the purchase and annexation of an adjoining house; redecorated and refurnished it, and in this task displayed, it must be said to his credit, or to that of the administrators he selected for the purpose, a nobleness of taste rarely exhibited nowadays. His collection of pictures was not large, and consisted exclusively of the French school, ancient and modern, for in all things Louvier affected the patriot. But each of those pictures was a gem; such Watteaus, such Greuzes, such landscapes by Patel, and, above all, such masterpieces by Ingres, Horace Vernet, and Delaroche were worth all the doubtful originals of Flemish and Italian art which make the ordinary boast of private collectors.

These pictures occupied two rooms of moderate size, built for their reception, and lighted from above. The great salon to which they led contained treasures scarcely less precious; the walls were covered with the richest silks which the looms of Lyons could produce. Every piece of furniture here was a work of art in its way: console-tables of Florentine mosaic, inlaid with pearl and lapis-lazuli; cabinets in which the exquisite designs of the Renaissance were carved in ebony; colossal vases of Russian malachite, but wrought by French artists. The very knick-knacks scattered carelessly about the room might have been admired in the cabinets of the Palazzo Pitti. Beyond this room lay the salle de danse, its ceiling painted by ———, supported by white marble columns, the glazed balcony and the angles of the room filled with tiers of exotics. In the dining-room, on the same floor, on the other side of the landing-place, were stored in glazed buffets not only vessels and salvers of plate, silver and gold, but, more costly still, matchless specimens of Sevres and Limoges, and mediaeval varieties of Venetian glass. On the ground-floor, which opened on the lawn of a large garden, Louvier had his suite of private apartments, furnished, as he said, “simply, according to English notions of comfort;”—Englishmen would have said, “according to French notions of luxury.” Enough of these details, which a writer cannot give without feeling himself somewhat vulgarized in doing so, but without a loose general idea of which a reader would not have an accurate conception of something not vulgar,—of something grave, historical, possibly tragical,—the existence of a Parisian millionaire at the date of this narrative.

The evidence of wealth was everywhere manifest at M. Louvier’s, but it was everywhere refined by an equal evidence of taste. The apartments devoted to hospitality ministered to the delighted study of artists, to whom free access was given, and of whom two or three might be seen daily in the “show-rooms,” copying pictures or taking sketches of rare articles of furniture or effects for palatian interiors.

Among the things which rich English visitors of Paris most coveted to see was M. Louvier’s hotel, and few among the richest left it without a sigh of envy and despair. Only in such London houses as belong to a Sutherland or a Holford could our metropolis exhibit a splendour as opulent and a taste as refined.

M. Louvier had his set evenings for popular assemblies. At these were entertained the Liberals of every shade, from tricolor to rouge, with the artists and writers most in vogue, pele-mele with decorated diplomatists, ex-ministers, Orleanists, and Republicans, distinguished foreigners, plutocrats of the Bourse, and lions male and female from the arid nurse of that race, the Chaussee d’Antin. Of his more select reunions something will be said later.

“And how does this poor Paris metamorphosed please Monsieur Vane?” asked a Frenchman with a handsome, intelligent countenance, very carefully dressed though in a somewhat bygone fashion, and carrying off his tenth lustrum with an air too sprightly to evince any sense of the weight. This gentleman, the Vicomte de Breze, was of good birth, and had a legitimate right to his title of Vicomte,—which is more than can be said of many vicomtes one meets at Paris. He had no other property, however, than a principal share in an influential journal, to which he was a lively and sparkling contributor. In his youth, under the reign of Louis Philippe, he had been a chief among literary exquisites; and Balzac was said to have taken him more than once as his model for those brilliant young vauriens who figure in the great novelist’s comedy of Human Life. The Vicomte’s fashion expired with the Orleanist dynasty.

“Is it possible, my dear Vicomte,” answered Graham, “not to be pleased with a capital so marvellously embellished?”

“Embellished it may be to foreign eyes,” said the Vicomte, sighing, “but not improved to the taste of a Parisian like me. I miss the dear Paris of old,—the streets associated with my beaux jours are no more. Is there not something drearily monotonous in those interminable perspectives? How frightfully the way lengthens before one’s eyes! In the twists and curves of the old Paris one was relieved from the pain of seeing how far one had to go from one spot to another,—each tortuous street had a separate idiosyncrasy; what picturesque diversities, what interesting recollections,—all swept away! Mon Dieu! and what for,—miles of florid facades staring and glaring at one with goggle-eyed pitiless windows; house-rents trebled, and the consciousness that if you venture to grumble underground railways, like concealed volcanoes, can burst forth on you at any moment with an eruption of bayonets and muskets. This maudit empire seeks to keep its hold on France much as a grand seigneur seeks to enchain a nymph of the ballet,—tricks her out in finery and baubles, and insures her infidelity the moment he fails to satisfy her whims.”

“Vicomte,” answered Graham, “I have had the honour to know you since I was a small boy at a preparatory school home for the holidays, and you were a guest at my father’s country-house. You were then fete as one of the most promising writers among the young men of the day, especially favoured by the princes of the reigning family. I shall never forget the impression made on me by your brilliant appearance and your no less brilliant talk.”

“Ah! ces beaux jours! ce bon Louis Philippe, ce cher petit Joinville,” sighed the Vicomte.

“But at that day you compared le bon Louis Philippe to Robert Macaire. You described all his sons, including, no doubt, ce cher petit Joinville, in terms of resentful contempt, as so many plausible gamins whom Robert Macaire was training to cheat the public in the interest of the family firm. I remember my father saying to you in answer, ‘No royal house in Europe has more sought to develop the literature of an epoch and to signalize its representatives by social respect and official honours than that of the Orleans dynasty. You, Monsieur de Breze, do but imitate your elders in seeking to destroy the dynasty under which you flourish; should you succeed, you hommes de plume will be the first sufferers and the loudest complainers.’”

“Cher Monsieur Vane,” said the Vicomte, smiling complacently, “your father did me great honour in classing me with Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile de Girardin, and the other stars of the Orleanist galaxy, including our friend here, M. Savarin. A very superior man was your father.”

“And,” said Savarin, who, being an Orleanist, had listened to Graham’s speech with an approving smile,—“and if I remember right, my dear De Breze, no one was more brilliantly severe than yourself on poor De Lamartine and the Republic that succeeded Louis Philippe; no one more emphatically expressed the yearning desire for another Napoleon to restore order at home and renown abroad. Now you have got another Napoleon.”