The Ball at Sceaux

“Mademoiselle,” Maximilien went on, “let us go no further if we do not understand each other. I love you,” he said, in a voice of deep emotion. “Well, then,” he added, as he heard the joyful exclamation she could not suppress, “why ask me if I am of noble birth?”

“Could he speak so if he were not?” cried a voice within her, which Emilie believed came from the depths of her heart. She gracefully raised her head, seemed to find new life in the young man’s gaze, and held out her hand as if to renew the alliance.

“You thought I cared very much for dignities?” said she with keen archness.

“I have no titles to offer my wife,” he replied, in a half-sportive, half-serious tone. “But if I choose one of high rank, and among women whom a wealthy home has accustomed to the luxury and pleasures of a fine fortune, I know what such a choice requires of me. Love gives everything,” he added lightly, “but only to lovers. Once married, they need something more than the vault of heaven and the carpet of a meadow.”

“He is rich,” she reflected. “As to titles, perhaps he only wants to try me. He has been told that I am mad about titles, and bent on marrying none but a peer’s son. My priggish sisters have played me that trick.” – “I assure you, monsieur,” she said aloud, “that I have had very extravagant ideas about life and the world; but now,” she added pointedly, looking at him in a perfectly distracting way, “I know where true riches are to be found for a wife.”

“I must believe that you are speaking from the depths of your heart,” he said, with gentle gravity. “But this winter, my dear Emilie, in less than two months perhaps, I may be proud of what I shall have to offer you if you care for the pleasures of wealth. This is the only secret I shall keep locked here,” and he laid his hand on his heart, “for on its success my happiness depends. I dare not say ours.”

“Yes, yes, ours!”

Exchanging such sweet nothings, they slowly made their way back to rejoin the company. Mademoiselle de Fontaine had never found her lover more amiable or wittier: his light figure, his engaging manners, seemed to her more charming than ever, since the conversation which had made her to some extent the possessor of a heart worthy to be the envy of every woman. They sang an Italian duet with so much expression that the audience applauded enthusiastically. Their adieux were in a conventional tone, which concealed their happiness. In short, this day had been to Emilie like a chain binding her more closely than ever to the Stranger’s fate. The strength and dignity he had displayed in the scene when they had confessed their feelings had perhaps impressed Mademoiselle de Fontaine with the respect without which there is no true love.

When she was left alone in the drawing-room with her father, the old man went up to her affectionately, held her hands, and asked her whether she had gained any light at to Monsieur Longueville’s family and fortune.

“Yes, my dear father,” she replied, “and I am happier than I could have hoped. In short, Monsieur de Longueville is the only man I could ever marry.”

“Very well, Emilie,” said the Count, “then I know what remains for me to do.”

“Do you know of any impediment?” she asked, in sincere alarm.

“My dear child, the young man is totally unknown to me; but unless he is not a man of honor, so long as you love him, he is as dear to me as a son.”

“Not a man of honor!” exclaimed Emilie. “As to that, I am quite easy. My uncle, who introduced him to us, will answer for him. Say, my dear uncle, has he been a filibuster, an outlaw, a pirate?”

“I knew I should find myself in this fix!” cried the old sailor, waking up. He looked round the room, but his niece had vanished “like Saint-Elmo’s fires,” to use his favorite expression.

“Well, uncle,” Monsieur de Fontaine went on, “how could you hide from us all you knew about this young man? You must have seen how anxious we have been. Is Monsieur de Longueville a man of family?”

“I don’t know him from Adam or Eve,” said the Comte de Kergarouet. “Trusting to that crazy child’s tact, I got him here by a method of my own. I know that the boy shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts well, plays wonderfully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he handles the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The devil’s in it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect gentleman, find me a bourgeois who knows all this, or any man who lives more nobly than he does. Does he do anything, I ask you? Does he compromise his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down before the upstarts you call Directors-General? He walks upright. He is a man. – However, I have just found in my waistcoat pocket the card he gave me when he fancied I wanted to cut his throat, poor innocent. Young men are very simple-minded nowadays! Here it is.”

“Rue du Sentier, No. 5,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall among all the information he had received, something which might concern the stranger. “What the devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma, Werbrust & Co., wholesale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed cotton goods, live there. – Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has an interest in their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longueville has but one son of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like our man, and to whom he gave fifty thousand francs a year that he might marry a minister’s daughter; he wants to be made a peer like the rest of ‘em. – I never heard him mention this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What is this girl Clara? Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call himself Longueville. But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust & Co. half ruined by some speculation in Mexico or the Indies? I will clear all this up.”

“You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and seem to account me a cipher,” said the old admiral suddenly. “Don’t you know that if he is a gentleman, I have more than one bag in my hold that will stop any leak in his fortune?”

“As to that, if he is a son of Longueville’s, he will want nothing; but,” said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head from side to side, “his father has not even washed off the stains of his origin. Before the Revolution he was an attorney, and the DE he has since assumed no more belongs to him than half of his fortune.”

“Pooh! pooh! happy those whose fathers were hanged!” cried the admiral gaily.

Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of those fine mornings in the month of November, which show the boulevards cleaned by the sharp cold of an early frost, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped in a new style of fur cape, of which she wished to set the fashion, went out with two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to discharge her most cutting remarks. The three women were tempted to the drive, less by their desire to try a very elegant carriage, and wear gowns which were to set the fashion for the winter, than by their wish to see a cape which a friend had observed in a handsome lace and linen shop at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were in the shop the Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and pointed out to her Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk, and engaged in paying out the change for a gold piece to one of the workwomen with whom he seemed to be in consultation. The “handsome stranger” held in his hand a parcel of patterns, which left no doubt as to his honorable profession.

Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. Thanks to the good breeding of the best society, she completely concealed the rage in her heart, and answered her sister-in-law with the words, “I knew it,” with a fulness of intonation and inimitable decision which the most famous actress of the time might have envied her. She went straight up to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the patterns in his pocket with distracting coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and came forward, looking at her keenly.

“Mademoiselle,” he said to the shopgirl, who followed him, looking very much disturbed, “I will send to settle that account; my house deals in that way. But here,” he whispered into her ear, as he gave her a thousand-franc note, “take this – it is between ourselves. – You will forgive me, I trust, mademoiselle,” he added, turning to Emilie. “You will kindly excuse the tyranny of business matters.”

“Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern of mine,” replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him with a bold expression of sarcastic indifference which might have made any one believe that she now saw him for the first time.

“Do you really mean it?” asked Maximilien in a broken voice.

Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. These words, spoken in an undertone, had escaped the ears of her two sisters-in-law. When, after buying the cape, the three ladies got into the carriage again, Emilie, seated with her back to the horses, could not resist one last comprehensive glance into the depths of the odious shop, where she saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, in the attitude of a man superior to the disaster that has so suddenly fallen on him. Their eyes met and flashed implacable looks. Each hoped to inflict a cruel wound on the heart of a lover. In one instant they were as far apart as if one had been in China and the other in Greenland.

Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Mademoiselle de Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that can torture the heart of a young girl, reaped the richest harvest of anguish that prejudice and narrow-mindedness ever sowed in a human soul. Her face, but just now fresh and velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red patches; the paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn green. Hoping to hide her despair from her sisters, she would laugh as she pointed out some ridiculous dress or passer-by; but her laughter was spasmodic. She was more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion than by any satirical comments for which she might have revenged herself. She exhausted her wit in trying to engage them in a conversation, in which she tried to expend her fury in senseless paradoxes, heaping on all men engaged in trade the bitterest insults and witticisms in the worst taste.

On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at first assumed a somewhat serious character. By the end of a month the care of her parents and of the physician restored her to her family.

Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough to subdue Emilie’s nature; but she insensibly fell into her old habits and threw herself again into the world of fashion. She declared that there was no disgrace in making a mistake. If she, like her father, had a vote in the Chamber, she would move for an edict, she said, by which all merchants, and especially dealers in calico, should be branded on the forehead, like Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She wished that none but nobles should have the right to wear the antique French costume, which was so becoming to the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear her, it was a misfortune for France, perhaps, that there was no outward and visible difference between a merchant and a peer of France. And a hundred more such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were rapidly poured out when any accident brought up the subject.

But those who loved Emilie could see through all her banter a tinge of melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longueville still reigned over that inexorable heart. Sometimes she would be as gentle as she had been during the brief summer that had seen the birth of her love; sometimes, again, she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her inequality of temper, which had its source in sufferings at once secret and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some influence over her, thanks to his increased prodigality, a kind of consolation which rarely fails of its effect on a Parisian girl.

The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared was at the Neapolitan ambassador’s. As she took her place in the first quadrille she saw, a few yards away from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded slightly to her partner.

“Is that young man a friend of yours?” she asked, with a scornful air.

“Only my brother,” he replied.

Emilie could not help starting. “Ah!” he continued, “and he is the noblest soul living – ”

“Do you know my name?” asked Emilie, eagerly interrupting him.

“No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to remember a name which is on every lip – I ought to say in every heart. But I have a valid excuse. I have but just arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who is in Paris on leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his amiable wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner.”

“A perfect tragic mask!” said Emilie, after looking at the ambassadress.

“And yet that is her ballroom face!” said the young man, laughing. “I shall have to dance with her! So I thought I might have some compensation.” Mademoiselle de Fontaine courtesied. “I was very much surprised,” the voluble young secretary went on, “to find my brother here. On arriving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in bed; and I counted on seeing him before coming to this ball; but good policy will always allow us to indulge family affection. The Padrona della case would not give me time to call on my poor Maximilien.”

“Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplomatic employment.”

“No,” said the attache, with a sigh, “the poor fellow sacrificed himself for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced their share of my father’s fortune to make an eldest son of me. My father dreams of a peerage, like all who vote for the ministry. Indeed, it is promised him,” he added in an undertone. “After saving up a little capital my brother joined a banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a speculation in Brazil which may make him a millionaire. You see me in the highest spirits at having been able, by my diplomatic connections, to contribute to his success. I am impatiently expecting a dispatch from the Brazilian Legation, which will help to lift the cloud from his brow. What do you think of him?”

“Well, your brother’s face does not look to me like that of a man busied with money matters.”

The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the apparently calm face of his partner.

“What!” he exclaimed, with a smile, “can young ladies read the thoughts of love behind the silent brow?”

“Your brother is in love, then?” she asked, betrayed into a movement of curiosity.

“Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a mother, wrote to me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but I have had no further news of the affair. Would you believe that the poor boy used to get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle his business that he might be back by four o’clock in the country where the lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I had just given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just come home from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I have been weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such a degree that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it not you who pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become inexhaustible. I should like to proclaim to all the world how good and generous he is. He gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a year, the income from the Longueville property.”

If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these important revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which she continued to question her confiding partner from the moment when she found that he was the brother of her scorned lover.

“And could you, without being grieved, see your brother selling muslin and calico?” asked Emilie, at the end of the third figure of the quadrille.

“How do you know that?” asked the attache. “Thank God, though I pour out a flood of words, I have already acquired the art of not telling more than I intend, like all the other diplomatic apprentices I know.”

“You told me, I assure you.”