He could not understand what she meant to convey by the last words.
"No matter! she is not so hard to overcome as I imagined," he thought.
She rang for a gla.s.s of water, drank a mouthful of it, sent it away again, and then began to complain of the wretched way in which her servants attended on her. In order to amuse her, he offered to become her servant himself, pretending that he knew how to hand round plates, dust furniture, and announce visitors--in fact, to do the duties of a _valet-de-chambre_, or, rather, of a running-footman, although the latter was now out of fashion. He would have liked to cling on behind her carriage with a hat adorned with c.o.c.k"s feathers.
"And how I would follow you with majestic stride, carrying your pug on my arm!"
"You are facetious," said Madame Dambreuse.
Was it not a piece of folly, he returned, to take everything seriously?
There were enough of miseries in the world without creating fresh ones.
Nothing was worth the cost of a single pang. Madame Dambreuse raised her eyelids with a sort of vague approval.
This agreement in their views of life impelled Frederick to take a bolder course. His former miscalculations now gave him insight. He went on:
"Our grandsires lived better. Why not obey the impulse that urges us onward?" After all, love was not a thing of such importance in itself.
"But what you have just said is immoral!"
She had resumed her seat on the little sofa. He sat down at the side of it, near her feet.
"Don"t you see that I am lying! For in order to please women, one must exhibit the thoughtlessness of a buffoon or all the wild pa.s.sion of tragedy! They only laugh at us when we simply tell them that we love them! For my part, I consider those hyperbolical phrases which tickle their fancy a profanation of true love, so that it is no longer possible to give expression to it, especially when addressing women who possess more than ordinary intelligence."
She gazed at him from under her drooping eyelids. He lowered his voice, while he bent his head closer to her face.
"Yes! you frighten me! Perhaps I am offending you? Forgive me! I did not intend to say all that I have said! "Tis not my fault! You are so beautiful!"
Madame Dambreuse closed her eyes, and he was astonished at his easy victory. The tall trees in the clouds streaked the sky with long strips of red, and on every side there seemed to be a suspension of vital movements. Then he recalled to mind, in a confused sort of way, evenings just the same as this, filled with the same unbroken silence. Where was it that he had known them?
He sank upon his knees, seized her hand, and swore that he would love her for ever. Then, as he was leaving her, she beckoned to him to come back, and said to him in a low tone:
"Come by-and-by and dine with us! We"ll be all alone!"
It seemed to Frederick, as he descended the stairs, that he had become a different man, that he was surrounded by the balmy temperature of hot-houses, and that he was beyond all question entering into the higher sphere of patrician adulteries and lofty intrigues. In order to occupy the first rank there all he required was a woman of this stamp. Greedy, no doubt, of power and of success, and married to a man of inferior calibre, for whom she had done prodigious services, she longed for some one of ability in order to be his guide. Nothing was impossible now. He felt himself capable of riding two hundred leagues on horseback, of travelling for several nights in succession without fatigue. His heart overflowed with pride.
Just in front of him, on the footpath, a man wrapped in a seedy overcoat was walking, with downcast eyes, and with such an air of dejection that Frederick, as he pa.s.sed, turned aside to have a better look at him. The other raised his head. It was Deslauriers. He hesitated. Frederick fell upon his neck.
"Ah! my poor old friend! What! "tis you!"
And he dragged Deslauriers into his house, at the same time asking his friend a heap of questions.
Ledru-Rollin"s ex-commissioner commenced by describing the tortures to which he had been subjected. As he preached fraternity to the Conservatives, and respect for the laws to the Socialists, the former tried to shoot him, and the latter brought cords to hang him with. After June he had been brutally dismissed. He found himself involved in a charge of conspiracy--that which was connected with the seizure of arms at Troyes. He had subsequently been released for want of evidence to sustain the charge. Then the acting committee had sent him to London, where his ears had been boxed in the very middle of a banquet at which he and his colleagues were being entertained. On his return to Paris----
"Why did you not call here, then, to see me?"
"You were always out! Your porter had mysterious airs--I did not know what to think; and, in the next place, I had no desire to reappear before you in the character of a defeated man."
He had knocked at the portals of Democracy, offering to serve it with his pen, with his tongue, with all his energies. He had been everywhere repelled. They had mistrusted him; and he had sold his watch, his bookcase, and even his linen.
"It would be much better to be breaking one"s back on the pontoons of Belle Isle with Senecal!"
Frederick, who had been fastening his cravat, did not appear to be much affected by this news.
"Ha! so he is transported, this good Senecal?"
Deslauriers replied, while he surveyed the walls with an envious air:
"Not everybody has your luck!"
"Excuse me," said Frederick, without noticing the allusion to his own circ.u.mstances, "but I am dining in the city. We must get you something to eat; order whatever you like. Take even my bed!"
This cordial reception dissipated Deslauriers" bitterness.
"Your bed? But that might inconvenience you!"
"Oh, no! I have others!"
"Oh, all right!" returned the advocate, with a laugh. "Pray, where are you dining?"
"At Madame Dambreuse"s."
"Can it be that you are--perhaps----?"
"You are too inquisitive," said Frederick, with a smile, which confirmed this hypothesis.
Then, after a glance at the clock, he resumed his seat.
"That"s how it is! and we mustn"t despair, my ex-defender of the people!"
"Oh, pardon me; let others bother themselves about the people henceforth!"
The advocate detested the working-men, because he had suffered so much on their account in his province, a coal-mining district. Every pit had appointed a provisional government, from which he received orders.
"Besides, their conduct has been everywhere charming--at Lyons, at Lille, at Havre, at Paris! For, in imitation of the manufacturers, who would fain exclude the products of the foreigner, these gentlemen call on us to banish the English, German, Belgian, and Savoyard workmen. As for their intelligence, what was the use of that precious trades" union of theirs which they established under the Restoration? In 1830 they joined the National Guard, without having the common sense to get the upper hand of it. Is it not the fact that, since the morning when 1848 dawned, the various trade-bodies had not reappeared with their banners?
They have even demanded popular representatives for themselves, who are not to open their lips except on their own behalf. All this is the same as if the deputies who represent beetroot were to concern themselves about nothing save beetroot. Ah! I"ve had enough of these dodgers who in turn prostrate themselves before the scaffold of Robespierre, the boots of the Emperor, and the umbrella of Louis Philippe--a rabble who always yield allegiance to the person that flings bread into their mouths. They are always crying out against the venality of Talleyrand and Mirabeau; but the messenger down below there would sell his country for fifty centimes if they"d only promise to fix a tariff of three francs on his walk. Ah! what a wretched state of affairs! We ought to set the four corners of Europe on fire!"
Frederick said in reply:
"The spark is what you lack! You were simply a lot of s...o...b..ys, and even the best of you were nothing better than penniless students. As for the workmen, they may well complain; for, if you except a million taken out of the civil list, and of which you made a grant to them with the meanest expressions of flattery, you have done nothing for them, save to talk in stilted phrases! The workman"s certificate remains in the hands of the employer, and the person who is paid wages remains (even in the eye of the law), the inferior of his master, because his word is not believed. In short, the Republic seems to me a worn-out inst.i.tution.
Who knows? Perhaps Progress can be realised only through an aristocracy or through a single man? The initiative always comes from the top, and whatever may be the people"s pretensions, they are lower than those placed over them!"
"That may be true," said Deslauriers.
According to Frederick, the vast majority of citizens aimed only at a life of peace (he had been improved by his visits to the Dambreuses), and the chances were all on the side of the Conservatives. That party, however, was lacking in new men.
"If you came forward, I am sure----"
He did not finish the sentence. Deslauriers saw what Frederick meant, and pa.s.sed his two hands over his head; then, all of a sudden: