or not thank him without incurring self-reproach?
Those are the problems submitted to your wisdom. If you will do me the kindness to solve them--and I know no one so capable--I shall add grat.i.tude to all the other affectionate sentiments which, as you know, I have so long felt for you.
III. THE COMTE DE L"ESTORADE TO MONSIEUR MARIE-GASTON
Paris, February, 1839.
Perhaps, my dear Monsieur Gaston, the public journals will have told you before this letter can arrive of the duel fought yesterday between your friend Monsieur Dorlange and the Duc de Rhetore. But the papers, while announcing the fact as a piece of news, are debarred by custom and propriety from inferring the motives of a quarrel, and therefore they will only excite your curiosity without satisfying it.
I have, fortunately, heard from a very good source, all the details of the affair, and I hasten to transmit them to you; they are, I think, of a nature to interest you to the highest degree.
Three days ago, that is to say on the very evening of the day when I paid my visit to Monsieur Dorlange, the Duc de Rhetore occupied a stall at the Opera-house. Next to him sat Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who has recently returned from a diplomatic mission which kept him out of France for several years. During the entr"acte these gentlemen did not leave their seats to walk about the foyer; but, as is often done, they stood up, with their backs to the stage, facing the audience and consequently Monsieur Dorlange, who was seated directly behind them, seeming to be absorbed in an evening newspaper. There had been that day a very scandalous, or what is called a very interesting, session of the Chamber of deputies.
The conversation between the duke and the marquis having naturally turned on the events of Parisian society which had taken place during Monsieur de Ronquerolles" absence, the latter made the following remark which was of a nature to rouse the attention of Monsieur Dorlange.
"Your poor sister Madame de Mac.u.mer! what a sad end, after her singular marriage!"
"Ah! you know," replied Monsieur de Rhetore, in that high-pitched tone of his, "my sister had too much imagination not to be romantic and visionary. She loved her first husband, Monsieur de Mac.u.mer, pa.s.sionately, but after a time one gets tired of everything, even widowhood. This Marie-Gaston crossed her path. He is agreeable in person; my sister was rich; he was deeply in debt and behaved with corresponding eagerness and devotion. The result was that the scoundrel not only succeeded Monsieur de Mac.u.mer and killed his wife with jealousy, but he got out of her every penny the law allowed the poor foolish woman to dispose of. My sister"s property amounted to at least twelve hundred thousand francs, not counting a delightful villa splendidly furnished which she built at Ville d"Avray. Half of this that man obtained, the other half went to the Duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Chaulieu, my father and mother, who were ent.i.tled to it by law as heirs ascendant.
As for my brother Lenoncourt and myself, we were simply disinherited."
As soon as your name, my dear Monsieur Gaston, was uttered, Monsieur Dorlange laid aside his newspaper, and then, as Monsieur de Rhetore ended his remarks, he rose and said:--
"Pardon me, Monsieur le duc, if I venture to correct your statement; but, as a matter of conscience, I ought to inform you that you are totally misinformed."
"What is that you say?" returned the duke, blinking his eyes and speaking in that contemptuous tone we can all imagine.
"I say, Monsieur le duc, that Marie-Gaston is my friend from childhood; he has never been thought a _scoundrel_; on the contrary, the world knows him as a man of honor and talent. So far from killing his wife with jealousy, he made her perfectly happy during the three years their marriage lasted. As for the property--"
"Have you considered, monsieur," said the Duc de Rhetore, interrupting him, "the result of such language?"
"Thoroughly, monsieur; and I repeat that the property left to Marie-Gaston by the will of his wife is so little desired by him that, to my knowledge, he is about to spend a sum of two or three hundred thousand francs in building a mausoleum for a wife whom he has never ceased to mourn."
"After all, monsieur, who are you?" said the Duc de Rhetore, again interrupting him with ill-restrained impatience.
"Presently," replied Monsieur Dorlange, "I shall have the honor to tell you; you must now permit me to add that the property of which you say you have been disinherited Madame Marie-Gaston had the right to dispose of without any remorse of conscience. It came from her first husband, the Baron de Mac.u.mer; and she had, previously to that marriage, given up her own property in order to const.i.tute a fortune for your brother, the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, who, as younger son, had not, like you, Monsieur le Duc, the advantages of an entail."
So saying, Monsieur Dorlange felt in his pocket for his card-case.
"I have no cards with me," he said at last, "but my name is Dorlange, a theatrical name, easy to remember, and I live at No. 42 rue de l"Ouest."
"Not a very central quarter," remarked Monsieur de Rhetore, ironically.
Then turning to Monsieur de Ronquerolles, whom he thus const.i.tuted one of his seconds, "I beg your pardon, my dear fellow," he said, "for the voyage of discovery you will have to undertake for me to-morrow morning." And then almost immediately he added: "Come to the foyer; we can talk there with greater _safety_."
By his manner of accenting the last word it was impossible to mistake the insulting meaning he intended to attach to it.
The two gentlemen having left their seats, without this scene attracting any notice, in consequence of the stalls being empty for the most part during the entr"acte, Monsieur Dorlange saw at some distance the celebrated sculptor Stidmann, and went up to him.
"Have you a note-book of any kind in your pocket?" he said.
"Yes, I always carry one."
"Will you lend it to me and let me tear out a page? I have an idea in my mind which I don"t want to lose. If I do not see you again after the play to make rest.i.tution, I will send it to you to-morrow morning without fail."
Returning to his place, Monsieur Dorlange sketched something rapidly, and when the curtain rose and the two gentlemen returned to their seats, he touched the Duc de Rhetore lightly on the shoulder and said, giving him the drawing:--
"My card, which I have the honor to present to you."
This "card" was a charming sketch of an architectural design placed in a landscape. Beneath it was written "Plan for a mausoleum to be erected to the memory of Madame Marie-Gaston, _nee_ Chaulieu, by her husband; from the designs of Charles Dorlange, sculptor, 42 rue de l"Ouest."
It was impossible to let Monsieur de Rhetore know more delicately that he had to do with a suitable adversary; and you will remark, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that Monsieur Dorlange made this drawing the means of enforcing his denial and giving proof of your disinterestedness and the sincerity of your grief.
After the play was over, Monsieur de Rhetore parted from Monsieur de Ronquerolles, and the latter went up to Monsieur Dorlange and endeavored, very courteously, to bring about a reconciliation, remarking to him that, while he was right in the subject-matter, his method of proceeding was unusual and offensive; Monsieur de Rhetore, on the other hand, had shown great moderation, and would now be satisfied with a mere expression of regret; in short, Monsieur de Ronquerolles said all that can be said on such an occasion.
Monsieur Dorlange would not listen to anything which seemed a submission on his part, and the next day he received a visit from Monsieur de Ronquerolles and General Montriveau on behalf of the Duc de Rhetore.
Again an effort was made to induce Monsieur Dorlange to give another turn to his words. But your friend would not depart from this ultimatum:--
"Will Monsieur de Rhetore withdraw the words I felt bound to notice; if so, I will withdraw mine."
"But that is impossible," they said to him. "Monsieur de Rhetore has been personally insulted; you, on the contrary, have not been. Right or wrong, he has the conviction that Monsieur Marie-Gaston has done him an injury. We must always make certain allowances for wounded self-interests; you can never get absolute justice from them."
"It comes to this, then," replied Monsieur Dorlange, "that Monsieur de Rhetore may continue to calumniate my friend at his ease; in the first place, because he is in Italy; and secondly, because Marie-Gaston would always feel extreme repugnance to come to certain extremities with the brother of his wife. It is precisely that powerlessness, relatively speaking, to defend himself, which const.i.tutes my right--I will say more--my duty to interfere. It was not without a special permission of Providence that I was enabled to catch a few of the malicious words that were said of him, and, as Monsieur de Rhetore declines to modify any of them, we must, if it please you, continue this matter to the end."
The duel then became inevitable; the terms were arranged in the course of the day, and the meeting, with pistols, was appointed for the day after. On the ground Monsieur Dorlange was perfectly cool. When the first fire was exchanged without result, the seconds proposed to put an end to the affair.
"No, one more shot!" he said gaily, as if he were shooting in a pistol-gallery.
This time he was shot in the fleshy part of the thigh, not a dangerous wound, but one which caused him to lose a great deal of blood. As they carried him to the carriage which brought him, Monsieur de Rhetore, who hastened to a.s.sist them, being close beside him, he said, aloud:--
"This does not prevent Marie-Gaston from being a man of honor and a heart of gold."
Then he fainted.
This duel, as you can well believe, has made a great commotion; Monsieur Dorlange has been the hero of the hour for the last two days; it is impossible to enter a single salon without finding him the one topic of conversation. I heard more, perhaps, in the salon of Madame de Montcornet than elsewhere. She receives, as you know, many artists and men of letters, and to give you an idea of the manner in which your friend is considered, I need only stenograph a conversation at which I was present in the countess"s salon last evening.
The chief talkers were Emile Blondet of the "Debats," and Monsieur Bixiou, the caricaturist, one of the best-informed _ferrets_ of Paris.
They are both, I think, acquaintances of yours, but, at any rate, I am certain of your intimacy with Joseph Bridau, our great painter, who shared in the talk, for I well remember that he and Daniel d"Arthez were the witnesses of your marriage.
"The first appearance of Dorlange in art," Joseph Bridau was saying, when I joined them, "was fine; the makings of a master were already so apparent in the work he did for his examinations that the Academy, under pressure of opinion, decided to crown him--though he laughed a good deal at its programme."
"True," said Bixiou, "and that "Pandora" he exhibited in 1837, after his return from Rome, is also a very remarkable figure. But as she won him, at once, the cross and any number of commissions from the government and the munic.i.p.ality, together with scores of flourishing articles in the newspapers, I don"t see how he can rise any higher after all that success."
"That," said Blondet, "is a regular Bixiou opinion."
"No doubt; and well-founded it is. Do you know the man?"
"No; he is never seen anywhere."