"But I have not told you the worst so far as I am concerned," said Madame de l"Estorade. "Just before dinner my husband imparted to me an absolutely Satanic desire of his--order, I might call it."
"What was it?" asked Madame de Camps, anxiously.
"He wishes me to go with him to the Chamber to-morrow,--to the gallery reserved for the peers of France,--and listen to the discussion."
"He is actually, as you say, losing his head," cried Monsieur de Camps; "he is like Thomas Diafoirus, proposing to take his fiance to enjoy a dissection--"
Madame de Camps made her husband a sign which meant, "Don"t pour oil on the fire." Then she asked the countess whether she had tried to show M.
de l"Estorade the impropriety of that step.
"The moment I began to object," replied the countess, "he was angry, and said I must be very anxious to keep up our intimacy with "that man"
when I rejected such a natural opportunity to show publicly that the acquaintance was at an end."
"Well, my dear, you will have to go," said Madame de Camps. "The peace of your home before everything else! Besides, considering all things, your presence at the discussion may be taken as a proof of kindly interest."
"For sixteen years," remarked Monsieur de Camps, "you have ruled and governed in your home; and here, at last, is a revolution which cruelly overturns your power."
"Ah, monsieur, I beg you to believe that that sovereignty--which I always sought to conceal--I never used arbitrarily."
"As if I did not know that!" replied Monsieur de Camps, taking Madame de l"Estorade"s hand and pressing it affectionately. "I am, nevertheless, of my wife"s opinion: you will have to drink this cup."
"But I shall die of shame in listening to the ministerial infamies; I shall feel that they are cutting the throat of a man whom two words from me could save."
"True," said Monsieur de Camps, "and a man, too, who has done you a vast service. But you must choose: do you prefer to bring h.e.l.l into your home, and exasperate the unhealthy condition of your husband"s mind?"
"Listen to me, dearest," said Madame de Camps. "Tell Monsieur de l"Estorade that I want to go to this session, and ask him for a permit; don"t yield the point to any objections. I shall then be there to take care of you, and perhaps protect you from yourself."
"I did not dare ask it of you," replied Madame de l"Estorade. "We don"t usually invite friends to see us commit bad actions; but since you are so kind as to offer, I can truly say I shall be less wretched if you are with me. Now good-bye; I don"t want my husband to find me out when he comes home. He is dining with Monsieur de Rastignac, where, no doubt, they are plotting for to-morrow."
"Yes, go; and I will write you a note in the course of an hour, as if I had not seen you, asking you to get me a permit for to-morrow"s session, which I am told will be very interesting."
"To be reduced to conspiracy!" cried Madame de l"Estorade, kissing her friend.
"My dear love," said Madame de Camps, "they say the life of a Christian is a struggle, but that of a woman married in a certain way is a pitched battle. Have patience and courage."
So saying, the two friends separated.
The next day, about two o"clock, Madame de l"Estorade, accompanied by her husband and Madame Octave de Camps, took their places in the gallery reserved for the members of the peerage. She seemed ill, and answered languidly the bows and salutations that were addressed to her from all parts of the Chamber. Madame de Camps, who was present for the first time in the parliamentary precincts, made two observations: first, she objected strongly to the slovenly costume of a great many of the "honorable gentlemen"; and she was also amazed at the number of bald heads she looked down upon from the gallery. Monsieur de l"Estorade took pains to point out to her all the notabilities present: first, the great men whom we need not mention, because their names are in everybody"s memory; next, the poet Ca.n.a.lis, whose air she thought Olympian; d"Arthez, who pleased her by his modesty and absence of a.s.sumption; Vinet, of whom she remarked that he was like a viper in spectacles; Victorin Hulot, a noted orator of the Left Centre. It was some time before she could accustom herself to the hum of the various conversations, which seemed to her like the buzzing of bees around their hive; but the thing that most amazed her was the general aspect of this a.s.semblage of legislators, where a singular _laisser-aller_ and a total absence of dignity would never have led her to suppose she was in the hall of the representatives of a great people.
It was written that on this day no pain or unpleasantness should be spared to Madame de l"Estorade. Just before the sitting began, the Marquise d"Espard, accompanied by Monsieur de Ronquerolles, entered the peers" gallery and took her seat beside the countess. Though meeting constantly in society, the two women could not endure each other.
Madame de l"Estorade despised the spirit of intrigue, the total lack of principle, and the sour, malevolent nature which the marquise covered with an elegant exterior; and the marquise despised, to a still greater degree, what she called the _pot-au-feu_ virtues of Madame de l"Estorade. It must also be mentioned that Madame de l"Estorade was thirty-two years old and her beauty was still undimmed, whereas Madame d"Espard was forty-four, and, in spite of the careful dissimulations of the toilet, her beauty was fairly at an end.
"You do not often come here, I think," said Madame d"Espard, after the usual conventional phrases about the _pleasure_ of their meeting had pa.s.sed.
"I never come," replied Madame de l"Estorade.
"And I am most a.s.siduous," said Madame d"Espard.
Then, pretending to a sudden recollection, she added,--
"Ah! I forgot; you have a special interest, I think, on this occasion. A friend of yours is to be _judged_, is he not?"
"Yes; Monsieur de Sallenauve has been to our house several times."
"How sad it is," said the marquise, "to see a man who, Monsieur de Ronquerolles tells me, had the making of a hero in many ways, come down to the level of the correctional police."
"His crime so far," said Madame de l"Estorade, dryly, "consists solely in his absence."
"At any rate," continued the marquise, "he seems to be a man eaten up by ambition. Before his parliamentary attempt, he made, as you doubtless know, a matrimonial attempt upon the Lantys, which ended in the beautiful heiress of that family, into whose good graces he had insinuated himself, being sent to a convent."
Madame de l"Estorade was not much surprised at finding that this history, which Sallenauve had told her as very secret, had reached the knowledge of Madame d"Espard. The marquise was one of the best informed women in Paris; her salon, as an old academician had said mythologically, was the Temple of Fame.
"I think the sitting is about to begin," said Madame de l"Estorade; fearing some blow from the claws of the marquise, she was eager to put an end to the conversation.
The president had rung his bell, the deputies were taking their seats, the curtain was about to rise. As a faithful narrator of the session we desire our readers to attend, we think it safer and better in every way to copy _verbatim_ the report of the debate as given in one of the morning papers of the following day.
Chamber of Deputies.
In the chair, M. Cointet (vice-president).
(Sitting of May 28.)
At two o"clock the president takes his seat.
M. the Keeper of the Seals, M. the minister of the Interior, M.
the minister of Public Works, are on the ministerial bench.
The minutes of the last session are read, approved, and accepted.
The order of the day is the verification of the powers and the admission of the deputy elected by the arrondiss.e.m.e.nt of Arcis-sur-Aube.
_The President_.--M. the reporter, from the Committee on the elections of the department of the Aube, has the floor.
_The Reporter_.--Gentlemen, the singular and regrettable situation in which Monsieur de Sallenauve has placed himself has not terminated in the manner that was hoped and expected last week.
The period of delay expired yesterday; Monsieur de Sallenauve continues to absent himself from your sittings, and no letter has reached M. le president asking for further leave of absence. This indifference to the functions which Monsieur de Sallenauve appeared to have solicited with so much eagerness [slight agitation on the Left] would be, in any case, a grave mistake; but when connected with an accusation that seriously compromises the deputy elect, it must be regarded as altogether unfortunate for his reputation. [Murmurs on the Left. Approbation from the Centre.] Compelled to search for the solution of a difficulty which may be said to be without precedent in parliamentary annals, your committee, in the adoption of suitable measures, finds itself divided into two very distinct opinions. The minority whom I represent--the committee consisting of but three members--thinks that it ought to submit to you a resolution which I shall call radical, and which has for its object the cutting short of the difficulty by returning the question to its natural judges. Annul _hic et nunc_ the election of Monsieur de Sallenauve, and send him back to the voters by whom he was elected and of whom he is so unfaithful a representative. Such is one of the solutions I have the honor to present to you. [Agitation on the Left.] The majority, on the contrary, are of opinion that the will of the electors cannot be too highly respected, and that the faults of a man honored by their confidence ought not to be discussed until the utmost limits of forbearance and indulgence have been pa.s.sed.
Consequently your committee instruct me to suggest that you grant to Monsieur de Sallenauve a further delay of fifteen days [murmurs from the Centre; "Very good! very good!" from the Left]; being satisfied that if after that delay Monsieur de Sallenauve does not present himself or give any other sign of existence, it will be sufficient proof that he has thrown up his election, and the Chamber need not be dragged on his account into irritating and useless debates. [Murmurs of various kinds.]
M. le Colonel Franchessini, who during the foregoing speech was sitting on the ministers" bench in earnest conversation with the minister of Public Works, here demanded the floor.
_The President_.--M. de Ca.n.a.lis has already asked for it.
_M. de Ca.n.a.lis_.--Gentlemen, M. de Sallenauve is one of those bold men who, like myself, are convinced that politics are not forbidden fruit to any form of intellect, and that in the poet, in the artist, as well as in the magistrate, the administrator, the lawyer, the physician, and the property-holder, may be found the stuff that makes a statesman. In virtue of this community of opinion, M. de Sallenauve has my entire sympathy, and no one can be surprised to see me mount this tribune to support the proposal of the majority of your committee. I cannot, however, agree to their final conclusion; and the idea of our colleague being declared, without discussion, dismissed from this Chamber through the single fact of his absence, prolonged without leave, is repugnant to my reason and also to my conscience. You are told: "The absence of M. de Sallenauve is all the more reprehensible because he is under the odium of a serious accusation." But suppose this accusation is the very cause of his absence--["Ha!
ha!" from the Centre, and laughter.] Allow me to say, gentlemen, that I am not, perhaps, quite so artless as Messieurs the laughers imagine. I have one blessing, at any rate: ign.o.ble interpretations do not come into my mind; and that M. de Sallenauve, with the eminent position he has filled in the world of art, should seek to enter the world of politics by means of a crime, is a supposition which I cannot admit _a priori_. Around a birth like his two hideous spiders called slander and intrigue have every facility to spread their toils; and far from admitting that he has fled before the accusation that now attacks him, I ask myself whether his absence does not mean that he is now engaged in collecting the elements of his defence. [Left: "Very good!" "That"s right."
Ironical laughter in the Centre.] Under that supposition--in my opinion most probable--so far from arraigning him in consequence of this absence, ought we not rather to consider it as an act of deference to the Chamber whose deliberations he did not feel worthy to share until he found himself in a position to confound his calumniators?
_A Voice_.--He wants leave of absence for ten years, like Telemachus, to search for his father. [General laughter.]