Chapter VIII: Part II: Letters Explanatory (4)

Leaving Paris on the evening of May 1st, I arrived at Arcis, according to my father’s directions, on the following day. You can believe my surprise when I saw in the street where the diligence stopped the elusive Jacques Bricheteau, whom I had not seen since our singular meeting on the Ile Saint-Louis. This time I beheld him, instead of behaving like the dog of Jean de Nivelle, come towards me with a smile upon his lips, holding out his hand and saying:--

“At last, my dear monsieur, we are almost at the end of all our mysteries, and soon, I hope, you will see that you have no cause to complain of me. Have you brought the money?”

“Yes,” I replied, “neither lost nor stolen.” And I drew from my pocket a wallet containing the two hundred and fifty thousand francs in bank notes.

“Very good!” said Jacques Bricheteau. “Now let us go to the Hotel de la Poste; no doubt you know who awaits you there.”

“No, indeed I do not,” I replied.

“You must have remarked the name and title under which that money was paid to you?”

“Certainly; that strange circumstance struck me forcibly, and has, I must own, stirred my imagination.”

“Well, we shall now completely lift the veil, one corner of which we were careful to raise at first, so that you might not come too abruptly to the great and fortunate event that is now before you.”

“Am I to see my father?”

“Yes,” replied Jacques Bricheteau; “your father is awaiting you; but I must warn you against a probable cloud on his manner of receiving you. The marquis has suffered much; the court life which he has always led has trained him to show no outward emotions; besides, he has a horror of everything bourgeois. You must not be surprised, therefore, at the cold and dignified reception he will probably give you; at heart, he is good and kind, and you will appreciate him better when you know him.”

“Here,” thought I, “are very comforting assurances, and as I myself am not very ardently disposed, I foresee that this interview will be at some degrees below zero.”

On going into the room where the Marquis awaited me, I saw a very tall, very thin, very bald man, seated at a table on which he was arranging papers. On hearing the door open, he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead, rested his hands on the arms of his chair, and looking round at us he waited.

“Monsieur le Comte de Sallenauve,” said Jacques Bricheteau, announcing me with the solemnity of an usher of ambassadors or a groom of the Chambers.

But in the presence of the man to whom I owed my life the ice in me was instantly melted; I stepped forward with an eager impulse, feeling the tears rise to my eyes. He did not move. There was not the faintest trace of agitation in his face, which had that peculiar look of high dignity that used to be called “the grand air”; he merely held out his hand, limply grasped mine, and then said:

“Be seated, monsieur--for I have not yet the right to call you my son.”

When Jacques Bricheteau and I had taken chairs--

“Then you have no objection,” said this strange kind of father, “to assuming the political position we are trying to secure for you?”

“None at all,” said I. “The notion startled me at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it; and to ensure success, I have punctually carried out all the instructions that were conveyed to me.”

“Excellent,” said the Marquis, taking up from the table a gold snuff-box which he twirled in his fingers.

Then, after a short silence, he added:

“Now I owe you certain explanations. Our good friend Jacques Bricheteau, if he will have the kindness, will lay them before you.”

This was equivalent to the royal formula of the old regime: “My chamberlain will tell you the rest.”

“To go back to the origin of everything,” said Jacques Bricheteau, accepting the duty thus put upon him, “I must first tell you that you are not a legitimate Sallenauve. When Monsieur le marquis, here present, returned after the emigration, in the year 1808, he made the acquaintance of your mother, and in 1809 you were born as the fruit of their intercourse. Your birth, as you already know, cost your mother her life, and as misfortunes never come singly, Monsieur de Sallenauve was compromised in a conspiracy against the imperial power and compelled to fly the country. Brought up in Arcis with me, the marquis, wishing to give me a proof of his friendship, confided to me, on his departure to this new expatriation, the care of your childhood. I accepted that charge, I will not say with alacrity, but certainly with gratitude.”

At these words the marquis held out his hand to Jacques Bricheteau, who was seated near him, and after a silent pressure, which did not seem to me remarkably warm, Jacques Bricheteau continued:--

“The mysterious precautions I was forced to take in carrying out my trust are explained by Monsieur le marquis’s position towards the various governments which have succeeded each other in France since the period of your birth. Under the Empire, I feared that a government little indulgent to attacks upon itself might send you to share your father’s exile; it was then that the idea of giving you a sort of anonymous existence first occurred to me. Under the Restoration I feared for you another class of enemies; the Sallenauve family, which has no other representatives at the present day than Monsieur le marquis, was then powerful. In some way it got wind of your existence, and also of the fact that the marquis had taken the precaution not to recognize you, in order to retain the right to leave you his whole fortune, which, as a natural child, the law would in part have deprived you. The obscurity in which I kept you seemed to me the best security, against the schemes of greedy relations, and certain mysterious steps taken by them from time to time proved the wisdom of these precautions. Under the government of July, on the other hand, it was I myself who I feared might endanger you. I had seen the establishment of the new order of things with the deepest regret, and not believing in its duration, I took part in certain active hostilities against it, which brought me under the ban of the police.”

Here the recollection that Jacques Bricheteau had been pointed out by the waiter of the Cafe des Arts as a member of the police made me smile, whereupon the speaker stopped and said with a very serious air:--

“Do these explanations which I have the honor to give you seem improbable?”

I explained the meaning of my smile.

“That waiter,” said Jacques Bricheteau, “was not altogether mistaken; for I have long been employed at the prefecture of police in the health department; but I have nothing to do with police espial; on the contrary, I have more than once come near being the victim of it.”

Here a rather ridiculous noise struck our ears, nothing less than a loud snore from my father, who thus gave us to know that he did not take a very keen interest in the explanations furnished in his name with a certain prolixity. I don’t know whether Jacques Bricheteau’s vanity being touched put him slightly out of temper, but he rose impatiently and shook the arm of the sleeper, crying out:--

“Hey! marquis, if you sleep like this at the Council of state, upon my soul, your country must be well governed!”

Monsieur de Sallenauve opened his eyes, shook himself, and then said, turning to me:--

“Pardon me, Monsieur le comte, but for the last ten nights I have travelled, without stopping, to meet you here; and though I spent the last night in a bed, I am still much fatigued.”

So saying he rose, took a large pinch of snuff, and began to walk up and down the room, while Jacques Bricheteau continued:--

“It is a little more than a year since I received a letter from your father explaining his long silence, the plans he had made for you, and the necessity he was under of keeping his incognito for a few years longer. It was at that very time that you made your attempt to penetrate a secret the existence of which had become apparent to you.”

“You made haste to escape me,” I said laughing. “It was then you went to Stockholm.”

“No, I went to your father’s residence; I put the letter that he gave me for you into the post at Stockholm.”

“I do not seize your--”

“Nothing is easier to understand,” interrupted the marquis. “I do not reside in Sweden, and we wished to throw you off the track.”

“Will you continue the explanation yourself?” asked Jacques Bricheteau, who spoke, as you may have observed, my dear friend, with elegance and fluency.

“No, no, go on,” said the marquis; “you are giving it admirably.”

“Feeling certain that your equivocal position as to family would injure the political career your father desired you to enter, I made that remark to him in one of my letters. He agreed with me, and resolved to hasten the period of your legal recognition, which, indeed, the extinction of the family in its other branch rendered desirable. But the recognition of a natural son is a serious act which the law surrounds with many precautions. Deeds must be signed before a notary, and to do this by power of attorney would involve both in a publicity which he is anxious for the present to avoid, he being married, and, as it were, naturalized in the country of his adoption. Hence, he decided to come here himself, obtaining leave of absence for a few weeks, in order to sign in person all papers necessary to secure to you his name and property in this country. Now let me put to you a final question. Do you consent to take the name of de Sallenauve and be recognized as his son?”

“I am not a lawyer,” I answered; “but it seems to me that, supposing I do not feel honored by this recognition, it does not wholly depend on me to decline it.”

“Pardon me,” replied Jacques Bricheteau; “under the circumstances you could, if you chose, legally contest the paternity. I will also add,--and in doing so I am sure that I express the intentions of your father,--if you think that a man who has already spent half a million on furthering your career is not a desirable father, we leave you free to follow your own course, and shall not insist in any way.”

“Precisely, precisely,” said Monsieur de Sallenauve, uttering that affirmation with the curt intonation and shrill voice peculiar to the relics of the old aristocracy.

Politeness, to say the least, forced me to accept the paternity thus offered to me. To the few words I uttered to that effect, Jacques Bricheteau replied gaily:--

“We certainly do not intend to make you buy a father in a poke. Monsieur le marquis is desirous of laying before you all title-deeds and documents of every kind of which he is the present holder. Moreover, as he has been so long absent from this country, he intends to prove his identity by several of his contemporaries who are still living. For instance, among the honorable personages who have already recognized him I may mention the worthy superior of the Ursuline convent, Mother Marie-des-Anges, for whom, by the bye, you have done a masterpiece.”

“Faith, yes,” said the marquis, “a pretty thing, and if you turn out as well in politics--”

“Well, marquis,” interrupted Jacques Bricheteau, who seemed to me inclined to manage the affair, “are you ready to proceed with our young friend to the verification of the documents?”

“That is unnecessary,” I remarked, and did not think that by this refusal I pledged my faith too much; for, after all, what signify papers in the hands of a man who might have forged them or stolen them? But my father would not consent; and for more than two hours they spread before me parchments, genealogical trees, contracts, patents, documents of all kinds, from which it appeared that the family of Sallenauve is, after that of Cinq-Cygne, the most ancient family in the department of the Aube. I ought to add that the exhibition of these archives was accompanied by an infinite number of spoken details which seemed to make the identity of the Marquis de Sallenauve indisputable. On all other subjects my father is laconic; his mental capacity does not seem to me remarkable, and he willingly allowed his _mouthpiece_ to talk for him. But here, in the matter of his parchments, he was loquaciously full of anecdotes, recollections, heraldic knowledge; in short, he was exactly the old noble, ignorant and superficial in all things, but possessed of Benedictine erudition where the genealogy of his family was concerned.

The _session_ would, I believe, be still going on, if Jacques Bricheteau had not intervened. As the marquis was preparing to read a voluminous memorandum refuting a chapter in Tallemant des Reaux’ “Historiettes” which did not redound to the credit of the great house of Sallenauve, the wise organist remarked that it was time we dined, if we intended to keep an appointment already made for seven o’clock at the office of Maitre Achille Pigoult the notary.

We dined, not at the table-d’hote, but in private, and the dinner seemed very long on account of the silent preoccupation of the marquis, and the slowness with which, owing to his loss of teeth, he swallowed his food.

At seven o’clock we went to the notary’s office; but as it is now two o’clock in the morning, and I am heavy with sleep, I shall put off till to-morrow an account of what happened there.

May 4, 5 A.M.

I reckoned on peaceful slumbers, embellished by dreams. On the contrary, I did not sleep an hour, and I have waked up stung to the heart by an odious thought. But before I transmit that thought to you, I must tell you what happened at the notary’s.

Maitre Achille Pigoult, a puny little man, horribly pitted with the small-pox, and afflicted with green spectacles, above which he darts glances of vivacious intelligence, asked us if we felt warm enough, the room having no fire. Politeness required us to say yes, although he had already given signs of incendiarism by striking a match, when, from a distant and dark corner of the room, a broken, feeble voice, the owner of which we had not as yet perceived, interposed to prevent the prodigality.

“No, Achille, no, don’t make a fire,” said an old man. “There are five in the room, and the lamp gives out a good heat; before long the room would be too hot to bear.”

Hearing these words, the marquis exclaimed:--

“Ah! this is the good Monsieur Pigoult, formerly justice of the peace.”

Thus recognized, the old man rose and went up to my father, into whose face he peered.

“_Parbleu_!” he cried, “I recognize you for a Champagnard of the _vieille roche_. Achille did not deceive me in declaring that I should see two of my former acquaintances. You,” he said, addressing the organist, “you are little Bricheteau, the nephew of our good abbess, Mother Marie-des-Anges; but as for that tall skeleton, looking like a duke and peer, I can’t recall his name. However, I don’t blame my memory; after eighty-six years’ service it may well be rusty.”

“Come, grandfather,” said Achille Pigoult, “brush up your memory; and you, gentlemen, not a word, not a gesture. I want to be clear in my own mind. I have not the honor to know the client for whom I am asked to draw certain deeds, and I must, as a matter of legal regularity, have him identified.”

While his son spoke, the old man was evidently straining his memory. My father, fortunately, has a nervous twitching of the face, which increased under the fixed gaze his _certifier_ fastened upon him.

“Hey! _parbleu_! I have it!” he cried. “Monsieur is the Marquise de Sallenauve, whom we used to call the ‘Grimacer,’ and who would now be the owner of the Chateau d’Arcis if, instead of wandering off, like the other fools, into emigration, he had stayed at home and married his pretty cousin.”

“You are still _sans-culotte_, it seems,” said the marquis, laughing.

“Messieurs,” said the notary, gravely, “the proof I had arranged for myself is conclusive. This proof, together with the title-deeds and documents Monsieur le marquis has shown to me, and which he deposits in my hands, together with the certificate of identity sent to me by Mother Marie-des-Anges, who cannot, under the rules of her Order, come to my office, are sufficient for the execution of the deeds which I have here--already prepared. The presence of two witnesses is required for one of them. Monsieur Bricheteau will, of course, be the witness on your side and on the other my father, if agreeable to you; it is an honor that, as I think, belongs to him of right, for, as one may say, this matter has revived his memory.”

“Very good, messieurs, let us proceed,” said Jacques Bricheteau, heartily.

The notary sat down at his desk; the rest of us sat in a circle around him, and the reading of the first document began. Its purport was to establish, authentically, the recognition made by Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, of me, his son. But in the course of the reading a difficulty came up. Notarial deeds must, under pain of being null and void, state the domicile of all contracting parties. Now, where was my father’s domicile? This part had been left in blank by the notary, who now insisted on filling it before proceeding farther.

“As for this domicile,” said Achille Pigoult, “Monsieur le marquis appears to have none in France, as he does not reside in this country, and has owned no property here for a long time.”

“It is true,” said the marquis, seeming to put more meaning into his words than they naturally carried, “I am a mere vagabond in France.”

“Ah!” said Jacques Bricheteau, “vagabonds like you, who can present their sons with the necessary sums to buy estates, are not to be pitied. Still, the remark is a just one, not only as to France, but as to your residence in foreign countries. With your eternal mania for roving, it is really very difficult to assign you a domicile.”

“Well,” said Achille Pigoult, “it does not seem worth while to let so small a matter stop us. Monsieur,” he continued, motioning to me, “is now the owner of the Chateau d’Arcis, for an engagement to sell is as good as the sale itself. What more natural, therefore, than that the father’s domicile should be stated as being on his son’s estate, especially as this is really the family property now returned into the hands of the family, being purchased by the father for the son, particularly as that father is known and recognized by some of the oldest and most important inhabitants of the place?”

“Yes, that is true,” said old Pigoult, adopting his son’s opinion without hesitation.

“In short,” said Jacques Bricheteau, “you think the matter can go on.”

“You see that my father, a man of great experience, did not hesitate to agree with me. We say, therefore,” continued the notary, taking up his pen, “Francois-Henri-Pantaleon Dumirail, Marquis de Sallenauve, domiciled with Monsieur Charles de Sallenauve, his natural son, by him legally recognized, in the house known as the Chateau d’Arcis, arrondissement of Arcis-sur-Aube, department of the Aube.”

The rest of the deed was read and executed without comment.

Then followed a rather ridiculous scene.

“Now, Monsieur le comte,” said Jacques Bricheteau, “embrace your father.”

The marquis opened his arms rather indifferently, and I coldly fell into them, vexed with myself for not being deeply moved and for not hearing in my heart the voice of kindred. Was this barrenness of emotion the result of my sudden accession to wealth? A moment later a second deed made me possessor, on payment of one hundred and eighty thousand francs in ready money, of the Chateau d’Arcis,--a grand edifice which had caught my eye, on my first arrival in the town, by its lordly and feudal air.

“You may congratulate yourselves,” said Achille Pigoult, “that you have got that estate for a song.”

“Come, come!” said Jacques Bricheteau, “how long have you had it on your hands to sell? Your client would have let it go for one hundred and fifty thousand to others, but, as family property, you thought you could get more from us. We shall have to spend twenty thousand to make the house habitable; the land doesn’t return a rental of more than four thousand; so that our money, all expenses deducted, won’t return us more than two and a half per cent.”

“What are you complaining about?” returned Achille Pigoult. “You have employment to give and money to pay in the neighborhood, and what can be better for a candidate?”

“Ah! that electoral business,” said Jacques Bricheteau; “we will talk about that to-morrow when we bring you the purchase-money and your fees.”

Thereupon we took leave, and returned to the Hotel de la Poste, where I bade good-night to my father and came to my room to write to you.

Now I must tell you the terrible idea that drove sleep from my brain and put the pen once more in my hand,--although I am somewhat distracted from it by writing the foregoing two pages, and I do not see quite as much evidence for my notion as I did before I renewed this letter.

One thing is certain: during the last year many romantic incidents have happened to me. You may say that adventure seems to be the logical way of life for one in my position; that my birth, the chances that brought you (whose fate is so like mine) and me together, my relations with Marianina and my handsome housekeeper, and perhaps I might say with Madame de l’Estorade, all point to the possession of a fickle star, and that my present affair is only one of its caprices.

True; but what if, at the present moment under the influence of that star, I were implicated without my knowledge in some infernal plot of which I was made the passive instrument?

To put some order into my ideas, I begin by this half-million spent for an interest which you must agree is very nebulous,--that of fitting me to succeed my father in the ministry of some imaginary country, the name of which is carefully concealed from me.

Next: who is spending these fabulous sums on me? Is it a father tenderly attached to a child of love? No, it is a father who shows me the utmost coldness, who goes to sleep when deeds which concern our mutual existence are being drawn, and for whom I, on my side, am conscious of no feeling; in fact, not to mince my words, I should think him a great booby of an _emigre_ if it were not for the filial respect and duty I force myself to feel for him.

_But_--suppose this man were not my father, not even the Marquis de Sallenauve, as he asserts himself to be; suppose, like that unfortunate Lucien de Rubempre, whose history has made so much noise, I were caught in the toils of a serpent like that false abbe Don Carlos Herrera, and had made myself liable to the same awful awakening. You may say to me that you see no such likelihood; that Carlos Herrera had an object in fascinating Lucien and making him his double; but that I, an older man with solid principles and no love of luxury, who have lived a life of thought and toil, should fear such influence, is nonsense.

So be it. But why should the man who recognizes me as his son conceal the very country in which he lives, and the name by which he is known in that equally nameless Northern land which it is intimated that he governs? Why make such sacrifices for my benefit and show so little confidence? And see the mystery with which Jacques Bricheteau has surrounded my life! Do you think that that long-winded explanation of his explained it?

All this, my dear friend, rolling in my head and clashing with that half-million already paid to me, has given substance to a strange idea, at which you may perhaps laugh, but which, nevertheless, is not without precedent in criminal annals.

I told you just now that this thought invaded me as it were suddenly; it came like an instinct upon me. Assuredly, if I had had the faintest inkling of it last evening, I would have cut off my right hand sooner than sign that deed by which I have henceforth bound my fate to that of an unknown man whose past and future may be as gloomy as a canto of Dante’s Hell, and who may drag me down with him into utter darkness.

In short, this idea--round which I am making you circle because I cannot bring myself to let you enter it--here it is, in all its crudity; I am afraid of being, without my knowledge, the agent, the tool of those associations of false coiners who are known in criminal records to concoct schemes as complicated and mysterious as the one I am now involved in, in order to put into circulation the money they coin. In all such cases you will find great coming and going of accomplices; cheques drawn from a distance on the bankers in great commercial centres like Paris, Stockholm, Rotterdam. Often one hears of poor dupes compromised. In short, do you not see in the mysterious ways of this Bricheteau something like an imitation, a reflection of the manoeuvres to which these criminal workers are forced to have recourse, arranging them with a talent and a richness of imagination to which a novelist can scarcely attain?

One thing is certain: there is about me a thick unwholesome atmosphere, in which I feel that air is lacking and I cannot breathe. However, assure me, if you can, persuade me, I ask no better, that this is all an empty dream. But in any case I am determined to have a full explanation with these two men to-morrow, and to obtain, although so late, more light than they have yet doled out to me....

Another and yet stranger fact! As I wrote those last words, a noise of horses’ hoofs came from the street. Distrustful now of everything, I opened my window, and in the dawning light I saw a travelling carriage before the door of the inn, the postilion in the saddle, and Jacques Bricheteau talking to some one who was seated in the vehicle. Deciding quickly on my action, I ran rapidly downstairs; but before I reached the bottom I heard the roll of wheels and the cracking of the postilion’s whip. At the foot of the staircase I came face to face with Jacques Bricheteau. Without seeming embarrassed, in fact with the most natural air in the world, he said to me,--

“What! my dear ward already up?”

“Of course; the least I could do was to say farewell to my excellent father.”

“He did not wish it,” replied that damned musician, with an imperturbability and phlegm that deserved a thrashing; “he feared the emotions of parting.”

“Is he so dreadfully hurried that he could not even give a day to his new and ardent paternity?”

“The truth is, he is an original; what he came to do, he has done; after that, to his mind, there is nothing to stay for.”

“Ah! I understand; he hastens to those high functions he performs at that Northern court!”

Jacques Bricheteau could no longer mistake the ironical tone in which these words were said.

“Until now,” he said, “you have shown more faith.”

“Yes; but I confess that faith begins to stagger under the weight of the mysteries with which it is loaded down without relief.”

“Seeing you at this decisive moment in your career giving way to doubts which our whole conduct pursued to you through many years ought to refute, I should be almost in despair,” replied Jacques Bricheteau, “if I had none but personal denials and asseverations to offer you. But, as you will remember, old Pigoult spoke of an aunt of mine, living in this neighborhood, where you will soon, I hope, find her position a most honorable one. I had arranged that you should see her in the course of the day; but now, if you will grant me the time to shave, I will take you at once, early as it is, to the convent of the Ursulines. There you shall question Mother Marie-des-Anges, who has the reputation of a saint throughout this whole department, and I think that at the close of your interview with her no doubt can remain upon your mind.”

While that devil of a man was speaking, his countenance had so perfect a look of integrity and benevolence, his speech, always calm, elegant, and self-possessed, so impressed the mind of his hearer, that I felt the tide of my anger going down and my sense of security rising.

In fact, his answer _is_ irresistible. The convent of the Ursuline sisters--heavens and earth! that can’t be the rendezvous of makers of false coin; and if the Mother Marie-des-Anges guarantees my father to me, as it appears she has already done to the notary, I should be foolish indeed to persist in my doubts.

“Very good,” I said to Jacques Bricheteau, “I will go up and get my hat and walk up and down the bank of the river until you are ready.”

“That’s right; and be sure you watch the door of the hotel to see that I do not give you the slip as I did once upon a time on the Quai de Bethune.”

Impossible to be more intelligent than that man; he seems to divine one’s thoughts. I was ashamed of this last doubt of mine, and told him that, on the whole, I would go and finish a letter while awaiting him. It was this letter, dear friend, which I must now close if I wish it to go by to-day’s post. I will write you soon of my visit to the convent.

XIV. MARIE-GASTON TO MADAME LA COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE

Arcis-sur-Aube, May 6, 1839.

Madame,--In any case I should gladly have profited by the request you were so good as to make that I should write to you during my stay in this town; but in granting me this favor you could not really know the full extent of your charity. Without you, madame, and the consolation of writing to you sometimes, what would become of me under the habitual weight of my sad thoughts in a town which has neither society, nor commerce, nor curiosities, nor environs; and where all intellectual activity spends itself on the making of pickled pork, soap-grease, stockings, and cotton night-caps. Dorlange, whom I shall not long call by that name (you shall presently know why) is so absorbed in steering his electoral frigate that I scarcely see him.

I told you, madame, that I resolved to come down here and join our mutual friend in consequence of a certain trouble of mind apparent in one of his letters, which informed me of a great revolution taking place in his life. I am able to-day to be more explicit. Dorlange at last knows his father. He is the natural son of the Marquis de Sallenauve, the last living scion of one of the best families in Champagne. Without explaining the reasons which have hitherto induced him to keep his son’s birth secret, the marquis has now recognized him legally. He has also bought and presented to him an estate formerly belonging to the Sallenauve family. This estate is situated in Arcis itself, and its possession will assist the project of our friend’s election. That project dates much farther back than we thought; and it did not take its rise in the fancy of Dorlange.

A year ago, the marquis began to prepare for it by sending his son a sum of money for the purchase of real estate in conformity with electoral laws; and it is also for the furtherance of this purpose that he has now made him doubly a landowner. The real object of all these sacrifices not seeming plain to Charles de Sallenauve, doubts have arisen in his mind, and it was to assist in dispelling them that my friendship for the poor fellow brought me here.

The marquis appears to be as odd and whimsical as he is opulent; for, instead of remaining in Arcis, where his presence and his name would contribute to the success of the election he desires, the very day after legal formalities attending the recognition of his son had been complied with, he departed furtively for foreign countries, where he says he has important interests, without so much as taking leave of his son. This coldness has poisoned the happiness Charles would otherwise feel in these events; but one must take fathers as they are, for Dorlange and I are living proofs that all cannot have them as they want them.

Another eccentricity of the marquis is the choice he has made, as chief assistant in his son’s election, of an old Ursuline nun, with whom he seems to have made a bargain, in which, strange to say, you have unconsciously played a part. Yes, madame, the Saint-Ursula for which, unknown to yourself, you were posing, will have, to all appearances, a considerable influence on the election of our friend. The case is this:

For many years Mother Marie-des-Anges, superior of the Ursuline convent at Arcis-sur-Aube, has desired to install in the chapel of her convent an image of its patron saint. But this abbess, who is a woman of taste and intelligence, would not listen to the idea of one of those stock figures which can be bought ready-made from the venders of church decorations. On the other hand, she thought it was robbing her poor to spend on this purpose the large sum necessary to procure a work of art. The nephew of this excellent woman is an organist in Paris to whom the Marquis de Sallenauve, then in emigration, had confided the care of his son. When it became a question of making Charles a deputy, the marquis naturally thought of Arcis, a place where his family had left so many memories. The organist also recollected his aunt’s desire; he knew how influential she was in that region because of her saintliness, and having in his nature a touch of that intrigue which likes to undertake things difficult and arduous, he went to see her, with the approval of the Marquis de Sallenauve, and let her know that one of the most skilful sculptors in Paris was ready to make her the statue of Saint-Ursula if she, on her side, would promise to secure the artist’s election as deputy from the arrondissement of Arcis.

The old nun did not think the undertaking beyond her powers. She now possesses the object of her pious longings; the statue arrived some days ago, and is already in the chapel of the convent, where she proposes to give it, before long, a solemn inauguration. It now remains to be seen whether the good nun will perform her part of the contract.

Well, madame, strange to say, after hearing and inquiring into the whole matter I shall not be surprised if this remarkable woman should carry the day. From the description our friend gives of her, Mother Marie-des-Anges is a small woman, short and thick-set, whose face is prepossessing and agreeable beneath its wrinkles and the mask of saffron-tinted pallor which time and the austerities of a cloister have placed upon it. Carrying very lightly the weight of her corpulence and also that of her seventy-six years, she is lively, alert, and frisky to a degree that shames the youngest of us. For fifty years she has governed in a masterly manner her community, which has always been the most regular, the best organized, and also the richest society in the diocese of Troyes. Admirably fitted for the training of youth, she has long conducted a school for girls, which is famous throughout the department of the Aube and adjacent regions. Having thus superintended the education of nearly all the daughters of the best houses in the province, it is easy to imagine the influence she has acquired among the aristocracy,--an influence she probably intends to use in the electoral struggle she has promised to take part in.

On the other hand, it appears that this really extraordinary woman is the sovereign disposer of the votes of the democratic party in the arrondissement of Arcis. Until now, the existence of that party in Arcis has been considered problematical; but it is actually, by its nature, active and stirring, and our candidate proposes to present himself under its banner. Evidently, therefore, the support the good mother has promised will be useful and important.

I am sure you will admire with me the--as one might say--bicephalous ability of this old nun, who has managed to keep well with the nobility and the secular clergy on the one hand, and on the other to lead with her wand the radical party, their sworn enemy. Admirable for her charity and her lucid intellect, respected throughout the region as a saint, exposed during the Revolution to a dreadful persecution, which she bore with rare courage, one can easily understand her close relations with the upper and conservative classes; but why she should be equally welcome to democrats and to the subverters of order would seem, at first, to pass all belief.

The power which she undoubtedly wields over the revolutionary party took its rise, madame, in a struggle which they formerly had together. In 1793 that amiable party were bent on cutting her throat. Driven from her convent, and convicted of harboring a “refractory” priest, she was incarcerated, arraigned before the Revolutionary tribunal, and condemned to death. The matter was reported to Danton, a native of Arcis, and then a member of the National Convention. Danton had known Mother Marie-des-Anges; he thought her the most virtuous and enlightened woman he had ever met. Hearing of her condemnation, he was furiously angry, and wrote, as they said in those days, a high-horse letter to the Revolutionary tribunal, and, with an authority no human being in Arcis would have dared to contest, he ordered a reprieve.

The same day he mounted the tribune, and after speaking in general terms of the “bloody boobies” who by their foolish fury compromised the future of the Revolution, he told who and what Mother Marie-des-Anges really was; he dwelt on her marvellous aptitude for the training of youth, and he presented a scheme in which she was placed at the head of a “grand national gynaecium,” the organization of which was to be made the subject of another decree. Robespierre, who would have thought the intellect of an Ursuline nun only a more imperative reason for bringing her under the revolutionary axe, was absent that day from the session, and the motion was voted with enthusiasm. The head of Mother Marie-des-Anges being indispensably necessary to the carrying out of this decree of the sovereign people, she kept it on her shoulders, and the headsman put aside his machine.

Though the other decree, organising the Grand National Gynaecium, was lost sight of in the many other duties that devolved upon the Convention, the excellent nun carried it out after her fashion. Instead of something grand and Greek and national, she started in Arcis a secular girl’s-school, and as soon as a little quiet was restored to the minds of the community, pupils flocked in from all quarters. Under the Empire Mother Marie-des-Anges was able to reconstitute her Ursuline sisterhood, and the first act of her restored authority was a recognition of gratitude. She decreed that on every year on the 5th of April, the anniversary of Danton’s death, a service should be held in the chapel of the convent for the repose of his soul. To those who objected to this edict she answered: “Do you know many for whom it is more necessary to implore God’s mercy?”

Under the Restoration, the celebration of this service became a sort of scandal; but Mother Marie-des-Anges would never hear of suppressing it, and the great veneration which has always surrounded her obliged these cavillers to hold their tongues. This courageous obstinacy had its reward, under the government of July. To-day Mother Marie-des-Anges is high in court favor, and there is nothing she cannot obtain in the most august regions of power; but it is only just to add that she asks nothing,--not even for her charities, for she provides the means to do them nobly by the wise manner in which she administers the property of her convent.

Her gratitude, thus openly shown to the memory of the great revolutionist, has been of course to the revolutionary party a potent recommendation, but not the only one.

In Arcis the leader of the advanced Left is a rich miller named Laurent Goussard, who possesses two or three mills on the river Aube. This man, formerly a member of the revolutionary municipality of Arcis and the intimate friend of Danton, was the one who wrote to the latter telling him that the axe was suspended over the throat of the ex-superior of the Ursulines. This, however, did not prevent the worthy _sans-culotte_ from buying up the greater part of the convent property when it was sold under the name of national domain.

At the period when Mother Marie-des-Anges was authorized to reconstitute her community, Laurent Goussard, who had not made much by his purchase, went to see the good abbess, and proposed to her to buy back the former property of her convent. Very shrewd in business, Laurent Goussard, whose niece Mother Marie-des-Anges had educated gratuitously, seemed to pique himself on the great liberality of his offer, the terms of which were that the sisterhood should reimburse him the amount of his purchase-money. The dear man was not however making a bad bargain, for the difference in the value of assignats with which he had paid and the good sound money he would receive made a pretty profit. But Mother Marie-des-Anges, remembering that without his warning Danton could not have saved her, did better still for her first helper. At the time when Laurent Goussard made his offer the community of the Ursulines was, financially speaking, in an excellent position. Having since its restoration received many liberal gifts, it was also enriched by the savings of its superior, made from the proceeds of her secular school, which she generously made over to the common fund. Laurent Goussard must therefore have been thunderstruck when he read the following letter:--

Your proposal does not suit me. My conscience will not allow me to
buy property below its proper value. Before the Revolution the
property of our abbey was estimated at--[so much]. That is the
price I choose to give, and not that to which it has fallen since
the great depreciation of all property called national. In a word,
my friend, I wish to pay you more than you ask; let me know if
that suits you.

Laurent Goussard thought at first that either she had misunderstood him or he her. But when it became clear to him that owing to these pretended scruples of Mother Marie-des-Anges, he was the gainer of fifty thousand francs, he would not do violence to so tender a conscience, and he pocketed this profit (which came to him literally from heaven), but he went about relating everywhere the marvellous proceeding, which, as you can well imagine, put Mother Marie-des-Anges on a pinnacle of respect (especially from the holders of other national property) which leaves her nothing to fear from any future revolution. Personally Laurent Goussard has become her slave, her henchman. He does no business, he takes no step, he never moves a sack of flour without going to her for advice; and, as she said in joke the other day, if she took a fancy to make a John the Baptist of the sub-prefect, Laurent Goussard would bring her his head on a charger. That is proof enough that he will also bring his vote and that of his friends to any candidate she may favor.

Among the clergy Mother Marie-des-Anges has, naturally, many affiliations,--as much on account of her high reputation for goodness as for the habit of her order, but she particularly counts among the number of her most zealous servitors Monseigneur Troubert, bishop of the diocese, who, though formerly a familiar of the Congregation [see “The Vicar of Tours”], has nevertheless managed to secure from the dynasty of July an archbishopric which will lead to a cardinalship.

When you have the clergy you have, or you are very near having, the legitimist party with you,--a party which, while passionately desirous of free education and filled with hatred for the July throne, is not averse, when occasion offers, to yielding to a monstrous union with the radical party. Now the head of the legitimists in Arcis and its neighborhood is, of course, the family of Cinq-Cygne. Never does the old marquise, whose haughty nature and powerful will you, madame, know well [see “An Historical Mystery”],--never does she drive into Arcis from her chateau of Cinq-Cygne, without paying a visit to Mother Marie-des-Anges, who in former days educated her daughter Berthe, now the Duchesse Georges de Maufrigneuse.

But now we come to the most opposing and resisting side,--that of the conservatives, which must not be confounded with the party of the administration. Here we find as its leader the Comte de Gondreville, your husband’s colleague in the Chamber of peers. Closely allied to the count is a very influential man, his old friend Grevin, formerly mayor and notary of Arcis, who, in turn, draws after him another elector of considerable influence, Maitre Achille Pigoult, to whom, on retiring from active life, he sold his practice as notary.

But Mother Marie-des-Anges has a powerful means of access to the Comte de Gondreville through his daughter, the Marechale de Carigliano. That great lady, who, as you know, has taken to devotion, goes into retreat every year at the Ursuline convent. More than that, the good Mother, without giving any explanation, intimates that she has a lever of some kind on the Comte de Gondreville known to herself only; in fact, the life of that old regicide--turned senator, then count of the Empire, then peer of France under two dynasties--has wormed itself through too many tortuous underground ways not to allow us to suppose the existence of secrets he might not care to have unmasked.

Now Gondreville is Grevin,--his confidant, and, as they say, his tool, his catspaw for the last fifty years. But even supposing that by an utter impossibility their close union should, under present circumstances, be sundered, we are certainly sure of Achille Pigoult, Grevin’s successor, on whom, when the purchase of the chateau d’Arcis was made in his office by the Marquis de Sallenauve, a fee was bestowed of such an unusual amount that to accept it was virtually to pledge himself.

As for the ruck of the electors, our friend cannot fail to make recruits there, by the work he is about to give in repairing the chateau, which, fortunately for him, is falling into ruin in several places. We must also count on the manifesto which Charles de Sallenauve has just issued, in which he openly declares that he will accept neither favors nor employment from the government. So that, really, taking into consideration his own oratorical talent, the support of the Opposition journals both here and in Paris, the insults and calumnies which the ministerial journals are already beginning to fire upon him, I feel great hopes of his success.

Forgive me for presenting to you in glowing colors the parliamentary future of a man of whom, you said to me the other day, you felt you could not safely make a friend, because of the lofty and rather impertinent assumption of his personality. To tell the truth, madame, whatever political success may be in store for Charles de Sallenauve, I fear he may one day regret the calmer fame of which he was already assured in the world of art. But neither he nor I was born under an easy and accommodating star. Birth has been a costly thing to us; it is therefore doubly cruel not to like us. You have been kind to me because you fancy that a lingering fragrance of our dear Louise still clings to me; give something, I beseech you, of the same kindness to him whom I have not hesitated in this letter to call our friend.

XV. MARIE-GASTON TO THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE

Arcis-sur-Aube, May 13, 1839.

Madame,--I see that the electoral fever is upon you, as you are good enough to send me from Monsieur de l’Estorade so many _discouragements_ which certainly deserve consideration.

We knew already of the mission given to Comte Maxime de Trailles,--a mission he endeavored at first to conceal under some irrigating project. We even know what you, madame, seem not to know,--that this able ministerial agent has found means to combine with the cares of electoral politics those of his own private policy. Monsieur Maxime de Trailles, if we are rightly informed, was on the point of succumbing to the chronic malady with which he has been so long afflicted; I mean _debt_. Not debts, for we say “the debt of Monsieur de Trailles,” as we say “the debt of England.” In this extremity the patient, resolved on heroic remedies, adopted that of marriage, which might perhaps be called marriage _in extremis_.

To cut a long story short, Monsieur de Trailles was sent to Arcis to put an end to the candidacy of an upstart of the Left centre, a certain Simon Giguet; and having brought forward the mayor of the town as the ministerial candidate, he finds the said mayor, named Beauvisage, possessed of an only daughter, rather pretty, and able to bring her husband five hundred thousand francs amassed in the honorable manufacture of cotton night-caps. Now you see, I am sure, the mechanism of the affair.

As for our own claims, we certainly do not make cotton night-caps, but we make statues,--statues for which we are decorated with the Legion of honor; religious statues, inaugurated with great pomp by Monseigneur the bishop of the diocese and all the constituted authorities; statues, or rather _a_ statue, which the whole population of the town has flocked to the Ursuline convent to behold, where Mesdames the nuns, not a little puffed up with this magnificent addition to their bijou of a chapel, have kept their house and their oratory open to all comers for this whole day. Is not that likely to popularize our candidacy?

This evening, to crown the ceremony of inaugurating our Saint-Ursula, we give in our chateau of Arcis a banquet to fifty guests, among whom we have had the malice to invite (with the chief inhabitants of the place) all the ministerial functionaries and, above all, the ministerial candidate. But, in view of our own declared candidacy, we feel pretty well assured that the latter will not respond to the invitation. So much the better! more room for others; and the missing guests, whose names will be made known on the morrow, will be convicted of a _servilism_ which will, we think, injure their influence with the population.

Yesterday we paid a visit at the chateau de Cinq-Cygne, where d’Arthez presented us, in the first place, to the Princesse de Cadignan, who is wonderfully well preserved. Both she and the old Marquise de Cinq-Cygne received Dorlange--I should say, Sallenauve--in the warmest manner. It was from them that we learned the history of Monsieur Maxime de Trailles’ mission and its present results. It seems that on his arrival the ministerial agent received some attentions at Cinq-Cygne,--mere floating sticks, to discover the set of his current. He evidently flattered himself that he should find support at Cinq-Cygne for his electioneering intrigue; which is so far from being the case that Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, to whom, as a Jockey Club comrade, he told all his projects, gave us the information about them which I have now given to you, and which, if you will be so kind, I should like you to make over to Monsieur de l’Estorade.

May 12th.