Alphonse Giraud and I—between whom had sprung up that friendship of contrasts which Madame de Clericy had foreseen—were in constant communication. My summons brought him to the H?tel Clericy at once, where he found the ladies already apprised2 of their bereavement3. He and I set off again for Passy, by train this time, as our need was more urgent. I despatched instructions to the Vicomte's lawyer to follow by the next train—bringing the undertaker with him. There was no heir to my patron's titles, but it seemed necessary to observe every formality at this the dramatic extinction5 of a long and noble line.
As we drove through the streets, the newsboys were shrieking6 some tidings which we had neither time nor inclination7 to inquire into at that moment. It was a hot July day, and Paris should have been half empty, but the pavements were crowded.
"What is the matter?" I said to Alphonse Giraud, who was too busy with his horse to look[154] about. "See the faces of the men at the cafés—they are wild with excitement and some look scared. There is news afoot."
"My good friend," returned Giraud, "I was in bed when your note reached me. Besides, I only read the sporting columns of the papers."
So we took train to Passy, without learning what it was that seemed to be stirring Paris as a squall stirs the sea.
At Passy there was indeed grim work awaiting us. The Préfet himself was kind enough to busy himself in a matter which was scarcely within his province. He had instructed the police to conduct us to his house, where he received us most hospitably8.
"Neither of you is related to the Vicomte?" he said, interrogatively; and we stated our case at once.
"It is well that you did not bring Madame with you," he said. "You forbade her to come?"
And he looked at me with a keenness which, I trust, impressed the police official for whose benefit it was assumed.
"I begged her to remain in Paris."
"Ah!" and he gave a significant laugh. "However—so long as she is not here."
He was a white-faced man, who looked as if he had been dried up by some blanching9 process.[155] One could imagine that the heart inside him was white also. In his own eyes it was evident that he was a vastly clever man. I thought him rather an ass4.
"You know, gentlemen," he said, as he prepared his papers, "the recognition of the body is a mere10 formality."
"Then let us omit it, Monsieur le Préfet," exclaimed Alphonse, with characteristic cheerfulness; but the remark was treated with contempt.
"In July, gentlemen," went on the Préfet, "the Seine is warm—there are eels—a hundred animalcul?—a score of decomposing11 elements. However, there are the clothes—the contents of Monsieur le Vicomte's pockets—a signet ring. Shall we go? But first take another glass of wine. If the nerves are sensitive—a few drops of Benedictine?"
"If I may have it in a claret glass," said Alphonse, and he launched into a voluble explanation, to which the Préfet listened with a thin, transparent12 smile. I thought that he would have been better pleased had some of the Vicomte's titled friends come to observe this formality. But one's grand friends are better kept for fine weather only, and the official had to content himself with the company of a private secretary and the son of a ruined financier.[156]
Alphonse and I had no difficulty in recognizing the small belongings13 which had been extracted from my old patron's sodden14 clothing. In the letter case was a letter from myself on some small matter of business. I pointed15 this out, and signed my name a second time on the yellow and crinkled paper for the further satisfaction of the lawyer. Then we passed into an inner room and stood in the presence of the dead man. The recognition was, as the Préfet had said, a painful formality. Alphonse Giraud and I swore to the clothing—indeed, the linen16 was marked plainly enough—and we left the undertaker to his work.
Giraud looked at me with a dry smile when we stood in the fresh air again.
"You and I, Howard," he said, "seem to have got on the seamy side of life lately."
And during the journey I saw him shiver once or twice at the recollection of what we had seen. His carriage was awaiting us at the railway station. Alphonse had been brought up in a school where horses and servants are treated as machines. The man who stood at the horse's head was, however, anything but mechanical, for he ran up to us as soon as we emerged from the crowded exit.
"à BERLIN—à BERLIN." "à BERLIN—à BERLIN."
"Monseiur le Baron17!" he cried excitedly, with a dull light in his eyes that made a man of him, [157]and no servant. "Has Monsieur le Baron heard the news—the great tidings?"
"No—we have heard nothing. What is your news?"
"The King of Prussia has insulted the French Ambassador at Ems. He struck him on the face, as it is said. And war has been declared by the Emperor. They are going to march to Berlin, Monsieur!"
As he spoke18 two groups of men swaggered arm in arm along the street. They were singing "Partant pour la Syrie," very much out of tune19. Others were crying "à Berlin—à Berlin!"
Alphonse Giraud turned and looked at me with a sudden rush of colour in his cheeks.
"And I, who thought life a matter of coats and neckties," he said, with that quick recognition of his own error that first endeared him to me and made him the better man of the two.
We stood for a few minutes watching the excited groups of men on the Boulevard. At the cafés the street boys were selling newspapers at a prodigious20 rate, and wherever a soldier could be seen there were many pressing him to drink.
"In Berlin," they shouted, "you will get sour beer, so you must drink good red wine when it is to be had." And the diminutive21 bulwarks22 of[158] France were ready enough, we may be sure, to swallow Dutch courage.
"In Berlin!" echoed Giraud, at my side. "Will it end there?"
"There or in Paris," answered I, and lay no claim to astuteness23, for the words were carelessly uttered.
We drove through the noisy streets, and Frenchmen never before or since showed themselves to such small advantage—so puerile24, so petty, so vain. It was "Berlin" here and "Berlin" there, and "Down with Prussia" on every side. A hundred catchwords, a thousand raised voices, and not one cool head to realize that war is not a game. The very sellers of toys in the gutter25 had already nicknamed their wares26, and offered the passer a black doll under the name of Bismarck, or a monkey on a stick called the King of Prussia.
It was with difficulty that I brought Alphonse Giraud to a grave discussion of the pressing matter we had in hand, for his superficial nature was open to every wind that blew, and now swayed to the tempest of martial27 ardour that swept across the streets of Paris.
"I think," he said, "I will buy myself a commission. I should like to go to Berlin. Yes—Howard, mon brave, I will buy myself a commission."[159]
"With what?"
"Ah—mon Dieu!—that is true. I have no money. I am ruined. I forgot that."
And he waved a gay salutation of the whip to a passing friend.
"And then, also," he added, with a face suddenly lugubrious28, "we have the terrible business of the Vicomte. Howard—listen to me—at all costs the ladies must never see that—must never know. Dieu! it was horrible. I feel all twisted here—as when I smoked my first cigar."
He touched himself on the chest, and with one of his inimitable gestures described in the air a great upheaval29.
"I will try to prevent it," I answered.
"Then you will succeed, for your way of suggesting might easily be called by another name. And it is not only the women who obey you. I told Lucille the other day that she was afraid of you, and she blazed up in such a fury of denial that I felt smaller than nature has made me. Her anger made her more beautiful than ever, and I was stupid enough to tell her so. She hates a compliment, you know."
"Indeed, I have never tried her with one."
Alphonse looked at me with grave surprise.
"It is a good thing," he said, "that you do not love her. Name of God! where should I be?"[160]
"But it is with Madame and not Mademoiselle Lucille that we shall have to do this afternoon," I said hastily.
Although he was more or less acknowledged as an aspirant30 to Lucille's hand, Giraud refused to come within the door when we reached the H?tel Clericy.
"No," he answered; "they will not want to see me at such a time. It is only when people want to laugh that I am required."
I found Madame quite calm, and all her thoughts were for Lucille. The more a man is brought into contact with maternal31 love, even if it bear in no way upon his own life, the better he will be for it—for this is surely the loftiest of human feelings.
My own mother having died when I was but an infant, it had never been my lot to live in intimacy32 with women, until fate guided me to the H?tel Clericy.
At no time had I felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame de Clericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast its sable33 veil over her.
"Lucille," she said at once, "must not be allowed to grieve for me. She has her own sorrow to bear, for she loved her father dearly. Do not let her have any thought for me."
And later, when the gods gave me five minutes alone with Lucille herself—
"You must not," she said, her face drawn34 and[161] white, her lips quivering, "you must not let mother think that this is more than I can bear. It falls heavier upon her."
I blundered on somehow during those two days, making, no doubt, a hundred mistakes; for what comfort could I offer? What pretence35 could I make to understand the feelings of these ladies? My task was not so difficult as I had anticipated in regard to the grim coffin36 lying at Passy. To spare the other, both ladies agreed with me separately that the Vicomte should be buried from Passy as quietly as possible, and Lucille overlooked the fact that the suggestion came from such an unwelcome source as myself.
So, amid the wild excitement of July, 1870, we laid Charles Albert Malaunay, Vicomte de Clericy, to rest among his ancestors in the little church of Senneville, near Nevers. The war fever was at its height, and all France convulsed with passionate37 hatred38 for the Prussian.
It is not for one who has found his truest friends—ay, and his keenest enemies—in France to say aught against so great and gifted a people. But it seems, as I look back now, that the French were ripe in 1870 for one of those strokes by which High Heaven teaches nations from time to time through the world's history that human greatness is a small affair.[162]
There are no people so tolerant of folly39 as the Parisians. It walks abroad in the streets of the great city with such unblushing self-satisfaction—such a brazen40 sense of its own superiority—that any Englishman must long to import a hundred London street boys, with their sense of ridicule41 and fearless tongue. At all times the world has possessed42 an army of geniuses whose greatness consists of faith and not of works—of faith in themselves which takes the outward form of weird43 clothing, long hair, and a literary or artistic44 pose. Paris streets were so full of such in 1870 that all thoughtful men could scarce fail to recognise a nation in its decadence45.
"The asses46 preponderate47 in the streets," said John Turner to me. "You may hear their bray48 in every café, and France is going to the devil."
I busied myself with looking into the money affairs of my poor patron, and found them in great disorder51. All the ready cash had fallen into the hands of Miste. Some of the estates, as, indeed, I already knew, yielded little or nothing. The commerce of France was naturally paralysed by the declaration of war, and no one wanted a vast old house in the Faubourg St. Germain—a hotbed of Legitimism where no good Buonapartist cared to own a friend or show his face.[163]
I disguised nothing from Madame de Clericy, whom indeed it was hard to deceive.
"Then," she said, "there is no money."
We were in my study, where I was seated at the table, while Madame moved from table to mantelpiece with a woman's keen sight for the blemishes52 to be found in a bachelor's apartment.
"For the moment you are in need of ready money—that is all. If the war is brought to a speedy termination, all will be set right."
"And if the war is not brought to a speedy termination—you are a second-rate optimist53, mon ami—what then?"
She looked at me probingly. The windows were open, and we heard the cries of the newsboys in the streets.
"Hear!" she said; "they are shouting of victories."
"You mean," said the Vicomtesse slowly, "that they will shout of victories until the Prussians are in sight of Paris."
"The Parisians will pay two sous for good news, and nothing at all for evil tidings," I answered.
Thus we lived for some weeks, through the heat of July—and I could neither leave Paris nor give thought to Charles Miste. That scoundrel was,[164] however, singularly quiet. No cheque had been cashed, and we knew, at all events, that he had realised none of his stolen wealth. On the tenth of July the Ollivier Ministry56 fell. Things were going from bad to worse. At the end of the month the Emperor quitted St. Cloud to take command of the army. He never came to France again.
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1
rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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apprised
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| v.告知，通知( apprise的过去式和过去分词 )；评价 | |
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bereavement
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| n.亲人丧亡，丧失亲人，丧亲之痛 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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hospitably
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| 亲切地，招待周到地，善于款待地 | |
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blanching
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| adj.漂白的n.热烫v.使变白( blanch的现在分词 )；使（植物）不见阳光而变白；酸洗（金属）使有光泽；用沸水烫（杏仁等）以便去皮 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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decomposing
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| 腐烂( decompose的现在分词 )； （使）分解； 分解（某物质、光线等） | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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baron
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| n.男爵；(商业界等)巨头，大王 | |
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18
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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diminutive
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| adj.小巧可爱的，小的 | |
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bulwarks
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| n.堡垒( bulwark的名词复数 )；保障；支柱；舷墙 | |
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astuteness
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| n.敏锐；精明；机敏 | |
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puerile
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| adj.幼稚的，儿童的 | |
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gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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wares
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| n. 货物, 商品 | |
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martial
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| adj.战争的，军事的，尚武的，威武的 | |
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lugubrious
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| adj.悲哀的，忧郁的 | |
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upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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aspirant
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| n.热望者；adj.渴望的 | |
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maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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sable
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| n.黑貂；adj.黑色的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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39
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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40
brazen
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| adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的 | |
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ridicule
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| v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄 | |
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42
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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43
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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44
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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45
decadence
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| n.衰落，颓废 | |
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46
asses
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| n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人 | |
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47
preponderate
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| v.数目超过；占优势 | |
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48
bray
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| n.驴叫声, 喇叭声；v.驴叫 | |
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49
dens
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| n.牙齿，齿状部分；兽窝( den的名词复数 )；窝点；休息室；书斋 | |
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50
knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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51
disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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52
blemishes
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| n.（身体的）瘢点( blemish的名词复数 )；伤疤；瑕疵；污点 | |
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53
optimist
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| n.乐观的人，乐观主义者 | |
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54
expedient
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| adj.有用的，有利的；n.紧急的办法，权宜之计 | |
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55
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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56
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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