Part 66

“Take my arm,” he said, bowing, “and walk proudly out. I will find your carriage.”

“Will you come home with me and finish the evening?” she answered, getting into her carriage and making room for him.

La Palferine said to his groom, “Follow the carriage of madame,” and then he jumped into it beside her to the utter stupefaction of Calyste, who stood for a moment planted on his two legs as if they were lead. It was the sight of him standing thus, pale and livid, that caused Beatrix to make the sign to La Palferine to enter her carriage. Doves can be Robespierres in spite of their white wings. Three carriages reached the rue de Chartres with thundering rapidity,--that of Calyste, that of the marquise, and that of La Palferine.

“Oh! you here?” said Beatrix, entering her salon on the arm of the young count, and finding Calyste, whose horse had outstripped those of the other carriages.

“Then you know monsieur?” said Calyste, furiously.

“Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was presented to me ten days ago by Nathan,” she replied; “but you, monsieur, you have known me four years!--”

“And I am ready, madame,” said Charles-Edouard, “to make the Marquise d’Espard repent to her third generation for being the first to turn away from you.”

“Ah! it was she, was it?” cried Beatrix; “I will make her rue it.”

“To revenge yourself thoroughly,” said the young man in her ear, “you ought to recover your husband; and I am capable of bringing him back to you.”

The conversation, thus begun, went on till two in the morning, without allowing Calyste, whose anger was again and again repressed by a look from Beatrix, to say one word to her in private. La Palferine, though he did not like Beatrix, showed a superiority of grace, good taste, and cleverness equal to the evident inferiority of Calyste, who wriggled in his chair like a worm cut in two, and actually rose three times as if to box the ears of La Palferine. The third time that he made a dart forward, the young count said to him, “Are you in pain, monsieur?” in a manner which sent Calyste back to his chair, where he sat as rigid as a mile-stone.

The marquise conversed with the ease of a Celimene, pretending to ignore that Calyste was there. La Palferine had the cleverness to depart after a brilliant witticism, leaving the two lovers to a quarrel.

Thus, by Maxime’s machinations, the fire of discord flamed in the separate households of Monsieur and of Madame de Rochefide. The next day, learning the success of this last scene from La Palferine at the Jockey Club, where the young count was playing whist, Maxime went to the hotel Schontz to ascertain with what success Aurelie was rowing her boat.

“My dear,” said Madame Schontz, laughing at Maxime’s expression, “I am at an end of my expedients. Rochefide is incurable. I end my career of gallantry by perceiving that cleverness is a misfortune.”

“Explain to me that remark.”

“In the first place, my dear friend, I have kept Arthur for the last week to a regimen of kicks on the shin and perpetual wrangling and jarring; in short, all we have that is most disagreeable in our business. ‘You are ill,’ he says to me with paternal sweetness, ‘for I have been good to you always and I love you to adoration.’ ‘You are to blame for one thing, my dear,’ I answered; ‘you bore me.’ ‘Well, if I do, haven’t you the wittiest and handsomest young man in Paris to amuse you?’ said the poor man. I was caught. I actually felt I loved him.”

“Ah!” said Maxime.

“How could I help it? Feeling is stronger than we; one can’t resist such things. So I changed pedals. I began to entice my judicial wild-boar, now turned like Arthur to a sheep; I gave him Arthur’s sofa. Heavens! how he bored me. But, you understand, I had to have Fabien there to let Arthur surprise us.”

“Well,” cried Maxime, “go on; what happened? Was Arthur furious?”

“You know nothing about it, my old fellow. When Arthur came in and ‘surprised’ us, Fabien and me, he retreated on the tips of his toes to the dining-room, where he began to clear his throat, ‘broum, broum!’ and cough, and knock the chairs about. That great fool of a Fabien, to whom, of course, I can’t explain the whole matter, was frightened. There, my dear Maxime, is the point we have reached.”

Maxime nodded his head, and played for a few moments with his cane.

“I have known such natures,” he said. “And the only way for you to do is to pitch Arthur out of the window and lock the door upon him. This is how you must manage it. Play that scene over again with Fabien; when Arthur surprises you, give Fabien a glance Arthur can’t mistake; if he gets angry, that will end the matter; if he still says, ‘broum, broum!’ it is just as good; you can end it a better way.”

“How?”

“Why, get angry, and say: ‘I believed you loved me, respected me; but I see you’ve no feeling at all, not even jealousy,’--you know the tirade. ‘In a case like this, Maxime’ (bring me in) ‘would kill his man on the spot’ (then weep). ‘And Fabien, he’ (mortify him by comparing him with that fellow), ‘Fabien whom I love, Fabien would have drawn a dagger and stabbed you to the heart. Ah, that’s what it is to love! Farewell, monsieur; take back your house and all your property; I shall marry Fabien; he gives me his name; he marries me in spite of his old mother--but you--’”

“I see! I see!” cried Madame Schontz. “I’ll be superb! Ah! Maxime, there will never be but one Maxime, just as there’s only one de Marsay.”

“La Palferine is better than I,” replied the Comte de Trailles, modestly. “He’ll make his mark.”

“La Palferine has tongue, but you have fist and loins. What weights you’ve carried! what cuffs you’ve given!”

“La Palferine has all that, too; he is deep and he is educated, whereas I am ignorant,” replied Maxime. “I have seen Rastignac, who has made an arrangement with the Keeper of the Seals. Fabien is to be appointed chief-justice at once, and officer of the Legion of honor after one year’s service.”

“I shall make myself devote,” said Madame Schontz, accenting that speech in a manner which obtained a nod of approbation from Maxime.