Part 32

Lucien drew the Bishop into a conversation that lasted for ten minutes. The women looked on Lucien as a phenomenon. His unexpected insolence had struck Mme. du Châtelet dumb; she could not find an answer. Looking round the room, she saw that every woman admired Lucien; she watched group after group repeating the phrases by which Lucien crushed her with seeming disdain, and her heart contracted with a spasm of mortification.

“Suppose that he should not come to the Prefecture after this, what talk there would be!” she thought. “Where did he learn this pride? Can Mlle. des Touches have taken a fancy for him? . . . He is so handsome. They say that she hurried to see him in Paris the day after that actress died. . . . Perhaps he has come to the rescue of his brother-in-law, and happened to be behind our calèche at Mansle by accident. Lucien looked at us very strangely that morning.”

A crowd of thoughts crossed Louise’s brain, and unluckily for her, she continued to ponder visibly as she watched Lucien. He was talking with the Bishop as if he were the king of the room; making no effort to find any one out, waiting till others came to him, looking round about him with varying expression, and as much at his ease as his model de Marsay. M. de Senonches appeared at no great distance, but Lucien still stood beside the prelate.

At the end of ten minutes Louise could contain herself no longer. She rose and went over to the Bishop and said:

“What is being said, my lord, that you smile so often?”

Lucien drew back discreetly, and left Mme. du Châtelet with his lordship.

“Ah! Mme. la Comtesse, what a clever young fellow he is! He was explaining to me that he owed all he is to you----”

“I am not ungrateful, madame,” said Lucien, with a reproachful glance that charmed the Countess.

“Let us have an understanding,” she said, beckoning him with her fan. “Come into the boudoir. My Lord Bishop, you shall judge between us.”

“She has found a funny task for his lordship,” said one of the Chandour camp, sufficiently audibly.

“Judge between us!” repeated Lucien, looking from the prelate to the lady; “then, is one of us in fault?”

Louise de Nègrepelisse sat down on the sofa in the familiar boudoir. She made the Bishop sit on one side and Lucien on the other, then she began to speak. But Lucien, to the joy and surprise of his old love, honored her with inattention; her words fell unheeded on his ears; he sat like Pasta in Tancredi, with the words O patria! upon her lips, the music of the great cavatina Dell Rizzo might have passed into his face. Indeed, Coralie’s pupil had contrived to bring the tears to his eyes.

“Oh! Louise, how I loved you!” he murmured, careless of the Bishop’s presence, heedless of the conversation, as soon as he knew that the Countess had seen the tears.

“Dry your eyes, or you will ruin me here a second time,” she said in an aside that horrified the prelate.

“And once is enough,” was Lucien’s quick retort. “That speech from Mme. d’Espard’s cousin would dry the eyes of a weeping Magdalene. Oh me! for a little moment old memories, and lost illusions, and my twentieth year came back to me, and you have----”

His lordship hastily retreated to the drawing-room at this; it seemed to him that his dignity was like to be compromised by this sentimental pair. Every one ostentatiously refrained from interrupting them, and a quarter of an hour went by; till at last Sixte du Châtelet, vexed by the laughter and talk, and excursions to the boudoir door, went in with a countenance distinctly overclouded, and found Louise and Lucien talking excitedly.

“Madame,” said Sixte in his wife’s ear, “you know Angoulême better than I do, and surely you should think of your position as Mme. la Préfète and of the Government?”

“My dear,” said Louise, scanning her responsible editor with a haughtiness that made him quake, “I am talking with M. de Rubempré of matters which interest you. It is a question of rescuing an inventor about to fall a victim to the basest machinations; you will help us. As to those ladies yonder, and their opinion of me, you shall see how I will freeze the venom of their tongues.”

She came out of the boudoir on Lucien’s arm, and drew him across to sign the contract with a great lady’s audacity.

“Write your name after mine,” she said, handing him the pen. And Lucien submissively signed in the place indicated beneath her name.

“M. de Senonches, would you have recognized M. de Rubempré?” she continued, and the insolent sportsman was compelled to greet Lucien.

She returned to the drawing-room on Lucien’s arm, and seated him on the awe-inspiring central sofa between herself and Zéphirine. There, enthroned like a queen, she began, at first in a low voice, a conversation in which epigram evidently was not wanting. Some of her old friends, and several women who paid court to her, came to join the group, and Lucien soon became the hero of the circle. The Countess drew him out on the subject of life in Paris; his satirical talk flowed with spontaneous and incredible spirit; he told anecdotes of celebrities, those conversational luxuries which the provincial devours with such avidity. His wit was as much admired as his good looks. And Mme. la Comtesse Sixte du Châtelet, preparing Lucien’s triumph so patiently, sat like a player enraptured with the sound of his instrument; she gave him opportunities for a reply; she looked round the circle for applause so openly, that not a few of the women began to think that their return together was something more than a coincidence, and that Lucien and Louise, loving with all their hearts, had been separated by a double treason. Pique, very likely, had brought about this ill-starred match with Châtelet. And a reaction set in against the prefect.

Before the Countess rose to go at one o’clock in the morning, she turned to Lucien and said in a low voice, “Do me the pleasure of coming punctually to-morrow evening.” Then, with the friendliest little nod, she went, saying a few words to Châtelet, who was looking for his hat.

“If Mme. du Châtelet has given me a correct idea of the state of affairs, count on me, my dear Lucien,” said the prefect, preparing to hurry after his wife. She was going away without him, after the Paris fashion. “Your brother-in-law may consider that his troubles are at an end,” he added as he went.

“M. le Comte surely owes me so much,” smiled Lucien.

Cointet and Petit-Claud heard these farewell speeches.

“Well, well, we are done for now,” Cointet muttered in his confederate’s ear. Petit-Claud, thunderstruck by Lucien’s success, amazed by his brilliant wit and varying charm, was gazing at Françoise de la Haye; the girl’s whole face was full of admiration for Lucien. “Be like your friend,” she seemed to say to her betrothed. A gleam of joy flitted over Petit-Claud’s countenance.

“We still have a whole day before the prefect’s dinner; I will answer for everything.”