The Collection of Antiquities

But for these explanations which depict one side of provincial life in the time of the Empire and the Restoration, it would not be easy to understand the opening scene of this history, an incident which took place in the great salon one evening towards the end of October 1822.  The card-tables were forsaken, the Collection of Antiquities—­elderly nobles, elderly countesses, young marquises, and simple baronesses —­had settled their losses and winnings.  The master of the house was pacing up and down the room, while Mlle. Armande was putting out the candles on the card-tables.  He was not taking exercise alone, the Chevalier was with him, and the two wrecks of the eighteenth century were talking of Victurnien.  The Chevalier had undertaken to broach the subject with the Marquis.

“Yes, Marquis,” he was saying, “your son is wasting his time and his youth; you ought to send him to court.”

“I have always thought,” said the Marquis, “that if my great age prevents me from going to court—­where, between ourselves, I do not know what I should do among all these new people whom his Majesty receives, and all that is going on there—­that if I could not go myself, I could at least send my son to present our homage to His Majesty.  The King surely would do something for the Count—­give him a company, for instance, or a place in the Household, a chance, in short, for the boy to win his spurs.  My uncle the Archbishop suffered a cruel martyrdom; I have fought for the cause without deserting the camp with those who thought it their duty to follow the Princes.  I held that while the King was in France, his nobles should rally round him.—­Ah! well, no one gives us a thought; a Henry IV. would have written before now to the d’Esgrignons, ’Come to me, my friends; we have won the day!’—­After all, we are something better than the Troisvilles, yet here are two Troisvilles made peers of France; and another, I hear, represents the nobles in the Chamber.” (He took the upper electoral colleges for assemblies of his own order.) “Really, they think no more of us than if we did not exist.  I was waiting for the Princes to make their journey through this part of the world; but as the Princes do not come to us, we must go to the Princes.”

“I am enchanted to learn that you think of introducing our dear Victurnien into society,” the Chevalier put in adroitly.  “He ought not to bury his talents in a hole like this town.  The best fortune that he can look for here is to come across some Norman girl” (mimicking the accent), “country-bred, stupid, and rich.  What could he make of her?—­his wife?  Oh! good Lord!”

“I sincerely hope that he will defer his marriage until he has obtained some great office or appointment under the Crown,” returned the gray-haired Marquis.  “Still, there are serious difficulties in the way.”

And these were the only difficulties which the Marquis saw at the outset of his son’s career.

“My son, the Comte d’Esgrignon, cannot make his appearance at court like a tatterdemalion,” he continued after a pause, marked by a sigh; “he must be equipped.  Alas! for these two hundred years we have had no retainers.  Ah!  Chevalier, this demolition from top to bottom always brings me back to the first hammer stroke delivered by M. de Mirabeau.  The one thing needful nowadays is money; that is all that the Revolution has done that I can see.  The King does not ask you whether you are a descendant of the Valois or a conquerer of Gaul; he asks whether you pay a thousand francs in tailles which nobles never used to pay.  So I cannot well send the Count to court without a matter of twenty thousand crowns——­”

“Yes,” assented the Chevalier, “with that trifling sum he could cut a brave figure.”

“Well,” said Mlle. Armande, “I have asked Chesnel to come to-night.  Would you believe it, Chevalier, ever since the day when Chesnel proposed that I should marry that miserable du Croisier——­”

“Ah! that was truly unworthy, mademoiselle!” cried the Chevalier.

“Unpardonable!” said the Marquis.

“Well, since then my brother has never brought himself to ask anything whatsoever of Chesnel,” continued Mlle. Armande.

“Of your old household servant?  Why, Marquis, you would do Chesnel honor—­an honor which he would gratefully remember till his latest breath.”

“No,” said the Marquis, “the thing is beneath one’s dignity, it seems to me.”

“There is not much question of dignity; it is a matter of necessity,” said the Chevalier, with the trace of a shrug.

“Never,” said the Marquis, riposting with a gesture which decided the Chevalier to risk a great stroke to open his old friend’s eyes.

“Very well,” he said, “since you do not know it, I will tell you myself that Chesnel has let your son have something already, something like——­”

“My son is incapable of accepting anything whatever from Chesnel,” the Marquis broke in, drawing himself up as he spoke.  “He might have come to you to ask you for twenty-five louis——­”

“Something like a hundred thousand livres,” said the Chevalier, finishing his sentence.

“The Comte d’Esgrignon owes a hundred thousand livres to a Chesnel!” cried the Marquis, with every sign of deep pain.  “Oh! if he were not an only son, he should set out to-night for Mexico with a captain’s commission.  A man may be in debt to money-lenders, they charge a heavy interest, and you are quits; that is right enough; but Chesnel! a man to whom one is attached!——­”

“Yes, our adorable Victurnien has run through a hundred thousand livres, dear Marquis,” resumed the Chevalier, flicking a trace of snuff from his waistcoat; “it is not much, I know.  I myself at his age——­ But, after all, let us let old memories be, Marquis.  The Count is living in the provinces; all things taken into consideration, it is not so much amiss.  He will not go far; these irregularities are common in men who do great things afterwards——­”

“And he is sleeping upstairs, without a word of this to his father,” exclaimed the Marquis.

“Sleeping innocently as a child who has merely got five or six little bourgeoises into trouble, and now must have duchesses,” returned the Chevalier.

“Why, he deserves a lettre de cachet!”

“‘They’ have done away with lettres de cachet,” said the Chevalier.  “You know what a hubbub there was when they tried to institute a law for special cases.  We could not keep the provost’s courts, which M. de Bonaparte used to call commissions militaires.”

“Well, well; what are we to do if our boys are wild, or turn out scapegraces?  Is there no locking them up in these days?” asked the Marquis.

The Chevalier looked at the heartbroken father and lacked courage to answer, “We shall be obliged to bring them up properly.”

“And you have never said a word of this to me, Mlle. d’Esgrignon,” added the Marquis, turning suddenly round upon Mlle. Armande.  He never addressed her as Mlle. d’Esgrignon except when he was vexed; usually she was called “my sister.”

“Why, monsieur, when a young man is full of life and spirits, and leads an idle life in a town like this, what else can you expect?” asked Mlle. d’Esgrignon.  She could not understand her brother’s anger.

“Debts! eh! why, hang it all!” added the Chevalier.  “He plays cards, he has little adventures, he shoots,—­all these things are horribly expensive nowadays.”

“Come,” said the Marquis, “it is time to send him to the King.  I will spend to-morrow morning in writing to our kinsmen.”

“I have some acquaintance with the Ducs de Navarreins, de Lenoncourt, de Maufrigneuse, and de Chaulieu,” said the Chevalier, though he knew, as he spoke, that he was pretty thoroughly forgotten.

“My dear Chevalier, there is no need of such formalities to present a d’Esgrignon at court,” the Marquis broke in.—­“A hundred thousand livres,” he muttered; “this Chesnel makes very free.  This is what comes of these accursed troubles.  M. Chesnel protects my son.  And now I must ask him. . . .  No, sister, you must undertake this business.  Chesnel shall secure himself for the whole amount by a mortgage on our lands.  And just give this harebrained boy a good scolding; he will end by ruining himself if he goes on like this.”

The Chevalier and Mlle. d’Esgrignon thought these words perfectly simple and natural, absurd as they would have sounded to any other listener.  So far from seeing anything ridiculous in the speech, they were both very much touched by a look of something like anguish in the old noble’s face.  Some dark premonition seemed to weigh upon M. d’Esgrignon at that moment, some glimmering of an insight into the changed times.  He went to the settee by the fireside and sat down, forgetting that Chesnel would be there before long; that Chesnel, of whom he could not bring himself to ask anything.

Just then the Marquis d’Esgrignon looked exactly as any imagination with a touch of romance could wish.  He was almost bald, but a fringe of silken, white locks, curled at the tips, covered the back of his head.  All the pride of race might be seen in a noble forehead, such as you may admire in a Louis XV., a Beaumarchais, a Marechal de Richelieu, it was not the square, broad brow of the portraits of the Marechal de Saxe; nor yet the small hard circle of Voltaire, compact to overfulness; it was graciously rounded and finely moulded, the temples were ivory tinted and soft; and mettle and spirit, unquenched by age, flashed from the brilliant eyes.  The Marquis had the Conde nose and the lovable Bourbon mouth, from which, as they used to say of the Comte d’Artois, only witty and urbane words proceed.  His cheeks, sloping rather than foolishly rounded to the chin, were in keeping with his spare frame, thin legs, and plump hands.  The strangulation cravat at his throat was of the kind which every marquis wears in all the portraits which adorn eighteenth century literature; it is common alike to Saint-Preux and to Lovelace, to the elegant Montesquieu’s heroes and to Diderot’s homespun characters (see the first editions of those writers’ works).

The Marquis always wore a white, gold-embroidered, high waistcoat, with the red ribbon of a commander of the Order of St. Louis blazing upon his breast; and a blue coat with wide skirts, and fleur-de-lys on the flaps, which were turned back—­an odd costume which the King had adopted.  But the Marquis could not bring himself to give up the Frenchman’s knee-breeches nor yet the white silk stockings or the buckles at the knees.  After six o’clock in the evening he appeared in full dress.

He read no newspapers but the Quotidienne and the Gazette de France, two journals accused by the Constitutional press of obscurantist views and uncounted “monarchical and religious” enormities; while the Marquis d’Esgrignon, on the other hand, found heresies and revolutionary doctrines in every issue.  No matter to what extremes the organs of this or that opinion may go, they will never go quite far enough to please the purists on their own side; even as the portrayer of this magnificent personage is pretty certain to be accused of exaggeration, whereas he has done his best to soften down some of the cruder tones and dim the more startling tints of the original.

The Marquis d’Esgrignon rested his elbows on his knees and leant his head on his hands.  During his meditations Mlle. Armande and the Chevalier looked at one another without uttering the thoughts in their minds.  Was he pained by the discovery that his son’s future must depend upon his sometime land steward?  Was he doubtful of the reception awaiting the young Count?  Did he regret that he had made no preparation for launching his heir into that brilliant world of court?  Poverty had kept him in the depths of his province; how should he have appeared at court?  He sighed heavily as he raised his head.

That sigh, in those days, came from the real aristocracy all over France; from the loyal provincial noblesse, consigned to neglect with most of those who had drawn sword and braved the storm for the cause.

“What have the Princes done for the du Guenics, or the Fontaines, or the Bauvans, who never submitted?” he muttered to himself.  “They fling miserable pensions to the men who fought most bravely, and give them a royal lieutenancy in a fortress somewhere on the outskirts of the kingdom.”

Evidently the Marquis doubted the reigning dynasty.  Mlle. d’Esgrignon was trying to reassure her brother as to the prospects of the journey, when a step outside on the dry narrow footway gave them notice of Chesnel’s coming.  In another moment Chesnel appeared; Josephin, the Count’s gray-aired valet, admitted the notary without announcing him.

“Chesnel, my boy——­” (Chesnel was a white-haired man of sixty-nine, with a square-jawed, venerable countenance; he wore knee-breeches, ample enough to fill several chapters of dissertation in the manner of Sterne, ribbed stockings, shoes with silver clasps, an ecclesiastical-looking coat and a high waistcoat of scholastic cut.)

“Chesnel, my boy, it was very presumptuous of you to lend money to the Comte d’Esgrignon!  If I repaid you at once and we never saw each other again, it would be no more than you deserve for giving wings to his vices.”

There was a pause, a silence such as there falls at court when the King publicly reprimands a courtier.  The old notary looked humble and contrite.

“I am anxious about that boy, Chesnel,” continued the Marquis in a kindly tone; “I should like to send him to Paris to serve His Majesty.  Make arrangements with my sister for his suitable appearance at court.—­And we will settle accounts——­”

The Marquis looked grave as he left the room with a friendly gesture of farewell to Chesnel.

“I thank M. le Marquis for all his goodness,” returned the old man, who still remained standing.

Mlle. Armande rose to go to the door with her brother; she had rung the bell, old Josephin was in readiness to light his master to his room.

“Take a seat, Chesnel,” said the lady, as she returned, and with womanly tact she explained away and softened the Marquis’ harshness.  And yet beneath that harshness Chesnel saw a great affection.  The Marquis’ attachment for his old servant was something of the same order as a man’s affection for his dog; he will fight any one who kicks the animal, the dog is like a part of his existence, a something which, if not exactly himself, represents him in that which is nearest and dearest—­his sensibilities.

“It is quite time that M. le Comte should be sent away from the town, mademoiselle,” he said sententiously.

“Yes,” returned she.  “Has he been indulging in some new escapade?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Well, why do you blame him?”

“I am not blaming him, mademoiselle.  No, I am not blaming him.  I am very far from blaming him.  I will even say that I shall never blame him, whatever he may do.”

There was a pause.  The Chevalier, nothing if not quick to take in a situation, began to yawn like a sleep-ridden mortal.  Gracefully he made his excuses and went, with as little mind to sleep as to go and drown himself.  The imp Curiosity kept the Chevalier wide awake, and with airy fingers plucked away the cotton wool from his ears.

“Well, Chesnel, is it something new?” Mlle. Armande began anxiously.

“Yes, things that cannot be told to M. le Marquis; he would drop down in an apoplectic fit.”

“Speak out,” she said.  With her beautiful head leant on the back of her low chair, and her arms extended listlessly by her side, she looked as if she were waiting passively for her deathblow.

“Mademoiselle, M. le Comte, with all his cleverness, is a plaything in the hands of mean creatures, petty natures on the lookout for a crushing revenge.  They want to ruin us and bring us low!  There is the President of the Tribunal, M. de Ronceret; he has, as you know, a very great notion of his descent——­”

“His grandfather was an attorney,” interposed Mlle. Armande.

“I know he was.  And for that reason you have not received him; nor does he go to M. de Troisville’s, nor to M. le Duc de Verneuil’s, nor to the Marquis de Casteran’s; but he is one of the pillars of du Croisier’s salon.  Your nephew may rub shoulders with young M. Fabien du Ronceret without condescending too far, for he must have companions of his own age.  Well and good.  That young fellow is at the bottom of all M. le Comte’s follies; he and two or three of the rest of them belong to the other side, the side of M. le Chevalier’s enemy, who does nothing but breathe threats of vengeance against you and all the nobles together.  They all hope to ruin you through your nephew.  The ringleader of the conspiracy is this sycophant of a du Croisier, the pretended Royalist.  Du Croisier’s wife, poor thing, knows nothing about it; you know her, I should have heard of it before this if she had ears to hear evil.  For some time these wild young fellows were not in the secret, nor was anybody else; but the ringleaders let something drop in jest, and then the fools got to know about it, and after the Count’s recent escapades they let fall some words while they were drunk.  And those words were carried to me by others who are sorry to see such a fine, handsome, noble, charming lad ruining himself with pleasure.  So far people feel sorry for him; before many days are over they will—­I am afraid to say what——­”

“They will despise him; say it out, Chesnel!” Mlle. Armande cried piteously.

“Ah!  How can you keep the best people in the town from finding out faults in their neighbors?  They do not know what to do with themselves from morning to night.  And so M. le Comte’s losses at play are all reckoned up.  Thirty thousand francs have taken flight during these two months, and everybody wonders where he gets the money.  If they mention it when I am present, I just call them to order.  Ah! but—­’Do you suppose’ (I told them this morning), ’do you suppose that if the d’Esgrignon family have lost their manorial rights, that therefore they have been robbed of their hoard of treasure?  The young Count has a right to do as he pleases; and so long as he does not owe you a half-penny, you have no right to say a word.’”

Mlle, Armande held out her hand, and the notary kissed it respectfully.

“Good Chesnel! . . .  But, my friend, how shall we find the money for this journey?  Victurnien must appear as befits his rank at court.”

“Oh!  I have borrowed money on Le Jard, mademoiselle.”

“What?  You have nothing left!  Ah, heaven! what can we do to reward you?”

“You can take the hundred thousand francs which I hold at your disposal.  You can understand that the loan was negotiated in confidence, so that it might not reflect on you; for it is known in the town that I am closely connected with the d’Esgrignon family.”

Tears came into Mlle. Armande’s eyes.  Chesnel saw them, took a fold of the noble woman’s dress in his hands, and kissed it.

“Never mind,” he said, “a lad must sow his wild oats.  In great salons in Paris his boyish ideas will take a new turn.  And, really, though our old friends here are the worthiest folk in the world, and no one could have nobler hearts than they, they are not amusing.  If M. le Comte wants amusement, he is obliged to look below his rank, and he will end by getting into low company.”

Next day the old traveling coach saw the light, and was sent to be put in repair.  In a solemn interview after breakfast, the hope of the house was duly informed of his father’s intentions regarding him—­he was to go to court and ask to serve His Majesty.  He would have time during the journey to make up his mind about his career.  The navy or the army, the privy council, an embassy, or the Royal Household,—­all were open to a d’Esgrignon, a d’Esgrignon had only to choose.  The King would certainly look favorably upon the d’Esgrignons, because they had asked nothing of him, and had sent the youngest representative of their house to receive the recognition of Majesty.

But young d’Esgrignon, with all his wild pranks, had guessed instinctively what society in Paris meant, and formed his own opinions of life.  So when they talked of his leaving the country and the paternal roof, he listened with a grave countenance to his revered parent’s lecture, and refrained from giving him a good deal of information in reply.  As, for instance, that young men no longer went into the army or the navy as they used to do; that if a man had a mind to be a second lieutenant in a cavalry regiment without passing through a special training in the Ecoles, he must first serve in the Pages; that sons of the greatest houses went exactly like commoners to Saint-Cyr and the Ecole polytechnique, and took their chances of being beaten by base blood.  If he had enlightened his relatives on these points, funds might not have been forthcoming for a stay in Paris; so he allowed his father and Aunt Armande to believe that he would be permitted a seat in the King’s carriages, that he must support his dignity at court as the d’Esgrignon of the time, and rub shoulders with great lords of the realm.

It grieved the Marquis that he could send but one servant with his son; but he gave him his own valet Josephin, a man who can be trusted to take care of his young master, and to watch faithfully over his interests.  The poor father must do without Josephin, and hope to replace him with a young lad.

“Remember that you are a Carol, my boy,” he said; “remember that you come of an unalloyed descent, and that your scutcheon bears the motto Cil est nostre; with such arms you may hold your head high everywhere, and aspire to queens.  Render grace to your father, as I to mine.  We owe it to the honor of our ancestors, kept stainless until now, that we can look all men in the face, and need bend the knee to none save a mistress, the King, and God.  This is the greatest of your privileges.”

Chesnel, good man, was breakfasting with the family.  He took no part in counsels based on heraldry, nor in the inditing of letters addressed to divers mighty personages of the day; but he had spent the night in writing to an old friend of his, one of the oldest established notaries of Paris.  Without this letter it is not possible to understand Chesnel’s real and assumed fatherhood.  It almost recalls Daedalus’ address to Icarus; for where, save in old mythology, can you look for comparisons worthy of this man of antique mould?

“My dear and ESTIMABLE Sorbier,—­I remember with no little pleasure that I made my first campaign in our honorable profession under your father, and that you had a liking for me, poor little clerk that I was.  And now I appeal to old memories of the days when we worked in the same office, old pleasant memories for our hearts, to ask you to do me the one service that I have ever asked of you in the course of our long lives, crossed as they have been by political catastrophes, to which, perhaps, I owe it that I have the honor to be your colleague.  And now I ask this service of you, my friend, and my white hairs will be brought with sorrow to the grave if you should refuse my entreaty.  It is no question of myself or of mine, Sorbier, for I lost poor Mme. Chesnel, and I have no child of my own.  Something more to me than my own family (if I had one) is involved—­it is the Marquis d’Esgrignon’s only son.  I have had the honor to be the Marquis’ land steward ever since I left the office to which his father sent me at his own expense, with the idea of providing for me.  The house which nurtured me has passed through all the troubles of the Revolution.  I have managed to save some of their property; but what is it, after all, in comparison with the wealth that they have lost?  I cannot tell you, Sorbier, how deeply I am attached to the great house, which has been all but swallowed up under my eyes by the abyss of time.  M. le Marquis was proscribed, and his lands confiscated, he was getting on in years, he had no child.  Misfortunes upon misfortunes!  Then M. le Marquis married, and his wife died when the young Count was born, and to-day this noble, dear, and precious child is all the life of the d’Esgrignon family; the fate of the house hangs upon him.  He has got into debt here with amusing himself.  What else should he do in the provinces with an allowance of a miserable hundred louis?  Yes, my friend, a hundred louis, the great house has come to this.

“In this extremity his father thinks it necessary to send the Count to Paris to ask for the King’s favor at court.  Paris is a very dangerous place for a lad; if he is to keep steady there, he must have the grain of sense which makes notaries of us.  Besides, I should be heartbroken to think of the poor boy living amid such hardships as we have known.—­Do you remember the pleasure with which we spent a day and a night there waiting to see The Marriage of Figaro?  Oh, blind that we were!—­We were happy and poor, but a noble cannot be happy in poverty.  A noble in want—­it is a thing against nature!  Ah!  Sorbier, when one has known the satisfaction of propping one of the grandest genealogical trees in the kingdom in its fall, it is so natural to interest oneself in it and to grow fond of it, and love it and water it and look to see it blossom.  So you will not be surprised at so many precautions on my part; you will not wonder when I beg the help of your lights, so that all may go well with our young man.

“Keep yourself informed of his movements and doings, of the company which he keeps, and watch over his connections with women.  M. le Chevalier says that an opera dancer often costs less than a court lady.  Obtain information on that point and let me know.  If you are too busy, perhaps Mme. Sorbier might know what becomes of the young man, and where he goes.  The idea of playing the part of guardian angel to such a noble and charming boy might have attractions for her.  God will remember her for accepting the sacred trust.  Perhaps when you see M. le Comte Victurnien, her heart may tremble at the thought of all the dangers awaiting him in Paris; he is very young, and handsome; clever, and at the same time disposed to trust others.  If he forms a connection with some designing woman, Mme. Sorbier could counsel him better than you yourself could do.  The old man-servant who is with him can tell you many things; sound Josephin, I have told him to go to you in delicate matters.

“But why should I say more?  We once were clerks together, and a pair of scamps; remember our escapades, and be a little bit young again, my old friend, in your dealings with him.  The sixty thousand francs will be remitted to you in the shape of a bill on the Treasury by a gentlemen who is going to Paris,” and so forth.