The Deputy of Arcis

VII

THE COMTESSE DE L’ESTORADE TO MADAME OCTAVE DE CAMPS

Paris, March, 1839.

My dear friend,—­Monsieur Dorlange dined with us yesterday.  My intention was to invite him alone to a formal family dinner, so as to have him more completely under my eye, and put him to the question at my ease.  But Monsieur de l’Estorade, to whom I had not explained my charitable motives, showed me that such an invitation might wound the sensibilities of our guest; it might seem to him that the Comte de l’Estorade thought the sculptor Dorlange unfitted for the society of his friends.

“We can’t,” said my husband gaily, “treat him like the sons of our farmers who come here with the epaulet of a lieutenant on their shoulder, and whom we invite with closed doors because we can’t send them to the servants’ hall.”

We therefore invited to meet him Monsieur Joseph Bridau, the painter, the Chevalier d’Espard, Monsieur and Madame de la Bastie (formerly, you remember, Mademoiselle Modeste Mignon) and the Marquis de Ronquerolles.  When my husband invited the latter, he asked him if he had any objection to meeting the adversary of the Duc de Rhetore.

“So far from objecting,” replied Monsieur de Ronquerolles, “I am glad of the opportunity to meet a man of talent, who in the affair you speak of behaved admirably.”  And he added, after my husband had told him of our great obligation to Monsieur Dorlange, “Then he is a true hero, your sculptor! if he goes on this way, we can’t hold a candle to him.”

In his studio, with a bare throat leaving his head, which is rather too large for his body, free, and dressed in a sort of Oriental costume, Monsieur Dorlange looked to me a great deal better than he does in regular evening dress.  Though I must say that when he grows animated in speaking his face lights up, a sort of a magnetic essence flows from his eyes which I had already noticed in our preceding encounters.  Madame de la Bastie was as much struck as I was by this peculiarity.

I don’t know if I told you that the ambition of Monsieur Dorlange is to be returned to the Chamber at the coming elections.  This was the reason he gave for declining Monsieur Gaston’s commission.  What Monsieur de l’Estorade and I thought, at first, to be a mere excuse was an actual reason.  At table when Monsieur Joseph Bridau asked him point-blank what belief was to be given to the report of his parliamentary intentions, Monsieur Dorlange formally announced them; from that moment, throughout the dinner, the talk was exclusively on politics.

When it comes to topics foreign to his studies, I expected to find our artist, if not a novice, at least very slightly informed.  Not at all.  On men, on things, on the past as on the future of parties, he had very clear and really novel views, which were evidently not borrowed from the newspapers; and he put them forth in lively, easy, and elegant language; so that after his departure Monsieur de Ronquerolles and Monsieur de l’Estorade declared themselves positively surprised at the strong and powerful political attitude he had taken.  This admission was all the more remarkable because, as you know, the two gentlemen are zealous conservatives, whereas Monsieur Dorlange inclines in a marked degree to democratic principles.

This unexpected superiority in my problematical follower reassured me not a little; still, I was resolved to get to the bottom of the situation, and therefore, after dinner I drew him into one of those tete-a-tetes which the mistress of a house can always bring about.

After talking awhile about Monsieur Marie-Gaston, our mutual friend, the enthusiasms of my dear Louise and my efforts to moderate them, I asked him how soon he intended to send his Saint-Ursula to her destination.

“Everything is ready for her departure,” he replied, “but I want your exeat, madame; will you kindly tell me if you desire me to change her expression?”

“One question in the first place,” I replied:  “Will your work suffer by such a change, supposing that I desire it?”

“Probably.  If you cut the wings of a bird you hinder its flight.”

“Another question:  Is it I, or the other person whom the statue best represents?”

“You, madame; that goes without saying, for you are the present, she the past.”

“But, to desert the past for the present is a bad thing and goes by a bad name, monsieur; and yet you proclaim it with a very easy air.”

“True,” said Monsieur Dorlange, laughing, “but art is ferocious; wherever it sees material for its creations, it pounces upon it desperately.”

“Art,” I replied, “is a great word under which a multitude of things shelter themselves.  The other day you told me that circumstances, too long to relate at that moment, had contributed to fix the image of which I was the reflection in your mind, where it has left a vivid memory; was not that enough to excite my curiosity?”

“It was true, madame, that time did not allow of my making an explanation of those circumstances; but, in any case, having the honor of speaking to you for the first time, it would have been strange, would it not, had I ventured to make you any confidences?”

“Well, but now?” I said, boldly.

“Now, unless I receive more express encouragement, I am still unable to suppose that anything in my past can interest you.”

“Why not?  Some acquaintances ripen fast.  Your devotion to my Nais has advanced our friendship rapidly.  Besides,” I added, with affected levity, “I am passionately fond of stories.”

“But mine has no conclusion to it; it is an enigma even to myself.”

“All the better; perhaps between us we might find the key to it.”

Monsieur Dorlange appeared to take counsel with himself; then, after a short pause he said:—­

“It is true that women are admirably fitted to seize the lighter shades of meaning in acts and sentiments which we men are unable to decipher.  But this confidence does not concern myself alone; I should have to request that it remain absolutely between ourselves, not even excepting Monsieur de l’Estorade from this restriction.  A secret is never safe beyond the person who confides it, and the person who hears it.”

I was much puzzled, as you can well suppose, about what might follow; still, continuing my explorations, I replied:—­

“Monsieur de l’Estorade is so little in the habit of hearing everything from me, that he never even read a line of my correspondence with Madame Marie-Gaston.”

Until then, Monsieur Dorlange had stood before the fireplace, at one corner of which I was seated; but he now took a chair beside me and said, by way of preamble:—­

“I mentioned to you, madame, the family of Lanty—­”

At that instant—­provoking as rain in the midst of a picnic—­Madame de la Bastie came up to ask me if I had been to see Nathan’s last drama.  Monsieur Dorlange was forced to give up his seat beside me, and no further opportunity for renewing the conversation occurred during the evening.

I have really, as you see now, no light upon the matter, and yet when I recall the whole manner and behavior of Monsieur Dorlange, whom I studied carefully, my opinion inclines to his perfect innocence.  Nothing proves that the love I suspected plays any part in this curious affair; and I will allow you to think that I and my terrors, with which I tormented you, were terribly absurd,—­in short, that I have played the part of Belise in the Femmes Savantes, who fancies that every man she sees is fatally in love with her.

I therefore cheerfully abandon that stupid conclusion.  Lover or not, Monsieur Dorlange is a man of high character, with rare distinction of mind; and if, as I believe now, he has no misplaced pretensions, it is an honor and pleasure to count him among our friends.  Nais is enchanted with her preserver.  After he left us that evening, she said to me, with an amusing little air of approbation,—­

“Mamma, how well Monsieur Dorlange talks.”

Apropos of Nais, here is one of her remarks:—­

“When he stopped the horses, mamma, and you did not seem to notice him, I thought he was only a man.”

“How do you mean,—­only a man?”

“Well, yes! one of those persons to whom one pays no attention.  But, oh!  I was so glad when I found out he was a monsieur.  Didn’t you hear me cry out, ’Ah! you are the monsieur who saved me’?”

Though her innocence is perfect, there was such pride and vanity in this little speech that I gave her, as you may well suppose, a lecture upon it.  This distinction of man and monsieur is dreadful; but, after all, the child told the truth.  She only said, with her blunt simplicity, what our democratic customs still allow us to put in practice, though they forbid us to put it into words.  The Revolution of ’89 has at least introduced that virtuous hypocrisy into our social system.

But I refrain from politics.