The Deputy of Arcis

III

THE COMTE DE L’ESTORADE TO MONSIEUR MARIE-GASTON

Paris, February, 1839.

Perhaps, my dear Monsieur Gaston, the public journals will have told you before this letter can arrive of the duel fought yesterday between your friend Monsieur Dorlange and the Duc de Rhetore.  But the papers, while announcing the fact as a piece of news, are debarred by custom and propriety from inferring the motives of a quarrel, and therefore they will only excite your curiosity without satisfying it.

I have, fortunately, heard from a very good source, all the details of the affair, and I hasten to transmit them to you; they are, I think, of a nature to interest you to the highest degree.

Three days ago, that is to say on the very evening of the day when I paid my visit to Monsieur Dorlange, the Duc de Rhetore occupied a stall at the Opera-house.  Next to him sat Monsieur de Ronquerolles, who has recently returned from a diplomatic mission which kept him out of France for several years.  During the entr’acte these gentlemen did not leave their seats to walk about the foyer; but, as is often done, they stood up, with their backs to the stage, facing the audience and consequently Monsieur Dorlange, who was seated directly behind them, seeming to be absorbed in an evening newspaper.  There had been that day a very scandalous, or what is called a very interesting, session of the Chamber of deputies.

The conversation between the duke and the marquis having naturally turned on the events of Parisian society which had taken place during Monsieur de Ronquerolles’ absence, the latter made the following remark which was of a nature to rouse the attention of Monsieur Dorlange.

“Your poor sister Madame de Macumer! what a sad end, after her singular marriage!”

“Ah! you know,” replied Monsieur de Rhetore, in that high-pitched tone of his, “my sister had too much imagination not to be romantic and visionary.  She loved her first husband, Monsieur de Macumer, passionately, but after a time one gets tired of everything, even widowhood.  This Marie-Gaston crossed her path.  He is agreeable in person; my sister was rich; he was deeply in debt and behaved with corresponding eagerness and devotion.  The result was that the scoundrel not only succeeded Monsieur de Macumer and killed his wife with jealousy, but he got out of her every penny the law allowed the poor foolish woman to dispose of.  My sister’s property amounted to at least twelve hundred thousand francs, not counting a delightful villa splendidly furnished which she built at Ville d’Avray.  Half of this that man obtained, the other half went to the Duc and Duchesse de Chaulieu, my father and mother, who were entitled to it by law as heirs ascendant.  As for my brother Lenoncourt and myself, we were simply disinherited.”

As soon as your name, my dear Monsieur Gaston, was uttered, Monsieur Dorlange laid aside his newspaper, and then, as Monsieur de Rhetore ended his remarks, he rose and said:—­

“Pardon me, Monsieur le duc, if I venture to correct your statement; but, as a matter of conscience, I ought to inform you that you are totally misinformed.”

“What is that you say?” returned the duke, blinking his eyes and speaking in that contemptuous tone we can all imagine.

“I say, Monsieur le duc, that Marie-Gaston is my friend from childhood; he has never been thought a scoundrel; on the contrary, the world knows him as a man of honor and talent.  So far from killing his wife with jealousy, he made her perfectly happy during the three years their marriage lasted.  As for the property—­”

“Have you considered, monsieur,” said the Duc de Rhetore, interrupting him, “the result of such language?”

“Thoroughly, monsieur; and I repeat that the property left to Marie-Gaston by the will of his wife is so little desired by him that, to my knowledge, he is about to spend a sum of two or three hundred thousand francs in building a mausoleum for a wife whom he has never ceased to mourn.”

“After all, monsieur, who are you?” said the Duc de Rhetore, again interrupting him with ill-restrained impatience.

“Presently,” replied Monsieur Dorlange, “I shall have the honor to tell you; you must now permit me to add that the property of which you say you have been disinherited Madame Marie-Gaston had the right to dispose of without any remorse of conscience.  It came from her first husband, the Baron de Macumer; and she had, previously to that marriage, given up her own property in order to constitute a fortune for your brother, the Duc de Lenoncourt-Givry, who, as younger son, had not, like you, Monsieur le Duc, the advantages of an entail.”

So saying, Monsieur Dorlange felt in his pocket for his card-case.

“I have no cards with me,” he said at last, “but my name is Dorlange, a theatrical name, easy to remember, and I live at No. 42 rue de l’Ouest.”

“Not a very central quarter,” remarked Monsieur de Rhetore, ironically.  Then turning to Monsieur de Ronquerolles, whom he thus constituted one of his seconds, “I beg your pardon, my dear fellow,” he said, “for the voyage of discovery you will have to undertake for me to-morrow morning.”  And then almost immediately he added:  “Come to the foyer; we can talk there with greater safety.”

By his manner of accenting the last word it was impossible to mistake the insulting meaning he intended to attach to it.

The two gentlemen having left their seats, without this scene attracting any notice, in consequence of the stalls being empty for the most part during the entr’acte, Monsieur Dorlange saw at some distance the celebrated sculptor Stidmann, and went up to him.

“Have you a note-book of any kind in your pocket?” he said.

“Yes, I always carry one.”

“Will you lend it to me and let me tear out a page?  I have an idea in my mind which I don’t want to lose.  If I do not see you again after the play to make restitution, I will send it to you to-morrow morning without fail.”

Returning to his place, Monsieur Dorlange sketched something rapidly, and when the curtain rose and the two gentlemen returned to their seats, he touched the Duc de Rhetore lightly on the shoulder and said, giving him the drawing:—­

“My card, which I have the honor to present to you.”

This “card” was a charming sketch of an architectural design placed in a landscape.  Beneath it was written “Plan for a mausoleum to be erected to the memory of Madame Marie-Gaston, nee Chaulieu, by her husband; from the designs of Charles Dorlange, sculptor, 42 rue de l’Ouest.”

It was impossible to let Monsieur de Rhetore know more delicately that he had to do with a suitable adversary; and you will remark, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that Monsieur Dorlange made this drawing the means of enforcing his denial and giving proof of your disinterestedness and the sincerity of your grief.

After the play was over, Monsieur de Rhetore parted from Monsieur de Ronquerolles, and the latter went up to Monsieur Dorlange and endeavored, very courteously, to bring about a reconciliation, remarking to him that, while he was right in the subject-matter, his method of proceeding was unusual and offensive; Monsieur de Rhetore, on the other hand, had shown great moderation, and would now be satisfied with a mere expression of regret; in short, Monsieur de Ronquerolles said all that can be said on such an occasion.

Monsieur Dorlange would not listen to anything which seemed a submission on his part, and the next day he received a visit from Monsieur de Ronquerolles and General Montriveau on behalf of the Duc de Rhetore.  Again an effort was made to induce Monsieur Dorlange to give another turn to his words.  But your friend would not depart from this ultimatum:—­

“Will Monsieur de Rhetore withdraw the words I felt bound to notice; if so, I will withdraw mine.”

“But that is impossible,” they said to him.  “Monsieur de Rhetore has been personally insulted; you, on the contrary, have not been.  Right or wrong, he has the conviction that Monsieur Marie-Gaston has done him an injury.  We must always make certain allowances for wounded self-interests; you can never get absolute justice from them.”

“It comes to this, then,” replied Monsieur Dorlange, “that Monsieur de Rhetore may continue to calumniate my friend at his ease; in the first place, because he is in Italy; and secondly, because Marie-Gaston would always feel extreme repugnance to come to certain extremities with the brother of his wife.  It is precisely that powerlessness, relatively speaking, to defend himself, which constitutes my right—­I will say more—­my duty to interfere.  It was not without a special permission of Providence that I was enabled to catch a few of the malicious words that were said of him, and, as Monsieur de Rhetore declines to modify any of them, we must, if it please you, continue this matter to the end.”

The duel then became inevitable; the terms were arranged in the course of the day, and the meeting, with pistols, was appointed for the day after.  On the ground Monsieur Dorlange was perfectly cool.  When the first fire was exchanged without result, the seconds proposed to put an end to the affair.

“No, one more shot!” he said gaily, as if he were shooting in a pistol-gallery.

This time he was shot in the fleshy part of the thigh, not a dangerous wound, but one which caused him to lose a great deal of blood.  As they carried him to the carriage which brought him, Monsieur de Rhetore, who hastened to assist them, being close beside him, he said, aloud:—­

“This does not prevent Marie-Gaston from being a man of honor and a heart of gold.”

Then he fainted.

This duel, as you can well believe, has made a great commotion; Monsieur Dorlange has been the hero of the hour for the last two days; it is impossible to enter a single salon without finding him the one topic of conversation.  I heard more, perhaps, in the salon of Madame de Montcornet than elsewhere.  She receives, as you know, many artists and men of letters, and to give you an idea of the manner in which your friend is considered, I need only stenograph a conversation at which I was present in the countess’s salon last evening.

The chief talkers were Emile Blondet of the “Debats,” and Monsieur Bixiou, the caricaturist, one of the best-informed ferrets of Paris.  They are both, I think, acquaintances of yours, but, at any rate, I am certain of your intimacy with Joseph Bridau, our great painter, who shared in the talk, for I well remember that he and Daniel d’Arthez were the witnesses of your marriage.

“The first appearance of Dorlange in art,” Joseph Bridau was saying, when I joined them, “was fine; the makings of a master were already so apparent in the work he did for his examinations that the Academy, under pressure of opinion, decided to crown him—­though he laughed a good deal at its programme.”

“True,” said Bixiou, “and that ‘Pandora’ he exhibited in 1837, after his return from Rome, is also a very remarkable figure.  But as she won him, at once, the cross and any number of commissions from the government and the municipality, together with scores of flourishing articles in the newspapers, I don’t see how he can rise any higher after all that success.”

“That,” said Blondet, “is a regular Bixiou opinion.”

“No doubt; and well-founded it is.  Do you know the man?”

“No; he is never seen anywhere.”

“Exactly; he is a bear, but a premeditated bear; a reflecting and determined bear.”

“I don’t see,” said Joseph Bridau, “why this savage inclination for solitude should be so bad for an artist.  What does a sculptor gain by frequenting salons where gentlemen and ladies have taken to a habit of wearing clothes?”

“Well, in the first place, a sculptor can amuse himself in a salon; and that will keep him from taking up a mania, or becoming a visionary; besides, he sees the world as it is, and learns that 1839 is not the fifteenth nor the sixteenth century.”

“Has Dorlange any such delusions?” asked Emile Blondet.

“He? he will talk to you by the hour of returning to the life of the great artists of the middle ages with the universality of their studies and their knowledge, and that frightfully laborious life of theirs; which may help us to understand the habits and ways of a semi-barbarous society, but can never exist in ours.  He does not see, the innocent dreamer, that civilization, by strangely complicating all social conditions, absorbs for business, for interests, for pleasures, thrice as much time as a less advanced society required for the same purposes.  Look at the savage in his hut; he hasn’t anything to do.  Whereas we, with the Bourse, the opera, the newspapers, parliamentary discussions, salons, elections, railways, the Cafe de Paris and the National Guard—­what time have we, if you please, to go to work?”

“Beautiful theory of a do-nothing!” cried Emile Blondet, laughing.

“No, my dear fellow, I am talking truth.  The curfew no longer rings at nine o’clock.  Only last night my concierge Ravenouillet gave a party; and I think I made a great mistake in not accepting the indirect invitation he gave me to be present.”

“Nevertheless,” said Joseph Bridau, “it is certain that if a man doesn’t mingle in the business, the interests, and the pleasures of our epoch, he can make out of the time he thus saves a pretty capital.  Independently of his orders, Dorlange has, I think, a little competence; so that nothing hinders him from arranging his life to suit himself.”

“But you see he goes to the opera; for it was there he found his duel.  Besides, you are all wrong in representing him as isolated from this contemporaneous life, for I happen to know that he is just about to harness himself to it by the most rattling and compelling chains of the social system—­I mean political interests.”

“Does he want to be a statesman?” asked Emile Blondet, sarcastically.

“Yes, no doubt that’s in his famous programme of universality; and you ought to see the consistency and perseverance he puts into that idea!  Only last year two hundred and fifty thousand francs dropped into his mouth as if from the skies, and he instantly bought a hovel in the rue Saint-Martin to make himself eligible for the Chamber.  Then—­another pretty speculation—­with the rest of the money he bought stock in the ‘National,’ where I meet him every time I want to have a laugh over the republican Utopia.  He has his flatterers on the staff of that estimable newspaper; they have persuaded him that he’s a born orator and can cut the finest figure in the Chamber.  They even talk of getting up a candidacy for him; and on some of their enthusiastic days they go so far as to assert that he bears a distant likeness to Danton.”

“But this is getting burlesque,” said Emile Blondet.

I don’t know if you have ever remarked, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that in men of real talent there is always great leniency of judgment.  In this, Joseph Bridau is pre-eminent.

“I think with you,” he said, “that if Dorlange takes this step, and enters politics, he will be lost to art.  But, after all, why should he not succeed in the Chamber?  He expresses himself with great facility, and seems to me to have ideas at his command.  Look at Canalis when he was made deputy!  ‘What! a poet!’ everybody cried out,—­which didn’t prevent him from making himself a fine reputation as orator, and becoming a minister.”

“But the first question is how to get into the Chamber,” said Emile Blondet.  “Where does Dorlange propose to stand?”

“Why, naturally, for one of the rotten boroughs of the ‘National.’  I don’t know if it has yet been chosen.”

“General rule,” said the writer for the “Debats.”  “To obtain your election, even though you may have the support of an active and ardent party, you must also have a somewhat extended political notoriety, or, at any rate, some provincial backing of family or fortune.  Has Dorlange any of those elements of success?”

“As for the backing of a family, that element is particularly lacking,” replied Bixiou; “in fact, in his case, it is conspicuously absent.”

“Really?” said Emile Blondet.  “Is he a natural child?”

“Nothing could be more natural,—­father and mother unknown.  But I believe, myself, that he can be elected.  It is the ins and outs of his political ideas that will be the wonder.”

“He is a republican, I suppose, if he is a friend of those ‘National’ gentlemen, and resembles Danton?”

“Yes, of course; but he despises his co-religionists, declaring they are only good for carrying a point, and for violence and bullying.  Provisionally, he is satisfied with a monarchy hedged in by republican institutions; but he insists that our civic royalty will infallibly be lost through the abuse of influence, which he roughly calls corruption.  This will lead him towards the little Church of the Left-centre; but there again—­for there’s always a but—­he finds only a collection of ambitious minds and eunuchs unconsciously smoothing the way to a revolution, which he, for his part, sees looming on the horizon with great regret, because, he says, the masses are too little prepared, and too little intelligent, not to let it slip through their fingers.  Legitimacy he simply laughs at; he doesn’t admit it to be a principle in any way.  To him it is simply the most fixed and consistent form of monarchical heredity; he sees no other superiority in it than that of old wine over new.  But while he is neither legitimist, nor conservative, nor Left-centre, and is republican without wanting a republic, he proclaims himself a Catholic, and sits astride the hobby of that party, namely,—­liberty of education.  But this man, who wants free education for every one, is afraid of the Jesuits; and he is still, as in 1829, uneasy about the encroachments of the clergy and the Congregation.  Can any of you guess the great party which he proposes to create in the Chamber, and of which he intends to be the leader?  That of the righteous man, the impartial man, the honest man! as if any such thing could live and breathe in the parliamentary cook-shops; and as if, moreover, all opinions, to hide their ugly nothingness, had not, from time immemorial, wrapped themselves in that banner.”

“Does he mean to renounce sculpture absolutely?” asked Joseph Bridau.

“Not yet; he is just finishing the statue of some saint, I don’t know which; but he lets no one see it, and says he does not intend to send it to the Exhibition this year—­he has ideas about it.”

“What ideas?” asked Emile Blondet.

“Oh! that religious works ought not to be delivered over to the judgment of critics, or to the gaze of a public rotten with scepticism; they ought, he thinks, to go, without passing through the uproar of the world, piously and modestly to the niches for which they are intended.”

“Ah ca!” exclaimed Emile Blondet, “and it is this fervent Catholic who fights a duel!”

“Better or worse than that.  This Catholic lives with a woman whom he brought back from Italy,—­a species of Goddess of Liberty, who serves him as model and housekeeper.”

“What a tongue that Bixiou has; he keeps a regular intelligence office,” said some of the little group as it broke up at the offer of tea from Madame de Montcornet.

You see from this, my dear Monsieur Gaston, that the political aspirations of Monsieur Dorlange are not regarded seriously by his friends.  I do not doubt that you will write to him soon to thank him for the warmth with which he defended you from calumny.  That courageous devotion has given me a true sympathy for him, and I shall hope that you will use the influence of early friendship to turn his mind from the deplorable path he seems about to enter.  I make no judgment on the other peculiarities attributed to him by Monsieur Bixiou, who has a cutting and a flippant tongue; I am more inclined to think, with Joseph Bridau, that such mistakes are venial.  But a fault to be forever regretted, according to my ideas, will be that of abandoning his present career to fling himself into the maelstrom of politics.  You are yourself interested in turning him from this idea, if you strongly desire to entrust that work to his hands.  Preach to him as strongly as you can the wisdom of abiding by his art.

On the subject of the explanation I advised you to have with him, I must tell you that your task is greatly simplified.  You need not enter into any of the details which would be to you so painful.  Madame de l’Estorade, to whom I spoke of the role of mediator which I wanted her to play, accepted the part very willingly.  She feels confident of being able, after half an hour’s conversation, to remove the painful feeling from your friend’s mind, and drive away the clouds between you.

While writing this long letter, I have sent for news of his condition.  He is going on favorably, and the physicians say that, barring all unforeseen accidents, his friends need have no anxiety as to his state.  It seems he is an object of general interest, for, to use the expression of my valet, people are “making cue” to leave their names at his door.  It must be added that the Duke de Rhetore is not liked, which may partly account for this sympathy.  The duke is stiff and haughty, but there is little in him.  What a contrast the brother is to her who lives in our tenderest memory.  She was simple and kind, yet she never derogated from her dignity; nothing equalled the lovable qualities of her heart but the charms of her mind.