Part 71 (1/2)
The Baron pointed out Valerie's carriage as they pa.s.sed it.
”She has told them to come for her at ten o'clock, and she is gone in a cab to the house where she visits Count Steinbock. She has dined there, and will come to the Opera in half an hour.--It is well contrived!” said Madame Nourrisson. ”Thus you see how she has kept you so long in the dark.”
The Brazilian made no reply. He had become the tiger, and had recovered the imperturbable cool ferocity that had been so striking at dinner. He was as calm as a bankrupt the day after he has stopped payment.
At the door of the house stood a hackney coach with two horses, of the kind known as a _Compagnie Generale_, from the Company that runs them.
”Stay here in the box,” said the old woman to Montes. ”This is not an open house like a tavern. I will send for you.”
The paradise of Madame Marneffe and Wenceslas was not at all like that of Crevel--who, finding it useless now, had just sold his to the Comte Maxime de Trailles. This paradise, the paradise of all comers, consisted of a room on the fourth floor opening to the landing, in a house close to the Italian Opera. On each floor of this house there was a room which had originally served as the kitchen to the apartments on that floor.
But the house having become a sort of inn, let out for clandestine love affairs at an exorbitant price, the owner, the real Madame Nourrisson, an old-clothes buyer in the Rue Nueve Saint-Marc, had wisely appreciated the great value of these kitchens, and had turned them into a sort of dining-rooms. Each of these rooms, built between thick party-walls and with windows to the street, was entirely shut in by very thick double doors on the landing. Thus the most important secrets could be discussed over a dinner, with no risk of being overheard. For greater security, the windows had shutters inside and out. These rooms, in consequence of this peculiarity, were let for twelve hundred francs a month. The whole house, full of such paradises and mysteries was rented by Madame Nourrisson the First for twenty-eight thousand francs of clear profit, after paying her housekeeper, Madame Nourrisson the Second, for she did not manage it herself.
The paradise let to Count Steinbock had been hung with chintz; the cold, hard floor, of common tiles reddened with encaustic, was not felt through a soft thick carpet. The furniture consisted of two pretty chairs and a bed in an alcove, just now half hidden by a table loaded with the remains of an elegant dinner, while two bottles with long necks and an empty champagne-bottle in ice strewed the field of bacchus cultivated by Venus.
There were also--the property, no doubt, of Valerie--a low easy-chair and a man's smoking-chair, and a pretty toilet chest of drawers in rosewood, the mirror handsomely framed _a la_ Pompadour. A lamp hanging from the ceiling gave a subdued light, increased by wax candles on the table and on the chimney-shelf.
This sketch will suffice to give an idea, _urbi et orbi_, of clandestine pa.s.sion in the squalid style stamped on it in Paris in 1840. How far, alas! from the adulterous love, symbolized by Vulcan's nets, three thousand years ago.
When Montes and Cydalise came upstairs, Valerie, standing before the fire, where a log was blazing, was allowing Wenceslas to lace her stays.
This is a moment when a woman who is neither too fat nor too thin, but like Valerie, elegant and slender, displays divine beauty. The rosy skin, mostly soft, invites the sleepiest eye. The lines of her figure, so little hidden, are so charmingly outlined by the white pleats of the s.h.i.+ft and the support of the stays, that she is irresistible--like everything that must be parted from.
With a happy face smiling at the gla.s.s, a foot impatiently marking time, a hand put up to restore order among the tumbled curls, and eyes expressive of grat.i.tude; with the glow of satisfaction which, like a sunset, warms the least details of the countenance--everything makes such a moment a mine of memories.
Any man who dares look back on the early errors of his life may, perhaps, recall some such reminiscences, and understand, though not excuse, the follies of Hulot and Crevel. Women are so well aware of their power at such a moment, that they find in it what may be called the aftermath of the meeting.
”Come, come; after two years' practice, you do not yet know how to lace a woman's stays! You are too much a Pole!--There, it is ten o'clock, my Wenceslas!” said Valerie, laughing at him.
At this very moment, a mischievous waiting-woman, by inserting a knife, pushed up the hook of the double doors that formed the whole security of Adam and Eve. She hastily pulled the door open--for the servants of these dens have little time to waste--and discovered one of the bewitching _tableaux de genre_ which Gavarni has so often shown at the Salon.
”In here, madame,” said the girl; and Cydalise went in, followed by Montes.
”But there is some one here.--Excuse me, madame,” said the country girl, in alarm.
”What?--Why! it is Valerie!” cried Montes, violently slamming the door.
Madame Marneffe, too genuinely agitated to dissemble her feelings, dropped on to the chair by the fireplace. Two tears rose to her eyes, and at once dried away. She looked at Montes, saw the girl, and burst into a cackle of forced laughter. The dignity of the insulted woman redeemed the scantiness of her attire; she walked close up to the Brazilian, and looked at him so defiantly that her eyes glittered like knives.
”So that,” said she, standing face to face with the Baron, and pointing to Cydalise--”that is the other side of your fidelity? You, who have made me promises that might convert a disbeliever in love! You, for whom I have done so much--have even committed crimes!--You are right, monsieur, I am not to compare with a child of her age and of such beauty!
”I know what you are going to say,” she went on, looking at Wenceslas, whose undress was proof too clear to be denied. ”This is my concern. If I could love you after such gross treachery--for you have spied upon me, you have paid for every step up these stairs, paid the mistress of the house, and the servant, perhaps even Reine--a n.o.ble deed!--If I had any remnant of affection for such a mean wretch, I could give him reasons that would renew his pa.s.sion!--But I leave you, monsieur, to your doubts, which will become remorse.--Wenceslas, my gown!”
She took her dress and put it on, looked at herself in the gla.s.s, and finished dressing without heeding the Baron, as calmly as if she had been alone in the room.
”Wenceslas, are you ready?--Go first.”
She had been watching Montes in the gla.s.s and out of the corner of her eye, and fancied she could see in his pallor an indication of the weakness which delivers a strong man over to a woman's fascinations; she now took his hand, going so close to him that he could not help inhaling the terrible perfumes which men love, and by which they intoxicate themselves; then, feeling his pulses beat high, she looked at him reproachfully.
”You have my full permission to go and tell your history to Monsieur Crevel; he will never believe you. I have a perfect right to marry him, and he becomes my husband the day after to-morrow.--I shall make him very happy.--Good-bye; try to forget me.”
”Oh! Valerie,” cried Henri Montes, clasping her in his arms, ”that is impossible!--Come to Brazil!”