Part 43 (1/2)
”True,” said Madame d'Anville, laughing. ”But then, the Vicomte is so poor, and in debt. He would fall in love, not with the demoiselle, but the dower. A propos of that, how cleverly you took advantage of his boastful confession to break off his liaisons with that bureau de mariage.”
”Yes; I congratulate myself on that manoeuvre. Unpleasant as it was to go to such a place (for, of course, I could not send for Monsieur Love here), it would have been still more unpleasant to have received such a Madame de Vaudemont as our cousin would have presented to us. Only think--he was the rival of an epicier! I heard that there was some curious denouement to the farce of that establishment; but I could never get from Vaudemont the particulars. He was ashamed of them, I fancy.”
”What droll professions there are in Paris!” said Madame d'Anville. ”As if people could not marry without going to an office for a spouse as we go for a servant! And so the establishment is broken up? And you never again saw that dark, wild-looking boy who so struck your fancy that you have taken him as the original for the Murillo sketch of the youth in that charming tale you read to us the other evening? Ah! cousin, I think you were a little taken with him. The bureau de mariage had its allurements for you as well as for our poor cousin!” The young mother said this laughingly and carelessly.
”Pooh!” returned Madame de Merville, laughing also; but a slight blush broke over her natural paleness. ”But a propos of the Vicomte. You know how cruelly he has behaved to that poor boy of his by his English wife--never seen him since he was an infant--kept him at some school in England; and all because his vanity does not like the world to know that he has a son of nineteen! Well, I have induced him to recall this poor youth.”
”Indeed! and how?”
”Why,” said Eugenie, with a smile, ”he wanted a loan, poor man, and I could therefore impose conditions by way of interest. But I also managed to conciliate him to the proposition, by representing that, if the young man were good-looking, he might, himself, with our connections, &c., form an advantageous marriage; and that in such a case, if the father treated him now justly and kindly, he would naturally partake with the father whatever benefits the marriage might confer.”
”Ah! you are an excellent diplomatist, Eugenie; and you turn people's heads by always acting from your heart. Hus.h.!.+ here comes the Vicomte!”
”A delightful ball,” said Monsieur de Vaudemont, approaching the hostess. ”Pray, has that young lady yonder, in the pink dress, any fortune? She is pretty--eh? You observe she is looking at me--I mean at us!”
”My dear cousin, what a compliment you pay to marriage! You have had two wives, and you are ever on the qui vive for a third!”
”What would you have me do?--we cannot resist the overtures of your bewitching s.e.x. Hum--what fortune has she?”
”Not a sou; besides, she is engaged.”
”Oh! now I look at her, she is not pretty--not at all. I made a mistake.
I did not mean her; I meant the young lady in blue.”
”Worse and worse--she is married already. Shall I present you?”
”Ah, Monsieur de Vaudemont,” said Madame d'Anville; ”have you found out a new bureau de mariage?”
The Vicomte pretended not to hear that question. But, turning to Eugenie, took her aside, and said, with an air in which he endeavoured to throw a great deal of sorrow, ”You know, my dear cousin, that, to oblige you, I consented to send for my son, though, as I always said, it is very unpleasant for a man like me, in the prime of life, to hawk about a great boy of nineteen or twenty. People soon say, 'Old Vaudemont and younq Vaudemont.' However, a father's feelings are never appealed to in vain.” (Here the Vicomte put his handkerchief to his eyes, and after a pause, continued,)--”I sent for him--I even went to your old bonne, Madame Dufour, to make a bargain for her lodgings, and this day--guess my grief--I received a letter sealed with black. My son is dead!--a sudden fever--it is shocking!”
”Horrible! dead!--your own son, whom you hardly ever saw--never since he was an Infant!”
”Yes, that softens the blow very much. And now you see I must marry. If the boy had been good-looking, and like me, and so forth, why, as you observed, he might have made a good match, and allowed me a certain sum, or we could have all lived together.”
”And your son is dead, and you come to a ball!”
”Je suis philosophe,” said the Vicomte, shrugging his shoulders. ”And, as you say, I never saw him. It saves me seven hundred francs a-year.
Don't say a word to any one--I sha'n't give out that he is dead, poor fellow! Pray be discreet: you see there are some ill-natured people who might think it odd I do not shut myself up. I can wait till Paris is quite empty. It would be a pity to lose any opportunity at present, for now, you see, I must marry!” And the philosophe sauntered away.
CHAPTER XII.
GUIOMAR.
”Those devotions I am to pay Are written in my heart, not in this book.”
Enter RUTILIO.
”I am pursued--all the ports are stopped too, Not any hope to escape--behind, before me, On either side, I am beset.”
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, The Custom of the Country