The Ball at Sceaux

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"Well, uncle," Monsieur de Fontaine went on, "how could you hide from
us all you knew about this young man? You must have seen how anxious
we have been. Is Monsieur de Longueville a man of family?"

"I don't know him from Adam or Eve," said the Comte de Kergarouet.
"Trusting to that crazy child's tact, I got him here by a method of my
own. I know that the boy shoots with a pistol to admiration, hunts
well, plays wonderfully at billiards, at chess, and at backgammon; he
handles the foils, and rides a horse like the late Chevalier de
Saint-Georges. He has a thorough knowledge of all our vintages. He is
as good an arithmetician as Bareme, draws, dances, and sings well. The
devil's in it! what more do you want? If that is not a perfect
gentleman, find me a bourgeois who knows all this, or any man who
lives more nobly than he does. Does he do anything, I ask you? Does he
compromise his dignity by hanging about an office, bowing down before
the upstarts you call Directors-General? He walks upright. He is a
man.--However, I have just found in my waistcoat pocket the card he
gave me when he fancied I wanted to cut his throat, poor innocent.
Young men are very simple-minded nowadays! Here it is."

"Rue du Sentier, No. 5," said Monsieur de Fontaine, trying to recall
among all the information he had received, something which might
concern the stranger. "What the devil can it mean? Messrs. Palma,
Werbrust & Co., wholesale dealers in muslins, calicoes, and printed
cotton goods, live there.--Stay, I have it: Longueville the deputy has
an interest in their house. Well, but so far as I know, Longueville
has but one son of two-and-thirty, who is not at all like our man, and
to whom he gave fifty thousand francs a year that he might marry a
minister's daughter; he wants to be made a peer like the rest of 'em.
--I never heard him mention this Maximilien. Has he a daughter? What
is this girl Clara? Besides, it is open to any adventurer to call
himself Longueville. But is not the house of Palma, Werbrust & Co.
half ruined by some speculation in Mexico or the Indies? I will clear
all this up."

"You speak a soliloquy as if you were on the stage, and seem to
account me a cipher," said the old admiral suddenly. "Don't you know
that if he is a gentleman, I have more than one bag in my hold that
will stop any leak in his fortune?"

"As to that, if he is a son of Longueville's, he will want nothing;
but," said Monsieur de Fontaine, shaking his head from side to side,
"his father has not even washed off the stains of his origin. Before
the Revolution he was an attorney, and the DE he has since assumed no
more belongs to him than half of his fortune."

"Pooh! pooh! happy those whose fathers were hanged!" cried the admiral
gaily.



Three or four days after this memorable day, on one of those fine
mornings in the month of November, which show the boulevards cleaned
by the sharp cold of an early frost, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, wrapped
in a new style of fur cape, of which she wished to set the fashion,
went out with two of her sisters-in-law, on whom she had been wont to
discharge her most cutting remarks. The three women were tempted to
the drive, less by their desire to try a very elegant carriage, and
wear gowns which were to set the fashion for the winter, than by their
wish to see a cape which a friend had observed in a handsome lace and
linen shop at the corner of the Rue de la Paix. As soon as they were
in the shop the Baronne de Fontaine pulled Emilie by the sleeve, and
pointed out to her Maximilien Longueville seated behind the desk, and
engaged in paying out the change for a gold piece to one of the
workwomen with whom he seemed to be in consultation. The "handsome
stranger" held in his hand a parcel of patterns, which left no doubt
as to his honorable profession.

Emilie felt an icy shudder, though no one perceived it. Thanks to the
good breeding of the best society, she completely concealed the rage
in her heart, and answered her sister-in-law with the words, "I knew
it," with a fulness of intonation and inimitable decision which the
most famous actress of the time might have envied her. She went
straight up to the desk. Longueville looked up, put the patterns in
his pocket with distracting coolness, bowed to Mademoiselle de
Fontaine, and came forward, looking at her keenly.

"Mademoiselle," he said to the shopgirl, who followed him, looking
very much disturbed, "I will send to settle that account; my house
deals in that way. But here," he whispered into her ear, as he gave
her a thousand-franc note, "take this--it is between ourselves.--You
will forgive me, I trust, mademoiselle," he added, turning to Emilie.
"You will kindly excuse the tyranny of business matters."

"Indeed, monsieur, it seems to me that it is no concern of mine,"
replied Mademoiselle de Fontaine, looking at him with a bold
expression of sarcastic indifference which might have made any one
believe that she now saw him for the first time.

"Do you really mean it?" asked Maximilien in a broken voice.

Emilie turned her back upon him with amazing insolence. These words,
spoken in an undertone, had escaped the ears of her two
sisters-in-law. When, after buying the cape, the three ladies got into
the carriage again, Emilie, seated with her back to the horses, could
not resist one last comprehensive glance into the depths of the odious
shop, where she saw Maximilien standing with his arms folded, in the
attitude of a man superior to the disaster that has so suddenly fallen
on him. Their eyes met and flashed implacable looks. Each hoped to
inflict a cruel wound on the heart of a lover. In one instant they
were as far apart as if one had been in China and the other in
Greenland.

Does not the breath of vanity wither everything? Mademoiselle de
Fontaine, a prey to the most violent struggle that can torture the
heart of a young girl, reaped the richest harvest of anguish that
prejudice and narrow-mindedness ever sowed in a human soul. Her face,
but just now fresh and velvety, was streaked with yellow lines and red
patches; the paleness of her cheeks seemed every now and then to turn
green. Hoping to hide her despair from her sisters, she would laugh as
she pointed out some ridiculous dress or passer-by; but her laughter
was spasmodic. She was more deeply hurt by their unspoken compassion
than by any satirical comments for which she might have revenged
herself. She exhausted her wit in trying to engage them in a
conversation, in which she tried to expend her fury in senseless
paradoxes, heaping on all men engaged in trade the bitterest insults
and witticisms in the worst taste.

On getting home, she had an attack of fever, which at first assumed a
somewhat serious character. By the end of a month the care of her
parents and of the physician restored her to her family.

Every one hoped that this lesson would be severe enough to subdue
Emilie's nature; but she insensibly fell into her old habits and threw
herself again into the world of fashion. She declared that there was
no disgrace in making a mistake. If she, like her father, had a vote
in the Chamber, she would move for an edict, she said, by which all
merchants, and especially dealers in calico, should be branded on the
forehead, like Berri sheep, down to the third generation. She wished
that none but nobles should have the right to wear the antique French
costume, which was so becoming to the courtiers of Louis XV. To hear
her, it was a misfortune for France, perhaps, that there was no
outward and visible difference between a merchant and a peer of
France. And a hundred more such pleasantries, easy to imagine, were
rapidly poured out when any accident brought up the subject.

But those who loved Emilie could see through all her banter a tinge of
melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longueville still reigned
over that inexorable heart. Sometimes she would be as gentle as she
had been during the brief summer that had seen the birth of her love;
sometimes, again, she was unendurable. Every one made excuses for her
inequality of temper, which had its source in sufferings at once
secret and known to all. The Comte de Kergarouet had some influence
over her, thanks to his increased prodigality, a kind of consolation
which rarely fails of its effect on a Parisian girl.

The first ball at which Mademoiselle de Fontaine appeared was at the
Neapolitan ambassador's. As she took her place in the first quadrille
she saw, a few yards away from her, Maximilien Longueville, who nodded
slightly to her partner.

"Is that young man a friend of yours?" she asked, with a scornful air.

"Only my brother," he replied.

Emilie could not help starting. "Ah!" he continued, "and he is the
noblest soul living----"

"Do you know my name?" asked Emilie, eagerly interrupting him.

"No, mademoiselle. It is a crime, I confess, not to remember a name
which is on every lip--I ought to say in every heart. But I have a
valid excuse. I have but just arrived from Germany. My ambassador, who
is in Paris on leave, sent me here this evening to take care of his
amiable wife, whom you may see yonder in that corner."

"A perfect tragic mask!" said Emilie, after looking at the
ambassadress.

"And yet that is her ballroom face!" said the young man, laughing. "I
shall have to dance with her! So I thought I might have some
compensation." Mademoiselle de Fontaine courtesied. "I was very much
surprised," the voluble young secretary went on, "to find my brother
here. On arriving from Vienna I heard that the poor boy was ill in
bed; and I counted on seeing him before coming to this ball; but good
policy will always allow us to indulge family affection. The Padrona
della case would not give me time to call on my poor Maximilien."

"Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplomatic
employment."

"No," said the attache, with a sigh, "the poor fellow sacrificed
himself for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced their share of
my father's fortune to make an eldest son of me. My father dreams of a
peerage, like all who vote for the ministry. Indeed, it is promised
him," he added in an undertone. "After saving up a little capital my
brother joined a banking firm, and I hear he has just effected a
speculation in Brazil which may make him a millionaire. You see me in
the highest spirits at having been able, by my diplomatic connections,
to contribute to his success. I am impatiently expecting a dispatch
from the Brazilian Legation, which will help to lift the cloud from
his brow. What do you think of him?"

"Well, your brother's face does not look to me like that of a man
busied with money matters."

The young attache shot a scrutinizing glance at the apparently calm
face of his partner.

"What!" he exclaimed, with a smile, "can young ladies read the
thoughts of love behind the silent brow?"

"Your brother is in love, then?" she asked, betrayed into a movement
of curiosity.

"Yes; my sister Clara, to whom he is as devoted as a mother, wrote to
me that he had fallen in love this summer with a very pretty girl; but
I have had no further news of the affair. Would you believe that the
poor boy used to get up at five in the morning, and went off to settle
his business that he might be back by four o'clock in the country
where the lady was? In fact, he ruined a very nice thoroughbred that I
had just given him. Forgive my chatter, mademoiselle; I have but just
come home from Germany. For a year I have heard no decent French, I
have been weaned from French faces, and satiated with Germans, to such
a degree that, I believe, in my patriotic mania, I could talk to the
chimeras on a French candlestick. And if I talk with a lack of reserve
unbecoming in a diplomatist, the fault is yours, mademoiselle. Was it
not you who pointed out my brother? When he is the theme I become
inexhaustible. I should like to proclaim to all the world how good and
generous he is. He gave up no less than a hundred thousand francs a
year, the income from the Longueville property."

If Mademoiselle de Fontaine had the benefit of these important
revelations, it was partly due to the skill with which she continued
to question her confiding partner from the moment when she found that
he was the brother of her scorned lover.

"And could you, without being grieved, see your brother selling muslin
and calico?" asked Emilie, at the end of the third figure of the
quadrille.

"How do you know that?" asked the attache. "Thank God, though I pour
out a flood of words, I have already acquired the art of not telling
more than I intend, like all the other diplomatic apprentices I know."

"You told me, I assure you."

Monsieur de Longueville looked at Mademoiselle de Fontaine with a
surprise that was full of perspicacity. A suspicion flashed upon him.
He glanced inquiringly from his brother to his partner, guessed
everything, clasped his hands, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and
began to laugh, saying, "I am an idiot! You are the handsomest person
here; my brother keeps stealing glances at you; he is dancing in spite
of his illness, and you pretend not to see him. Make him happy," he
added, as he led her back to her old uncle. "I shall not be jealous,
but I shall always shiver a little at calling you my sister----"

The lovers, however, were to prove as inexorable to each other as they
were to themselves. At about two in the morning, refreshments were
served in an immense corridor, where, to leave persons of the same
coterie free to meet each other, the tables were arranged as in a
restaurant. By one of those accidents which always happen to lovers,
Mademoiselle de Fontaine found herself at a table next to that at
which the more important guests were seated. Maximilien was of the
group. Emilie, who lent an attentive ear to her neighbors'
conversation, overheard one of those dialogues into which a young
woman so easily falls with a young man who has the grace and style of
Maximilien Longueville. The lady talking to the young banker was a
Neapolitan duchess, whose eyes shot lightning flashes, and whose skin
had the sheen of satin. The intimate terms on which Longueville
affected to be with her stung Mademoiselle de Fontaine all the more
because she had just given her lover back twenty times as much
tenderness as she had ever felt for him before.

"Yes, monsieur, in my country true love can make every kind of
sacrifice," the Duchess was saying, in a simper.

"You have more passion than Frenchwomen," said Maximilien, whose
burning gaze fell on Emilie. "They are all vanity."

"Monsieur," Emilie eagerly interposed, "is it not very wrong to
calumniate your own country? Devotion is to be found in every nation."

"Do you imagine, mademoiselle," retorted the Italian, with a sardonic
smile, "that a Parisian would be capable of following her lover all
over the world?"

"Oh, madame, let us understand each other. She would follow him to a
desert and live in a tent but not to sit in a shop."

A disdainful gesture completed her meaning. Thus, under the influence
of her disastrous education, Emile for the second time killed her
budding happiness, and destroyed its prospects of life. Maximilien's
apparent indifference, and a woman's smile, had wrung from her one of
those sarcasms whose treacherous zest always let her astray.

"Mademoiselle," said Longueville, in a low voice, under cover of the
noise made by the ladies as they rose from the table, "no one will
ever more ardently desire your happiness than I; permit me to assure
you of this, as I am taking leave of you. I am starting for Italy in a
few days."

"With a Duchess, no doubt?"

"No, but perhaps with a mortal blow."

"Is not that pure fancy?" asked Emilie, with an anxious glance.

"No," he replied. "There are wounds which never heal."

"You are not to go," said the girl, imperiously, and she smiled.

"I shall go," replied Maximilien, gravely.

"You will find me married on your return, I warn you," she said
coquettishly.

"I hope so."

"Impertinent wretch!" she exclaimed. "How cruel a revenge!"

A fortnight later Maximilien set out with his sister Clara for the
warm and poetic scenes of beautiful Italy, leaving Mademoiselle de
Fontaine a prey to the most vehement regret. The young Secretary to
the Embassy took up his brother's quarrel, and contrived to take
signal vengeance on Emilie's disdain by making known the occasion of
the lovers' separation. He repaid his fair partner with interest all
the sarcasm with which she had formerly attacked Maximilien, and often
made more than one Excellency smile by describing the fair foe of the
counting-house, the amazon who preached a crusade against bankers, the
young girl whose love had evaporated before a bale of muslin. The
Comte de Fontaine was obliged to use his influence to procure an
appointment to Russia for Auguste Longueville in order to protect his
daughter from the ridicule heaped upon her by this dangerous young
persecutor.

Not long after, the Ministry being compelled to raise a levy of peers
to support the aristocratic party, trembling in the Upper Chamber
under the lash of an illustrious writer, gave Monsieur Guiraudin de
Longueville a peerage, with the title of Vicomte. Monsieur de Fontaine
also obtained a peerage, the reward due as much to his fidelity in
evil days as to his name, which claimed a place in the hereditary
Chamber.

About this time Emilie, now of age, made, no doubt, some serious
reflections on life, for her tone and manners changed perceptibly.
Instead of amusing herself by saying spiteful things to her uncle, she
lavished on him the most affectionate attentions; she brought him his
stick with a persevering devotion that made the cynical smile, she
gave him her arm, rode in his carriage, and accompanied him in all his
drives; she even persuaded him that she liked the smell of tobacco,
and read him his favorite paper La Quotidienne in the midst of clouds
of smoke, which the malicious old sailor intentionally blew over her;
she learned piquet to be a match for the old count; and this fantastic
damsel even listened without impatience to his periodical narratives
of the battles of the Belle-Poule, the manoeuvres of the Ville de
Paris, M. de Suffren's first expedition, or the battle of Aboukir.

Though the old sailor had often said that he knew his longitude and
latitude too well to allow himself to be captured by a young corvette,
one fine morning Paris drawing-rooms heard the news of the marriage of
Mademoiselle de Fontaine to the Comte de Kergarouet. The young
Countess gave splendid entertainments to drown thought; but she, no
doubt, found a void at the bottom of the whirlpool; luxury was
ineffectual to disguise the emptiness and grief of her sorrowing soul;
for the most part, in spite of the flashes of assumed gaiety, her
beautiful face expressed unspoken melancholy. Emilie appeared,
however, full of attentions and consideration for her old husband,
who, on retiring to his rooms at night, to the sounds of a lively
band, would often say, "I do not know myself. Was I to wait till the
age of seventy-two to embark as pilot on board the Belle Emilie after
twenty years of matrimonial galleys?"

The conduct of the young Countess was marked by such strictness that
the most clear-sighted criticism had no fault to find with her.
Lookers on chose to think that the vice-admiral had reserved the right
of disposing of his fortune to keep his wife more tightly in hand; but
this was a notion as insulting to the uncle as to the niece. Their
conduct was indeed so delicately judicious that the men who were most
interested in guessing the secrets of the couple could never decide
whether the old Count regarded her as a wife or as a daughter. He was
often heard to say that he had rescued his niece as a castaway after
shipwreck; and that, for his part, he had never taken a mean advantage
of hospitality when he had saved an enemy from the fury of the storm.
Though the Countess aspired to reign in Paris and tried to keep pace
with Mesdames the Duchesses de Maufrigneuse and du Chaulieu, the
Marquises d'Espard and d'Aiglemont, the Comtesses Feraud, de
Montcornet, and de Restaud, Madame de Camps, and Mademoiselle des
Touches, she did not yield to the addresses of the young Vicomte de
Portenduere, who made her his idol.

Two years after her marriage, in one of the old drawing-rooms in the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she was admired for her character,
worthy of the old school, Emilie heard the Vicomte de Longueville
announced. In the corner of the room where she was sitting, playing
piquet with the Bishop of Persepolis, her agitation was not observed;
she turned her head and saw her former lover come in, in all the
freshness of youth. His father's death, and then that of his brother,
killed by the severe climate of Saint-Petersburg, had placed on
Maximilien's head the hereditary plumes of the French peer's hat. His
fortune matched his learning and his merits; only the day before his
youthful and fervid eloquence had dazzled the Assembly. At this moment
he stood before the Countess, free, and graced with all the advantages
she had formerly required of her ideal. Every mother with a daughter
to marry made amiable advances to a man gifted with the virtues which
they attributed to him, as they admired his attractive person; but
Emilie knew, better than any one, that the Vicomte de Longueville had
the steadfast nature in which a wise woman sees a guarantee of
happiness. She looked at the admiral who, to use his favorite
expression, seemed likely to hold his course for a long time yet, and
cursed the follies of her youth.

At this moment Monsieur de Persepolis said with Episcopal grace: "Fair
lady, you have thrown away the king of hearts--I have won. But do not
regret your money. I keep it for my little seminaries."



PARIS, December 1829.




ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Beaudenord, Godefroid de
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
The Firm of Nucingen

Dudley, Lady Arabella
The Lily of the Valley
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
Letters of Two Brides

Fontaine, Comte de
The Chouans
Modeste Mignon
Cesar Birotteau
The Government Clerks

Kergarouet, Comte de
The Purse
Ursule Mirouet

Louis XVIII., Louis-Stanislas-Xavier
The Chouans
The Seamy Side of History
The Gondreville Mystery
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Lily of the Valley
Colonel Chabert
The Government Clerks

Manerville, Paul Francois-Joseph, Comte de
The Thirteen
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
A Marriage Settlement

Marsay, Henri de
The Thirteen
The Unconscious Humorists
Another Study of Woman
The Lily of the Valley
Father Goriot
Jealousies of a Country Town
Ursule Mirouet
A Marriage Settlement
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Letters of Two Brides
Modest Mignon
The Secrets of a Princess
The Gondreville Mystery
A Daughter of Eve

Palma (banker)
The Firm of Nucingen
Cesar Birotteau
Gobseck
Lost Illusions
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris

Portenduere, Vicomte Savinien de
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
Ursule Mirouet
Beatrix

Rastignac, Eugene de
Father Goriot
A Distinguished Provincial at Paris
Scenes from a Courtesan's Life
The Interdiction
A Study of Woman
Another Study of Woman
The Magic Skin
The Secrets of a Princess
A Daughter of Eve
The Gondreville Mystery
The Firm of Nucingen
Cousin Betty
The Member for Arcis
The Unconscious Humorists

Vandenesse, Marquise Charles de (Emilie de Fontaine)
Cesar Birotteau
Ursule Mirouet
A Daughter of Eve