Arthur O'Leary Part 18

Poor Biennais, he was an _artiste!_ He commenced his career under Chicaud, and rose to the dignity of _rotisseur_ under Napoleon. With what enthusiasm he used to speak of his successes during the Empire, when Bonaparte gave him carte-blanche to compose a dinner for a 'party of kings!' Napoleon himself was but an inferior gastronome. With him, the great requisite was to serve anywhere and at any moment; and though the bill of fare was a modest one, it was sometimes a matter of difficulty to prepare it in the depths of the Black Forest or on the sandy plains of Prussia, amid the mud-covered fields of Poland or the snows of Muscovy. A poulet, a cutlet, and a cup of coffee was the whole affair; but it should be ready as if by magic. Among his followers were several distinguished gourmets. Cambaceres was well known; Murat also, and Decres, the Minister of Marine, kept admirable tables. Of these, Biennais spoke with ecstasy; he remembered their various tastes, and would ever remark, when placing some masterpiece of skill before you, how the King of Naples loved or the arch-chancellor praised it. To him the overthrow of the empire was but the downfall of the cuisine; and he saw nothing more affecting in the last days of Fontainebleau than that the Emperor had left untouched a _fondue_ he had always eaten of with delight. 'After that,' said Biennais, 'I saw the game was up.' With the Hundred Days he was 'restored,' like his master; but, alas! the empire of ca.s.seroles was departed; the thunder of the cannon foundries, and the roar of the shot furnaces were more congenial sounds than the simmering of sauces and the gentle murmur of a stew-pan. No wonder, thought he, there should come a Waterloo, when the spirit of the nation had thus degenerated. Napoleon spent his last days in exile; Biennais took his departure for Belgium. The park was his Longwood; and, indeed, he himself saw invariable points of resemblance in the two destinies.

Happily for those who frequented the Hotel de France, he did not occupy his remaining years in dictating his memoirs to some Las Casas of the kitchen, but persevered to the last in the practice of his great art, and died, so to speak, ladle in hand.

To me the Hotel de France has many charms. I remember it, I shall not say how many years--its cool, delightful salon, looking out upon that beautiful little park whose shady alleys are such a resource in the evenings of summer; its lime-trees, beneath which you may sit and sip your coffee, as you watch the groups that pa.s.s and repa.s.s before you, weaving stories to yourself which become thicker and thicker as the shade deepens, and the flitting shapes are barely seen as they glide along the silent alleys, while a distant sound of music--some air of the Fatherland--is all that breaks the stillness, and you forget in the dreamy silence that you are in the midst of a great city.

The Hotel de France has other memories than these, too. I 'm not sure that I shall not make a confession, yet somehow I half shrink from it.

You might call it a love adventure, and I should not like that; besides, there is scarcely a moral in it--though who knows?

CHAPTER X. A DILEMMA

It was in the month of May--I won't confess to the year--that I found myself, after trying various hotels in the Place Royale, at last deposited at the door of the Hotel de France. It seemed to me, in my then ignorance, like a _pis aller_, when the postillion said, 'Let us try the "France,"' and little prepared me for the handsome, but somewhat small, hotel before me. It was nearly five o'clock when I arrived, and I had only time to make some slight change in my dress when the bell sounded for table d'hote.

The guests were already seated when I entered, but a place had been reserved for me, which completed the table. I was a young--perhaps after reading a little farther you'll say a _very young_--traveller at the time, but was soon struck by the quiet and decorous style in which the dinner was conducted. The servants were prompt, silent, and observant; the guests, easy and affable; the equipage of the table was even elegant; and the cookery, Biennais! I was the only Englishman present, the party being made up of Germans and French; but all spoke together like acquaintances, and before the dinner had proceeded far were polite enough to include me in the conversation.

At the head of the table sat a large and strikingly handsome man, of about eight-and-thirty or forty years of age--his dress a dark frock, richly braided, and ornamented by the decorations of several foreign orders; his forehead high and narrow, the temples strongly indented; his nose arched and thin, and his upper lip covered by a short black moustache raised at either extremity and slightly curled, as we see occasionally in a Van Dyck picture; indeed, his dark-brown features, somewhat sad in their expression, his rich hazel eyes and long waving hair, gave him all the character that great artist loved to perpetuate on his canvas. He spoke seldom, but when he did there was something indescribably pleasing in the low, mellow tones of his voice; a slight smile too lit up his features at these times, and his manner had in it--I know not what; some strange power it seemed, that made whoever he addressed feel pleased and nattered by his notice of them, just as we see a few words spoken by a sovereign caught up and dwelt upon by those around.

At his side sat a lady, of whom when I first came into the room I took little notice; her features seemed pleasing, but no more. But gradually, as I watched her I was struck by the singular delicacy of traits that rarely make their impression at first sight. She was about twenty-five, perhaps twenty-six, but of a character of looks that preserves something almost childish in their beauty. She was pale, and with brown hair--that light sunny brown that varies in its hue with every degree of light upon it; her face was oval and inclined to plumpness; her eyes were large, full, and l.u.s.trous, with an expression of softness and candour that won on you wonderfully the longer you looked at them; her nose was short, perhaps faultily so, but beautifully chiselled, and fine as a Greek statue; her mouth, rather large, displayed, however, two rows of teeth beautifully regular and of snowy whiteness; while her chin, rounded and dimpled, glided by an easy transition into a throat large and most gracefully formed. Her figure, as well as I could judge, was below the middle size, and inclined to embonpoint; and her dress, denoting some national peculiarity of which I was ignorant, was a velvet bodice laced in front and ornamented with small silver b.u.t.tons, which terminated in a white muslin skirt; a small cap, something like what Mary Queen of Scots is usually represented in, sat on the back of her head and fell in deep lace folds on her shoulders. Lastly, her hands were small, white, and dimpled, and displayed on her taper and rounded fingers several rings of apparently great value.

I have been somewhat lengthy in my description of these two persons, and can scarcely ask my reader to accompany me round the circle; however, it is with them princ.i.p.ally I have to do. The others at table were remarkable enough. There was a leading member of the Chamber of Deputies--an ex-minister--a tall, dark-browed, ill-favoured man, with a retiring forehead and coal-black eyes; he was a man of great cleverness, spoke eloquently and well, and was singularly open and frank in giving his opinion on the politics of the time. There was a German or two, from the grand-duchy of something--somewhat proud, reserved personages, as all the Germans of petty states are; they talked little, and were evidently impressed with the power they possessed of tantalising the company by not divulging the intention of the Gross Herzog of Hoch Donnerstadt regarding the present prospects of Europe. There were three Frenchmen and two French ladies, all pleasant, easy, and affable people; there was a doctor from Louvain, a shrewd, intelligent man; a Prussian major and his wife--well-bred, quiet people, and, like all Prussians, polite without inviting acquaintance. An Austrian secretary of legation, a wine-merchant from Bordeaux, and a celebrated pianist completed the party.

I have now put my readers in possession of information which I only obtained after some days myself; for though one or other of these personages was occasionally absent from table d'hote, I soon perceived that they were all frequenters of the house, and well known there.

If the guests were seated at table wherever chance or accident might place them, I could perceive that a tone of deference was always used to the tall man, who invariably maintained his place at the head; and an air of even greater courtesy was a.s.sumed towards the lady beside him, who was his wife. He was always addressed as Monsieur le Comte, and her t.i.tle of Countess was never forgotten in speaking to her. During dinner, whatever little chit-chat or gossip was the talk of the day was specially offered up to her. The younger guests occasionally ventured to present a bouquet, and even the rugged minister himself accomplished a more polite bow in accosting her than he could have summoned up for his presentation to royalty. To all these little attentions she returned a smile or a look or a word, or a gesture with her white hand, never exciting jealousy by any undue degree of favour, and distributing her honours with the practised equanimity of one accustomed to it.

Dinner over and coffee, a handsome britzka, drawn by two splendid dark-bay horses, would drive up, and Madame la Comtesse, conducted to the carriage by her husband, would receive the homage of the whole party, as they stood to let her pa.s.s. The count would then linger some twenty minutes or so, and take his leave to wander for an hour about the park, and afterwards to the theatre, where I used to see him in a private box with his wife.

Such was the little party at the 'France' when I took up my residence there in the month of May, and gradually one dropped off after another as the summer wore on. The Germans went back to sauer kraut and kreutzer whist; the secretary of legation was on leave; the wine-merchant was off to St. Petersburg; the pianist was in the bureau he once directed--and so on, leaving our party reduced to the count and madame, a stray traveller, a deaf abbe, and myself.

The dog-days in a Continental city are, every one knows, stupid and tiresome enough. Every one has taken his departure either to his chateau, if he has one, or to the watering-places; the theatre has no attraction, even if the heat permitted one to visit it; the streets are empty, parched, and gra.s.s-grown; and except the arrival and departure of that incessant locomotive, John Bull, there is no bustle or stir anywhere. Hapless, indeed, is the condition then of the man who is condemned from any accident to toil through this dreary season; to wander about in solitude the places he has seen filled by pleasant company; to behold the park and promenades given up to Flemish _bonnes_ or Norman nurses, where he was wont to glad his eye with the sight of bright eyes and trim shapes, flitting past in all the tasty elegance of Parisian toilette; to see the lazy _frotteur_ sleeping away his hours at the _porte cochere_, which a month before thundered with the deep roll of equipage coming and going. All this is very sad, and disposes one to be dull and discontented too.

For what reason I was detained at Brussels it is unnecessary to inquire.

Some delay in remittances, if I remember aright, had its share in the cause. Who ever travelled without having cursed his banker or his agent or his uncle or his guardian, or somebody, in short, who had a deal of money belonging to him in his hands, and would not send it forward? In all my long experience of travelling and travellers, I don't remember meeting with one person, who, if it were not for such mischances, would not have been amply supplied with cash. Some with a knowing wink throw the blame on the 'Governor'; others, more openly indignant, confound Coutts and Drummond; a stray Irishman will now and then d.a.m.n the 'tenantry that haven't paid up the last November'; but none, no matter how much their condition bespeaks that out-at-elbows habit which a ways-and-means style of life contracts, will ever confess to the fact that their expectations are as blank as their banker's book, and that the only land they are ever to pretend to is a post-obit right in some six-feet-by-two in a churchyard. And yet the world is full of such people--well-informed, pleasant, good-looking folk, who inhabit first-rate hotels; drink, dine, and dress well; frequent theatres and promenades; spend their winters at Paris or Florence or Rome, their summers at Baden or Ems or Interlachen; have a strange half-intimacy with men in the higher circles, and occasionally dine with them; are never heard of in any dubious or unsafe affair; are reputed safe fellows to talk to; know every one, from the horse-dealer who will give credit to the Jew who will advance cash; and notwithstanding that they neither gamble nor bet nor speculate, yet contrive to live--ay, and well, too--without any known resources whatever. If English (and they are for the most part so), they usually are called by some well-known name of aristocratic reputation in England: they are thus Villiers or Paget or Seymour or Percy, which on the Continent is already a kind of half-n.o.bility at once; and the question which seemingly needs no reply, 'Ah, vous etes parent de milord!' is a receipt in full rank anywhere.

These men--and who that knows anything of the Continent has not met such everywhere--are the great riddles of our century; and I 'd rather give a reward for their secret than all the discoveries about perpetual motion, or longitude, or North-west Pa.s.sages, that ever were heard of. And strange it is, too, no one has ever blabbed. Some have emerged from this misty state to inherit large fortunes and live in the best style; yet I have never heard of a single man having turned king's evidence on his fellows. And yet what a talent theirs must be, let any man confess who has waited three posts for a remittance without any tidings of its arrival! Think of the hundred-and-one petty annoyances and ironies to which he is subject! He fancies that the very waiters know he is _a sec_; that the landlord looks sour, and the landlady austere; the very clerk in the post-office appears to say, 'No letter for you, sir,' with a jibing and impertinent tone. From that moment, too, a dozen expensive tastes that he never dreamed of before enter his head: he wants to purchase a hack or give a dinner-party or bet at a racecourse, princ.i.p.ally because he has not got a sou in his pocket, and he is afraid it may be guessed by others--such is the fatal tendency to strive or pretend to something which has no other value in our eyes than the effect it may have on our acquaintances, regardless of what sacrifices it may demand.

Forgive, I pray, this long digression, which although I hope not without its advantages would scarcely have been entered into were it not _a propos_ to myself. And to go back--I began to feel excessively uncomfortable at the delay of my money. My first care every morning was to repair to the post-office; sometimes I arrived before it was open, and had to promenade up and down the gloomy Rue de l'Evecque till the clock struck; sometimes the mail would be late (a foreign mail is generally late when the weather is peculiarly fine and the roads good!); but always the same answer came, 'Rien pour vous, Monsieur O'Leary'; and at last I imagined from the way the fellow spoke that he had set the response to a tune, and sang it.

Beranger has celebrated in one of his very prettiest lyrics 'how happy one is at twenty in a garret.' I have no doubt, for my part, that the vicinity of the slates and the poverty of the apartment would have much contributed to my peace of mind at the time I speak of. The fact of a magnificently furnished salon, a splendid dinner every day, champagne and Seltzer promiscuously, cab fares and theatre tickets innumerable being all scored against me were sad dampers to my happiness; and from being one of the cheeriest and most light-hearted of fellows, I sank into a state of fidgety and restless impatience, the nearest thing I ever remember to low spirits.

Such was I one day when the post, which I had been watching anxiously from mid-day, had not arrived at five o'clock. Leaving word with the commissionaire to wait and report to me at the hotel, I turned back to the table d'hote. By accident, the only guests were the count and madame. There they were, as accurately dressed as ever; so handsome and so happy-looking; so attached, too, in their manner towards each other--that nice balance between affection and courtesy which before the world is so captivating. Disturbed as were my thoughts, I could not help feeling struck by their bright and pleasant looks.

'Ah, a family party!' said the count gaily, as I entered, while madame bestowed on me one of her very sweetest smiles.

The restraint of strangers removed, they spoke as if I had been an old friend--chatting away about everything and everybody, in a tone of frank and easy confidence perfectly delightful; occasionally deigning to ask if I did not agree with them in their opinions, and seeming to enjoy the little I ventured to say, with a pleasure I felt to be most flattering.

The count's quiet and refined manner, the easy flow of his conversation, replete as it was with information and amus.e.m.e.nt, formed a most happy contrast with the brilliant sparkle of madame's lively sallies; for she seemed rather disposed to indulge a vein of slight satire, but so tempered with good feeling and kindliness withal that you would not for the world forego the pleasure it afforded. Long, long before the dessert appeared I ceased to think of my letter or my money, and did not remember that such things as bankers, agents, or stockbrokers were in the universe. Apparently they had been great travellers: had seen every city in Europe, and visited every court; knew all the most distinguished people, and many of the sovereigns intimately; and little stories of Metternich, _bons mots_ of Talleyrand, anecdotes of Goethe and Chateaubriand, seasoned the conversation with an interest which to a young man like myself was all-engrossing.

Suddenly the door opened, and the commissionaire called out, 'No letter for Monsieur O'Leary!' I immediately became pale and faint; and though the count was too well bred to take any direct notice of what he saw was caused by my disappointment, he contrived adroitly to direct some observation to madame, which relieved me from any burden of the conversation.

'What hour did you order the carriage, Duischka?' said he.

'At half-past six. The forest is so cool that I like to go slowly through it.'

'That will give us ample time for a walk, too,' said he; 'and if Monsieur O'Leary will join us, the pleasure will be all the greater.'

I hesitated, and stammered out an apology about a headache, or something of the sort.

'The drive will be the best thing in the world for you,' said madame; 'and the strawberries and cream of Boitsfort will complete the cure.'

'Yes, yes,' said the count, as I shook my head half sadly, 'La comtesse is infallible as a doctor.'

'And, like all the faculty, very angry when her skill is called in question,' said she.

'Go, then, and find your shawl, madame,' said he, 'and, meanwhile, monsieur and I will discuss our liqueur, and be ready for you.'

Madame smiled gaily, as if having carried her point, and left the room.

The door was scarcely closed when the count drew his chair closer to mine, and, with a look of kindliness and good-nature I cannot convey, said, 'I am going, Monsieur O'Leary, to take a liberty--a very great liberty indeed--with you, and perhaps you may not forgive it.' He paused for a minute or two, as if waiting some intimation on my part. I merely muttered something intended to express my willingness to accept of what he hinted, and he resumed: 'You are a very young man; I not a very old, but a very experienced one. There are occasions in life in which such knowledge as I possess of the world and its ways may be of great service. Now, without for an instant obtruding myself on your confidence, or inquiring into affairs which are strictly your own, I wish to say that my advice and counsel, if you need either, are completely at your service. A few minutes ago I perceived that you were distressed at hearing there was no letter for you----'

'I know not how to thank you,' said I, 'for such kindness as this; and the best proof of my sincerity is to tell you the position in which I am placed.'

'One word, first,' added he, laying his hand gently on my arm--'one word. Do you promise to accept of my advice and a.s.sistance when you have revealed the circ.u.mstances you allude to? If not, I beg I may not hear it.'

'Your advice I am most anxious for,' said I hastily.

'The other was an awkward word, and I see that your delicacy has taken the alarm. But come, it is spoken now, and can't be recalled. I must have my way; so go on.'

I seized his hand with enthusiasm, and shook it heartily. 'Yes,' said I, 'you shall have your way. I have neither shame nor concealment before you.' And then, in as few words as I could explain such tangled and knotted webs as envelop all matters where legacies and lawyers and settlements and securities and mortgages enter, I put him in possession of the fact that I had come abroad with the a.s.surance from my man of business of a handsome yearly income, to be increased after a time to something very considerable; that I was now two months in expectation of remittances, which certain forms in Chancery had delayed and deferred; and that I watched the post each day with an anxious heart for means to relieve me from certain trifling debts I had incurred, and enable me to proceed on my journey.

The count listened with the most patient attention to my story, only interfering once or twice when some difficulty demanded explanation, and then suffering me to proceed to the end. Then leisurely withdrawing a pocket-book from the breast of his frock, he opened it slowly.

'My dear young friend,' said he, in a measured and almost solemn tone, 'every hour that a man is in debt is a year spent in slavery. Your creditor is your master; it matters not whether a kind or a severe one, the sense of obligation you incur saps the feeling of manly independence which is the first charm of youth--and, believe me, it is always through the rents in moral feeling that our happiness oozes out quickest. Here are five thousand francs; take as much as you want. With a friend, and I insist upon you believing me to be such, these things have no character of obligation: I accommodate you to-day; you do the same for me to-morrow. And now put these notes in your pocket; I see madame is waiting for us.'

For a second or two I felt so overpowered I could not speak. The generous confidence and friendly interest of one so thoroughly a stranger were too much for my astonished and gratified mind. At last I recovered myself enough to reply, and a.s.suring my worthy friend that when I spoke of my debts they were in reality merely trifling ones; that I had still ample funds in my banker's hands for all necessary outlay, and that by the next post, perhaps, my long-wished-for letter might arrive.

'And if it should not?' interposed he, smiling.

'Why then the next day----'

'And if not then?' continued he, with a half-quizzing look at my embarra.s.sment.

'Then your five thousand francs shall tremble for it.'

'That's a hearty fellow!' cried he, grasping my hand in both of his; 'and now I feel I was not deceived in you. My first meeting with Metternich was very like this. I was at Presburg in the year 1804, just before the campaign of Austerlitz opened--'

'You are indeed most gallant, messieurs,' said the countess, opening the door, and peeping in. 'Am I to suppose that cigars and maraschino are better company than mine?'

We rose at once to make our excuses; and thus I lost the story of Prince Metternich, in which I already felt an uncommon interest from the similarity of the adventure to my own, though whether I was to represent the prince or the count I could not even guess.