The Bashful Lover Part 19

Darena, who was desirous that the effect produced by the dance should not be wasted, ran to Cherubin and took his arm, saying:

"Now we are going back to Paris; we are to dine at the Rocher de Cancale with these ladies, and they hope that you will join us, for the party would not be complete without you."

Cherubin was excited, and he hesitated. Darena made a sign to the dancers, who at once surrounded the youth, saying:

"Oh, yes, monsieur, come to Paris with us!"

"You must go to the Opera to-night; you will see us dance there, and it will be rather different from what it was in this room."

"It would be very mean of you to refuse us."

"And then," cried Malvina, "at the Rocher de Cancale! That's the place to get a good dinner! I'm going to stuff myself, I am!"

"Come, come, you must be one of us!" exclaimed Darena.

The Spaniard and the Neapolitan each seized one of Cherubin's arms; he let them drag him away and they carried him, almost dancing, to the cab, which he entered with Darena and the four dancers.

"But I have a carriage," cried the notary; "you will be too crowded with six in there! Let some of the ladies come in my carriage."

"No, no!" said Darena; "we'll sit in one another's laps--it's all the more fun!--Off you go, driver; founder your nags--we'll pay you for them. To the Rocher de Cancale!"

The cab drove away with Cherubin, who had not even had time to bid his nurse good-bye.

"Darena has succeeded!" said Monfreville; "the bird has left his nest."

"Yes," replied Monsieur d'Hurbain, "but this sort of thing must not go too far. And this dinner--with those women; really, I can't be there. I, a notary, dine with ballet dancers!"

"Oh! bless my soul! just once; you can go _incog_. Besides, it's for a good motive, and your presence will prevent the dinner from being too indecent. Let us take my tilbury, we can follow them better."

Monsieur d'Hurbain entered the tilbury with Monfreville, and Monsieur Gerondif and Jasmin jumped into the carriage.

"They are taking my young master to the Rocher de Cancale," said the old servant, "and I have ordered a sumptuous banquet at the house, and a reception, with music and flowers and----"

"Never mind, worthy Jasmin," rejoined the tutor, "all those things will serve as well later; my pupil will have to go home eventually. As for myself, I am Mentor, and I must not abandon Telemachus, even when he goes to dinner at the Rocher de Cancale."

XI

MONFReVILLE.--DAReNA.--POTERNE

A handsome salon had been engaged and a sumptuous banquet ordered at the Rocher de Cancale, by Comte Darena, who had said to himself before he started for Gagny:

"Whatever happens, we shall surely come back to dinner; to be sure, if I happen to be one of those who are to pay, it will be rather hard for me just at this time; but that doesn't worry me much; I'll order the dinner none the less."

To give no thought to anything but pleasure, to pay no heed to the future, to be, in truth, often indifferent concerning affairs of the present, such was Darena's nature. Born of a n.o.ble family, he had received an excellent education and had studied diligently. His father, a man of a proud and stern character, having observed in his son early in life a decided taste for independence and dissipation, had thought that he could correct him by depriving him of those amus.e.m.e.nts and that liberty which are the ordinary means of relaxation after toil and study.

Thus, when Darena was nineteen years of age, he had never had a franc that he could call his own, or a half hour of freedom. At that time his father died; his mother had died long before, and he suddenly found himself his own master and possessed of a very pretty little fortune. He plunged recklessly into pleasure and dissipation, trying to make up all the time that his father's severity had caused him to lose, and bade adieu forever to study and to serious things.

Cards, women, horses, the table, became his idols. At first he frequented the best society, to which his name and his wealth gave him access; from the very beginning he had a mult.i.tude of love intrigues; but Darena was not sentimental, he looked for nothing but pleasure in such affairs, and broke them off as soon as he foreshadowed the slightest exaction or annoyance.

As ladies in good society are not always disposed to form a liaison of a few days only, and as Comte Darena's behavior was no secret, since he plumed himself on not becoming attached to any woman, his amatory triumphs gradually became less numerous in the fas.h.i.+onable world, and he was compelled to pay his addresses to _pet.i.tes bourgeoises_, then to ladies of the theatre, then to grisettes, then to courtesans; and finally he had grown to be so unexacting on that point that he had been known to take his mistresses from the most humble ranks of society.

Darena's fortune, like his love-affairs, had sunk constantly lower and lower. At last, at the age of twenty-eight, the count had squandered his whole patrimony and had nothing left save the house in Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which he desired to sell, and upon which he had already borrowed more than it was worth.

But, far from worrying concerning his present plight and his future, so long as he was able to dine well, to drink champagne with a ballet dancer, a figurante, a lace-maker, or even a lady's maid, Darena snapped his fingers at all the rest. To obtain those enjoyments, he was often obliged to resort to doubtful expedients; but the man who is not particular in choosing his acquaintances is not always particular as to his means of existence.

A person named Poterne had seconded Darena's dissipation and ruin to the utmost of his power. This Poterne was a man whose age it was impossible to guess, he was so ugly and unshapely. A gaunt, bony, angular body, supported by thin, knock-kneed legs, was surmounted by an oblong head of excessive length, a nose broken in the centre and hooked at the end, a mouth without lips, a protruding chin, and small eyes of a dull green hue, shaded by bushy eyebrows, and turning incessantly in every direction. Add to these an enormous quant.i.ty of thick, dirty brown hair, always cut like the quills of a hedgehog, and you have a faithful image of Monsieur Poterne.

This man had become attached to Comte Darena when he was still wealthy; he had offered his services in any capacity; he knew all the places in Paris where a young man of family can ruin himself with the least difficulty. If Darena spied, at the play or on the street, a woman who attracted him, Poterne undertook to follow her, and to hand her a letter containing information concerning him. Later, Poterne made it his business to find usurers, money-lenders, accommodating tradesmen; so that he had become indispensable to the count, who treated him sometimes as his friend, sometimes as his servant, cajoled him occasionally, despised him always, and could never do without him.

The reader will a.s.sume perhaps that it had been this gentleman's aim to enrich himself at the expense of the person whom he was a.s.sisting to ruin himself. That was Poterne's idea at first; but his own vices prevented him from taking advantage of another's failings. As inveterate a gambler and libertine as Darena, while the latter was losing thousand-franc notes in a fas.h.i.+onable salon, Poterne was gambling away, in some wine-shop or low resort, the money he had extracted from his intimate friend. While Darena entertained some charmer at Vefour's or Very's, Poterne betook himself to a gin-shop to squander what money he had with a street peddler, and he was too ugly not to be compelled to be open-handed. And when Darena was without a sou he sometimes abused his friend, and accused him of being the author of his ruin. At such times he unceremoniously appropriated all that Poterne possessed; and that worthy, who was also a coward, allowed himself to be despoiled without a murmur, promising himself that he would have his revenge ere long.

It may seem strange that the refined Monfreville should be on intimate terms with a man whose tastes, whose conduct, whose very dress, proved his disorderly mode of life. But there are people who, after knowing a person when he was rich and fortunate, dare not turn their backs on him when they meet him with a soiled coat and dingy hat. Moreover, Darena still had intervals of prosperity; when the cards had been favorable to him, or when his friend Poterne had discovered some new resource, he instantly reappeared, elegantly and stylishly dressed; he frequented the theatres, the ballrooms and the best restaurants in Paris; and a few days later, a perceptible falling off in his toilet, a certain lack of neatness in some part of his costume, indicated that the situation had changed. But even with a wretched hat and dirty linen, Darena succeeded so well in retaining the manners of good society, that it was hard to believe that he consorted with the very lowest.

Indeed, does anyone know aught of the private life of the great majority of the persons with whom he has only a pa.s.sing connection? Meeting Darena arrayed as in the days of his prosperity, seeing him squander money madly in some pleasure resort, no one asked him by what blessed change of luck he had become rich; and for the same reason, when he was seen, in shabby garments, slinking into a wretched twenty-two sou restaurant, no one took pains to inquire what hard luck he had had. In Paris, people do not try to worm themselves into other people's secrets; and in this respect, discretion very often resembles indifference.

Monfreville, who had known Darena when he was rich, was well aware that he had squandered his fortune, but he did not believe him to be entirely without resources, having no idea that he would resort to indelicate methods of obtaining money. The count had frequently borrowed a thousand-franc note of him, however, none of which had he ever returned; but Edouard de Monfreville was wealthy and attached little importance to those trifling services. And then, too, Darena's society amused him; his sallies, his indifference, sometimes carried to the point of cynicism, made him laugh and banished the melancholy humor which now and then took possession of his mind.

Sometimes people wondered what could be the cause of that pensive air, of that smile, rather bitter than mocking, which often played about Monfreville's mouth. He was rich, he had everything calculated to attract. In society he was sought after, women schemed to gain his notice; he had been known to have a great number of love-affairs, and he was still at an age to have more. But his merriment rarely seemed genuine, and in his conversation he avoided speaking of a s.e.x of which he could hardly have had reason to complain. Some thought that Monfreville had reached the point of being surfeited with all sorts of pleasure, and attributed to that fact the clouds that sometimes darkened his brow; others, when they heard him sneer at those of his friends who believed in the constancy of their mistresses, concluded that the handsome and fascinating Monfreville had had some unfortunate pa.s.sion, had been the victim of some treachery. Finally, when he was seen to pa.s.s his thirtieth year, and even to approach his fortieth, without apparently thinking of marriage, all sorts of conjectures were indulged in.

"He must have a very low opinion of women," people said, "as he doesn't choose to do like other men, and settle down, under the yoke of hymen."

But Edouard de Monfreville paid no heed to what people might think or say of him; he continued to live according to his taste, to do exactly as he chose; sometimes after pa.s.sing a month in a succession of uproarious debauches, surrounded by a jovial, dissipated crowd, all whose follies he shared, he would hold himself aloof from society for weeks at a time, finding pleasure only in solitude. His friends had finally become accustomed to the eccentricities of his humor, because in society a rich man is always ent.i.tled to be original; only the poor devils are denied that privilege.

Now that we are better acquainted with the people whom we are to join, let us enter the Rocher de Cancale, where Cherubin had just arrived with the priestesses of Terpsich.o.r.e.

XII

A DINNER AT THE ROCHER DE CANCALE

Cherubin found himself in Paris, and at the Rocher de Cancale, before he had had time to collect his thoughts. All the way to town the ladies had talked so much nonsense, their conversation was so lively, their remarks so amusing, that the boy had not ears enough to hear, and he glanced constantly from one to another of the dancers, to make sure that he was not dreaming.

When they entered the cab, the ladies enveloped themselves in ample cloaks, which concealed their costumes, and pulled hoods over their heads, so that their headdresses could not be seen.

"Why do these ladies all disguise themselves in hoods?" Cherubin asked Darena in an undertone.

"My dear marquis," the latter replied aloud, "they do it so that their stage costumes may not be seen when they go into the restaurant, for the Carnival hasn't come yet.--A modest dress is the correct thing in Paris."

"Bah! I don't care a fig for your correct thing!" said Mademoiselle Malvina; "for my part I'd just as lief walk about Paris in a Swiss costume. I say, why mightn't I be a real Swiss?"

"If you wore an oyster woman's costume, my dear girl, it's much more probable that no one would think that you were disguised."