The round of wrong : a romance of to-day

Contents

CHAPTER

I. THE NEW TEAK'S GIFTS II. THE OFFER OF MAEKIAGE III. THE WEDDING IT. THE TOUB IN ITALY V. THE DUKE VI. LETTEES FEOM COBFU . . ,

VII. THE NEW SEEVANT . .

Chapter I. The New Year's Gifts

In the centre of the Rue de l'TJniversite, in Paris, there are four mansions, which may be reckoned as among the handsomest even in that city of palaces. It is in one of these, belonging to the Baron de Sanglie', and joining the corner of the Rue de Bellechasse, that our story opens.

It is certainly a house of very stately aspect. The gate opens on a courtyard covered with the finest sand, and surrounded by evergreens. The porter's lodge is to the left, hidden beneath a thick trellis of ivy, where the sparrows and the porter try to outvie each other in gossiping. The ground and first floors of the mansion are occupied by the Baron himself; they look out on a large garden peopled by tom-tits, blackbirds, and squirrels, which visit each other at perfect ease, just as if they were the denizens of a wood, and not citizens of Paris.

The arms of the Sanglie family are painted on the panels along the Hall. They consist of a Boar, or, on a

B

2 THE EOUND OF WKONG.

field gules. The shield is supported by two greyhounds, while underneath runs the motto, Sang lie au KOI.*

Half-a-dozen living greyhounds, grouped according to their fancy, are biting at the veronicas blossoming in china vases, or lying on the matting, with their snake-like heads resting on their paws. The footmen, lounging about on the benches, have their arms solemnly crossed, as befits people attached to a noble family.

On the 1st of January, 1853, at about nine in the morning, all the servants of the house were holding a noisy congress in the hall, for the Baron's steward, M. Anatole, had just given them their New Year's Gifts. t The head cook received twenty pounds, the valet ten pounds. Even the least favoured of all, the scullery-boy, looked with inexpressible tenderness on two bran new Louis-d'or. There might be jealousy among them, but no dissatisfaction, and each said in his own peculiar language that it was a pleasure to serve a master at once so rich and so generous.

These gentry formed rather a picturesque group round the stove. The earliest risers among them were dressed in full livery, while others still wore the sleeved waistcoat, or undress uniform of servants. The

* " Blood allied to the King." It is a pun on the word "Sanglier," or boar, which cannot be rendered in English. Hence we pray our readers to pardon the enforced Gallicism.

+ In France it is the custom for everybody to give everybody presents on New Year's-day, and servants look for a species of bounty, varying in amount with the position of the family they serve, and their own status in the domestic hierarchy.

valet was dressed all in black, with list slippers ; the gardener resembled a villager in his Sunday clothes ; the coachman had on a striped waistcoat, and his goldbound three-cornered hat ; while the porter wore his golden aiguillettes and wooden shoes.

As the master usually slept till mid-day, after spending the night at his club, there was plenty of time for them to go to work. Each was spending his money beforehand, and the castles in the air had reached the seventh story. After all, every man, great or small, has some of the Alnaschar blood in his veins.

" With that, and what I have already saved," the steward said, " I shall have a very tidy annuity. Thank Heaven ! there is bread on the shelf, and I shall not want for anything in my old days."

" Hang it," the valet remai'ked, " you're a bachelor, and have only yourself to think of. But I've got a family. So I'll give my money to a young man I know on the Stock Exchange, and he'll turn it over well."

" That's a good idea, Mr. Ferdinand," the scullery-boy said, " so pray take my forty francs too, when you go."

The valet replied in a protecting tone, " How green he is ! What can be done with forty francs on the Exchange ?"

" Well, then," the young man said, stifling a sigh, " I will place them in the savings-bank."

The coachman uttered a loud laugh, and struck his stomach as he said, " That's my savings-bank. I

b 2 always put my money there, and never was the worse for it. Don't you think so, Master Altroff V

Altroff, porter by profession, Alsacian by birth — tall, vigorous, bony, with wide shoulders and enormous head, and as rubicund as a young hippopotamus, perpetrated a wink and gave a " cl'c" with his tongue worth a long phrase.

The gardener, a true Norman, fingered the money in his hand, and remarked, " Ah ! bah ! money drunk is money sunk. There is no investment like a hidingplace in an old wall or a hollow tree. Hide your pelf, you'll enjoy it yourself. He who lends, loses his friends. Money in your purse, let the old one do his worst."

All present protested against such simplicity as burying money instead of letting it turn over. Some twenty exclamations were heard simultaneously. Each revealed his secret, and betrayed his weakness. Each tapped his pocket and enjoyed his certain hopes — the clear and licpiid happiness he had pouched that morning. Gold mingled its shrill weak voice with their conceited, vulgar passions, and the clinking of the Napoleons, more heady than the odour of wine, or the smell of gunpowder, turned their poor brains and heightened the beating of their coarse hearts.

At the height of the tumult a small door opened on the staircase, about half way up. A woman dressed in black rags, came down the steps hurriedly, crossed the hall, opened the glass door, and disappeared in the court-yard.

It was the affair of a moment; yet this gloomy apparition destroyed all the happiness of the servants. They rose as she passed with marks of profound respect. The shouts were arrested in their throats. The gold no longer rang in their pockets. The poor woman left behind, as it were, an exhalation of silence and stupor. The valet, as a strong-minded man, was the first to recover.

" Confuse it," said he, " I really fancied I saw Misery in person pass. My New Year's day is spoiled. You'll see that I shall succeed in nothing till next New Year's Eve. Bru ! I'm cold all up the back."

" Poor woman !" the steward said ; " she has had her thousands and her hundreds, and now see ! Who'd believe she was a duchess ?"

" Her rogue of a husband spent, it all."

" A gambler !"

" A glutton !"

" An old scamp, who runs after all the petticoats from morning till night."

" I don't feel any sympathy with him ; he's only got his deserts."

" Does any one know how little Germaine is ?"

" Their negi*ess told me she is at the last stage. She spits blood by the handkerchief-full."

" And hasn't even a carpet in her room. That poor child could only recover in a warm country — at Florence, or in Italy."

" She'll become an angel in heaven."

" Those who remain behind are most to be pitied."

" I don't know how the Duchess can get on much longer. They've run up bills with every tradesman, and the baker is talking of stopping their credit."

" What's their rent V

" Eight hundred francs. But I should be surprised if master ever saw the colour of their money."

" If I were he, I would sooner have the rooms empty than keep people who disgrace the house."

" What an ass you are ! I suppose the Duke de la Tour and his family are to go to the workhouse. — No, no ; we have all an interest in keeping the matter from becoming public."

" But why don't they work ?" the scullery -boy said. " Dukes are men like others."

" Boy," the steward said, seriously, " we are talking of things you do not understand. The proof that they are not like other men is, that I, your superior, shall never be a baron, even for an hour, in my life. Besides, the Duchess is a glorious lady, and does things of which neither you nor I would be capable. Would you like to eat stewed beef for every meal through the year ]"

" Hang it, stewed beef ain't particularly jolly !" " Well ! the Duchess only puts the pot on to stew every other day, because her husband is not fond of broth. He has a rich tapioca soup, a beefsteak, or a couple of chops for his dinner, while the poor dear lady eats the shreds of meat of which the soup was made. What do you say to that 1"

The scullery-boy was touched to the heart, — " My good M. Tournoy," he said to the steward, " they are really interesting people ; could we not send them something nice, by coming to an understanding with their negress 1"

" Oh, no, she is as proud as they are ; she wouldn't have anything to do with us, and yet it's my belief she don't breakfast every day."

This conversation would have lasted longer, had not M. Anatole come to interrupt it ; he arrived just at the moment to stop the porter, who was opening his mouth for the first time. The meeting dispersed with all speed ; each orator carried off the implements of work, and the hall was deserted.

In the meanwhile, Marguerite de Brisson, Duchess de la Tour d'Embleuse, was walking with hasty steps in the direction of the Rue Jacob. The passers by, who elbowed her as they hastened to give or receive their New Year's gifts, found her like those wretched Irish girls who wander about the streets of London in search of a penny. Daughter of the Duke of Brittany, wife of an ex-governor of Senegal, the Duchess wore a black straw bonnet, the edge of which was in rags ; her veil was torn in five or six places, and. hardly concealed her face. An old China crape shawl, rusty and weather-worn, hung from her shoulders, the ragged fringe trailing in the snow ; the dress under it was so worn that the material could not be recognised ; it would have required a very close examination to see that it was a moire unnioired, muddy, cut in the folds, worn out at the bottom, and corroded by the mud of Paris streets. No linen was to be seen at the neck or cuffs. As she crossed a gutter, she would lift her dress, and you might observe a grey worsted stocking, and a plain black mohair petticoat. The Duchess' hands, stung by the piercing cold, were concealed in her shawl, and she dragged her feet after her as she walked — not from any bad habit, but simply througli fear of losing her slippers.

And yet by a contrast you may have noticed sometimes, the Duchess was neither thin nor pale, nor in any way disfigured by wretchedness. She had received from her ancestors one of those rebellious beauties which resist everything — even hunger. Prisoners have been known before now to grow fat in their dungeons to the day of their death. At the age of forty-seven the Duchess retained the greater portion of her beauty. Her hair was black, and she had two-and-thirty teeth, strong enough to pound the hardest crust. Her health was less flourishing than her face, but that was a secret between herself and her physician. The Duchess was approaching a dangerous period of life, and had received several serious warnings. Dr. le Bris, a young physician and old friend, recommended a gentle course of life, without fatigue or emotion. But how could she endure such harsh trials without giving way to emotions 1

Duke Caesar de la Tour d'Embleuse, son of one of the Emigres most faithful to the king, and most vindictive against his country, was magnificently rewarded for his father's services. In 1827, Charles X. appointed him Governor-General of the French possessions in Western Africa. He was hardly forty years of age. During his eighteen months' stay in the colony he made head against the Moors and the yellow fever, and then requested leave to come to Paris to be married. He was rich, thanks to the indemnity, and he doubled his fortune by marrying the lovely Marguerite de Brisson, who had an estate bringing in two thousand five hundred pounds a-year. The King signed his marriage contract on the same day as the Ordinances, and theDukesaw himself married, and discharged from office at one blow. The new Power would gladly have welcomed him among the turncoats, and it was rumoured that Louis Philippe's Ministry made some advances to him. But he despised all offices, in the first place, through pride, and then, through his invincible sloth. Whether it was that he had expended in three years his entire stock of energy, or that the facile loves of Paris held him by an irresistible attraction, his only labour, during ten years, was parading his horses in the Park, and showiDg his yellow kid gloves at the opera. Paris had been hitherto a terra incognita to him, for he had lived in the country under the inflexible ferule of his father until the day that he started for Senegal. He enjoyed every pleasure so late in life that he had no time to outgrow many of them.

All pleased him — the enjoyments of the table — the satisfaction of his vanity — the emotions of gambling, and even the placid joys of domestic life. He displayed at home the attentions of a young husband ; and abroad the impetuosity of a youth just of age. His wife was the happiest in France, but she was not the only woman whose happiness he promoted. He wept tears of joy on the birth of his daughter in the summer of 1835. In the excess of his delight he bought a country villa for an opera_ dancer with whom he was madly in love. The dinners he gave at home were unrivalled, save by the suppers he gave at his mistress' The woi'ld, which is always indulgent to men, pardoned him for thus squandering his life and his fortune. He was considered to act as a gentleman, because his pleasures abroad awoke no painful echo at home. Looking at it in the right light, ought he to be re- ■proached for spreading around him the superabundance of his purse and his heart 1 Not a woman pitied the Duchess, and, in fact, there was no reason to pity her. He carefully avoided compromising himself; he never appeared in public with any lady but his wife, and would sooner have missed a rendezvous than allow her to go to a ball by herself.

This double life, and the decent veil a gentleman always seeks to throw around his pleasures, soon encroached on his capital. Nothing costs so much at Paris as obscurity and discretion. The Duke was too great a gentleman to bargain with anybody ; he could never refuse anything to hi3 own, or another person's wife. You must not suppose that he was ignorant of the enormous breaches he was making in his fortune; but he calculated on play to repair them all. Men to whom fortune has come in their sleep, accustom themselves to place unlimited confidence in destiny. The Duke was as lucky as every man who takes to cards for the first time. It was supposed that his gains in 1841 more than doubled his income. But nothing is permanent in this world, not even luck in play, and he speedily discovered this fact. The Revolution of 1848, which exposed so much misery, taught him that he was irretrievably ruined. He saw a bottomless abyss yawning before him, but where another man would have lost his senses, he did not even lose hope : he went straight to his wife, and said, gaily, " My dear Marguerite, this unlucky revolution has stripped us of everything. We have not fifty pounds left."

The Duchess did not expect such a piece of news ; she thought of her daughter, and wept bitterly.

" Do not be afraid," he said ; " it is only a passing storm. Trust to me, and trust to accident. People say I am a light-minded man : all the better — I shall not sink."

The poor lady wiped away her tears, and said to him, —

" I suppose, my love, you will take office ?"

" I — fie ! I will await Fortune ; she is a coquette, but she is too fond of me to think of leaving me without some intention of returning."

The Duke waited for her coming eight years in a small set of rooms, over the stables at the Baron de Sangli6's. His old friends, so soon as they had time to look round, helped him with their purses and their credit. He borrowed without scruple, like a man who had lent much without any acknowledgment. He was offered several appointments, all honourable ; an agricultural company proposed to place him on the direction with a handsome salary. He refused through fear of lowering himself : " I do not mind selling my time," he said, " but I cannot consent to lend my name."

Thus he descended, one by one, all the rungs of misery's ladder, wearing out his friends, exhausting the patience of his creditors, causing every door to be closed against him, staining the honour he would not compromise, but never thinking of the threadbare coat in which he promenaded the streets, or the fireless grate at home.

On the first of January, 1853, the Duchess was carrying to the government pawnbroker's her wedding-ring.

A person must be totally destitute of all human help to pledge an article of such slight value as a wedding-ring. But the Duchess had not a farthing in the house ; and it is not possible to live without money, although confidence is the mainspring of commerce in Paris. Many things may be obtained without payment if you can throw on the counter a card bearing a high name and an imposing address. You can furnish your house, fill your cellar, and cram your wardrobe without letting your tradespeople see the colour of your money. But there are a thousand daily expenses which can only be defrayed purse in hand. A coat may be got on credit, but mending a rent costs ready-money. It is at times easier to buy a watch than a cabbage. The Duchess had a remnant of credit with some tradespeople, which she managed with religious care ; but as for money, she knew not where to turn for it. The Duke had no friends left : he had expended them like the remains of his fortune. One college friend is fond of us up to fifty pounds ; an acquaintance may be the man to lend us a twenty-pound note ; or a charitable neighbour may represent the value of a dinner. Beyond a certain figure, the lender is liberated from all the duties of friendship ; — - he has no reason to reproach himself ; he has behaved well ; he owes you nothing more, and has the right to turn his head away when he meets you, or to be "not at home" when you call. The Duchess' ladyfriends had withdrawn from her one by one. The friendship of women is assuredly more chivalrous than that of men ; but in both sexes affection is only lasting among equals. A delicate pleasure is felt in climbing a difficult flight of stairs two or three times, and sitting down in full-dress by the side of a trucklebed ; but there are few souls sufficiently heroic to live on familiar terms with the misfortunes of others. The poor woman's dearest friends, those who addressed her by her Christian name, felt their hearts chilled in this room, without carpet or fire — but they did not come again. When the Duchess' name was mentioned, they spoke highly of her, sincerely pitied her, and said, " We still love her dearly, but we hardly ever see her. It is her husband's fault."

In this lamentable state of desertion, the Duchess had recourse to the last friend of the wretched — the creditor who lends at high interest, but without reproach or objection. The pawnbroker took care of her jewellery, furs, and the best of her linen and wardrobe, and the last mattrass on her bed. She had pledged everything under the eyes of the old Duke, who saw article after article of his furniture disappear, and gaily wished them a pleasant trip. This incomprehensible old man lived in his house, as Louis XIV did in his kingdom, without care for the future, while saying, " After me, the deluge !" He rose late, breakfasted with a good appetite : passed an hour at his toilet-table, curled his hair, plastered his wrinkles, put on some rouge, polished his nails, and promenaded his graces about Paris until the dinner hour. He did not feel surprised at seeing a good meal on the table, and was too discreet to ask his wife whence she obtained it. If the fare were meagre, he only smiled at his ill-luck. When Germaine began coughing, he made some agreeable jokes about this bad habit. He was a long time before he saw that she was pining away ; and on the day he perceived it, he experienced considerable annoyance.

When the doctor told him that the poor girl could only be saved by a miracle, he called him Dr. Croaker, and said, as he rubbed his hands, " Pooh, pooh ! it will be nothing !" He did not really know whether he assumed this jaunty air to reassure his family, or if his natural levity prevented him from experiencing grief. His wife and daughter adored him, such as he was. He treated the Duchess with the same attention as on the day after their marriage, and jumped Germaine on his knee. The Duchess never suspected that he had been the cause of her ruin ; she had seen in him, for three-and-twenty years, a perfect man ; she considered his indifference to be courage and firmness ; she hoped in him, spite of all, and believed him capable of raising her family again by a stroke of fortune.

According to Dr. Le Bris' opinion, Germaine had still four months tc Jive. She would die at the beginning of spring, and the white lilies would have time to blossom over her tomb. She foresaw her fate, and . judged of her condition with a degree of clairvoyance very rare among consumptive persons. Perhaps, too, she suspected the evil that was undermining her mother's health. She slept by the side of the Duchess, and in her long nights of watchfulness she was at times alarmed by the panting sleep of her dear nurse. "When I am dead," she thought, " mamma will soon follow me ; we shall not be separated for long — but what will become of papa 1"

Every possible anxiety, privation, physical and moral pain, inhabited this nook of Sanglie' House ; and in Paris, so pregnant with wretchedness, there was not, probably, a family more thoroughly wretched than that of the La Tour d'Embleuse's, whose last resource was a wedding-ring.

The Duchess first hurried to a branch pawnbroker's office, but found it closed, for was it not a holiday ? Then she tried another — also closed ! Her resources were exhausted, for there are few such establishments in an aristocratic quarter like St. Germain. Still, as the Duke could not begin the year by fasting, she went into a small jeweller's shop, where she sold her ring for eleven francs. The tradesman promised to keep it for three months, in case she would like to re-purchase it.

She tied up the money in the corner of her handkerchief, and walked without stopping, to the Rue des Lombards. She went into a chemist's, bought a bottle of cod-liver oil for Germaine, crossed the market, purchased a lobster and a partridge, and returned, muddy up to her knees, to her apartments.

She found in the ante-chamber her only servant, old Semiramis, weeping silently over a piece of paper.

" What have you there T she asked her.

" It is all, madam, the baker has brought us ; we cannot have any more bread unless we pay him."

The Duchess took the bill ; it amounted to twenty-four pounds. " Don't cry," she said, " here is some change, and run to the nearest baker's ; you will get a roll for your master, and some household bread for us. Carry that into the kitchen, it is your master's breakfast. Is your young mistress awake yet V

" Yes, m'm. The doctor saw her at ten o'clock ; he is still in master's room."

Semiramis went out, and the Duchess proceeded to her husband's room. On opening the door, she heard the duke saying, in a clear and resonant voice —

" Two thousand a year ! I knew that luck was changing !"

Chapter II. The Offer Of Marriage

Dr. Charles le Bris is one of the men most liked in Paris. The great city has its spoiled children in every art, but I do not know one she treats with greater tenderness. He was born at a pretty little town in Champagne, but he studied at the Henri IV College. One of his relations, who is a surgeon in the country, destined him from an early hour for the profession. The young man walked the hospitals — passed his examination, and gained certain medals, which are the ornament of his study. His sole ambition was to succeed his uncle, and finish the patients the good old gentleman had begun. But when he appeared, armed with his successes, and doctor to the teeth, the health inspectors of the town, and his uncle, who was not much better than they, asked him why he had not remained in Paris. He was so good-looking and so clever that they felt sure success awaited him there His venerable relation considered himself much too young to think of retiring, and the rivalry of his nephew restored him his long-lost legs. In short the poor fellow was so badly received, and so many obstacles were placed in his path, that in his despair he returned to Paris. His old masters had such a high

C opinion of him that they soon got him a practice. Great men are rich enough not to be jealous. Thanks to their generosity, the doctor's reputation was made in five or six years. Some people like him as a clever man, others as an excellent dancer ; but all because he is a gentleman. He is ignorant of the first principles of charlatanism — speaks very little of his success, and leaves to his patients the care of stating who has cured them. He lives in a most unfashionable part of the town, on the third floor ; but the poor people in his quarter have no reason to complain of his being among them ; for he attends to them with so much application that he sometimes forgets his purse at their bedside.

M. le Bris had been for more than three years Mademoiselle de la Tour's physician. He had watched the progress of the disease without being able to do anything to check it. It was not that Germaine was one of those children condemned at their birth, who have within them the germ of an hereditary death. Her constitution was robust — her chest wide, and her mother had never coughed. A neglected cold, a. freezing room, and want of actual necessaries had caused the whole evil. Gradually, in spite of the doctor's attention, the poor girl had grown pallid as a statue of wax ; her appetite, gaiety, breath, and delight in life, all failed her. Six months before this history begins, M. le Bris had called in two celebrated physicians to her ; they gave their opinion that she could still be saved. One lung was left her, and nature is contented with that. But she must be taken without delay to Egypt or Italy.

" Yes," the young doctor said, " the only prescription is a villa on the banks of the Arno, a quiet life, and an income. But look !"

He pointed to the torn curtains, the straw chairs, and the naked floor.

" These condemn her to death."

In the month of January the other lung was attacked : the sacrifice was being consummated. The doctor transferred his care to the Duchess, and his last hope was to lull the daughter gently to sleep and save the mother.

He paid his visit to Germaine, felt her pulse as a matter of form, offered her a box of sugar-plums, kissed her fraternally on the forehead, and went into the Duke's room.

The Duke was still in bed; his face was not made up, and he showed all his three-and-sixty years.

" Well, my good doctor," he said, with a hearty laugh, " what sort of a year do you bring us 1 Is Fortune still angry with me 1 Ah, you coquette. If ever I get hold of you ! You are witness, doctor, that I am waiting for her in bed."