Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (25 page)

Then, with a sprightly air, “But I’ve forgotten that I’m talking to a capitalist, to a Mondor, for you are a Mondor now!”

And, coming back to the question of the inheritance, he expressed this view—that collateral succession (a thing unjust in itself, though in the present case he was glad it was possible) would be abolished one of these days at the approaching revolution.

“Do you believe in that?” said Frédéric.

“Be sure of it!” he replied. “This sort of thing cannot last. There is too much suffering. When I see the wretchedness of men like Sénécal—”

“Always Sénécal!” thought Frédéric.

“But, as for the rest, tell me the news? Are you still in love with Madame Arnoux? Is it all over—eh?”

Frédéric, not knowing what answer to give him, closed his eyes and bowed his head.

With regard to Arnoux, Deslauriers told him that the journal was now the property of Hussonnet, who had transformed it. It was called
“L’Art,
a literary institution—a company with shares of one hundred francs each; capital of the firm, forty thousand francs,” each shareholder having the right to put into it his own contributions; for “the company has for its object to publish the works of beginners, to spare writers of talent, perhaps of genius, sad overwhelming crises,” etc.

“You know how it goes!” There was, however, something to be effected by the change—the tone of the journal could be raised; then, without any delay, while retaining the same writers, and promising a continuation of the series, to supply the subscribers with a political journal: the capital required would not be much.

“What do you think of it? Come! would you like to have a hand in it?”

Frédéric did not reject the proposal; but he pointed out that it was necessary for him to straighten out his affairs first.

“After that, if you require anything—”

“Thanks, my boy!” said Deslauriers.

Then, they smoked cigars, leaning with their elbows on the ledge covered with velvet beside the window. The sun was shining; the air was balmy. Flocks of birds, fluttering about, swooped down into the garden. The statues of bronze and marble, washed by the rain, were glistening. Nursery-maids wearing aprons were seated on chairs, chatting together; and the laughter of children could be heard mingling with the continuous splash that came from the fountain.

Frédéric was troubled by Deslauriers’ irritability; but under the influence of the wine which circulated through his veins, half-asleep, in a state of torpor, with the sun shining full on his face, he was no longer conscious of anything save a profound sense of comfort, a kind of voluptuous feeling that stupefied him, as a plant is saturated with heat and moisture. Deslauriers, with half-closed eyelids, was staring vacantly into the distance. His chest swelled, and he broke out in the following strain:

“Ah! those were better days when Camille Desmoulins, standing below there on a table, drove the people on to the Bastille.
³
Men really lived in those times; they could assert themselves, and prove their strength! Simple lawyers commanded generals. Kings were beaten by beggars; whilst now—”

He stopped, then added all of a sudden:

“Never mind! the future is full of promise!”

And, drumming a battle-march on the window-panes, he spoke some verses of Barthélemy,
^y
which ran thus:

A fearless Colussus marching with giant strides’

—I don’t know the rest of it! But ’tis late; suppose we go?”

And he went on preaching his theories in the street.

Frédéric, without listening to him, was looking at certain materials and articles of furniture in the shop-windows which would be suitable for his new residence in Paris; and it was, perhaps, the thought of Madame Arnoux that made him stop before a second-hand dealer’s window, where three plates made of fine porcelain were exposed to view. They were decorated with yellow arabesques with metallic reflections, and were worth a hundred crowns apiece. He had them put aside.

“If I were in your place,” said Deslauriers, “I would buy silver,” revealing by this love of lavish things a man of humble origins.

As soon as he was alone, Frédéric proceeded to the establishment of the celebrated Pomadère, where he ordered three pairs of trousers, two dress coats, a coat trimmed with fur, and five waistcoats. Then he called at a bootmaker‘s, a shirtmaker’s, and a hatter‘s, giving them directions in each shop to make the greatest possible haste. Three days later, on the evening of his return from Le Havre, he found his complete wardrobe awaiting him in his Parisian abode; and impatient to make use of it, he resolved to pay an immediate visit to the Dambreuses. But it was too early yet—scarcely eight o’clock.

“Suppose I went to see the others?” said he to himself.

He came upon Arnoux, all alone, in the act of shaving in front of his glass. The latter proposed to drive him to a place where they could amuse themselves, and when M. Dambreuse was referred to, “Ah, that’s lucky! You’ll see some of his friends there. Come on, then! It will be good fun!”

Frédéric asked to be excused. Madame Arnoux recognised his voice, and wished him good-day, through the partition, for her daughter was indisposed, and she was also rather unwell herself The noise of a spoon against a glass could be heard from within, and all those rustling sounds made by things being lightly moved about, which are usual in a sickroom. Then Arnoux left his dressing-room to say good-bye to his wife. He enumerated the reasons for going out:

“You know well that it is a serious matter! I must go there; ’tis a case of necessity. They’ll be waiting for me!”

“Go, go, my dear! Amuse yourself!”

Arnoux hailed a hackney-coach:

“Palais Royal, No. 7 Montpensier Gallery.” And, as he let himself sink back in the cushions:

“Ah! how tired I am, my dear fellow! It will be the death of me! However, I can tell it to you—to you!”

He bent towards Frédéric’s ear in a mysterious fashion:

“I am trying to discover again the red of Chinese copper!”

And he explained the nature of the glaze and the little fire.

On their arrival at Chevet’s shop, a large basket was brought to him, which he stowed away in the hackney-coach. Then he chose for his “poor wife” some grapes, pineapples and various delicacies, and directed that they should be sent early next morning.

After this, they called at a costumer’s establishment; it was to a masquerade ball they were going.

Arnoux selected blue velvet breeches, a vest of the same material, and a red wig; Frédéric a domino; and they went down the Rue de Laval towards a house the second floor of which was illuminated by coloured lanterns.

At the foot of the stairs they heard violins playing above.

“Where the devil are you bringing me to?” said Frédéric.

“To see a sweet girl! don’t be afraid!”

The door was opened for them by a footman; and they entered the hall, where overcoats, cloaks, and shawls were thrown together in a heap on some chairs. A young woman in the costume of a dragoon of Louis XIV’s reign was passing by at that moment. It was Mademoiselle Rosanette Bron, the mistress of the house.

“Well?” said Arnoux.

“ ’Tis done!” she replied.

“Ah! thank you, my angel!”

And he wanted to kiss her.

“Be careful, you fool! You’ll spoil my make-up!”

Arnoux introduced Frédéric.

“Step inside, Monsieur; you are quite welcome!”

She drew aside a door-curtain, and cried out with a certain emphasis:

“Here’s my lord Arnoux, kitchen boy, and a princely friend of his!”

Frédéric was at first dazzled by the lights. He could see nothing save some silk and velvet dresses, naked shoulders, a mass of colours swaying to and fro to the accompaniment of an orchestra hidden behind green foliage, between walls hung with yellow silk, with pastel portraits here and there and crystal chandeliers in the style of Louis XVI’s period. High lamps, whose globes of frosted glass resembled snowballs, looked down on baskets of flowers placed on small tables in the corners; and opposite through a second smaller room, one could see a third room containing a bed with twisted posts, over which hung a Venetian mirror.

The dancing stopped, and there were bursts of applause, a hubbub of delight, as Arnoux was seen advancing with his basket on his head; the food stuffs contained in it made a lump in the centre.

“Watch out for the chandelier!”

Frédéric raised his eyes: it was the old Saxon chandelier that had adorned the shop attached to the office of
L’Art Industriel.
The memory of former days came back to him. But a foot-soldier in undress uniform, with that silly expression traditionally attributed to conscripts, planted himself right in front of him, spreading out his two arms to express his astonishment, and, in spite of the hideous black extra-pointing moustache, disfiguring his face, Frédéric recognised his old friend Hussonnet. In a half Alsatian, half-negro kind of gibberish, the Bohemian showered him with congratulations, calling him his colonel. Frédéric, overwhelmed by all these people, was at a loss for an answer. At a tap on the desk from a fiddlestick, the partners in the dance fell into their places.

They were about sixty in number, the women being for the most part dressed either as village-girls or marquises, and the men, who were nearly all middle-aged, in costumes of wagoners, ’longshore-men, or sailors.

Frédéric, having taken up his position close to the wall, stared at those who were going through the quadrille in front of him.

An old buck, dressed like a Venetian Doge in a long gown of purple silk, was dancing with Mademoiselle Rosanette, who wore a green coat, laced breeches, and boots of soft leather with gold spurs. The pair in front of them consisted of an Albanian laden with Turkish daggers and a Swiss girl with blue eyes and skin white as milk, who looked as plump as a quail in shirt-sleeves and a red corset to show off her hair, which fell down to her hips; a tall blonde, an extra in the opera, had assumed the part of a female savage, and over her brown body-suit she wore nothing but a leather loin-cloth, glass bracelets, and a tinsel diadem, from which rose a large spray of peacock’s feathers. In front of her, a gentleman who had intended to be Pritchard, in a ridiculously big black coat, was beating time with his elbows on his snuff-box. A little Watteau shepherd in blue-and-silver, like moonlight, dashed his crook against the thyrsus of a Bacchante crowned with grapes, who wore a leopard’s skin over her left side, and buskins with gold ribbons; on the other side, a Polish lady, in a short red velvet jacket, made her gauze petticoat flutter over her pearl-gray stockings, which rose above her fashionable pink boots bordered with white fur.

She was smiling at a big-paunched man of forty, disguised as a choir-boy, who was skipping about, lifting up his surplice with one hand, and with the other his red clerical cap. But the queen, the star, was Mademoiselle Loulou, a star of the dance halls. As she had now become wealthy, she wore a large lace collar over her vest of smooth black velvet; and her wide trousers of poppy-coloured silk, clinging closely to her figure, and drawn tight round her waist by a cashmere scarf, had all over their seams little natural white camellias. Her pale face, a little puffy, and with a slightly turned up nose, looked all the more pert from the disordered appearance of her wig, over which she had clapped a man’s grey felt hat, cocked over her right ear; and, with every leap she made, her pumps, adorned with diamond buckles, nearly kicked in the nose her neighbour, a big mediaeval baron, who was quite entangled in his steel armour. There was also an angel, with a gold sword in her hand, and two swan’s wings over her back, who kept rushing up and down, every minute losing her partner who appeared as Louis XIV, bewildered among the figures and confusing the quadrille.

Frédéric, as he gazed at these people, experienced a sense of forlornness, a feeling of uneasiness. He was still thinking of Madame Arnoux and it seemed to him as if he were taking part in some plot that was being hatched against her.

When the quadrille was over, Mademoiselle Rosanette accosted him. She was slightly out of breath, and her gorget, polished like a mirror, rose up under her chin.

“And you, Monsieur,” said she, “don’t you dance?”

Frédéric excused himself; he did not know how to dance.

“Really! but with me? Are you quite sure?” And, poised on one hip, with her other knee a little drawn back, while she stroked with her left hand the mother-of-pearl pommel of her sword, she kept staring at him for a minute with a half-beseeching, half-teasing air. At last she said “Good night!” then made a pirouette, and disappeared.

Frédéric, dissatisfied with himself, and not knowing what to do, began to wander through the ball-room.

He entered the boudoir padded with pale blue silk, with bouquets of flowers from the fields, whilst on the ceiling, in a circle of gilt wood, Cupids emerging out of an azure sky, played over the pillowy clouds. This display of luxury, which would to-day be nothing to people like Rosanette, dazzled him, and he admired everything—the artificial morning glories which adorned the surface of the mirror, the curtains over the fireplace, the Turkish divan, and a sort of tent in an alcove made of pink silk with a covering of white muslin overhead. Furniture made of dark wood with inlaid copper work filled the bedroom, where, on a platform covered with swan’s-down, stood the large canopied bedstead trimmed with ostrich-feathers. Pins, with heads made of precious stones, stuck into pincushions, rings trailing over trays, circular gold medallions, and little silver chests, could be distinguished in the dim light shed by a Bohemian urn suspended from three chains. Through a little door, which was slightly ajar, could be seen a green-house occupying the entire breadth of a terrace, with an aviary at the other end.