Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

“I was not aware of the origin of the term,” she replied, with the sweetest glance at Mistigris.

“My pupil here,” said Bridau, “Monsieur Leon de Lora, shows a remarkable talent for portraiture. He would be too happy, I know, to leave you a souvenir of our stay by painting your charming head, madame.”

Joseph Bridau made a sign to Mistigris which meant: “Come, sail in, and push the matter; she is not so bad in looks, this woman.”

Accepting the glance, Leon de Lora slid down upon the sofa beside Estelle and took her hand, which she permitted.

“Oh! madame, if you would like to offer a surprise to your husband, and will give me a few secret sittings I would endeavor to surpass myself. You are so beautiful, so fresh, so charming! A man without any talent might become a genius in painting you. He would draw from your eyes — ”

“We must paint your dear children in the arabesques,” said Bridau, interrupting Mistigris.

“I would rather have them in the salon; but perhaps I am indiscreet in asking it,” she replied, looking at Bridau coquettishly.

“Beauty, madame, is a sovereign whom all painters worship; it has unlimited claims upon them.”

“They are both charming,” thought Madame Moreau. “Do you enjoy driving? Shall I take you through the woods, after dinner, in my carriage?”

“Oh! oh! oh!” cried Mistigris, in three ecstatic tones. “Why, Presles will prove our terrestrial paradise.”

“With an Eve, a fair, young, fascinating woman,” added Bridau.

Just as Madame Moreau was bridling, and soaring to the seventh heaven, she was recalled like a kite by a twitch at its line.

“Madame!” cried her maid-servant, bursting into the room.

“Rosalie,” said her mistress, “who allowed you to come here without being sent for?”

Rosalie paid no heed to the rebuke, but whispered in her mistress’s ear: —

“The count is at the chateau.”

“Has he asked for me?” said the steward’s wife.

“No, madame; but he wants his trunk and the key of his apartment.”

“Then give them to him,” she replied, making an impatient gesture to hide her real trouble.

“Mamma! here’s Oscar Husson,” said her youngest son, bringing in Oscar, who turned as red as a poppy on seeing the two artists in evening dress.

“Oh! so you have come, my little Oscar,” said Estelle, stiffly. “I hope you will now go and dress,” she added, after looking at him contemptuously from head to foot. “Your mother, I presume, has not accustomed you to dine in such clothes as those.”

“Oh!” cried the cruel Mistigris, “a future diplomatist knows the saying that ‘two coats are better than none.’”

“How do you mean, a future diplomatist?” exclaimed Madame Moreau.

Poor Oscar had tears in his eyes as he looked in turn from Joseph to Leon.

“Merely a joke made in travelling,” replied Joseph, who wanted to save Oscar’s feelings out of pity.

“The boy just wanted to be funny like the rest of us, and he blagued, that’s all,” said Mistigris.

“Madame,” said Rosalie, returning to the door of the salon, “his Excellency has ordered dinner for eight, and wants it served at six o’clock. What are we to do?”

During Estelle’s conference with her head-woman the two artists and Oscar looked at each other in consternation; their glances were expressive of terrible apprehension.

“His Excellency! who is he?” said Joseph Bridau.

“Why, Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, of course,” replied little Moreau.

“Could it have been the count in the coucou?” said Leon de Lora.

“Oh!” exclaimed Oscar, “the Comte de Serizy always travels in his own carriage with four horses.”

“How did the Comte de Serizy get here?” said the painter to Madame Moreau, when she returned, much discomfited, to the salon.

“I am sure I do not know,” she said. “I cannot explain to myself this sudden arrival; nor do I know what has brought him — And Moreau not here!”

“His Excellency wishes Monsieur Schinner to come over to the chateau,” said the gardener, coming to the door of the salon. “And he begs Monsieur Schinner to give him the pleasure to dine with him; also Monsieur Mistigris.”

“Done for!” cried the rapin, laughing. “He whom we took for a bourgeois in the coucou was the count. You may well say: ‘Sour are the curses of perversity.’”

Oscar was very nearly changed to a pillar of salt; for, at this revelation, his throat felt saltier than the sea.

“And you, who talked to him about his wife’s lovers and his skin diseases!” said Mistigris, turning on Oscar.

“What does he mean?” exclaimed the steward’s wife, gazing after the two artists, who went away laughing at the expression of Oscar’s face.

Oscar remained dumb, confounded, stupefied, hearing nothing, though Madame Moreau questioned him and shook him violently by his arm, which she caught and squeezed. She gained nothing, however, and was forced to leave him in the salon without an answer, for Rosalie appeared again, to ask for linen and silver, and to beg she would go herself and see that the multiplied orders of the count were executed. All the household, together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife, were going and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The master had fallen upon his own house like a bombshell.

From the top of the hill near La Cave, where he left the coach, the count had gone, by the path through the woods well-known to him, to the house of his gamekeeper. The keeper was amazed when he saw his real master.

“Is Moreau here?” said the count. “I see his horse.”

“No, monseigneur; he means to go to Moulineaux before dinner, and he has left his horse here while he went to the chateau to give a few orders.”

“If you value your place,” said the count, “you will take that horse and ride at once to Beaumont, where you will deliver to Monsieur Margueron the note that I shall now write.”

So saying the count entered the keeper’s lodge and wrote a line, folding it in a way impossible to open without detection, and gave it to the man as soon as he saw him in the saddle.

“Not a word to any one,” he said, “and as for you, madame,” he added to the gamekeeper’s wife, “if Moreau comes back for his horse, tell him merely that I have taken it.”

The count then crossed the park and entered the court-yard of the chateau through the iron gates. However worn-out a man may be by the wear and tear of public life, by his own emotions, by his own mistakes and disappointments, the soul of any man able to love deeply at the count’s age is still young and sensitive to treachery. Monsieur de Serizy had felt such pain at the thought that Moreau had deceived him, that even after hearing the conversation at Saint-Brice he thought him less an accomplice of Leger and the notary than their tool. On the threshold of the inn, and while that conversation was still going on, he thought of pardoning his steward after giving him a good reproof. Strange to say, the dishonesty of his confidential agent occupied his mind as a mere episode from the moment when Oscar revealed his infirmities. Secrets so carefully guarded could only have been revealed by Moreau, who had, no doubt, laughed over the hidden troubles of his benefactor with either Madame de Serizy’s former maid or with the Aspasia of the Directory.

As he walked along the wood-path, this peer of France, this statesman, wept as young men weep; he wept his last tears. All human feelings were so cruelly hurt by one stroke that the usually calm man staggered through his park like a wounded deer.

When Moreau arrived at the gamekeeper’s lodge and asked for his horse, the keeper’s wife replied: —