Alexandre Dumas - The Last Cavalier - Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon

“Incessu patuit dea,” said Dupaty as she passed.

“Do you insult me in a language I do not understand, Citizen Poet?” asked Madame Leclerc with a smile.

“What?” answered Dupaty. “You are from Rome, madame, and you don’t understand Latin?”

“I’ve forgotten all my Latin.”

“That is one of Virgil’s hemistiches, Madame, when Venus appeared to Aeneas. Abbé Delille translated it like this: ‘She walks by, and her steps reveal a goddess.’”

“Give me your arm, flatterer, and dance the first quadrille with me. That will be your punishment.”

Dupaty didn’t need to be asked twice. He held out his arm, straightened his legs, and allowed himself to be led by Madame Leclerc into a boudoir, where she stopped on the pretext that it was cooler than the larger rooms. In reality, though, it was because the boudoir offered an immense sofa that enabled the divine coquette to display her couture and her beauty to best effect.

As she passed Madame de Contades, the most beautiful woman in the room only so long as Madame Leclerc had not been present, the grand coquette cast a defiant glance. And she had the satisfaction of seeing all her rival’s admirers abandon Madame de Contades in her armchair and gather now around the sofa.

Madame de Contades bit her lips until they bled. But in the quiver of revenge that every woman wears at her side, she found one of those poisoned arrows that can mortally wound, and she called to Monsieur de Noailles. “Charles,” she said, “lend me your arm so I can go see up close that marvel of beauty and clothing that has just attracted all of our butterflies.”

“Ah,” said the young man, “and you are going to make her realize that among these butterflies there is a bee. Sting, sting, Countess,” Monsieur de Noailles added. “These low-born Bonapartes have been nobles for too short a time. They need to be reminded that they are making a mistake in trying to mix with the old aristocracy. If you look carefully at that parvenu, you will find, I am sure, the stigmata of her plebian origins.”

With a laugh, the young man allowed himself to be led by Madame de Contades, who, nostrils flared, seemed to be blazing a trail. Once she’d reached the crowd of flatterers surrounding the lovely Madame Leclerc, she elbowed her way up to the front row.

Madame Leclerc afforded her rival a smile, for no doubt Madame de Contades felt obligated to pay her homage.

And indeed, Madame de Contades proceeded with a politesse that in no way disabused Madame Leclerc of her impression. Madame de Contades added her voice to the hymns of praise and admiration being offered up to the divinity on the sofa. Then, suddenly, as if she had just made a horrible discovery, she cried out, “Oh, my God! How terrible! Why does such a horrible deformity have to spoil one of nature’s masterpieces!” she exclaimed. “Must it be said that nothing in this world is perfect? My God, how sad!”

At this strange lamentation, everybody looked first at Madame de Contades, then at Madame Leclerc, then at Madame de Contades again. They were obviously waiting for her to explain her outburst, but Madame de Contades continued only to lament this sad case of human imperfection.

“Come now,” her escort finally said. “What do you see? Tell us what you see!”

“What do you mean? Tell you what I see? Can you not see those two enormous ears stuck on both sides of such a charming head? If I had ears like that, I would have them trimmed back a little. And since they have not been hemmed, that shouldn’t be difficult.”

Barely had Madame de Contades finished when all eyes turned toward Madame Leclerc’s head—not to admire it, but rather to remark her ears. For until then no one had even noticed them.

And indeed, Paulette, as her friends called her, did have unusual ears. The white cartilage looked signally like an oyster shell, and, as Madame de Contades had pointed out, it was cartilage that nature had neglected to hem.

Madame Leclerc did not even try to defend herself against such an impertinent attack. Instead, she availed herself of that resource any woman wronged might use: She uttered a cry and collapsed.

At the same moment, her erstwhile admirers heard a carriage rolling up to the Permon mansion, and a horse galloping, then a voice calling out “The First Consul!”—all of which distracted everyone’s attention from the bizarre scene that had just transpired.

Except that, while Madame Leclerc was rushing from the boudoir in tears and the First Consul was striding in through one of the ballroom doors, Madame de Contades, her attack triumphant but too brutal perhaps, was stealing out through another.

MADAME DE PERMON WALKED up to the First Consul and bowed with great ceremony. Bonaparte took her hand and kissed it most gallantly.

“What’s this I hear, my dear friend?” he said. “Did you really refuse to open the ball before I arrived? And what if I had not been able to come before one in the morning—would all these lovely children have had to wait for me?”

Glancing around the room, he saw that some of the women from the Faubourg Saint-Germain had failed to rise when he came in. He frowned, but showed no other signs of displeasure.

“Come now, Madame de Permon,” he said. “Let the ball begin. Young people need to have fun, and dancing is their favorite pastime. They say that Loulou can dance like Mademoiselle Chameroi. Who told me that? It was Eugene, wasn’t it?”

Eugene’s ears turned red; he was the beautiful ballerina’s lover.

Bonaparte continued: “If you wish, Madame de Permon, we shall dance the monaco. That’s the only dance I know.”

“Surely you are joking,” Madame de Permon answered. “I have not danced in thirty years.”

“Come now, you can’t mean that,” said Bonaparte. “This evening you look like your daughter’s sister.”

Then, noticing Monsieur de Talleyrand, Bonaparte said, “Oh, it’s you, Talleyrand. I need to talk to you.” And with his Foreign Affairs Minister he went into the boudoir where Madame Leclerc had endured her embarrassment just moments before.

Immediately, the music began, the dancers chose partners, and the ball was under way.

Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, who was dancing with Duroc, led him over to Claire and the Comte de Sainte-Hermine, for everything her friend had told her about the young man had piqued her interest.

Monsieur de Sainte-Hermine was proving to be no less talented on the ballroom floor than he was in other areas. He had studied with the second Vestris, the son of France’s own god of dance, and he did his teacher great honor.

During the Consulate years, a young man of fashion considered it requisite to perfect the art of dancing. I can still remember having seen, when I was a child, in 1812 or 1813, the two Monbreton brothers—the very same who were dancing at Madame de Permon’s ball this evening a dozen years earlier—in Villers-Cotterêts, where a grand ball brought together the entire beautiful new aristocracy. The Montbretons came from their castle in Corcy, three leagues away, and guess how they came. In their cabriolets. Yes, but their domestics rode inside the cabriolet, while they themselves, wearing their fine pump dancing shoes, held on to straps in the back, on the springboard where normally their valets stood, so that on the road they could continue to practice their intricate steps. Arriving at the ballroom door just in time to join the first quadrille, they had their domestics brush the dust off their clothes and threw themselves into the lively reel.

However brilliantly the Montbretons may have danced at Madame de Permon’s, it was Sainte-Hermine who impressed Mademoiselle de Beauharnais, and Mademoiselle de Sourdis was proud to see that the count, who had never before deigned to dance, with skill and grace could hold his own with the best dancers at the ball. Although Mademoiselle de Beauharnais was reassured on that point, there was still another that worried the curious Hortense: Had the young man spoken to Claire? Had he told her the cause of his long sadness, of his past silence, of his present joy?