第46章 A LOVER SAVED AND LOST(10)

"They'll replace the sums you have paid for him.""Ah!"cried Florine,"didn't I kill myself body and soul in the provinces to get him money,--I,who'd have cut my hand off to serve him?But that's men!damn your soul for them and they'll march over you rough-shod!He shall pay me for this!"Madame de Vandenesse was disappearing with the letters.

"Hi!stop,stop,my fine mask!"cried Florine;"leave me one to confound him with.""Not possible,"said Vandenesse.

"Why not?"

"That mask is your ex-rival;but you needn't fear her now.""Well,she might have had the grace to say thank you,"cried Florine.

"But you have the fifty thousand francs instead,"said Vandenesse,bowing to her.

It is extremely rare for young men,when driven to suicide,to attempt it a second time if the first fails.When it doesn't cure life,it cures all desire for voluntary death.Raoul felt no disposition to try it again when he found himself in a more painful position than that from which he had just been rescued.He tried to see the countess and explain to her the nature of his love,which now shone more vividly in his soul than ever.But the first time they met in society,Madame de Vandenesse gave him that fixed and contemptuous look which at once and forever puts an impassable gulf between a man and a woman.In spite of his natural assurance,Nathan never dared,during the rest of the winter,either to speak to the countess or even approach her.

But he opened his heart to Blondet;to him he talked of his Laura and his Beatrice,apropos of Madame de Vandenesse.He even made a paraphrase of the following beautiful passage from the pen of Theophile Gautier,one of the most remarkable poets of our day:--"'Ideala,flower of heaven's own blue,with heart of gold,whose fibrous roots,softer,a thousandfold,than fairy tresses,strike to our souls and drink their purest essence;flower most sweet and bitter!thou canst not be torn away without the heart's blood flowing,without thy bruised stems sweating with scarlet tears.Ah!cursed flower,why didst thou grow within my soul?'""My dear fellow,"said Blondet,"you are raving.I'll grant it was a pretty flower,but it wasn't a bit ideal,and instead of singing like a blind man before an empty niche,you had much better wash your hands and make submission to the powers.You are too much of an artist ever to be a good politician;you have been fooled by men of not one-half your value.Think about being fooled again--but elsewhere.""Marie cannot prevent my loving her,"said Nathan;"she shall be my Beatrice.""Beatrice,my good Raoul,was a little girl twelve years of age when Dante last saw her;otherwise,she would not have been Beatrice.To make a divinity,it won't do to see her one day wrapped in a mantle,and the next with a low dress,and the third on the boulevard,cheapening toys for her last baby.When a man has Florine,who is in turn duchess,bourgeoise,Negress,marquise,colonel,Swiss peasant,virgin of the sun in Peru (only way she can play the part),I don't see why he should go rambling after fashionable women."Du Tillet,to use a Bourse term,EXECUTED Nathan,who,for lack of money,gave up his place on the newspaper;and the celebrated man received but five votes in the electoral college where the banker was elected.

When,after a long and happy journey in Italy,the Comtesse de Vandenesse returned to Paris late in the following winter,all her husband's predictions about Nathan were justified.He had taken Blondet's advice and negotiated with the government,which employed his pen.His personal affairs were in such disorder that one day,on the Champs-Elysees,Marie saw her former adorer on foot,in shabby clothes,giving his arm to Florine.When a man becomes indifferent to the heart of a woman who has once loved him,he often seems to her very ugly,even horrible,especially when he resembles Nathan.Madame de Vandenesse had a sense of personal humiliation in the thought that she had once cared for him.If she had not already been cured of all extra-conjugal passion,the contrast then presented by the count to this man,grown less and less worthy of public favor,would have sufficed her.

To-day the ambitious Nathan,rich in ink and poor in will,has ended by capitulating entirely,and has settled down into a sinecure,like any other commonplace man.After lending his pen to all disorganizing efforts,he now lives in peace under the protecting shade of a ministerial organ.The cross of the Legion of honor,formerly the fruitful text of his satire,adorns his button-hole."Peace at any price,"ridicule of which was the stock-in-trade of his revolutionary editorship,is now the topic of his laudatory articles.Heredity,attacked by him in Saint-Simonian phrases,he now defends with solid arguments.This illogical conduct has its origin and its explanation in the change of front performed by many men besides Raoul during our recent political evolutions.