第14章

"Three months ago Claudine drove to La Palferine's door in her splendid carriage with its armorial bearings. Du Bruel's grandfather was a farmer of taxes ennobled towards the end of Louis Quatorze's reign. Cherin composed his coat-of-arms for him, so the Count's coronet looks not amiss above a scutcheon innocent of Imperial absurdities. In this way, in the short space of three years, Claudine had carried out the programme laid down for her by the charming, light-hearted La Palferine.

"One day, just above a month ago, she climbed the miserable staircase to her lover's lodging; climbed in her glory, dressed like a real countess of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, to our friend's garret. La Palferine, seeing her, said, 'You have made a peeress of yourself Iknow. But it is too late, Claudine; every one is talking just now about the Southern Cross, I should like it see it!'

" 'I will get it for you.'

"La Palferine burst into a peal of Homeric laughter.

" 'Most distinctly,' he returned, 'I do /not/ wish to have a woman as ignorant as a carp for my mistress, a woman that springs like a flying fish from the green-room of the Opera to Court, for I should like to see you at the Court of the Citizen King.'

"She turned to me.

" 'What is the Southern Cross?' she asked, in a sad, downcast voice.

"I was struck with admiration for this indomitable love, outdoing the most ingenious marvels of fairy tales in real life--a love that would spring over a precipice to find a roc's egg, or to gather the singing flower. I explained that the Southern Cross was a nebulous constellation even brighter than the Milky Way, arranged in the form of a cross, and that it could only be seen in southern latitudes.

" 'Very well, Charles, let us go,' said she.

"La Palferine, ferocious though he was, had tears in his eyes; but what a look there was in Claudine's face, what a note in her voice! Ihave seen nothing like the thing that followed, not even in the supreme touch of a great actor's art; nothing to compare with her movement when she saw the hard eyes softened in tears; Claudine sank upon her knees and kissed La Palferine's pitiless hand. He raised her with his grand manner, his 'Rusticoli air,' as he calls it--'There, child!' he said, 'I will do something for you; I will put you--in my will.'

"Well," concluded Nathan, "I ask myself sometimes whether du Bruel is really deceived. Truly there is nothing more comic, nothing stranger than the sight of a careless young fellow ruling a married couple, his slightest whims received as law, the weightiest decisions revoked at a word from him. That dinner incident, as you can see, is repeated times without number, it interferes with important matters. Still, but for Claudine's caprices, du Bruel would be de Cursy still, one vaudevillist among five hundred; whereas he is in the House of Peers.""You will change the names, I hope!" said Nathan, addressing Mme. de la Baudraye.

"I should think so! I have only set names to the masks for you. My dear Nathan," she added in the poet's ear, "I know another case on which the wife takes du Bruel's place.""And the catastrophe?" queried Lousteau, returning just at the end of Mme. de la Baudraye's story.

"I do not believe in catastrophes. One has to invent such good ones to show that art is quite a match for chance; and nobody reads a book twice, my friend, except for the details.""But there is a catastrophe," persisted Nathan.

"What is it?"

"The Marquise de Rochefide is infatuated with Charles Edward. My story excited her curiosity.""Oh, unhappy woman!" cried Mme. de la Baudraye.

"Not so unhappy," said Nathan, "for Maxime de Trailles and La Palferine have brought about a rupture between the Marquis and Mme.

Schontz, and they mean to make it up between Arthur and Beatrix."1839 - 1845.

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