The Chateau de Courtornieu is, next to Sairmeuse, the most magnificent habitation in the arrondissement of Montaignac.
The approach to the castle was by a long and narrow road, badly paved. When the carriage containing Martial and his father turned from the public highway into this rough road, the jolting aroused the duke from the profound revery into which he had fallen on leaving Sairmeuse.
The marquis thought that he had caused this unusual fit of abstraction.
“It is the result of my adroit manoeuvre,” he said to himself, not without secret satisfaction. “Until the restitution of Sairmeuse is legalized, I can make my father do anything I wish; yes, anything. And if it is necessary, he will even invite Lacheneur and Marie-Anne to his table.”
He was mistaken. The duke had already forgotten the affair; his most vivid impressions lasted no longer than an indentation in the sand.
He lowered the glass in front of the carriage, and, after ordering the coachman to drive more slowly:
“Now,” said he to his son, “let us talk a little. Are you really in love with that little Lacheneur?”
Martial could not repress a start. “Oh! in love,” said he, lightly, “that would perhaps be saying too much. Let me say that she has taken my fancy; that will be sufficient.”
The duke regarded his son with a bantering air.
“Really, you delight me!” he exclaimed. “I feared that this love-affair might derange, at least for the moment, certain plans that I have formed — for I have formed certain plans for you.”
“The devil!”
“Yes, I have my plans, and I will communicate them to you later in detail. I will content myself today by recommending you to examine Mademoiselle Blanche de Courtornieu.”
Martial made no reply. This recommendation was entirely unnecessary. If Mlle. Lacheneur had made him forget Mlle. de Courtornieu that morning for some moments, the remembrance of Marie-Anne was now effaced by the radiant image of Blanche.
“Before discussing the daughter,” resumed the duke, “let us speak of the father. He is one of my strongest friends; and I know him thoroughly. You have heard men reproach me for what they style my prejudices, have you not? Well, in comparison with the Marquis de Courtornieu, I am only a Jacobin.”
“Oh! my father!”
“Really, nothing could be more true. If I am behind the age in which I live, he belongs to the reign of Louis XIV. Only — for there is an only — the principles which I openly avow, he keeps locked up in his snuff-box — and trust him for not forgetting to open it at the opportune moment. He has suffered cruelly for his opinions, in the sense of having so often been obliged to conceal them. He concealed them, first, under the consulate, when he returned from exile. He dissimulated them even more courageously under the Empire — for he played the part of a kind of chamberlain to Bonaparte, this dear marquis. But, chut! do not remind him of that proof of heroism; he has deplored it bitterly since the battle of Lutzen.”
This was the tone in which M. de Sairmeuse was accustomed to speak of his best friends.
“The history of his fortune,” he continued, “is the history of his marriages — I say marriages, because he has married a number of times, and always advantageously. Yes, in a period of fifteen years he has had the misfortune of losing three wives, each richer than the other. His daughter is the child of his third and last wife, a Cisse Blossac — she died in 1809. He comforted himself after each bereavement by purchasing a quantity of lands or bonds. So that now he is as rich as you are, Marquis, and his influence is powerful and widespread. I forgot one detail, however, he believes, they tell me, in the growing power of the clergy, and has become very devout.”
He checked himself; the carriage had stopped before the entrance of the Chateau de Courtornieu, and the marquis came forward to receive his guests in person. A nattering distinction, which he seldom lavished upon his visitors. The marquis was long rather than tall, and very solemn in deportment. The head that surmounted his angular form was remarkably small, a characteristic of his race, and covered with thin, glossy black hair, and lighted by cold, round black eyes.
The pride that becomes a gentleman, and the humility that befits a Christian, were continually at war with each other in his countenance.
He pressed the hands of M. de Sairmeuse and Martial, overwhelming them with compliments uttered in a thin, rather nasal voice, which, issuing from his immense body, was as astonishing as the sound of a flute issuing from the pipes of an orphicleide would be.
“At last you have come,” he said; “we were waiting for you before beginning our deliberations upon a very grave, and also very delicate matter. We are thinking of addressing a petition to His Majesty. The nobility, who have suffered so much during the Revolution, have a right to expect ample compensation. Our neighbors, to the number of sixteen, are now assembled in my cabinet, transformed for the time into a council chamber.”
Martial shuddered at the thought of all the ridiculous and tiresome conversation he would probably be obliged to hear; and his father’s recommendation occurred to him.
“Shall we not have the honor of paying our respects to Mademoiselle de Courtornieu?”
“My daughter must be in the drawing-room with our cousin,” replied the marquis, in an indifferent tone; “at least, if she is not in the garden.”
This might be construed into, “Go and look for her if you choose.” At least Martial understood it in that way; and when they entered the hall, he allowed his father and the marquis to go upstairs without him.
A servant opened the door of the drawing-room for him — but it was empty.
“Very well,” said he; “I know my way to the garden.”
But he explored it in vain; no one was to be found.
He decided to return to the house and march bravely into the presence of the dreaded enemy. He had turned to retrace his steps when, through the foliage of a bower of jasmine, he thought he could distinguish a white dress.
He advanced softly, and his heart quickened its throbbing when he saw that he was right.
Mlle. Blanche de Courtornieu was seated on a bench beside an old lady, and was engaged in reading a letter in a low voice.
She must have been greatly preoccupied, since she had not heard Martial’s footsteps approaching.
He was only ten paces from her, so near that he could distinguish the shadow of her long eyelashes. He paused, holding his breath, in a delicious ecstasy.
“Ah! how beautiful she is!” he thought. Beautiful? no. But pretty, yes; as pretty as heart could desire, with her great velvety blue eyes and her pouting lips. She was a blonde, but one of those dazzling and radiant blondes found only in the countries of the sun; and from her hair, drawn high upon the top of her head, escaped a profusion of ravishing, glittering ringlets, which seemed almost to sparkle in the play of the light breeze.
One might, perhaps, have wished her a trifle larger. But she had the winning charm of all delicate and mignonnes women; and her figure was of exquisite roundness, and her dimpled hands were those of an infant.
Alas! these attractive exteriors are often deceitful, as much and even more so, than the appearances of a man like the Marquis de Courtornieu.
The apparently innocent and artless young girl possessed the parched, hollow soul of an experienced woman of the world, or of an old courtier. She had been so petted at the convent, in the capacity of only daughter of a grand seigneur and millionnaire; she had been surrounded by so much adulation, that all her good qualities had been blighted in the bud by the poisonous breath of flattery.
She was only nineteen; and still it was impossible for any person to have been more susceptible to the charms of wealth and of satisfied ambition. She dreamed of a position at court as a school-girl dreams of a lover.
If she had deigned to notice Martial — for she had remarked him — it was only because her father had told her that this young man would lift his wife to the highest sphere of power. Thereupon she had uttered a “very well, we will see!” that would have changed an enamoured suitor’s love into disgust.
Martial advanced a few steps, and Mlle. Blanche, on seeing him, sprang up with a pretty affectation of intense timidity.
Bowing low before her, he said, gently, and with profound deference:
“Monsieur de Courtornieu, Mademoiselle, was so kind as to tell me where I might have the honor of finding you. I had not courage to brave those formidable discussions inside; but ——”
He pointed to the letter the young girl held in her hand, and added:
“But I fear that I am de trap.”
“Oh! not in the least, Monsieur le Marquis, although this letter which I have just been reading has, I confess, interested me deeply. It was written by a poor child in whom I have taken ............