The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 2 of 6

"No. Pray tell me, is there not a hackney coach-stand near here?"

"Quite close, my lord, – in the Rue de Lille."

After a moment's hesitation, the marquis continued: "Go and inquire of Mlle. Juliette whether Madame d'Harville can see me for a few minutes." Joseph obeyed.

"Yes," murmured the marquis, "I will see the cause of all my misery, – my disgrace. I will contemplate the guilty mask beneath which the impure heart conceals its adulterous designs. I will listen to the false lips that speak the words of innocence, while deep dishonour lurks in the candid smile, – a smile that seemed to me as that of an angel. Yet 'tis an appalling spectacle to watch the words, the looks, of one who, breathing only the sentiments of a chaste wife and mother, is about to sully your name with one of those deep, deadly stains which can only be washed out in blood. Fool that I am to give her the chance of again bewildering my senses! She will look at me with her accustomed sweetness and candour; greet me (all guilty as she is) with the same pure smile she bestows upon her child, as, kneeling at her lap, it lisps its early prayer. That look, – those eyes, mirrors of the soul, – the more modest and pure the glance" (D'Harville shuddered with contempt) "the greater must be the innate corruption and falsehood! Alas! she has proved herself a consummate dissembler; and I – I – have been the veriest dupe! Only let me consider with what sentiments must that woman look upon me, if just previous to her meeting with her favoured lover I pay her my accustomed visit, and express my usual devotion and love for her, – the young, the virtuous wife, the tender, sensible, and devoted mother, as until this wretched moment I would have died to prove her. Can I, dare I, trust myself in her presence, with the knowledge of her being but too impatient for the arrival of that blessed hour which conveys her to her guilty rendezvous and infamous paramour? Oh, Clémence, Clémence, you in whom all my hopes and fondest affections were placed, is this a just return? No! no! no!" again repeated M. d'Harville, with rapidly returning excitement. "False, treacherous woman! I will not see you! I will not trust my ears to your feigned words! Nor you, my child. At the sight of your innocent countenance I should unman myself, and compromise my just revenge."

Quitting his apartment, M. d'Harville, instead of repairing to those of the marquise, contented himself with leaving a message for her through Mlle. Juliette, to the effect that he wished a short conversation with Madame d'Harville, but that being obliged to go out just then, he should be glad, if it assorted with Madame la Marquise's perfect convenience, to breakfast with her at twelve o'clock.

"And so," said the unhappy M. d'Harville, "fancying that after twelve o'clock I shall be safe at home, she will consider herself more at liberty to follow out her own plans."

He then repaired to the coach-stand contiguous to his mansion, and summoned a vehicle from the ranks.

"Now, coachee," said he, affecting to disguise his rank, "what's o'clock?"

"All right, master," said the man, drawing up to the side of the footway, "where am I to drive to? Let's have a right understanding, and a look at the clock. Why, it's as close on half-after eleven as may be."

"Now, then, drive to the corner of the Rue St. Dominique, and wait at the end of the garden wall which runs along there; do you understand?"

"Yes, yes, – I know."

M. d'Harville then drew down the blinds of the fiacre; the coachman drove on, and soon arrived opposite the Hôtel d'Harville, from which point of observation it was impossible for any person to enter or quit the house without the marquis having a full view of them. One o'clock was the hour fixed in the note; and with his eyes riveted on the entrance-gates of the mansion, the marquis waited in painful suspense, absorbed in a whirl of fearful thoughts and maddening conjectures. Time stole on imperceptibly; twelve o'clock reverberated from the dome of St. Thomas Aquinas, when the door opened slowly at the Hôtel d'Harville, and Madame d'Harville herself came timidly forth.

"Already?" exclaimed the unhappy husband; "how punctual she is! She fears to keep him waiting," cried the marquis, with a mixture of irony and savage rage.

The cold was excessive; the pavement hard and dry. Clémence was dressed in a black velvet bonnet, covered with a veil of the same colour, and a thickly wadded pelisse of dark ruby satin, a large shawl of dark blue cashmere fell to the very hem of her pelisse, which she lightly and gracefully held up while crossing the street. Thanks to this movement, the taper foot and graceful ankle of Madame d'Harville, cased in an exquisitely fitting boot of black satin, were exposed to view.

It was strange, that amid the painful and bewildering ideas that crowded the brain of D'Harville, he should have found one thought to waste upon the beauty of his wife's foot; but so it was; and at the moment that was about to separate them for ever, to his eager gaze that fairy foot and well-turned ankle had never looked so charming; and then, as by a rapid train of thought he recalled the matchless loveliness of his wife, and, as he had ever believed till now, her purity, her mental graces, he groaned aloud as he remembered that another was preferred to him, and that the light figure that glided on before his fixed gaze, was but the hollow spectre of fallen goodness, a lost, degraded creature, hastening to steep her husband and infant in irremediable disgrace, for the indulging of a base and guilty passion. Even in that wretched moment he felt how dearly, how exclusively he had loved her; and for the first time during the blow which had fallen on him, he knew that he mourned the lovely woman almost equally with the virtuous mother and chaste wife. A cry of rage and mingled fury escaped him, as he pictured the rapture of her meeting with the lover of her choice; and a sharp, darting pain quivered through his heart as he remembered that Clémence, with all her youth and beauty, her countless charms, both of body and mind, was lost to him for ever.

Hitherto his passionate grief had been unmixed by any alloy of self. He had bewailed the sanctity of the marriage-vow trampled under foot, the abandonment of all sworn and sacred duties; but his sufferings of rage, jealousy, and regret almost overpowered him, and with much difficulty was he able to command his voice sufficiently to say to the coachman, while partially drawing up the blind:

"Do you see that lady in the blue shawl and black bonnet walking along by the wall?"

"Yes, yes! I see her safe enough."

"Well, then, go slowly along, and keep up with her. Should she go to the coach-stand I had you from, pull up; and when she has got into a fiacre, follow it wherever it goes."

"All right, – I understand! Now this is what I call a good joke!"

M. d'Harville had conjectured rightly. Madame d'Harville repaired directly to the coach-stand, and beckoning a fiacre off the stand, instantly got in, and drove off, closely followed by the vehicle containing her husband.

They had proceeded but a very short distance, when the coachman took the road to the church of St. Thomas Aquinas, and, to the surprise of M. d'Harville, pulled up directly in front.

"What is this for? What are you about?"

"Why, master, the lady you told me to follow has just alighted here, and a smart, tidy leg and foot of her own she has got. Her dress somehow caught; so, you see, I couldn't help having a peep, nohow. This is downright good fun though, this is!"

A thousand varied thoughts agitated M. d'Harville. One minute he fancied that his wife, fearing pursuit, had taken this step to escape detection; then hope whispered that the letter which had given him so much uneasiness, might after all be only an infamous calumny; for if guilty, what could be gained by this false assumption of piety? Would it not be a species of sacrilegious mockery? At this suggestion a bright ray of hope shot across the troubled mind of M. d'Harville, arising from the striking contrast between Clémence's present occupation and the crime alleged as her motive for quitting her home. Alas! this consolatory illusion was speedily destroyed. Leaning in at the open window the coachman observed:

"I say, master, that nice little woman you are after has got back into her coach."

"Then follow quickly."

"I'm off! Now this is what I call downright good fun. Capital; hang me if it ain't!"

The vehicle reached the Quais, the Hôtel de Ville, the Rue St. Avoye, and, at last, Rue du Temple.

"I say," said the coachman, turning round to speak to M. d'Harville from his seat, "master, just look. My mate, there, has stopped at No. 17; we are about at 13. Shall I stop here or go on to 17?"

"Stop here."

"I say, – look'ee, – you'll lose your pretty lady. She has gone into the alley leading to No. 17."

"Open the door."

"I'm coming, sir."

And quickly following the steps of his wife, M. d'Harville entered the obscure passage up which she had disappeared. Madame d'Harville, however, had so far the start as to have entered the house previously.

Attracted by the most devouring curiosity, Madame Pipelet, with her melancholy Alfred and her friend the oyster-woman, were huddled close together on the sill at the lodge door. The staircase was so dark that a person just emerging from the daylight into the gloom of the passage could not discern a single step of it; and Madame d'Harville, agitated and almost sinking with apprehension, found herself constrained to apply to Madame Pipelet for further advice how to proceed, saying, in a low, tremulous voice:

"Which way must I turn, madame, to find the staircase of the house?"

"Stop, if you please. Pray, whom do you want?"

"I wish to go to the apartments of M. Charles, madame."

"Monsieur who?" repeated the old woman, feigning not to have heard her, but in reality to afford sufficient leisure to her husband and her friend thoroughly to scrutinise the unhappy woman's countenance, even through the folds of her thick veil.

"M. Charles, madame," repeated Clémence, in a low, trembling tone, and bending down her head, so as to escape the rude and insolent examination to which her features were subjected.

"Ah! M. Charles; very well; you should have spoken so that one could hear you. Well, my pretty dear, if you want M. Charles, – and a good-looking fellow he is as ever won a woman's heart, – go straight on, and the door will stare you in the face. Eh! eh! eh!" laughed out the old woman, shaking her fat sides with spiteful glee, "it seems he has not waited for nothing this time. Success to love and love-makings, and a merry end to it!"

The marquise, ready to sink with confusion, began slowly to grope her way up the dingy staircase.

"I say," bawled out the old shell-fish woman, "our commandant knows what he is about, don't he? Leave him alone to choose a pretty girl. His marm is a regular swell, ain't she?"

Had it not been requisite for her to run the gauntlet of the trio who occupied the entrance-door, Madame d'Harville, ready to sink with shame and terror, would gladly have retraced her steps. She made another effort, and at last reached the landing-place, where, to her unutterable consternation and surprise, she saw Rodolph waiting, impatiently, her arrival. Instantly flying to meet her, he hastily placed a purse in her hand, saying, in a hurried manner:

"Your husband knows all, and is now following your very steps."

At this instant, the sharp tones of Madame Pipelet were heard crying out, "Where are you going to, sir?"

"'Tis he!" exclaimed Rodolph, and then, almost forcing Madame d'Harville up the second staircase, he added, in a rapid manner, "make all haste to the very top of the house; on the fifth floor you will find a wretched family, named Morel. Remember your sole business in coming hither was to relieve their distress."

"I tell you, sir," screamed Madame Pipelet, "that unless you tell me your name, you shall trample over me, as they walked over our brave men at Waterloo, before I let you pass."

Having, from the entrance to the alley, observed Madame d'Harville stop to speak to the porteress, the marquis had likewise prepared himself to pass through some sort of questioning.