princesses of the footlights. Too small to suit a wealthy family, too
inconvenient, owing to certain deficiencies in accommodation, for
tenants accustomed to the completeness of English comfort, it must have
proved quite seductive to persons accustomed to a semi-country life by
its attraction as a "home," as well as by the quiet pervading the end of
the street, which is rarely affronted by vehicles on account of the
difficulty of the ascent.
During this November evening, although the windows of the little
drawing-room looked upon the courtyard, and the latter opened upon the
street, only a dim and distant murmuring penetrated from without, broken
by occasional gusts of the north wind. Judging by the whistling of this
north wind the night must have been a cold one. So, at least, opined a
fairly young man, one of the three persons assembled in the
drawing-room, as he rose from his chair, set down his empty cup on the
tea-tray with a sigh, and looked at the time-piece.
"Ten o'clock. Must I really go to see the Malhoures this evening? What a
disaster it is to have a sensible wife who thinks about your future!
Never get married, Armand. Listen to that wind! I was so comfortable
here with you. Look here, Helen," he went on, leaning on the back of the
easy-chair in which his wife was seated, "what will happen if I do not
put in an appearance this evening?"
"We shall be discourteous to some very kind people, who have always
behaved perfectly towards us since we came to Paris a year ago," replied
the young woman; she stretched out to the fire her slender feet, in the
pretty patent leather shoes and mauve stockings, the latter being of the
same colour as her dress. "If I had not my neuralgia!" she added,
putting her fingers to her temple. "You will make all my excuses to
them. Come, my poor Alfred, courage!"
She rose and held out her hand to her husband, who drew her to him in
order to give her a kiss. Visible pain was depicted on Helen's handsome
face for a minute, during which she was constrained to submit to this
caress. Standing thus, in her mauve-coloured, lace-trimmed dress, the
contrast between the elegance of her entire person and the clumsiness of
the man whose name she bore was still more striking.
She was tall, slender, and supple. The delicacy with which her hand
joined the arm which the sleeve of her dress left half uncovered, the
fulness of this arm, on which shone the gold of a bracelet, the
roundness of her dainty waist, the grace of her youthful figure,--all
revealed in her the blooming of a bodily beauty in harmony with the
beauty of her head. Her bright chestnut hair, parted simply in the
centre, half concealed a forehead that was almost too high--a probable
sign that with her feeling predominated over judgment. She had brown
eyes, in a fair complexion, such eyes as become hazel or black according
as the pupil contracts or dilates; and everything in the face declared
passion, energy, and pride, from the rather too pronounced line of the
oval, indicating the firm structure of the lower part of the head, to
the mouth, which was strongly outlined, and from the chin, which was
worthy of an ancient medal, to the nose, which was nearly straight, and
was united to the forehead by a noble attachment.
The pure and living quality of her beauty fully justified the fervour
depicted on the face of her husband while he was kissing his wife, just
as the evident aversion of the young woman was explained by the
unpleasing aspect of her lord and master. They were not creatures of the
same breed. Alfred Chazel presented the regular type of a middle-class
Frenchman, who has had to work too diligently, to prepare for too many
examinations, to spend too many hours over papers or before a desk, at
an age when the body is developing.
Although he was scarcely thirty-two, the first tokens of physical wear
and tear were abundant with him. His hair was thin, his complexion
looked impoverished, his shoulders were both broad and bony, and there
was an angularity in his gestures as well as an awkwardness about his
entire person. His tall figure, his big bones, and his large hand
suggested a disparity between the initial constitution, which must have
been robust, and the education, which must have been reducing. Chazel
carried an eye-glass, which he was always letting fall, for he was
clumsy with his long, thin hands, as was attested by the tying of the
white evening cravat, so badly adjusted round his already crumpled
collar. But when the eye-glass fell, the blue colour of his eyes was the
better seen--a blue so open, so fresh, so childlike, that the most
ill-disposed persons would have found it hard to attribute this man's
weariness to any excess save that of thought.
His still very youthful smile, displaying white teeth beneath a fair
beard, which Alfred wore in its entirety, harmonised with this childlike
frankness of look. And, in fact, Chazel's life had been passed in
continuous, absorbing work, and in an absolute inexperience of what was
not "his business," as he used to say. Son of a modest professor of
chemistry, and grandson of a peasant, Alfred, having inherited aptitude
for the sciences from his father, and tenacity of purpose from his
grandfather, had, by dint of energy, and with but moderate abilities,
been one of the first at the entrance to that École Polytechnique
which, in the estimation of many excellent intellects, exercises, by its
overloaded and precocious examinations, a murderous influence upon the
development of the middle-class youth of our country.
At twenty-two, Chazel passed out twelfth, and three years later first
from the School of Roads and Bridges. Sent to Bourges, he fell in love
with Mademoiselle de Vaivre, whose father, having married a second time,
could give her only a very slender dowry. The unexpected