"Do you know what this place suggests to me? Why, living in a hotel!"
"And you are right," Vaudrey gaily answered; "we are at a hotel, but it is the hotel in which the will of France lodges!"
"You understand, my dear, that if you are happy—"
"Very happy! it is only now that I can show what I am made of. You shall see, Adrienne, you shall see what I will do and become within a year."
Within a year!
IV
Guy de Lissac occupied a small summer-house forming a residence situated at the end of a court on Rue D'Aumale. He had given carte-blanche for the arrangement of this bachelor's nest—a nest in which sitting-hens without eggs succeeded each other rapidly—to one of those upholsterers who installed, in regulation style, the knickknacks so much in vogue, and who sell at very high prices to Bourse operators and courtesans the spurious Clodions and imitation Boulles that they pick up by chance at auction sales.
Lissac, who had sufficient taste to discover artistic nuggets in the gutters of Paris, had found it very convenient to wake up one fine morning in a little mansion crowded with Japanese bric-à-brac, Chinese satin draperies, tapestries, Renaissance chests and terra-cotta figures writhing upon their sculptured bases. The upholsterer had taste, Lissac had money. The knickknacks were genuine. There was a coquettish attractiveness about the abode that made itself evident in every detail.
This bachelor's suite lacked, however, something personal, something living, some cherished object, the mark of some particular taste, some passion for a period, for a thing, or pictures or books. In this jumble of ill-matched curiosities, where ivory netzkés on tables surrounded Barye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key, to the collection. This worldly dwelling, with its white lacquered bed and Louis XV. canopy and its heads of birds carved in wood like the queen's bed at Trianon, vaguely resembled the apartments of a fashionable woman.
But Guy had hung around here and there a Samouraï sabre, Malay krises, Oriental daggers in purple velvet sheaths, and upon the green tapestry background of the antechamber a panoply on which keen-bladed swords with steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giving a masculine character to this hôtel of a fashionable lounger, steeped with the odor of ylang-ylang like the little house of a pretty courtesan.
This Guy enjoyed in Paris a free and easy life, leaving to Vaudrey, his old college-comrade at Grenoble, the pursuit of the pleasures of political life, and, as Lissac said in that bantering tone which is peculiar to Parisian gossip, the relish of the "sweets of power"; for himself, what kept him in Paris was Paris itself, just that and nothing more:—its pleasures, its first nights, its surprises, its women, that flavor of scandal and perfume of refined immorality that seemed peculiar to his time and surroundings.
He had squandered two fortunes, one after the other, without feeling any regret; he had made a brush at journalism, tried finance, won at the Bourse, lost at the clubs, knew everybody and was known by all, had a smiling lip, was sound of tooth, loved the girls, was dreaded by the men, was of fine appearance, and was unquestionably noble, which permitted him to enjoy all the frolics of Bohemian life without sullying himself, having always discovered a forgotten uncle or met some considerate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be passed merrily—a Parisian to the finger-tips and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian in fact, a Parisianized provincial inoculated with Parisine, just as certain sick persons are with morphine, judging men by their wit, actions by their results, women by the size of their gloves; as sceptical as the devil, wicked in speech and considerate in thought, still agile at forty, claiming even that this is man's best time—the period of fortune and gallantry—sliding along in life and taking things as he found them, wisely considering that a day's snow or rain lasts no longer than a day's sunshine, and that, after all, a wretched night is soon over.
On leaving Vaudrey the previous night, Lissac had passed part of the night at his club on Place Vendôme. He had played and won. He had gone to sleep over a fashionable novel, very faithfully written, but wearisome in the extreme, and he had awakened late and somewhat heavy-headed. There were fringes of snow upon the window-sills and upon the house facing his little mansion. The roofs were hidden under a large white sheet and half lost in the grayish-white background of the sky.
"Detestable weather! So much the better," thought Lissac, "I shall have no visitors."
"I will see no one," he said to his servant. "In such weather no one but borrowers will come."
He had just finished his déjeuner, plunging a Russian enamelled silver spoon into his egg, his tea smoking at his side in a burnished silver teapot with Japanese designs, when, notwithstanding his orders, the servant handed him a card written in pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a note-book.
"It is not a borrower, monsieur!"
Guy seized the paper disdainfully, thinking, in spite of the servant's opinion, that he would find the name of a beggar who had not even had his name printed on a piece of Bristol-board, and, adjusting his glass, he deciphered the fine writing on the paper; then after involuntarily exclaiming: Ah! bah! and well! well! greatly astonished, he said as he rose:
"Show her in!"
He had thrown on a chair his damask napkin of Muscovite pattern, and instinctively glanced at himself in the mirror, just as a coquette might do before a rendezvous, smoothing out his flannel vest and spreading out his cravat that only half-fastened the blue foulard collar of his dressing-gown.
At the moment that he was examining the folds made on his red leather slippers by his ample flannel trousers, a woman half-raised the satin portière, and, standing within a frame formed by the folds of yellow satin, looked at the young man, displaying her brilliant teeth as she smilingly said:
"Good-morning, Guy!"
Lissac went straight toward her with outstretched hands.
She allowed the large satin portière to fall behind her, and after having permitted her little suède gloved hands to be raised for a moment, she boldly abandoned them to Guy, laughing the while, as they looked at each other face to face. He betrayed some little astonishment, gazing at her as a person examines one whom one has not seen for a long time, and the young woman raised her head unabashed, displaying her features in full light, as if submitting to an inspection with confidence.
"You did not expect me, eh?"
"I confess—"
"Doubtless it is a considerable time since you thought of me."
Guy was inclined to bow and, as his only reply, to kiss the tips of her fingers; but he reflected that, since they last met, the parting of his brown locks had been devilishly widened, and he remained standing, answering with the conceit of a handsome man:
"You are mistaken, I often think of you."
She had, with, a sweeping glance around the room, examined the furniture of the apartment, the framed pictures, the designs and the gilding, and, on sitting down near the