This declaration was followed by a silence that had the character of stupor.
At last Duplessis said, "But what has Louvier to do in this galere? Louvier is no relation of that well-born vaurien; why should he summon your family council?"
"Louvier excused his interference on the ground of early and intimate friendship with De Mauleon, who, he said, came to consult him on arriving at Paris, and who felt too proud or too timid to address relations with whom he had long dropped all intercourse. An intermediary was required, and Louvier volunteered to take that part on himself; nothing more natural nor more simple. By the way, Alain, you dine with Louvier to-morrow, do you not?—a dinner in honour of our rehabilitated kinsman. I and Raoul go."
"Yes, I shall be charmed to meet again a man who, whatever might be his errors in youth, on which," added Alain, slightly colouring, "it certainly does not become me to be severe, must have suffered the most poignant anguish a man of honour can undergo,—namely, honour suspected; and who now, whether by years or sorrow, is so changed that I cannot recognize a likeness to the character I have just heard given to him as mauvais sujet and vaurien."
"Bravo!" cried Enguerrand; "all honour to courage!—and at Paris it requires great courage to defend the absent."
"Nay," answered Alain, in a low voice. "The gentilhomme who will not defend another gentilhomme traduced, would, as a soldier, betray a citadel and desert a flag."
"You say M. de Mauleon is changed," said De Breze; "yes, he must be growing old. No trace left of his good looks?"
"Pardon me," said Enguerrand; "he is bien conserve, and has still a very handsome head and an imposing presence. But one cannot help doubting whether he deserved the formidable reputation he acquired in youth; his manner is so singularly mild and gentle, his conversation so winningly modest, so void of pretence, and his mode of life is as simple as that of a Spanish hidalgo."
"He does not, then, affect the role of Monte Cristo," said Duplessis, "and buy himself into notice like that hero of romance?"
"Certainly not: he says very frankly that he has but a very small income, but more than enough for his wants,—richer than in his youth, for he has learned content. We may dismiss the hint in 'Le Sens Commun' about his future political career,—at least he evinces no such ambition."
"How could he as a Legitimist?" said Alain, bitterly. "What department would elect him?"
"But is he a Legitimist?" asked De Breze.
"I take it for granted that he must be that," answered Alain, haughtily, "for he is a De Mauleon."
"His father was as good a De Mauleon as himself, I presume," rejoined De Breze, dryly; "and he enjoyed a place at the Court of Louis Philippe, which a Legitimist could scarcely accept. Victor did not, I fancy, trouble his head about politics at all, at the time I remember him; but to judge by his chief associates, and the notice he received from the Princes of the House of Orleans, I should guess that he had no predilections in favour of Henri V."
"I should regret to think so," said Alain, yet more haughtily, "since the De Mauleons acknowledge the head of their house in the representative of the Rochebriants."
"At all events," said Duplessis, "M. de Mauleon appears to be a philosopher of rare stamp. A Parisian who has known riches and is contented to be poor is a phenomenon I should like to study."
"You have that chance to-morrow evening, Monsieur Duplessis," said Enguerrand.
"What! at M. Louvier's dinner? Nay, I have no other acquaintance with M. Louvier than that of the Bourse, and the acquaintance is not cordial."
"I did not mean at M. Louvier's dinner, but at the Duchesse de Tarascon's ball. You, as one of her special favourites, will doubtless honour her reunion."
"Yes; I have promised my daughter to go to the ball. But the Duchesse is Imperialist. M. de Mauleon seems to be either a Legitimist, according to Monsieur le Marquis, or an Orleanist, according to our friend De Breze."
"What of that? Can there be a more loyal Bourbonite than De Rochebriant?—and he goes to the ball. It is given out of the season, in celebration of a family marriage. And the Duchesse de Tarascon is connected with Alain, and therefore with De Mauleon, though but distantly."
"Ah! excuse my ignorance of genealogy."
"As if the genealogy of noble names were not the history of France," muttered Alain, indignantly.
CHAPTER II
Yes, the "Sens Commun" was a success: it had made a sensation at starting; the sensation was on the increase. It is difficult for an Englishman to comprehend the full influence of a successful journal at Paris; the station—political, literary, social—which it confers on the contributors who effect the success. M. Lebeau had shown much more sagacity in selecting Gustave Rameau for the nominal editor than Savarin supposed or my reader might detect. In the first place, Gustave himself, with all his defects of information and solidity of intellect, was not without real genius,—and a sort of genius that when kept in restraint, and its field confined to sentiment or sarcasm, was in unison with the temper of the day; in the second place, it was only through Gustave that Lebeau could have got at Savarin, and the names which that brilliant writer had secured at the outset would have sufficed to draw attention to the earliest numbers of the "Sens Commun," despite a title which did not seem alluring. But these names alone could not have sufficed to circulate the new journal to the extent it had already reached. This was due to the curiosity excited by leading articles of a style new to the Parisian public, and of which the authorship defied conjecture. They were signed Pierre Firmin,—supposed to be a nom de plume, as, that name was utterly unknown in the world of letters. They affected the tone of an impartial observer; they neither espoused nor attacked any particular party; they laid down no abstract doctrines of government. But somehow or other, in language terse yet familiar, sometimes careless yet never vulgar, they expressed a prevailing sentiment of uneasy discontent, a foreboding of some destined change in things established, without defining the nature of such change, without saying whether it would be for good or for evil. In his criticisms upon individuals, the writer was guarded and moderate—the keenest-eyed censor of the press could not have found a pretext for interference with expression of opinions so polite. Of the Emperor these articles spoke little, but that little was not disrespectful; yet, day after day, the articles contributed to sap the Empire. All malcontents of every shade comprehended, as by a secret of freemasonry, that in this journal they had an ally. Against religion not a word was uttered, yet the enemies of religion bought that journal; still, the friends of religion bought it too, for those articles treated with irony the philosophers on paper who thought that their contradictory crotchets could fuse themselves into any single Utopia, or that any social edifice, hurriedly run up by the crazy few, could become a permanent habitation for the turbulent many, without the clamps of a creed.
The tone of these articles always corresponded with the title of the journal,—"Common-sense." It was to common-sense that