“My father is no more,” said Alain, gravely; “he has been dead nearly three years.”
“Ciel! forgive me; I am greatly shocked. Hem! so you are now the Marquis de Rochebriant, a great historical name, worth a large sum in the market. Few such names left. Superb place your old chateau, is it not?”
“A superb place, no—a venerable ruin, yes!”
“Ah, a ruin! so much the better. All the bankers are mad after ruins: so charming an amusement to restore them. You will restore yours, without doubt. I will introduce you to such an architect! has the ‘moyen age’ at his fingers’ ends. Dear—but a genius.”
The young Marquis smiled—for since he had found a college friend, his face showed that it could smile—smiled, but not cheerfully, and answered,
“I have no intention to restore Rochebriant. The walls are solid: they have weathered the storms of six centuries, they will last my time, and with me the race perishes.”
“Bah! the race perish, indeed! you will marry. ‘Parlez moi de ca’: you could not come to a better man. I have a list of all the heiresses at Paris, bound in russia leather. You may take your choice out of twenty. Ah, if I were but a Rochebriant! It is an infernal thing to come into the world a Lemercier. I am a democrat, of course. A Lemercier would be in a false position if he were not. But if any one would leave me twenty acres of land, with some antique right to the De and a title, faith, would not I be an aristocrat, and stand up for my order? But now we have met, pray let us dine together. Ah! no doubt you are engaged every day for a month. A Rochebriant just new to Paris must be ‘fete’ by all the Faubourg.”
“No,” answered Alain, simply, “I am not engaged; my range of acquaintance is more circumscribed than you suppose.”
“So much the better for me. I am luckily disengaged today, which is not often the case, for I am in some request in my own set, though it is not that of the Faubourg. Where shall we dine?—at the Trois Freres?”
“Wherever you please. I know no restaurant at Paris, except a very ignoble one, close by my lodging.”
“ ‘Apropos’, where do you lodge?”
“Rue de l’Universite, Numero—.”
“A fine street, but ‘triste’. If you have no longer your family hotel, you have no excuse to linger in that museum of mummies, the Faubourg St. Germain; you must go into one of the new quarters by the Champs Elysees. Leave it to me; I’ll find you a charming apartment. I know one to be had a bargain—a bagatelle—five hundred naps a-year. Cost you about two or three thousand more to furnish tolerably, not showily. Leave all to me. In three days you shall be settled. Apropos! horses! You must have English ones. How many?—three for the saddle, two for your ‘coupe’? I’ll find them for you. I will write to London to-morrow: Reese [Rice] is your man.”
“Spare yourself that trouble, my dear Frederic. I keep no horses and no coupe. I shall not change my apartment.” As he said this, Rochebriant drew himself up somewhat haughtily.
“Faith,” thought Lemercier, “is it possible that the Marquis is poor? No. I have always heard that the Rochebriants were among the greatest proprietors in Bretagne. Most likely, with all his innocence of the Faubourg St. Germain, he knows enough of it to be aware that I, Frederic Lemercier, am not the man to patronize one of its greatest nobles. ‘Sacre bleu!’ if I thought that; if he meant to give himself airs to me, his old college friend—I would—I would call him out.”
Just as M. Lemercier had come to that bellicose resolution, the Marquis said, with a smile which, though frank, was not without a certain grave melancholy in its expression, “My dear Frederic, pardon me if I seem to receive your friendly offers ungraciously. But I believe that I have reasons you will approve for leading at Paris a life which you certainly will not envy;” then, evidently desirous to change the subject, he said in a livelier tone, “But what a marvellous city this Paris of ours is! Remember I had never seen it before: it burst on me like a city in the Arabian Nights two weeks ago. And that which strikes me most—I say it with regret and a pang of conscience—is certainly not the Paris of former times, but that Paris which M. Buonaparte—I beg pardon, which the Emperor—has called up around him, and identified forever with his reign. It is what is new in Paris that strikes and enthrals me. Here I see the life of France, and I belong to her tombs!”
“I don’t quite understand you,” said Lemercier. “If you think that because your father and grandfather were Legitimists, you have not the fair field of living ambition open to you under the Empire, you never were more mistaken. ‘Moyen age,’ and even rococo, are all the rage. You have no idea how valuable your name would be either at the Imperial Court or in a Commercial Company. But with your fortune you are independent of all but fashion and the Jockey Club.
“And ‘apropos’ of that, pardon me—what villain made your coat?—let me know; I will denounce him to the police.” Half amused, half amazed, Alain Marquis de Rochebriant looked at Frederic Lemercier much as a good-tempered lion may look upon a lively poodle who takes a liberty with his mane, and after a pause he replied curtly, “The clothes I wear at Paris were made in Bretagne; and if the name of Rochebriant be of any value at all in Paris, which I doubt, let me trust that it will make me acknowledged as ‘gentilhomme,’ whatever my taste in a coat or whatever the doctrines of a club composed—of jockeys.”
“Ha, ha!” cried Lemercier, freeing himself from the arm of his friend, and laughing the more irresistibly as he encountered the grave look of the Marquis. “Pardon me—I can’t help it—the Jockey Club—composed of jockeys!—it is too much!—the best joke. My dear, Alain, there is some of the best blood of Europe in the Jockey Club; they would exclude a plain bourgeois like me. But it is all the same: in one respect you are quite right. Walk in a blouse if you please: you are still Rochebriant; you would only be called eccentric. Alas! I am obliged to send to London for my pantaloons: that comes of being a Lemercier. But here we are in the Palais Royal.”
CHAPTER II.
The salons of the Trois Freres were crowded; our friends found a table with some little difficulty. Lemercier proposed a private cabinet, which, for some reason known to himself, the Marquis declined.
Lemercier spontaneously and unrequested ordered the dinner and the wines.
While waiting for their oysters, with which, when in season, French ‘bon-vivants’ usually commence their dinner, Lemercier looked round the salon with that air of inimitable, scrutinizing, superb impertinence which distinguishes the Parisian dandy. Some of the ladies returned his glance coquettishly, for Lemercier was ‘beau garcon;’ others turned aside indignantly, and muttered something to the gentlemen dining with them. The said gentlemen, when old, shook their heads, and continued to eat unmoved; when young, turned briskly round, and looked at first fiercely at M. Lemercier, but, encountering his eye through the glass which he had screwed into his socket, noticing the hardihood of his countenance and the squareness of his shoulders, even they turned back to the tables, shook their heads, and continued to eat unmoved, just like the old ones.
“Ah!” cried Lemercier, suddenly, “here comes a man you should know, ‘mon cher.’ He will tell you how to place your money—a rising man, a coming man, a future minister. Ah! ‘bon jour,’ Duplessis, ‘bon jour,’ ” kissing his hand to a gentleman who had just entered and was looking about him for a seat. He was evidently well and favourably known at the Trois Freres. The waiters had flocked round him, and were pointing to a table by the window, which a saturnine Englishman, who had dined off a beefsteak and potatoes, was about to vacate.