“Is Monsieur de Serizy at Presles?” he said.
“Apparently, as I am going there,” replied Oscar.
“Do you often see the count,” asked Monsieur de Serizy.
“Often,” replied Oscar. “I am a comrade of his son, who is about my age, nineteen; we ride together on horseback nearly every day.”
“‘Aut Caesar, aut Serizy,’” said Mistigris, sententiously.
Pierrotin and Pere Leger exchanged winks on hearing this statement.
“Really,” said the count to Oscar, “I am delighted to meet with a young man who can tell me about that personage. I want his influence on a rather serious matter, although it would cost him nothing to oblige me. It concerns a claim I wish to press on the American government. I should be glad to obtain information about Monsieur de Serizy.”
“Oh! if you want to succeed,” replied Oscar, with a knowing look, “don’t go to him, but go to his wife; he is madly in love with her; no one knows more than I do about that; but she can’t endure him.”
“Why not?” said Georges.
“The count has a skin disease which makes him hideous. Doctor Albert has tried in vain to cure it. The count would give half his fortune if he had a chest like mine,” said Oscar, swelling himself out. “He lives a lonely life in his own house; gets up very early in the morning and works from three to eight o’clock; after eight he takes his remedies, — sulphur-baths, steam-baths, and such things. His valet bakes him in a sort of iron box — for he is always in hopes of getting cured.”
“If he is such a friend of the King as they say he is, why doesn’t he get his Majesty to touch him?” asked Georges.
“The count has lately promised thirty thousand francs to a celebrated Scotch doctor who is coming over to treat him,” continued Oscar.
“Then his wife can’t be blamed if she finds better — ” said Schinner, but he did not finish his sentence.
“I should say so!” resumed Oscar. “The poor man is so shrivelled and old you would take him for eighty! He’s as dry as parchment, and, unluckily for him, he feels his position.”
“Most men would,” said Pere Leger.
“He adores his wife and dares not find fault with her,” pursued Oscar, rejoicing to have found a topic to which they listened. “He plays scenes with her which would make you die of laughing, — exactly like Arnolphe in Moliere’s comedy.”
The count, horror-stricken, looked at Pierrotin, who, finding that the count said nothing, concluded that Madame Clapart’s son was telling falsehoods.
“So, monsieur,” continued Oscar, “if you want the count’s influence, I advise you to apply to the Marquis d’Aiglemont. If you get that former adorer of Madame de Serizy on your side, you will win husband and wife at one stroke.”
“Look here!” said the painter, “you seem to have seen the count without his clothes; are you his valet?”
“His valet!” cried Oscar.
“Hang it! people don’t tell such things about their friends in public conveyances,” exclaimed Mistigris. “As for me, I’m not listening to you; I’m deaf: ‘discretion plays the better part of adder.’”
“‘A poet is nasty and not fit,’ and so is a tale-bearer,” cried Schinner.
“Great painter,” said Georges, sententiously, “learn this: you can’t say harm of people you don’t know. Now the little one here has proved, indubitably, that he knows his Serizy by heart. If he had told us about the countess, perhaps — ?”
“Stop! not a word about the Comtesse de Serizy, young men,” cried the count. “I am a friend of her brother, the Marquis de Ronquerolles, and whoever attempts to speak disparagingly of the countess must answer to me.”
“Monsieur is right,” cried the painter; “no man should blaguer women.”
“God, Honor, and the Ladies! I believe in that melodrama,” said Mistigris.
“I don’t know the guerrilla chieftain, Mina, but I know the Keeper of the Seals,” continued the count, looking at Georges; “and though I don’t wear my decorations,” he added, looking at the painter, “I prevent those who do not deserve them from obtaining any. And finally, let me say that I know so many persons that I even know Monsieur Grindot, the architect of Presles. Pierrotin, stop at the next inn; I want to get out a moment.”
Pierrotin hurried his horses through the village street of Moisselles, at the end of which was the inn where all travellers stopped. This short distance was done in silence.
“Where is that young fool going?” asked the count, drawing Pierrotin into the inn-yard.
“To your steward. He is the son of a poor lady who lives in the rue de la Cerisaie, to whom I often carry fruit, and game, and poultry from Presles. She is a Madame Husson.”
“Who is that man?” inquired Pere Leger of Pierrotin when the count had left him.
“Faith, I don’t know,” replied Pierrotin; “this is the first time I have driven him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was that prince who owns Maffliers. He has just told me to leave him on the road near there; he doesn’t want to go on to Isle-Adam.”
“Pierrotin thinks he is the master of Maffliers,” said Pere Leger, addressing Georges when he got back into the coach.
The three young fellows were now as dull as thieves caught in the act; they dared not look at each other, and were evidently considering the consequences of their fibs.
“This is what is called ‘suffering for license sake,’” said Mistigris.
“You see I did know the count,” said Oscar.
“Possibly. But you’ll never be an ambassador,” replied Georges. “When people want to talk in public conveyances, they ought to be careful, like me, to talk without saying anything.”
“That’s what speech is for,” remarked Mistigris, by way of conclusion.
The count returned to his seat and the coucou rolled on amid the deepest silence.
“Well, my friends,” said the count, when they reached the Carreau woods, “here we all are, as silent as if we were going to the scaffold.”
“‘Silence gives content,’” muttered Mistigris.
“The weather is fine,” said Georges.
“What place is that?” said Oscar, pointing to the chateau de Franconville, which produces a fine effect at that particular spot, backed, as it is, by the noble forest of Saint-Martin.
“How is it,” cried the count, “that you, who say you go so often to Presles, do not know Franconville?”
“Monsieur knows men, not castles,” said Mistigris.
“Budding diplomatists have so much else to take their minds,” remarked Georges.
“Be so good as to remember my name,” replied Oscar, furious. “I am Oscar Husson, and ten years hence I shall be famous.”
After that speech, uttered with bombastic assumption, Oscar flung himself back in his corner.
“Husson of what, of where?” asked Mistigris.
“It is a great family,” replied the count. “Husson de la Cerisaie; monsieur was born beneath the steps of the Imperial throne.”
Oscar colored crimson to the roots of his hair, and was penetrated through and through with a dreadful foreboding.
They were now about to descend the steep hill of La Cave, at the foot of which, in a narrow valley, flanked by the forest of Saint-Martin, stands the magnificent chateau of Presles.
“Messieurs,” said the count, “I wish you every good fortune in your various careers. Monsieur le colonel, make your peace with the King of France; the Czerni-Georges ought not to snub the Bourbons. I have nothing to wish for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner; your fame is already won, and nobly won by splendid work. But you are much to be feared in domestic life, and I, being a married man, dare not invite you to my house. As for Monsieur Husson, he needs no protection; he possesses the secrets of statesmen and can make them tremble. Monsieur Leger is about to pluck the Comte de Serizy, and I can only exhort him to do it with a firm hand. Pierrotin, put me out here, and pick me up at the same place to-morrow,” added the cou
nt, who then left the coach and took a path through the woods, leaving his late companions confused and bewildered.
“He must be that count who has hired Franconville; that’s the path to it,” said Leger.
“If ever again,” said the false Schinner, “I am caught blague-ing in a public coach, I’ll fight a duel with myself. It was your fault, Mistigris,” giving his rapin a tap on the head.
“All I did was to help you out, and follow you to Venice,” said Mistigris; “but that’s always the way, ‘Fortune belabors the slave.’”
“Let me tell you,” said Georges to his neighbor Oscar, “that if, by chance, that was the Comte de Serizy, I wouldn’t be in your skin for a good deal, healthy as you think it.”
Oscar, remembering his mother’s injunctions, which these words recalled to his mind, turned pale and came to his senses.
“Here you are, messieurs!” cried Pierrotin, pulling up at a fine iron gate.
“Here we are — where?” said the painter, and Georges, and Oscar all at once.
“Well, well!” exclaimed Pierrotin, “if that doesn’t beat all! Ah ca, monsieurs, have none of you been here before? Why, this is the chateau de Presles.”
“Oh, yes; all right, friend,” said Georges, recovering his audacity. “But I happen to be going on to Les Moulineaux,” he added, not wishing his companions to know that he was really going to the chateau.
“You don’t say so? Then you are coming to me,” said Pere Leger.
“How so?”
“Why, I’m the farmer at Moulineaux. Hey, colonel, what brings you there?”
“To taste your butter,” said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.
“Pierrotin,” said Oscar, “leave my things at the steward’s. I am going straight to the chateau.”
Whereupon Oscar plunged into a narrow path, not knowing, in the least, where he was going.
“Hi! Monsieur l’ambassadeur,” cried Pere Leger, “that’s the way to the forest; if you really want to get to the chateau, go through the little gate.”
Thus compelled to enter, Oscar disappeared into the grand court-yard. While Pere Leger stood watching Oscar, Georges, utterly confounded by the discovery that the farmer was the present occupant of Les Moulineaux, has slipped away so adroitly that when the fat countryman looked round for his colonel there was no sign of him.
The iron gates opened at Pierrotin’s demand, and he proudly drove in to deposit with the concierge the thousand and one utensils belonging to the great Schinner. Oscar was thunderstruck when he became aware that Mistigris and his master, the witnesses of his bravado, were to be installed in the chateau itself. In ten minutes Pierrotin had discharged the various packages of the painter, the bundles of Oscar Husson, and the pretty little leather portmanteau, which he took from its nest of hay and confided mysteriously to the wife of the concierge. Then he drove out of the courtyard, cracking his whip, and took the road that led through the forest to Isle-Adam, his face beaming with the sly expression of a peasant who calculates his profits. Nothing was lacking now to his happiness; on the morrow he would have his thousand francs, and, as a consequence, his magnificent new coach.
CHAPTER VI. THE MOREAU INTERIOR
Oscar, somewhat abashed, was skulking behind a clump of trees in the centre of the court-yard, and watching to see what became of his two road-companions, when Monsieur Moreau suddenly came out upon the portico from what was called the guard-room. He was dressed in a long blue overcoat which came to his heels, breeches of yellowish leather and top-boots, and in his hand he carried a riding-whip.
“Ah! my boy, so here you are? How is the dear mamma?” he said, taking Oscar by the hand. “Good-day, messieurs,” he added to Mistigris and his master, who then came forward. “You are, no doubt, the two painters whom Monsieur Grindot, the architect, told me to expect.”
He whistled twice at the end of his whip; the concierge came.
“Take these gentlemen to rooms 14 and 15. Madame Moreau will give you the keys. Go with them to show the way; make fires there, if necessary, and take up all their things. I have orders from Monsieur le comte,” he added, addressing the two young men, “to invite you to my table, messieurs; we dine at five, as in Paris. If you like hunting, you will find plenty to amuse you; I have a license from the Eaux et Forets; and we hunt over twelve thousand acres of forest, not counting our own domain.”
Oscar, the painter, and Mistigris, all more or less subdued, exchanged glances, but Mistigris, faithful to himself, remarked in a low tone, “‘Veni, vidi, cecidi, — I came, I saw, I slaughtered.’”
Oscar followed the steward, who led him along at a rapid pace through the park.
“Jacques,” said Moreau to one of his children whom they met, “run in and tell your mother that little Husson has come, and say to her that I am obliged to go to Les Moulineaux for a moment.”
The steward, then about fifty years old, was a dark man of medium height, and seemed stern. His bilious complexion, to which country habits had added a certain violent coloring, conveyed, at first sight, the impression of a nature which was other than his own. His blue eyes and a large crow-beaked nose gave him an air that was the more threatening because his eyes were placed too close together. But his large lips, the outline of his face, and the easy good-humor of his manner soon showed that his nature was a kindly one. Abrupt in speech and decided in tone, he impressed Oscar immensely by the force of his penetration, inspired, no doubt, by the affection which he felt for the boy. Trained by his mother to magnify the steward, Oscar had always felt himself very small in Moreau’s presence; but on reaching Presles a new sensation came over him, as if he expected some harm from this fatherly figure, his only protector.
“Well, my Oscar, you don’t look pleased at getting here,” said the steward. “And yet you’ll find plenty of amusement; you shall learn to ride on horseback, and shoot, and hunt.”
“I don’t know any of those things,” said Oscar, stupidly.
“But I brought you here to learn them.”
“Mamma told me only to stay two weeks because of Madame Moreau.”
“Oh! we’ll see about that,” replied Moreau, rather wounded that his conjugal authority was doubted.
Moreau’s youngest son, an active, strapping lad of twelve, here ran up.
“Come,” said his father, “take Oscar to your mother.”
He himself went rapidly along the shortest path to the gamekeeper’s house, which was situated between the park and the forest.
The pavilion, or lodge, in which the count had established his steward, was built a few years before the Revolution. It stood in the centre of a large garden, one wall of which adjoined the court-yard of the stables and offices of the chateau itself. Formerly its chief entrance was on the main road to the village. But after the count’s father bought the building, he closed that entrance and united the place with his own property.
The house, built of freestone, in the style of the period of Louis XV. (it is enough to say that its exterior decoration consisted of a stone drapery beneath the windows, as in the colonnades of the Place Louis XV., the flutings of which were stiff and ungainly), had on the ground-floor a fine salon opening into a bedroom, and a dining-room connected with a billiard-room. These rooms, lying parallel to one another, were separated by a staircase, in front of which was a sort of peristyle which formed an entrance-hall, on which the two suits of rooms on either side opened. The kitchen was beneath the dining-room, for the whole building was raised ten steps from the ground level.
By placing her own bedroom on the first floor above the ground-floor, Madame Moreau was able to transform the chamber adjoining the salon into a boudoir. These two rooms were richly furnished with beautiful pieces culled from the rare old furniture of the chateau. The salon, hung with blue and white damask, formerly the curtains of the state-bed, was draped with ample portieres and window curtains lined with white silk. Pictures, evidently from old panels, plant-stands, various pretty articles of modern uph
olstery, handsome lamps, and a rare old cut-glass chandelier, gave a grandiose appearance to the room. The carpet was a Persian rug. The boudoir, wholly modern, and furnished entirely after Madame Moreau’s own taste, was arranged in imitation of a tent, with ropes of blue silk on a gray background. The classic divan was there, of course, with its pillows and footstools. The plant-stands, taken care of by the head-gardener of Presles, rejoiced the eye with their pyramids of bloom. The dining-room and billiard-room were furnished in mahogany.
Around the house the steward’s wife had laid out a beautiful garden, carefully cultivated, which opened into the great park. Groups of choice parks hid the offices and stables. To improve the entrance by which visitors came to see her, she had substituted a handsome iron gateway for the shabby railing, which she discarded.
The dependence in which the situation of their dwelling placed the Moreaus, was thus adroitly concealed, and they seemed all the more like rich and independent persons taking care of the property of a friend, because neither the count nor the countess ever came to Presles to take down their pretensions. Moreover, the perquisites granted by Monsieur de Serizy allowed them to live in the midst of that abundance which is the luxury of country life. Milk, eggs, poultry, game, fruits, flowers, forage, vegetables, wood, the steward and his wife used in profusion, buying absolutely nothing but butcher’s-meat, wines, and the colonial supplies required by their life of luxury. The poultry-maid baked their bread; and of late years Moreau had paid his butcher with pigs from the farm, after reserving those he needed for his own use.
On one occasion, the countess, always kind and good to her former maid, gave her, as a souvenir perhaps, a little travelling-carriage, the fashion of which was out of date. Moreau had it repainted, and now drove his wife about the country with two good horses which belonged to the farm. Besides these horses, Moreau had his own saddle-horse. He did enough farming on the count’s property to keep the horses and maintain his servants. He stacked three hundred tons of excellent hay, but accounted for only one hundred, making use of a vague permission once granted by the count. He kept his poultry-yard, pigeon-cotes, and cattle at the cost of the estate, but the manure of the stables was used by the count’s gardeners. All these little stealings had some ostensible excuse.
Works of Honore De Balzac Page 81
