"May I ask you something?"
The glance he sent her was wary, but he inclined his head in silent permission.
"Did you deliberately cut Trude's face?"
"Is that what she is saying?"
"You know that it is."
He exhaled with a soft sound that might have been a sigh.
"Trude is too good a soldier. Such devotion has its uses, but she is in danger of forgetting that she is a woman."
"It's hardly surprising since she is seldom treated as one. We tend to see ourselves as others see us."
"When that happens, it would be as well if we were forced to take another look."
"Is that it? You wanted to remind her that she is female and subject to vanity?"
"To remind her that there are other things besides being a member of the cadre."
"I somehow feel that she knows that."
"Buxom and tender of heart she is, or so you think? It also seemed necessary to prevent her from making me into some figure of romance. It's popular at the moment for some men to pose as misunderstood, yearning, poetic souls, but I am none of those things. I am a man with a job to do, and I can do it best without attachments. More, there is room in the cadre only for those who will put the goods of all first instead of turning instinctively to see to the welfare of one in particular."
"You fear she will endanger the others for your sake? But where is the threat?” Was there a warning in his words for her? Was he saying in his own peculiar way that he had no time for dalliance with any woman?
"If we knew, it could be neutralized so that it would be no threat for long."
"But why? Why was it necessary for you to—to—"
"To meddle? Trude is my responsibility, as are all the cadre and now you. Anything that happens to any one of you will be laid at my door."
"Who would accuse you?"
"I would."
The timbre of his voice was unrelenting. The question could not be argued. She abandoned it. “Still, it seems a hard lesson for Trude."
"She understands it. Besides, she has her own kind to console her. I don't doubt you soothed and sympathized with her wound and her fears."
"Juliana did."
"The child must have matured behind my back if she can discover pity inside her for one so self-sufficient as our Trude."
"What is it that you were trying to prove; that she was too hard or too soft?"
"Another champion; I thought so. My intent was to make her consider the direction in which she is going. No more."
They had reached the antechamber that led into the public salon with the dining room beyond it. A footman held open the door and they passed through it.
Her voice low, Mara said,"In that case, I suspect that you succeeded."
"Too well, or so it may prove. How shall I contain my joy?"
She sent him a sharp glance and found his blue gaze dark as it rested on her face. There was no time for more, however, for Juliana was there before them, and with her was Trude, wearing a shirtwaist of white silk, with a jabot of fine lace, tucked into her uniform trousers.
What had Roderic meant? Was the regret she had seen reflected in his face for a brief moment because of her disapproval of his action, a disapproval deliberately courted? Was it for what he saw as the necessary lack of closeness between them? Or had it been merely that he had seen Trude in her silk immediately and mourned the corrupting of a good soldier? But if the reason was the last one, hadn't he contributed, with all deliberation, to that excursion into femininity? The possible convolutions of his thinking eluded her, and she gave up the subject in exasperation.
She had planned to try once more to detach the prince from the others that evening. She was given no opportunity to do so, however. Directly after the lengthy dinner, the prince swept them up with him and out of the house. The writer Victor Hugo was holding a literary salon in his home close by at the Place Royale. A card had been received inviting Roderic and as many of his retinue as he cared to bring. They would enjoy the stimulation of the presence of some of the best intellects and most liberal minds in Paris, and if they did not, they could at least be entertained by them.
"Liberal?” Juliana scoffed. “Hugo is a libertine!"
"Prudery, my dear sister, is an affliction that is stifling to the body and the energies of the brain. Would you deny a man greatness merely because he pays expenses for three households, all within walking distance of each other?"
"No man needs two mistresses as well as a wife. And it's indecent that Hugo keeps his collection so close together. What are the women involved thinking of, to live so for the convenience of one man?"
"Not for nothing is his motto ‘Ego Hugo.’ I call it sublime."
"I call it ridiculous."
"Great men can be forgiven many ridiculous things. Dumas and his waistcoats, for instance."
"Among other things! They say he keeps a menagerie of animals, including a pet vulture named Jugurtha worth fifteen thousand francs and a battalion of mistresses who change places as regularly as a palace guard—and which he shares with his son!"
Roderic refused to be drawn, however. Tucking his sister's hand in one arm and Mara's in the other, he swept them with him, calling over his shoulder. “En avant, mes enfants!"
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7
The gathering was not large, but it was loud with talk and laughter. People stood in groups arguing and gesticulating, or else sat here and there with their heads together and expressions of concentration on their faces. Madame Hugo circulated among her guests, making introductions, directing the serving of wine and cheese and small pastries. Victor Hugo held court from a vast armchair near the fire to an audience of men and women seated on the carpet at his feet.
The room was long and commodious, with walls hung with red cloth painted with oriental designs. The furniture was dark and heavy and ornately carved, with a great deal of red plush and a number of fat ottomans, both the latest style in decor, on display. The gaslight overhead sputtered and hissed in a black cast-iron fixture with milky, etched globes. The drapes that shut out the night, and also the skirts on the various tables about the room, dripped with layers of silk fringe.
Mara stood with Estes and Michael in a corner. She was glad of the company of the men and also for their indulgence in pointing out people to her; she felt more than a little intimidated in such unfamiliar and ferociously intellectual surroundings. Everyone seemed so sure of themselves and their ideas, so ready to shout down opposition. They were never at a loss for the meaning of a word or an abstract phrase. Theories and the ramifications of ideologies were tossed about like toys. Books and plays were being discussed that she had never heard of, much less read. There were people there who were no doubt famous in their fields, but she had no idea who they were.
"Not to worry, mademoiselle,” Estes reassured her when she said as much to him and Michael, “half of the people in this room understand not a tenth of what the other half is saying, but they all—all!—pretend like mad. It is the way of the world."
Mara recognized Alexandre Dumas wearing another of his execrable waistcoats, this one in bilious green and egg-yoke-yellow stripes. His round face was beaming with enjoyment and he was eating thick slabs of cheese without bread and talking about his new production of Hamlet. Near him, but not of his circle, was a woman in her early forties, dressed conservatively in a gown of black wool with a tight basque and full skirt with organ pleats, and over it a gray-and-black-striped pelerine. This lady had been pointed out to her on the street when she first came to Paris and Roderic had also mentioned her.
"Isn't that Madame Dudevant, who signs her books as George Sand?” she asked in an undertone.
Michael turned to look, then nodded. “She is very drab this evening. Sometimes she enlivens the proceedings by dressing in trousers."
"That can't be a novel sight for you two,” Mara said, “after all, you see Trude in trousers all the time."
"Trude is—well, Trude.” Michael shrugged.
Perhaps Roderic was right, perhaps it was time Trude was made aware that she was a woman, Mara thought, but Estes spoke then, claiming her attention.
"Madame Dudevant is still mourning her parting with the composer Chopin, or so I would guess. They had the big quarrel over something to do with the marriage of her daughter, and he walked out. The estrangement, it appears, is to be permanent."
"I hear Chopin is in ill health,” Michael said.
"Lung disease,” Estes answered. “He blames Madame Dudevant for it, for carrying him with her to Majorca where he caught it several years ago."
"That hardly seems fair,” Mara said, “she can't have forced him to go."
"Hers is the stronger personality. She is older by some six or seven years."
"What has that to say to anything?"
"A great deal, as you will see when you meet her! This way.” The Italian caught her hand and began to ease through the crowd.
"No, wait!” Mara called, but he paid no attention. A moment later she was being presented to Aurore Dudevant.
"How do you do, my dear.” The writer turned with a gracious smile to her companion. “May I make known to you my friend, Balzac?"
The man beside her was, like so many in the room, nearing middle age. Heavy-set, with a large head and a thick neck set on bull-like shoulders, he was not particularly tall, but gave an impression of size. His face was red, his nose large and square, and, beneath a ragged mustache, his teeth when he smiled were discolored.
"A pleasure, Monsieur. I have read your books."
"Have you? Which ones?” The words were abrupt, almost eager.
"Le Père Goirot, of course, and a few other volumes of The Human Comedy, though not all. It is a marvelous endeavor, but such a large undertaking!"
"He is quite as much a glutton for work as for food, is he not?” Madame Dudevant said.
"One must pay one's creditors,” Honoré de Balzac said with a sad shake of his head. “Tradesmen have a most uncomfortable habit of expecting a man to have the money to match his desires. It is not possible."
"You and Dumas,” Aurore Dudevant said, her voice resigned. “You make money as if it pours from the ends of your pens, and you will both be lucky if you aren't buried in pauper's graves."
"With Hugo beside us."
"Victor is luckier in his women; they not only copy his manuscripts and letters for him as unpaid secretaries, they also manage his money."
"His wife, one hears, certainly holds the purse strings."
"A strong personality, Madame Adele."
"She at least has the good sense not to hold him on too tight a leash."
"Yes. She no longer complains of neglect, I hear. There may have been a lesson for her in the Praslin affair. There was a lesson for many."
Mara, made curious by the significant looks exchanged by the others, interrupted, “The Praslin affair?"
It was George Sand, Madame Dudevant, who explained. Some months before, at the end of August, the duc de Praslin had murdered his wife, stabbing her with a knife and bludgeoning her with a candlestick as she lay sleeping in their house on the rue de Faubourg St. Honoré. There had been whispers of the most virulent sort as to the cause. The duc was rumored to have been in love with his children's governess, Mademoiselle Deluzy; the duchesse was said to have been corrupting the children due to her exposure as a child by her own governess who had, as it was put, sometimes “fled not to the Isle of Cythera, but to that of Lesbos.” Some said the duc was a cold and withdrawn man who had lost his sanity, while others declared that he was a quiet man driven to madness by the emotional and sexual domination of his duchesse. The only thing that was known with any degree of accuracy was that the marriage had begun as a love match and continued so for some time, producing nine children in thirteen years. At that point it had disintegrated abruptly into violent quarrels and separate bedrooms—until one hot night in August.
The tragedy had come on top of other indiscretions, other acts of insanity among the highest figures in the country. Not too long before, the comte Mortier had tried to murder his children; the Prince d'Eckmuhl had in a fit of rage stabbed his mistress; the French ambassador to Naples had slit his own throat with a razor; and the Keeper of the Seal, Martin du Nord, had reacted to implication in an affair of morals by taking his own life. The general feeling among the people was that there was poisonous corruption beneath the respectable façade of the reign of Louis Philippe and that it should be destroyed, even if it meant starting at the head.
"Never will I forget the people outside the house where the Praslin murder was committed. They seemed to have no pity for the duchesse lying dead inside, nor any real anger against the duc, who had by then swallowed poison and been taken away by the police. Their rage was against the government. They kept screaming, ‘Down with Louis Philippe!’ and ‘Death to the king!’ It was as if it were the Terror all over again."
"It easily could be,” Estes said.
"Perhaps we should pray for another such scandal to persuade the king to listen to the cries for reform?” Balzac said.
"Or create one?” Aurore Dudevant suggested.
The seriousness of the group sent a small frisson through Mara. She had listened politely to all that was said, though after the first moments she had remembered hearing of the Praslin case from her grandmother. Now, recalling the beginning of the conversation, she asked, “But what has this to do with Monsieur Hugo?"
"He was fascinated by the details,” Balzac answered, “so much so that his good wife became disturbed. I fear that may have been the results he had hoped to achieve, though one cannot be sure. It's difficult to know how much of Hugo's selfishness is a pose and how much is natural to him."
"Ego Hugo,” Mara murmured with a smile of remembrance as she glanced toward where Victor Hugo talked to those at his feet without ceasing, waving his arms for emphasis.
"Precisely. He was a great ugly brute of a baby, and now that he has grown into a presentable man, he behaves as if he were still in his swaddling clothes."
"But he is a great man, a great writer,” Estes said.
"It goes without saying.” Madame Dudevant shrugged. “Who else could write a simple book about a hunchback and a cathedral and singlehandedly change architecture for the century, to say nothing of saving Notre Dame from falling completely into ruins?"
"I do not see Madame Juliette, I think, and I had heard so much of her beauty. I understood she and Madame Hugo were friendly.” Estes looked hopefully around him as he spoke.
"It is the other mistress, Madame Leonie, who visits Adele Hugo. Leonie is the one with whom Hugo was caught in flagrante delicto by the husband and for whom he was placed under arrest for the crime of adultery."
"Ah, yes. One has heard of the escapade."
"Who did not? But as Lamartine observed at the time, ‘France is elastic: one rises even from a divan.’”
"The French still buy his books,” Mara commented.
"More avidly than ever. It is more than one so notorious in his infidelities deserves."
"Now, Aurore,” Balzac said placatingly.
Estes lifted a comical brow. “This, from you, my dear lady?"
"Are you suggesting that I have been unfaithful?"
Beads of perspiration broke out on the Italian's head. “I would not dream of it. Still, one has heard..."
"Men are such gossips! I have always believed in fidelity; I have preached it, practiced it, demanded it. Others have failed to live up to it and I, too. And yet I have never felt remorse because in my infidelities I have suffered a sort of fatality, an instinctive idealism which impelled me to abandon the imperfect for what seemed to me to be closer to perfection."
"You do not hold the marriage vow sacred?” Mara asked since the woman spoke so openly.
"Hardly, since I have freed myself of a husband to whom I was little more than a chattel. No. It is only common sense and simple humanity that
no wife should be forced to remain with a man she despises. Women, as well as men, should be free to love where they will. But it is not love but mere concupiscence to go merrily from house to house as Victor does, making love to three different women on the same day, and likely a few actresses as well."
"In his defense,” Balzac said, “I should like to remind you of his wife's notorious affair with Sainte-Beuve. It's my opinion that he has been disillusioned with love from the day he discovered it."
"It's no excuse."
"But to make a cuckold of him with his most virulent literary critic! Men will overlook much, but a betrayal of that magnitude will be neither forgotten nor forgiven."
Betrayal. It was not a subject with which Mara could be comfortable. She had not yet dared think of what Roderic would do when he discovered how she had used him. At one time she had thought it would not matter. She had been wrong. She permitted her attention to be snared by a man wearing an odd cloak of maroon velvet edged with gold braiding and frogging, with a tasseled hood hanging down in back. He was striking in appearance, tall and dark and saturnine.
"Who is the man in the strange cloak?"
"The burnous? That is Delacroix, the painter. A splendid figure, is he not? He picked up the idea of the burnous on his travels in Algeria. With so many going to that part of the world, it is becoming something of a fashion."
Beyond Delacroix—who was no relation, as far as she knew—was the entrance door. A man was just arriving, giving his hat and cane into the hands of a maidservant. He was also dark and tall, but he had a thin mustache and narrow beard and wore an expression of impatience as he scanned the room. De Landes's gaze found Mara, and he gave a small jerk of his head, summoning her.
Mara felt her nerves tighten like violin strings. That de Landes was here was an indication that her every movement was being watched. Did he know that she had not done what she had been told to do? What would he say?
It would be a wrench to leave the group she was with; still, it must be done. “Excuse me,” she said at the first opportunity, “I believe I saw Princess Juliana beckoning."
Royal 02 - Royal Passion Page 13
