learn nor unlearn. Fors non mutat genus.'" The magnificent millionnaire, accustomed to the homage of grandees from the faubourg and lions from the Chaussée d'Antin, rose to his feet in superb wrath, less at the taunting words than at the haughtiness of mien with which they were uttered. “Monsieur, I cannot permit you to address me in that tone. Do you mean to insult me?" "I regret to hear that; I might have avenged you." "I need no one to avenge my wrong. Let this pass." "Not yet. Louise, you say, fled with a seducer? So proud as she was, I can scarcely believe it." "Oh, it was not with a roturier she fled; her pride would not have allowed that.” "He must have deceived her somehow. Did she continue to live with him?" "That question, at least, I can answer; "Certainly not. Tranquillize your nerves, reseat yourself, and listen ;- -re-for though I lost all trace of her life, his seat yourself, I say." Louvier dropped into his chair. "No," resumed the Vicomte, politely, "I do not come here to insult you, neither do I come to ask money; I assume that I am in my rights when I ask M. Louvier what has become of Louise Duval ?" "Louise Duval! I know nothing about her." "Possibly not now; but you did know her well enough, when we two parted, to be a candidate for her hand. You did know her enough to solicit my good offices in promotion of your suit; and you did, at my advice, quit Paris to seek her at Aix-la-Chapelle.' "What! have you, M. de Mauléon, not heard news of her since that day?” "I decline to accept your question as an answer to mine. You went to Aix-laChapelle; you saw Louise Duval; at my urgent request she condescended to accept your hand." No, M. de Mauléon, she did not accept my hand. I did not even see her. The day before I arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle she had left it not alone - left it with her lover." "Her lover! you do not mean the miserable Englishman who No Englishman," interrupted Louvier, fiercely. Enough that the step she took placed an eternal barrier between her and myself. I have never even sought to hear of her since that day. Vicomte, that woman was the one love of my life. I loved her, as you must have known, to folly—to madness. And how was my love requited? Ah! you open a very deep wound, M. le Vicomte." Pardon me, Louvier; I did not give you credit for feelings so keen and so genuine, nor did I think myself thus easily affected by matters belonging to a past life so remote from the present. For whom did Louise forsake you? "It matters not- he is dead." life was pretty well known to me till its end; and a very few months after she fled he was enchained to another. Let us talk of her no more." "Ay, ay," muttered De Mauléon, "some disgraces are not to be redeemed, and therefore not to be discussed. To me, though a relation, Louise Duval was but little known, and after what you tell me, I cannot dispute your right to say, ‘talk of her no more." You loved her, and she wronged you. My poor Louvier, pardon me if I made an old wound bleed afresh." These words were said with a certain pathetic tenderness; they softened Louvier towards the speaker. After a short pause the Vicomte swept his hand over his brow, as if to dismiss from his mind a painful and obtrusive thought; then, with a changed expression of countenance - an expression frank and winning-with voice and with manner in which no vestige remained of the irony or the haughtiness with which he had resented the frigidity of his reception, he drew his chair still nearer to Louvier's, and resumed: "Our situations, Paul Louvier, are much changed since we two became friends. I then could say, ‘Open sesame' to whatever recesses, forbidden to vulgar footsteps, the adventurer whom I took by the hand might wish to explore. In those days my heart was warm; I liked you, Louvier — honestly liked you. I think our personal acquaintance commenced in some gay gathering of young viveurs whose behaviour to you offended my sense of good breeding?" Louvier coloured, and muttered inaudi Louvier bowed his head, evidently gratified. "From that day we became familiar. If any obligation to me were incurred, you would not have been slow to return it. On more than one occasion when I was rapidly wasting money - and money was plentiful with you- you generously offered me your purse. On more than one occasion I accepted the offer; and you would never have asked repayment if I had not insisted on repaying. I was no less grateful for your aid." "Pardon me," answered Louvier, meekly, "but I did not return to Paris for months after you had disappeared. My Louvier made a movement as if to ex- mind was unsettled by the news that tend his hand, but he checked the im-awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it pulse, by travel — visited Holland and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard of your story was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own account. You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse des jewels; and your friend M. de N. never sold them to one jeweller and obtained their substitutes in paste from another?" "There was another attraction which drew me towards you. I recognized in your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the freluquets and lions who were my more habitual associates. Do you not remember some hours of serious talk we have had together when we lounged in The Vicomte made a perceptible effort the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the to repress an impulse of rage; then regarden of the Palais Royal? — hours seating himself in his chair, and with that when we forgot that those were the haunts slight shrug of the shoulder by which a of idlers, and thought of the stormy ac- Frenchman implies to himself that rage tions affecting the history of the world of would be out of place, replied calmly, which they had been the scene - hours" M. de N. did as you say, but, of course, when I confided to you, as I confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my follies in the present, alas were hourly tending to frustrate?" "Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal, it was on the Pont de la Concorde, on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you said, pointing towards the walls of the Corps Legislatif, 'Paul, when I once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First Minister of France?'" not employed by me, nor with my knowledge. Listen; the truth is this - the time has come to tell it: Before you left Paris for Aix I found myself on the brink of ruin. I had glided towards it with my characteristic recklessness - with that scorn of money for itself that sanguine confidence in the favour of fortune which are vices common to every roi des viveurs. Poor mock Alexanders that we spendthrifts are in youth! we divide all we have among others, and when asked by some prudent friend 'What have you left for your own share?' answer "Did I say so?-possibly; but I was Hope.' I knew, of course, that my patritoo young then for admission to the mony was rapidly vanishing; but then my Chamber, and I fancied I had so many horses were matchless. I had enough to years yet to spare in idle loiterings at the last me for years on their chance of winFountain of Youth. Pass over these cir-ning-of course they would win. But cumstances. You became in love with you may recollect when we parted that Louise. I told you her troubled history; I was troubled, creditor's bills before it did not diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards then fell the thunderbolt which shattered my existence and we have never met again till this hour. You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier." "But," said Louvier, falteringly-"but since you refer to that thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that — that How me; usurers' bills too, and you, my thrift, vaurien though he might be was likely to steal or accept a woman's jewels -Va, mon pauvre Louvier, again I say, 'Fors non mutat genus." Despite the repetition of the displeasing patrician motto, such reminiscences of his visitor's motley character-irregular, turbulent, the reverse of severe, but, in its own loose way, grandly generous and grandly brave-struck both on the common-sense and the heart of the listener; and the Frenchman recognized the Frenchman. Louvier doubted De Mauléon's word no more, bowed his head, and said, "Victor de Mauléon, I have wronged you go on.' "On the day after you left for Aix came that horse-race on which my all depended it was lost, The loss absorbed the whole of my remaining fortune; it absorbed about 20,000 francs in excess, a debt of honour to De N., whom you called my friend friend he was not; imitator, follower, flatterer, yes. Still I deemed him enough my friend to say to him, Give me a little time to pay the money; I must sell my stud, or write to my only living relation from whom I have expectations.' You remember that relation Jacques de Mauléon, old and unmarried. By De N.'s advice I did write to my kinsman. No answer came; but what did come were fresh bills from creditors. I then calmly calculated my assets. The sale of my stud and effects might suffice to pay every sou that I owed, including my debt to De N.; but that was not quite certain at all events, when the debts were paid I should be beggared. Well, you know, Louvier, what we Frenchmen are how nature has denied to us the quality of patience; how involuntarily suicide presents itself to us when hope is lost and suicide seemed to me here due to honour-viz., to the certain discharge of my liabilities—for the stud and effects of Victor de Mauléon, roi des viveurs, would command much higher prices if he died like Cato than if he ran away from his fate like Pompey. Doubless De N. guessed my intention from my words or my manner; but on the very day in which I had made all preparations for quitting the world from which sunshine had vanished, I received in a blank envelope bank-notes amounting to 70,000 francs, and the post-mark on the envelope was that of the town of Fontainebleau, near to which lived my rich kinsman Jacques. I took it for granted that the sum came from him. Displeased as he might have been with my wild career, still I was his natural heir. The sum sufficed to pay my debt to De N., to all creditors, and leave a surplus. My sanguine spirits returned. I would sell my stud; I would retrench, reform, go to my kinsman as the penitent son. The fatted calf would be killed, and I should wear purple yet. You understand that, Louvier ?" 66 Yes, yes; so like you. Go on." "Now, then, came the thunder-bolt! Ah in those sunny days you used to envy me for being so spoilt by women. The Duchesse de had conceived for me one of those romantic fancies which women without children, and with ample leisure for the waste of affection, do sometimes conceive for very ordinary men younger than themselves, but in whom they imagine they discover sinners to reform or heroes to exalt. I had been honoured by some notes from the Duchesse in which this sort of romance was owned. I had not replied to them encouragingly. In truth, my heart was then devoted to another, the English girl whom I had wooed as my wife-who, despite her parents' retractation of their consent to our union when they learned how dilapidated were my fortunes, pledged herself to remain faithful to me, and wait for better days." Again De Mauléon paused in suppressed emotion, and then went on hurriedly: "No, the Duchesse did not inspire me with guilty passion, but she did inspire me with an affectionate respect. I felt that she was by nature meant to be a great and noble creature, and was, nevertheless, at that moment wholly misled from her right place amongst women by an illusion of mere imagination about a man who happened then to be very much talked about, and perhaps resembled some Lothario in the novels which she was always reading. We lodged, as you may remember, in the same house." 66 Yes, I remember. I remember how you once took me to a great ball given by the Duchesse; how handsome I thought her, though no longer young; and you say right-how I did envy you, that night!" "From that night, however, the Duc, not unnaturally, became jealous. He reproved the Duchesse for her too amiable manner towards a mauvais sujet like myself, and forbade her in future to receive my visits. It was then that these notes became frequent and clandestine, brought to me by her maid, who took back my somewhat chilling replies. "But to proceed. In the flush of my - high spirits, and in the insolence of mag-interdict, enclosed the key to the private nificent ease with which I paid De N. entrance to her rooms, by which I could the trifle I owed him, something he said gain an interview with her at ten o'clock made my heart stand still. I told him that night, an hour at which the Duc had that the money received had come from informed her he should be out till late at Jacques de Mauléon, and that I was going his club. Now, however great the indisdown to his house that day to thank him. cretion which the Duchesse here comHe replied, 'Don't go; it did not come mitted, it is due to her memory to say, from him.' It must; see the post-mark that I am convinced that her dominant of the envelope Fontainebleau.' 'I idea was that I meditated self-destrucposted it at Fontainebleau.' 'You sent tion; that no time was to be lost to save me the money, you!' 'Nay, that is be- me from it; and for the rest she trusted yond my means. Where it came from,' to the influence which a woman's tears said this misérable, much more may yet and adjurations and reasonings have over come;' and then he narrated, with that even the strongest and hardest men. It cynicism so in vogue at Paris, how he is only one of those coxcombs in whom had told the Duchesse (who knew him as the world of fashion abounds who could my intimate associate) of my stress of cir- have admitted a thought that would have cumstance, of his fear that I meditated done wrong to the impulsive, generous, something desperate; how she gave him imprudent eagerness of a woman to be in the jewels to sell and to substitute; how, time to save from death by his own hand in order to baffle my suspicion and frus- a fellow-being for whom she had contrate my scruples, he had gone to Fon-ceived an interest. I so construed her tainebleau and there posted the envelope note. At the hour she named I admitted containing the bank-notes, out of which myself into the rooms by the key she he secured for himself the payment he | sent. You know the rest: I was discovdeemed otherwise imperilled. De N. ered by the Duc and by the agents of having made this confession, hurried police in the cabinet in which the Dudown the stairs swiftly enough to save chesse's jewels were kept. The key that himself a descent by the window. Do admitted me into the cabinet was found you believe me still?" in my possession." "Yes; you were always so hot-blooded, and De N. so considerate of self, I believe you implicitly." De Mauléon's voice here faltered, and he covered his face with a convuisive hand. Almost in the same breath he recovered from visible sign of emotion, and went on with a half-laugh. "Of course I did what any man would do I wrote a hasty letter to the Duchesse, stating all my gratitude for an act "Ah! you envied me, did you, for being of pure friendship so noble; urging also spoiled by the women? Enviable position the reasons that rendered it impossible indeed was mine that night. The Duc for a man of honour to profit by such an obeyed the first impulse of his wrath. act. Unhappily, what had been sent was He imagined that I had dishonoured him: paid away ere I knew the facts; but I he would dishonour me in return. Easier could not bear the thought of life till my to his pride, too, a charge against the robdebt to her was acquitted; in short, Lou-ber of jewels than against a favoured lover vier, conceive for yourself the sort of letter which I—or any honest man would write, under circumstances so cruel." "H'm!" grunted Louvier. "Something, however, in my letter, conjoined with what De N. had told her as to my state of mind, alarmed this poor woman, who had deigned to take in me an interest so little deserved. Her reply, very agitated and incoherent, was brought to me by her maid, who had taken my letter, and by whom, as I before said, our correspondence had been of late carried on. In her reply she implored me to decide, to reflect on nothing till I had seen her; stated how the rest of her day was pre-engaged; and since to visit her openly had been made impossible by the Duc's of his wife. But when I, obeying the first necessary obligation of honour, invented on the spur of the moment the story by which the Duchesse's reputation was cleared from suspicion, accused myself of a frantic passion and the trickery of a fabricated key, the Duc's true nature of gentilhomme came back. He retracted the charge which he could scarcely even at the first blush have felt to be well founded; and as the sole charge left was simply that which men comme il faut do not refer to criminal courts and police investigations, I was left to make my bow unmolested and retreat to my own rooms, awaiting there such communications as the Duc might deem it right to convey to me on the morrow. "But on the morrow the Duc, with his | named, despatched to the Duc the anwife and personal suite quitted Paris en nouncement of my arrival, and was conroute for Spain; the bulk of his retinue, sidering how I should obtain a second in including the offending abigail, was dis- some officer quartered in the town - for charged; and, whether through these my soreness and resentment at the marked servants or through the police, the story coldness of my former acquaintances at before evening was in the mouth of every Paris had forbidden me to seek a second gossip in club or café-exaggerated, dis- among any of that faithless number — torted to my ignominy and shame. My when the Duc himself entered my room. detection in the cabinet, the sale of the Judge of my amaze at seeing him in perjewels, the substitution of paste by De son; judge how much greater the amaze N., who was known to be my servile imi- became when he advanced with a grave tator and reputed to be my abject tool; but cordial smile, offering me his hand ! all my losses on the turf, my debts,— all these scattered fibres of flax were twisted together in a rope that would have hanged a dog with a much better name than mine. If some disbelieved that I could be a thief, few of those who should have known me best held me guiltless of a baseness almost equal to that of theft -the exaction of profit from the love of a foolish woman." "But you could have told your own tale, shown the letters you had received from the Duchesse, and cleared away every stain on your honour." "How?-shown her letters, ruined her character, even stated that she had caused her jewels to be sold for the uses of a young roue! Ah no, Louvier. I would rather have gone to the galleys!" "M. de Mauléon,' said he, 'since I wrote to you, facts have become known to me which would induce me rather to ask your friendship than call on you to defend your life. Madame la Duchesse has been seriously ill since we left Paris, and I refrained from all explanations likely to add to the hysterical excitement under which she was suffering. It is only this day that her mind became collected, and she herself then gave me her entire confidence. Monsieur, she insisted on my reading the letters that you addressed to her. Those letters, monsieur, suffice to prove your innocence of any design against my peace. The Duchesse has so candidly avowed her own indiscretion, has so clearly established the distinction between indiscretion and guilt that I have "H'm!" grunted Louvier again. granted her my pardon with a lightened "The Duc generously gave me better heart and a firm belief that we shall be means of righting myself. Three days happier together than we have been yet.' after he quitted Paris I received a letter The Duc continued his journey the from him, very politely written, express- next day, but he subsequently honoured. ing his great regret that any words imply-me with two or three letters written as ing the suspicion too monstrous and absurd to need refutation should have escaped him in the surprise of the moment; but stating that since the offence I had owned was one that he could not overlook, he was under the necessity of asking the only reparation I could make. That if it deranged' me to quit Paris, he would return to it for the purpose required; but that if I would give him the additional satisfaction of suiting his convenience, he should prefer to await my arrival at Bayonne, where he was detained by the indisposition of the Duchesse." friend to friend, and in which you will find repeated the substance of what I have stated him to say by word of mouth." "But why not then have returned to Paris? Such letters, at least, you might have shown, and in braving your calumniators you would have soon lived them down." "You forget that I was a ruined man. When, by the sale of my horses, &c., my debts, including what was owed to the Duchesse, and which I remitted to the Duc, were discharged, the balance left to me would not have maintained me a week at Paris. Besides, I felt so sore, so indignant. Paris and the Parisians had become to me so hateful. And to crown all, that girl, that English girl whom I had so loved, on whose fidelity I had so counted well, I received a letter from her, gently but coldly bidding me farewell for ever. I do not think she believed me guilty of theft, but doubtless the offence I had confessed, in order to save the honour of the |
