Monsieur de Maulincour was all the more anxious to go to this ball because he knew that Madame Jules would be present. The fete was given by the Prefect of the Seine, in whose salons the two social worlds of Paris met as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the rooms without finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate. He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly, the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the police, and the dead man of the day before.
"Monsieur, not a sound, not a word," said Bourignard, whose voice he recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. "Monsieur," he continued, and his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, "you increase my efforts against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur; it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful life, and blacken her virtue?"
Some one entered the card-room. Ferragus rose to go.
"Do you know this man?" asked Monsieur de Maulincour of the new-comer, seizing Ferragus by the collar. But Ferragus quickly disengaged himself, took Monsieur de Maulincour by the hair, and shook his head rapidly.
"Must you have lead in it to make it steady?" he said.
"I do not know him personally," replied Henri de Marsay, the spectator of this scene, "but I know that he is Monsieur de Funcal, a rich Portuguese."
Monsieur de Funcal had disappeared. The baron followed but without being able to overtake him until he reached the peristyle, where he saw Ferragus, who looked at him with a jeering laugh from a brilliant equipage which was driven away at high speed.
"Monsieur," said Auguste, re-entering the salon and addressing de Marsay, whom he knew, "I entreat you to tell me where Monsieur de Funcal lives."
"I do not know; but some one here can no doubt tell you."
The baron, having questioned the prefect, ascertained that the Comte de Funcal lived at the Portuguese embassy. At this moment, while he still felt the icy fingers of that strange man in his hair, he saw Madame Jules in all her dazzling beauty, fresh, gracious, artless, resplendent with the sanctity of womanhood which had won his love.
This creature, now infernal to him, excited no emotion in his soul but that of hatred; and this hatred shone in a savage, terrible look from his eyes. He watched for a moment when he could speak to her unheard, and then he said:--"Madame, your /bravi/ have missed me three times."
"What do you mean, monsieur?" she said, flushing. "I know that you have had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatly regretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?"
"You knew that /bravi/ were employed against me by that man of the rue Soly?"
"Monsieur!"
"Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but for my blood--"
At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them.
"What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?"
"Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious," said Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almost fainting condition.
There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least in their lives, /a propos/ of some undeniable fact, confronted with a direct, sharp, uncompromising question,--one of those questions pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a dagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, "All women lie." Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood, horrible falsehood,--but always the necessity to lie. This necessity admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception!
Besides, women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true in lying,--they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not resist,--that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as the cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomes to them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to individual character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep; others are grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning indifference to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end by lying to themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority to everything at the very moment when they are trembling for the secret treasures of their love? Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments of life? In them, nothing is put on. Deception comes as the snow from heaven. And then, with what art they discover the truth in others!
