The Marquise had indeed several times suggested to deputies or to peers words and ideas that had rung through Europe.She had often judged correctly of certain events on which her circle of friends dared not express an opinion.The principal persons about the Court came in the evening to play whist in her rooms.
Then she also had the qualities of her defects; she was thought to be --and she was--indiscreet.Her friendship seemed to be staunch; she worked for her proteges with a persistency which showed that she cared less for patronage than for increased influence.This conduct was based on her dominant passion, Vanity.Conquests and pleasure, which so many women love, to her seemed only means to an end; she aimed at living on every point of the largest circle that life can describe.
Among the men still young, and to whom the future belonged, who crowded her drawing-room on great occasions, were to be seen MM.de Marsay and de Ronquerolles, de Montriveau, de la Roche-Hugon, de Serizy, Ferraud, Maxime de Trailles, de Listomere, the two Vandenesses, du Chatelet, and others.She would frequently receive a man whose wife she would not admit, and her power was great enough to induce certain ambitious men to submit to these hard conditions, such as two famous royalist bankers, M.de Nucingen and Ferdinand du Tillet.She had so thoroughly studied the strength and the weakness of Paris life, that her conduct had never given any man the smallest advantage over her.An enormous price might have been set on a note or letter by which she might have compromised herself, without one being produced.
If an arid soul enabled her to play her part to the life, her person was no less available for it.She had a youthful figure.Her voice was, at will, soft and fresh, or clear and hard.She possessed in the highest degree the secret of that aristocratic pose by which a woman wipes out the past.The Marquise knew well the art of setting an immense space between herself and the sort of man who fancies he may be familiar after some chance advances.Her imposing gaze could deny everything.In her conversation fine and beautiful sentiments and noble resolutions flowed naturally, as it seemed, from a pure heart and soul; but in reality she was all self, and quite capable of blasting a man who was clumsy in his negotiations, at the very time when she was shamelessly making a compromise for the benefit of her own interest.
Rastignac, in trying to fasten on to this woman, had discerned her to be the cleverest of tools, but he had not yet used it; far from handling it, he was already finding himself crushed by it.This young Condottiere of the brain, condemned, like Napoleon, to give battle constantly, while knowing that a single defeat would prove the grave of his fortunes, had met a dangerous adversary in his protectress.For the first time in his turbulent life, he was playing a game with a partner worthy of him.He saw a place as Minister in the conquest of Madame d'Espard, so he was her tool till he could make her his--a perilous beginning.
The Hotel d'Espard needed a large household, and the Marquise had a great number of servants.The grand receptions were held in the ground-floor rooms, but she lived on the first floor of the house.The perfect order of a fine staircase splendidly decorated, and rooms fitted in the dignified style which formerly prevailed at Versailles, spoke of an immense fortune.When the judge saw the carriage gates thrown open to admit his nephew's cab, he took in with a rapid glance the lodge, the porter, the courtyard, the stables, the arrangement of the house, the flowers that decorated the stairs, the perfect cleanliness of the banisters, walls, and carpets, and counted the footmen in livery who, as the bell rang, appeared on the landing.His eyes, which only yesterday in his parlor had sounded the dignity of misery under the muddy clothing of the poor, now studied with the same penetrating vision the furniture and splendor of the rooms he passed through, to pierce the misery of grandeur.
"M.Popinot--M.Bianchon."
The two names were pronounced at the door of the boudoir where the Marquise was sitting, a pretty room recently refurnished, and looking out on the garden behind the house.At the moment Madame d'Espard was seated in one of the old rococo armchairs of which Madame had set the fashion.Rastignac was at her left hand on a low chair, in which he looked settled like an Italian lady's "cousin." A third person was standing by the corner of the chimney-piece.As the shrewd doctor had suspected, the Marquise was a woman of a parched and wiry constitution.But for her regimen her complexion must have taken the ruddy tone that is produced by constant heat; but she added to the effect of her acquired pallor by the strong colors of the stuffs she hung her rooms with, or in which she dressed.Reddish-brown, marone, bistre with a golden light in it, suited her to perfection.Her boudoir, copied from that of a famous lady then at the height of fashion in London, was in tan-colored velvet; but she had added various details of ornament which moderated the pompous splendor of this royal hue.Her hair was dressed like a girl's in bands ending in curls, which emphasized the rather long oval of her face; but an oval face is as majestic as a round one is ignoble.The mirrors, cut with facets to lengthen or flatten the face at will, amply proved the rule as applied to the physiognomy.
