The trail of the serpent
moralised; which Scottish John Law infected with a furious madness, in
those halcyon days when jolly, good-tempered, accomplished, easy-going
Philippe of Orléans held the reins of power. Paris, which young Arouet,
afterwards Voltaire, ruled with the distant jingle of his jester’s
wand, from the far retreat of Ferney. Paris, in which Madame du Deffand
dragged out those weary, brilliant, dismal, salon-keeping years,
quarrelling with Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse, and corresponding with
Horace Walpole; _ce cher_ Horace, who described those brilliant
French ladies as women who neglected all the duties of life, and gave
very pretty suppers.
Paris, in which Bailly spoke, and Madame Roland dreamed; in which
Marie Antoinette despaired, and gentle Princess Elizabeth laid down
her saintly life; in which the son of St. Louis went calmly to the
red mouth of that terrible machine invented by the charitable doctor
who thought to benefit his fellow creatures. City, under whose roofs
bilious Robespierre suspected and feared; beneath whose shadow the
glorious twenty-two went hand in hand to death, with the psalm of
freedom swelling from their lips. Paris, which rejoiced when Marengo
was won, and rang joy-bells for the victories of Lodd Arcola,
Austerlitz, Auerstedt, and Jena; Paris, which mourned over fatal
Waterloo, and opened its arms, after weary years of waiting, to take
to its heart only the ashes of the ruler of its election; Paris,
the marvellous; Paris, the beautiful, whose streets are streets of
palaces--fairy wonders of opulence and art;--can it be that under
some of thy myriad roofs there are such incidental trifles as misery,
starvation, vice, crime, and death? Nay, we will not push the question,
but enter at once into one of the most brilliant of the temples of that
goddess whose names are Pleasure, Fashion, Folly, and Idleness: and
what more splendid shrine can we choose whereat to worship the divinity
called Pleasure than the Italian Opera House?
To-night the house is thronged with fashion and beauty. Bright uniforms
glitter in the backgrounds of the boxes, and sprinkle the crowded
parterre. The Citizen King is there--not King of France; no such poor
title will he have, but King of the French. His throne is based, not on
the broad land, but on the living hearts of his people. May it never
prove to be built on a shallow foundation! In eighteen hundred and
forty-two all is well for Louis Philippe and his happy family.
In the front row of the stalls, close to the orchestra, a young man
lounges, with his opera-glass in his hand. He is handsome and very
elegant, and is dressed in the most perfect taste and the highest
fashion. Dark curling hair clusters round his delicately white
forehead; his eyes are of a bright blue, shaded by auburn lashes, which
contrast rather strangely with his dark hair. A very dark and thick
moustache only reveals now and then his thin lower lip and a set of
dazzling white teeth. His nose is a delicate aquiline, and his features
altogether bear the stamp of aristocracy. He is quite alone, this
elegant lounger, and of the crowd of people of rank and fashion around
him not one turns to speak to him. His listless white hand is thrown
on the cushion of the stall on which he leans, as he glances round the
house with one indifferent sweep of his opera-glass. Presently his
attention is arrested by the conversation of two gentlemen close to
him, and without seeming to listen, he hears what they are saying.
“Is the Spanish princess here to-night?” asks one.
“What, the marquis’s niece, the girl who has that immense property in
Spanish America? Yes, she is in the box next to the king’s; don’t you
see her diamonds? They and her eyes are brilliant enough to set the
curtains of the box on fire.”
“She is immensely rich, then?”
“She is an Eldorado. The Marquis de Cevennes has no children, and all
his property will go to her; her Spanish American property comes from
her mother. She is an orphan, as you know, and the marquis is her
guardian.”
“She is handsome; but there’s just a little too much of the demon in
those great almond-shaped black eyes and that small determined mouth.
What a fortune she would be to some intriguing adventurer!”
“An adventurer! Valerie de Cevennes the prize of an adventurer! Show me
the man capable of winning her, without rank and fortune equal to hers;
and I will say you have found the eighth wonder of the world.”
The listener’s eyes light up with a strange flash, and lifting his
glass, he looks for a few moments carelessly round the house, and then
fixes his gaze upon the box next to that occupied by the royal party.
The Spanish beauty is indeed a glorious creature; of a loveliness
rich alike in form and colour, but with hauteur and determination
expressed in every feature of her face. A man of some fifty years of
age is seated by her side, and behind her chair two or three gentlemen
stand, the breasts of whose coats glitter with stars and orders. They
are speaking to her; but she pays very little attention to them. If
she answers, it is only by a word, or a bend of her proud head, which
she does not turn towards them. She never takes her eyes from the
curtain, which presently rises. The opera is _La Sonnambula_.
The Elvino is the great singer of the day--a young man whose glorious
voice and handsome face have made him the rage of the musical world.
Of his origin different stories are told. Some say he was originally
a shoemaker, others declare him to be the son of a prince. He has,
however, made his fortune at seven-and-twenty, and can afford to
laugh at these stories. The opera proceeds, and the powerful glass of
the lounger in the stalls records the minutest change in the face of
Valerie de Cevennes. It records one faint quiver, and then a firmer
compression of the thin lips, when the Elvino appears; and the eyes of
the lounger fasten more intently, if possible, than before upon the
face of the Spanish beauty.
Presently Elvino sings the grand burst of passionate reproach, in
which he upbraids Amina’s fancied falsehood. As the house applauds at
the close of the scene, Valerie’s bouquet falls at the feet of the
Amina. Elvino, taking it in his hand, presents it to the lady, and as
he does so, the lounger’s glass--which, more rapidly than the bouquet
has fallen, has turned to the stage--records a movement so quick as to
be almost a feat of leger-de-main. The great tenor has taken a note
from the bouquet. The lounger sees the triumphant glance towards the
box next the king’s, though it is rapid as lightning. He sees the tiny
morsel of glistening paper crumpled in the singer’s hand; and after one
last contemplative look at the proud brow and set lips of Valerie de
Cevennes, he lowers the glass.
“My glass is well worth the fifteen guineas I paid for it,” he
whispers to himself. “That girl can command her eyes; they have not one
traitorous flash. But those thin lips cannot keep a secret from a man
with a decent amount of brains.”
When the opera is over, the lounger of the stalls leaves his place by
the orchestra, and loiters in the winter night outside the stage-door.
Perhaps he is enamoured of some lovely _coryphée_--lovely in all
the gorgeousness of flake white and liquid rouge; and yet that can
scarcely be, or he would be still in the stalls, or hovering about the
side-scenes, for the _ballet_ is not over. Two or three carriages,
belonging to the principal singers, are waiting at the stage-door.
Presently a tall, stylish-looking man, in a loose overcoat, emerges;
a groom opens the door of a well-appointed little brougham, but the
gentleman says--
“No, Farée, you can go home. I shall walk.”
“But, monsieur,” remonstrates the man, “monsieur is not aware that it
rains.”
Monsieur says he is quite aware of the rain; but that he has an
umbrella, and prefers walking. So the brougham drives off with the
distressed Farée, who consoles himself at a café high up on the
boulevard, where he plays _écarté_ with a limp little pack of
cards, and drinks effervescing lemonade.
The lounger of the stalls, standing in the shadow, hears this little
dialogue, and sees also, by the light of the carriage-lamps, that
the gentleman in the loose coat is no less a personage than the hero
of the opera. The lounger also seems to be indifferent to the rain,
and to have a fancy for walking; for when Elvino crosses the road
and turns into an opposite street, the lounger follows. It is a dark
night, with a little drizzling rain--a night by no means calculated to
tempt an elegantly-dressed young man to brave all the disagreeables
and perils of dirty pavements and overflowing gutters; but neither
Elvino nor the lounger seem to care for mud or rain, for they walk
at a rapid pace through several streets--the lounger always a good
way behind and always in the shadow. He has a light step, which wakes
no echo on the wet pavement; and the fashionable tenor has no idea
that he is followed. He walks through long narrow streets to the Rue
Rivoli, thence across one of the bridges. Presently he enters a very
aristocratic but retired street, in a lonely quarter of the city. The
distant roll of carriages and the tramp of a passing _gendarmes_
are the only sounds that break the silence. There is not a creature
to be seen in the wide street but the two men. Elvino turns to look
about him, sees no one, and walks on till he comes to a mansion at the
corner, screened from the street by a high wall, with great gates and
a porter’s lodge. Detached from the house, and sheltered by an angle
of the wall, is a little pavilion, the windows of which look into the
courtyard or garden within. Close to this pavilion is a narrow low
door of carved oak, studded with great iron nails, and almost hidden
in the heavy masonry of the wall which frames it. The house in early
times has been a convent, and is now the property of the Marquis de
Cevennes. Elvino, with one more glance up and down the dimly-lighted
street, approaches this doorway, and stooping down to the keyhole
whistles softly three bars of a melody from Don Giovanni--_Là ci
darem la mano_.
“So!” says the lounger, standing in the shadow of a house opposite, “we
are getting deeper into the mystery; the curtain is up, and the play is
going to begin.”
As the clocks of Paris chime the half-hour after eleven the little door
turns on its hinges, and a faint light in the courtyard within falls
upon the figure of the fashionable tenor. This light comes from a lamp
in the hand of a pretty-looking, smartly-dressed girl, who has opened
the door.
“She is not the woman I took her for, this Valerie,” says the
lounger, “or she would have opened that door herself. She makes her
waiting-maid her confidante--a false step, which proves her either
stupid or inexperienced. Not stupid; her face gives the lie to that.
Inexperienced then. So much the better.”
As the spy meditates time, Elvino passes through the doorway, stooping
as he crosses the threshold, and the light disappears.
“This is either a private marriage, or something worse,” mutters the
lounger. “Scarcely the last. Hers is the face of a woman capable of a
madness, but not of degradation--the face of a Phædra rather than a
Messalina. I have seen enough of the play for to-night.”
CHAPTER II.
WORKING IN THE DARK.
EARLY the next morning a gentleman rings the bell of the porter’s lodge
belonging to the mansion of the Marquis de Cevennes, and on seeing the
porter addresses him thus--
“The lady’s-maid of Mademoiselle Valerie de Cevennes is perhaps visible
at this early hour?”
The porter thinks not; it is very early, only eight o’clock;
Mademoiselle Finette never appears till nine. The toilette of her