After all, I shall enjoy keeping you to it.""Well, then, after I am married," said Newman serenely.
The little marquise hesitated a moment, looking at him, and he wondered what was coming."I suppose you know what my life is,"she presently said."I have no pleasure, I see nothing, I do nothing.I live in Paris as I might live at Poitiers.
My mother-in-law calls me--what is the pretty word?--a gad-about? accuses me of going to unheard-of places, and thinks it ought to be joy enough for me to sit at home and count over my ancestors on my fingers.
But why should I bother about my ancestors? I am sure they never bothered about me.I don't propose to live with a green shade on my eyes; I hold that things were made to look at.
My husband, you know, has principles, and the first on the list is that the Tuileries are dreadfully vulgar.
If the Tuileries are vulgar, his principles are tiresome.
If I chose I might have principles quite as well as he.
If they grew on one's family tree I should only have to give mine a shake to bring down a shower of the finest.
At any rate, I prefer clever Bonapartes to stupid Bourbons.""Oh, I see; you want to go to court," said Newman, vaguely conjecturing that she might wish him to appeal to the United States legation to smooth her way to the imperial halls.
The marquise gave a little sharp laugh."You are a thousand miles away.I will take care of the Tuileries myself;the day I decide to go they will be very glad to have me.
Sooner or later I shall dance in an imperial quadrille.
I know what you are going to say: 'How will you dare?'
But I SHALL dare.I am afraid of my husband;he is soft, smooth, irreproachable; everything that you know;but I am afraid of him--horribly afraid of him.
And yet I shall arrive at the Tuileries.But that will not be this winter, nor perhaps next, and meantime I must live.
For the moment, I want to go somewhere else; it's my dream.
I want to go to the Bal Bullier."
"To the Bal Bullier?" repeated Newman, for whom the words at first meant nothing.
"The ball in the Latin Quarter, where the students dance with their mistresses.Don't tell me you have not heard of it.""Oh yes," said Newman; "I have heard of it; I remember now.
I have even been there.And you want to go there?""It is silly, it is low, it is anything you please.But I want to go.
Some of my friends have been, and they say it is awfully drole.
My friends go everywhere; it is only I who sit moping at home.""It seems to me you are not at home now," said Newman, "and I shouldn't exactly say you were moping.""I am bored to death.I have been to the opera twice a week for the last eight years.Whenever I ask for anything my mouth is stopped with that: Pray, madam, haven't you an opera box?
Could a woman of taste want more? In the first place, my opera box was down in my contrat; they have to give it to me.
To-night, for instance, I should have preferred a thousand times to go to the Palais Royal.But my husband won't go to the Palais Royal because the ladies of the court go there so much.
You may imagine, then, whether he would take me to Bullier's;he says it is a mere imitation--and a bad one--of what they do at the Princess Kleinfuss's.But as I don't go to the Princess Kleinfuss's, the next best thing is to go to Bullier's.It is my dream, at any rate, it's a fixed idea.
All I ask of you is to give me your arm; you are less compromising than any one else.I don't know why, but you are.
I can arrange it.I shall risk something, but that is my own affair.Besides, fortune favors the bold.Don't refuse me;it is my dream!"
Newman gave a loud laugh.It seemed to him hardly worth while to be the wife of the Marquis de Bellegarde, a daughter of the crusaders, heiress of six centuries of glories and traditions, to have centred one's aspirations upon the sight of a couple of hundred young ladies kicking off young men's hats.It struck him as a theme for the moralist;but he had no time to moralize upon it.The curtain rose again;M.de Bellegarde returned, and Newman went back to his seat.
He observed that Valentin de Bellegarde had taken his place in the baignoire of Mademoiselle Nioche, behind this young lady and her companion, where he was visible only if one carefully looked for him.In the next act Newman met him in the lobby and asked him if he had reflected upon possible emigration.
"If you really meant to meditate," he said, "you might have chosen a better place for it.""Oh, the place was not bad," said Valentin."I was not thinking of that girl.I listened to the music, and, without thinking of the play or looking at the stage, I turned over your proposal.At first it seemed quite fantastic.
And then a certain fiddle in the orchestra--I could distinguish it--began to say as it scraped away, 'Why not, why not?'
And then, in that rapid movement, all the fiddles took it up and the conductor's stick seemed to beat it in the air:
'Why not, why not?' I'm sure I can't say! I don't see why not.
I don't see why I shouldn't do something.It appears to me really a very bright idea.This sort of thing is certainly very stale.
And then I could come back with a trunk full of dollars.
Besides, I might possibly find it amusing.They call me a raffine;who knows but that I might discover an unsuspected charm in shop-keeping? It would really have a certain romantic, picturesque side; it would look well in my biography.
It would look as if I were a strong man, a first-rate man, a man who dominated circumstances.""Never mind how it would look," said Newman.
"It always looks well to have half a million of dollars.
There is no reason why you shouldn't have them if you will mind what I tell you--I alone--and not talk to other parties."He passed his arm into that of his companion, and the two walked for some time up and down one of the less frequented corridors.